Marathon Summary

Well I will start out with a few observations prior to the race.

1. Virginia Beach is a lot further than I recall it being in conversation from other people... (5.5 hours)
2. Virginia Beach is a huge city (the largest in VA). I expected it to be like OC, MD and it would be relatively abandoned at this time of the year but that was certainly not the case.

I arrived at in VA Beach around 7PM and picked up my packet and stuffs from the expo right away. There was lots of good deals on old shirts but the lines were atrocious so I had to forgo those deals. I did stop by some of the individual vendors however and I picked up some BodyGlide and found a nice deal on a waterproof bright neon yellow jacket for the super cold winter days.

I got back to the hotel and checked in and then tried to find somewhere to eat. There was a subway half a mile away so I couldn't resist heading there. Not much else happened that night. The next morning I went for an easy shakeout 4mi run in the AM and felt pretty good considering the wear and tear that had accumulated over the past year. The rest of the day consisted of hunting for a Walmart and then relaxing with a nap and otherwise fueling up with carbs and potassium. I should add though, not sodium...

I actually slept pretty well that night despite the people partying upstairs (I felt like I was back at college!) and woke up at 4AM to get in a solid breakfast of a bagel and a half, two pop-tarts, a banana, and some orange juice. I got to the parking lot across from the finish line around 6am and just spent the next hour and a half drinking water and listening to my "pump up" playlist.

About half an hour before the race I went down to the bag check and had a hard time deciding if I should take my arm warmers and gloves but I decided to leave them behind and that was a good choice. Other than the half an hour I was freezing before the race started I felt good once the gun (or rather air horn) went off.

My first mile was 7:07. Fast, but considering how I expected to be much faster that was ok. I think I clicked off 7:10's for the next three miles or so. Then I found a nice group of guys that I would stick with for the next 10 or so miles. They were all quite friendly and were also aiming for a 3:10 BQ time. Maybe it was being in a nice group of people that made me relax a bit too much because before I knew it I was clicking off 6:59's and 6:58's pretty regularly and my average pace was down to 7:05. I knew this was too fast but I felt great so I decided to try and "bank" some time for a possible latter-half of the race crash.

I stayed around 7:07 average through the half (1:34:0x) and until around 15 miles. At that point I could feel that my legs were getting a bit tired, but I still felt decent so I dropped to 7:15ish pace to try and recover a bit. All went well until mile 18. I didn't "hit the wall", but around that point I all of a sudden started to experience painful cramps through most of my leg muscles. If you think of having a charlie horse and then imagine that in your entire leg, that is what it felt like. I stopped and stretched/massaged it a bit and then tried running but after a few strides the cramps came back and it was physically impossible to keep up running.

The remainder of the race was spend walking when the cramps occurred and then trying to jog for a while (10:30 pace) before they would come back again. I think the longest stretch I ran continuously in those last 8 miles was the last mile, and I think that was only fueled by adrenaline.

I finished in 3:35 and change, splitting 2:00+ for my last half. A very disappointing finish. At first I thought I would never run another marathon when I finished. Why go through all the training for months and months when even the best preparation might still not be enough on race day? After some consideration I realized the cramps probably occurred because my diet in the past 48 hours consisted of almost no sodium. This helped my ego a bit to know that without the cramps I might have had a good chance of finishing in under 3:20.

Now at the end of my week long break I think I might give the marathon one more try. My last race was not a good indication of my fitness or my potential as a runner, so in many ways I deserve to myself to give it at least one more try. Possible fall marathons are Baltimore and Steamtown in PA. I'll have to decide by April 1st which one I want to do so I will have some thinking to do.

Quote of the day:

"A: Knock knock?

B: Whos there?

A: The guy who finished second.
B: The guy who finished second who?
A: Exactly." - Second Place

The Long and Winding Road

The time is fast approaching for me to see exactly what the past few months of training will culminate in for me. One week from today I will toe the line (or likely not) in Virginia Beach for my first Marathon. My goal? Qualify for Boston by running 3:10:59 or better. What will really happen? Only time will tell.

The journey to this point has been a long one and looking back I have a nice combination of sweet and bitter memories to trace my path to this point. I would say this particular journey began last year around the time I did the 2010 Frederick Half-Marathon on May 2nd. I was trying to think about what pace I wanted to run the race and I decided "Hey, I'd be cool to qualify for Boston someday, I'll stick with the 3:10 pace group... 7:15 pace can't be that hard, right?"

I ended up going with that plan. Unfortunately for me the first half of the course was much easier than the second half so the pacers ran at 7 minute mile pace for at least 6 miles, because that is where I dropped off the pack and ran my own race to finish with a dismal time of 1:44:25 (7:58min/mi). At that point I don't exactly remember what I thought. I think half of me really really wanted to still qualify for Boston but another part of my had serious doubts.

I ended up taking some time off and then started into the good old summer base training routine. During that last week of May and through August I managed to tally up around 650 miles. For a below average high school runner (2:12/5:17/20:40 for 800m/1600m/3mi) that was a pretty big achievement for me. I would say it is about that time that I decided to look into this whole Boston Qualifier thing again.

I started to slowly increase my weekly milage but mainly my long run. I started out one day planning to go for a 10 miler, but I missed the 5 mile turn around so I ended up doing 12. Surprisingly I felt pretty good. To weeks later I tried 14, then later 16, and one late summer day I set out and did 4x5 mile loops through my neighborhood. What was this? I felt pretty damn good!

It would be a while before I did another 20 miler, and in fact I only did two more. One in Early December and one in Early January. So looking forward to the real subject of this post (my first Marathon) I know my endurance will be a problem, but I'll have to deal with it. Other than that I certainly can't be disappointed with my progress along the way.

I took my 3 mile PR of 20:40 in high school and in my first serious race after the summer training ran 18:54. Then I ran 19:10 a short while later. I knew at least I was getting a little faster I could tell, even though I did no speed work other than tempo runs. Then I went to the Summers Farm 5K in October and ended up winning with a 17:59. A few things were significant about this race. For one, 17:59 is a pretty decent 5K time. I'm not going to win any championships with that time, but it also seemed like I wasn't just "one of the crowd" anymore, I was starting to be a decent runner for once, something I was not used to. Secondly, it was my first real race victory ever, if you don't count those JV race victories in high school.

With that said the course was measured with a guy to be way short, as I expected since I felt pretty relaxed the whole time. But it was still happy with it. So going into the Frederick Waystation Turkey Trot I knew I had something to prove to myself: I could run under 18 on a course I could be relatively certain was really 5 kilometers.

Check on that, I ran 17:58. A few weeks later I ran 17:54 (5:45min/mile) on another legitimate course. Fast forward to February 27th, and I ran 1:04:13 for RRCA 10 miler. Woah!!! That's 6:25min/mile less than a year after I considered 7:00min/mile impossible to keep up for 13 miles. I could safely say that speed would not be a problem anymore. So what might be? Endurance.

December was actually a pretty decent month for training. I got in a 20 miler and averaged 55 miles per week with 2 weeks at or over 60 miles. Since then however I have ran ~410 miles, with some weeks unaccounted for on some days for an average of 37 miles per week. And only one 20 miler. I can chalk this up to various nagging minor injuries that I took time off to allow to heal before they became serious or some type of seasonal affective running disorder where the winter months make me hate running most days. No matter what excuses I make it doesn't change what will happen on race day though. I will either have it around mile 18 or I will not. And after the race then that will be the time to see what I can improve on. But for now, I'll just have to hope Emil Zátopek is looking down from way up there and when he sees things getting tough for me he can help me to remember that "It's at the border of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys" and I can be able to find that last gear.