So, I finished the Houston Marathon (yay!).  There’s good news, and there’s bad news.

The good news is, according to my Garmin, I finished at 4:51 which would have meant a new PR.  Let me tell you, I was definitely keeping an eye on my Garmin the whole time so there’s no way I misread the time.

But the bad news is the Houston Marathon Athlete Tracking thingy is reporting my chip time as 5:23.  When I review the History on my Garmin, it says I finished at 4:51:49.  BUT, when I downloaded the Garmin data to my computer, it did say my total moving time was 5:24:01 for a distance of 27.68 mi.

The reason for the discrepancy?  The Auto Pause function.  When I drop below 14 min/mile, the Garmin stops recording.  It’s something I intentionally programmed during training, and totally forgot about today.  During the race, I hit the wall at Mile 22 and so between Miles 22 to 25 I had some walking breaks.  So, that must be why.   Wow, what a huge disappointment……my 4:51 has suddenly been bumped down to a 5:23.  Great.  Now this means I have to run another Marathon to break through that 5:00 ceiling.
(Though, a weird thing is that starting at Mile 13, my Garmin started falling .25 miles behind the mile markers.  That can’t be related to the Auto Pause issue because I didn’t drop below 14 until Mile 22.)

Full race report later.  bleh.  Time for a beer.