That’a a blurry photo of the capitol and the start of today’s Austin Marathon, but trust me, I was there for sunrise. The start was a little cool at 38°, and breezy, but my brother gave me the VIP experience by letting me warmup in his office building at 816 Congress. My brother Steve and sister Nancy crewed me. They bought me dinner the night before and was there for my every need.

They captured this photo of me after the split from the half marathon runners, around 12.5 miles. I’d worn my gloves until mile 10 but really, it was fantastic marathon weather. My long sleeve, alpaca wool t-shirt was perfect for the entire distance. The wind actually disappeared along the rolling hills of Enfield and returned downtown, about where this photo was taken on 15th St. I never over-heated today.

I have to say, Austin really is hilly. This course found every hill in central Austin to include in its route. There was over 1000 feet of elevation gain. That’s a lot for a course that only goes from 400 to 600 feet. I felt good about maintaining form and speed on the hills. I especially think I took advantage of the downhills.

You have to be ready to surge for those and I always was. Running good downhills probably made the difference today in my final time. I wore my ear buds, although I didn’t listen to a playlist. I was able to hear Siri read the chats from family following me on the tracker app. It motivated me to push my pace.

I felt good the whole way but had a slight slowdown over the hills on Enfield, and then of course I slowed down a bit for the final 6 miles, but not by much. I did a great job of maintaining a pace slightly under 9 minutes per mile for just about every mile. I’ve never run such a consistent pace. It didn’t feel consistent. I would catch myself slowing and put on a surge. It was a race of surges. I’d find someone to try to keep up with whenever I felt a slow down in progress. The result was that I kept a steady pace around 8:56 per mile. At least that was my finish pace but I never ran under 8:14 and I never ran over 9:19.

The crowds were bigger this year. Non-stop spectators the entire course. Being Austin, there were so many sites to comment on. The funniest for me was passing by a choir singing beautiful church songs along the Drag – the section of Guadalupe that runs by the UT campus. They were singing directly across from the Church of Scientology – Austin. Made me chuckle.

I was nostalgic running through the Hyde Park neighborhood. Speedway has really gentrified since I last lived there and the homes were so pretty. Climbing 11th St. near the finish was easily the most difficult hill of the race. It tops out on Trinity but that’s a false summit and it doesn’t really crest until San Jacinto. From there, it was all downhill and I made my target of crossing the finish line under 4 hours in 3:54. It was a good run.