The 2023 Knoxville Marathon Follow Up
The Knoxville Marathon was held on April 2nd, and has continued its streak as the largest competitive road race in East Tennessee. This race consisted of over 6,300 participants over the course of 2 days and multiple events. One of those participants was Ryan Jandro (10). Jandro won 14th overall with a time of 2:54:53. Jandro was also the youngest participant in the race. With his average time being 6:40 per mile for 26.2 miles, this was a big race for him. Jandro had conquered the marathon.
Jandro shares his plan to continue to run more marathons in the future.
“I plan on running more marathons in the future because I enjoyed the experience, and it felt like a fun accomplishment,” Jandro said.
Jandro has spent lots of time running and trying to improve his passion. During this marathon, Jandro made note of some personal highlights.
“I ended up finding a group of runners going my same pace around mile 6. It got to run with them until about mile 20. That was very helpful because running with others to help motivate you is a lot easier than running alone,” Jandro said.
Marathons are one of the hardest challenges that runners face. Throughout marathons, the body has different stages of fatigue. Lots of runners say that the “real marathon” starts around the 20 mile marker.
“The hardest miles were the last 2-3; I’d already been running hard for over two and a half hours, and it really caught up to me towards the end,” Jandro said.
Marathons consist of 26.2 miles of physical and mental challenges that the runner must persevere through in order to reach the end. Jandro shares some of his hardest challenges that he faced during this marathon.
“Just keeping a positive mindset on some of the tougher miles, and pushing through the soreness and tiredness. It was overall a very good experience,” Jandro said.
The Knoxville Marathon is just the start for Jandro, and he has already come up with ideas on how to improve his skill to get his next best time.
“I plan to train with more miles over longer periods of time, maybe pace a little bit better, and try to better understand when my body is going to hit the wall,” Jandro said.
Jandro continues to keep on training and pushing himself to improve his time, as he plans to pursue his running career. Jandro was also interviewed for the WBIR Channel 10’s Youtube page. Click the link below if you want to find out more about Jandro’s experience.
