Month: June 2006

The marathon was won in 2:23:51 by the Kenyan Mark Chepses Kiprosgei. That is a pace of 5:29 per mile. That is faster than most runners can run 1 mile, and he ran 26 of them back to back.

There were 222 registered runners. That was a surprise to me. I did not think there were that many at the starting line this morning.

This was the 19th running of this event.

All of the races I have been in here have a special category for military vets. As this is an event honoring the Mexican Navy, they supposedly made a big deal out of the presentation of the prize to the first place vet.

First place was approximately $1,800 USD. They also had an extra award for the first Yucatecan runner. He received $900 USD bonus plus whatever his age category awarded. You had to show your birth certificate to win that extra bit of money.

Edited to say: The man in the picture was not the winner. Yikes! The site I got the picture from said he was the winner, but the newspaper says the man with race number 001 was the winner.

They’re off! The race started at 6:00 this morning. I probably won’t know the results until later today or tomorrow when it comes out in the newspaper. I am not able to go to the finish line and see it end.

It was easy to see who the winners will be. There were three African men that stood out. They seemed to know each other and may be from the same country. They warmed up together and did not seem to understand the instructions in Spanish.

I caught up with them (in the car) at kilometer marking 12 and they were already 1 kilometer ahead of everyone else. They had just gone through a water station. One grabbed sponges for all of them and the other two grabbed water. I am not sure how water is done in races outside of our area here in México, but we have water in bags. You are able to load up on several bags if you want. You don’t have to fight with cups. They all shared the water and sponges around. They looked like they were having a good time.

They were running 5:30 miles (3:25/Km) at the 12 Km. mark. I imagine the pace will pick up at the end. There was no one even close to them. It will be a race between the three in the final kilometers.

I have been running pretty consistently. Not four or five days a week, but I have been able to get back into running three days a week. I was sick this weekend so did not feel like running at all. I should be able to get back into it tomorrow. Planning an easy 40 minute run.

My three days a week have been about like this. One day of 30 minutes, one day of 40 and one day of an hour. I have freed up one day a week that I should be able to run on. This will only last for a month so I am going to run as much as I can on that day. It will probably be my long run day as I don’t normally have anything planned on that morning except for the one appointment that kept me from running in the first place.

About mid way through July I will start training for my next half marathon. I am very excited about my training program. The last time the goal was to just finish, so I did not do any speed work. Though I ran a ton, I really had no base when I started. Now I have a good base and I know what it is like to run 2 and 1/2 hours at a time. I will not be experiencing anything new in this training, I will be just be building on experience. I think that alone will help me get my time down. Couple that with the speed work I will be doing and I may end up with around a 2 hour finish.

Registration is open for the Phedippidations Half Marathon. This is a “virtual” half marathon. You can run an official half that weekend and turn in your time, or you can just map out 13.1 miles on your own and run alone. The point is not to have a race against 10,000 other runners, but that 10,000 runners will be running together that weekend. Join us. Join the fun.