3:16:11
Well, it took me nearly
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| Pretty decent showing! |
The taper sucks and I don't even want to really talk about it. Because I'm typically an afternoon and evening running, during the taper I did all my runs at 5am to get my body ready for the early 7am start. Most of those days the temps were in the low to mid 20's, but that wasn't the problem either. What bothered me is that my legs felt like lead, but even worse, I no longer had training plans to ponder on during the week. I was left with nothing but the race to think about, which I actually did not spend much time thinking about until Friday. So, I was left with nothing to think about during the week, and I felt like I was losing touch with something that had become incredibly important to me. I guess I look forward to tapering, but I certainly do NOT enjoy being in the middle of a taper.
WEEKEND PRE-RACE:
This seemed destined to be a just-in-the-nick-of-time sort of weekend, starting with me making it to the airport approximately 45 minutes before my scheduled departure. Silver Line/rush hour issues and I got a bit caught up earlier that day a) picking up my new FHR gear from the screen printer and b) following the live twitter updates from the 100k WC unfolding over a six+ hour period in Doha (USA does great!)
Joe was kind enough to a) pick me up at the Philly airport b) provide me lodging and logistical ease for the weekend and c) some much needed laughter in the face of pending stress! Joe is easily the strongest runner I know from growing up, and proved it again a few weeks ago by extending his long training run a few extra miles to knock out a 3:18 26.2 mile training run. So...yeah, bettering my target marathon by a couple of minutes on his training run. Damn...
Anyway, Joe was basically open to doing whatever I wanted to do, which is my kind of host! Friday night we topped off with some late night carby snacks, and then early to bed. After waking up at 4:45 am all week, there was no getting around that on Saturday, even though I could have slept until 9 if I wanted. I was up at 4:30...mind thinking hard about the next 24 hours. Joe took me over to Haverford for a very scenic shakeout of 3 miles, which I made sure to include two 20 second strides to finish up. Then lunch: a nice big hoagie sandwich that we split, but really should have just gotten our own, followed by more toast. Then down to Axe's house (and on the way Joe drove me down Kelly drive so that we could see a good chunk of the back half of the marathon) to see his family, watch some Wisconsin football, more marathon talk, and then a short walk down to an early Italian dinner. We hit the restaurant at around 4:45 (which was great timing in my book) and it allowed us to beat the rush. Food was basic-nothing special, and I avoided ordering anything elaborate...a dark beer, lots of bread, and spaghetti with marinara sauce. Then Joe and I scooted back out to Ardmore where I laid out my gear for the morning, and turned in for bed at around 9pm. I fell asleep OK, but I was up by 3:30am, which didn't really upset me very much.
After we got up, everything went more or less to the time-line I laid out in the previous post. Breakfast, shower, suit-up, catch a ride downtown, porto-potty, check bag, half mile or so warm up jog, with leg swings and some dynamic stretches thrown in the middle, and the off to the coral with about 10 minutes to spare. The race did a great job of handling the start of the race, letting the top corral go first and then waiting a full 2 minutes before releasing my (the second) corral.
THE RACE:
First of all, the conditions for this race were nearly perfect. Cool with running temps in the mid to upper 40's, mostly overcast, very little wind. I was at the very front of the second coral, so was able to move right into a comfortable pace, and comfortable ended up being a bit faster than planned! I'll post the actual splits (vs my two target/range splits) below, but I'll say that I was very aware that I was running 30 seconds, of more, faster than I had planned over the entire first half of the marathon, but I felt like my effort level was where I wanted it to be at that early stage of the race. I think I was just ready to run...after the taper, the carb loading, the pre-race warmup, I was able to get a flow going very quickly.
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| My two target paces with my actual pace on the right |
I probably should have tried to be more consistent in my pacing...there are a couple miles I dropped down to/below 7 min/mile, and I'm not sure why that happened. I would have LOVED to haul ass into the finish line, at close to 7 min miles, but that wasn't going to happen after running so close to 7 min miles during the first 17 miles of the race. BUT, it was OK at that point, because I was so far ahead of my target 3:20 pacing, that I knew I could afford to have some near-8 min miles towards the end. If the next goal is to run sub-3:10 (which it IS the next goal) then this was great experience of coming close to that pace of 7:19 through 18 miles (vs BQ of 7:15.)
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| Around mile 6 I think. |
Also, the hills in the first half-- things I should NOT have been as concerned about as I was! They weren't bad at all, and I maybe they wear my legs out, but mentally the boost from climbing even a short hill is a great thing for me. I think of myself as a decent climber, so I enjoy the challenge. Shortly after coming down those hills, I was relieved when all the 1/2 marathon people finished up, but only because they were mostly all pushing their pace up from miles 10-13, and it was nice to look around and just see other marathon runners to figure out which ones looked like the would be moving at a pace that might be consistent with my own, and actually I usually look for someone 5-10 seconds faster than me.
I would say things started unravel during the Fells Bridge crossing at mile 18. I did OK to hold my 7:30 pace for a few miles after that, but up until then I had been averaging 7:19 for the run, so I knew with each mile that came in at 7:30, I was that much closer to the hurt of the last few miles of a marathon. You just want that hurt to hold off as long as possible. As you can see above, it started for me at mile 23. I remember a guy on the side of the road saying "come on, it's just a 5k left, anyone can do it!" and he was totally right, and I knew I would be done with this soon. Especially disconcerting was that on the other side of Kelly Drive are folks who are 3 hours into their marathon and still around mile 15-that is tough...and seeing it from my side of the road...there just aren't a lot of positive take-aways from watching other runners struggle like that. Back on my side of the road, I was pulling the old "when the next mile comes, you'll only have 2 miles left" game. I knew I was a) WAY ahead of my 3:20 pace and b) WAY behind Boston Qualifying pace, so that just left me with 3:15 as a barrier, but right now that barrier doesn't really man much to me, so I admit that I didn't push myself to the limit those last few miles. HOWEVER, I did enjoy it a bit more because I didn't run myself in to the ground in the process.
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| Mile 26 |
POST RACE:
I made an effort to re-hydrate yesterday during the packer game. As of today, I'm getting around more-or-less fine. I'm sore and, still very tired, but in general I'm feeling pretty good. So, that makes 10 marathons in 7 states with doubles in CA, MA, IL. And my 10th, at 2.5 months shy of my 37th birthday, is now my fastest. WORK.
And, I spent the day starting to put together my 2015 race/training plan.
TBD for now though.
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