With less than two weeks until the Garmin Marathon In the Land of Oz, it’s taper time for participants and countdown time to those putting on the show. While we're busy getting prepped for race day, we're also getting excited about welcoming the fans and participants. I hope to meet some fellow Wildcats, members of the K-State Marathon Club, who will be going after their Boston qualifying times of 3:05. Smart move on their part to choose this race’s flat and fast course that starts at Garmin’s world headquarters in Olathe, Kansas. For other goal-getters going for a BQ or a personal record in the full or half marathon, pacers from the SmartPacing team will guide them with change to spare. The pacers will be sporting Forerunner 210 watches to accurately track their distance, pace and split times.

Leading the way for the 3:15 pace group is Zac B, who holds a marathon PR of 2:34:42. If you can lay down 26.2 miles in that kind of time, you’ve earned the right to roll across the finish, like he's doing here. A little more about Zac: his mission as a pacer is to "make you slow down when you want to run too fast and make you speed up when you want to run too slow." He would say that the biggest mistake you can make, outside of failing to prepare, is to go out too fast. Zac was the 2008 Kansas City Marathon champion, where he ran the first half of the race in 1:19 and the last half in 1:15 as he moved from tenth place to first place.

Meet the rest of the SmartPacing team for the Garmin Marathon In the Land of Oz. Coach Eladio’s SmartPacing strategy works, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of runners who’ve met their race day goals on account of it. I ran my first marathon without SmartPacing and the second one with SmartPacing, and there’s no comparison. I attribute my own my BQ, on the not-so-flat KC Marathon course, to Coach Eladio’s training, his pacers, and the Forerunner that paced me through the many miles leading up to race day. Maybe there’s a BQ or a PR in your near future. Register for the Garmin Marathon, half or 5k today!

Source: Garmin
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Peg’s Posts: Meet the pacers for the Garmin Marathon

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