Story of my first marathon.
All the running magazines and all the
running books talk about the Boston Marathon. A book I've found
particularily helpful, Run Less, Run Faster, devotes about 1/3 of the
book to training plans with the specific goal of qualifying for
Boston.
I decided it was time for me to try.
Other runners I spoke to said they
thought that me getting into Boston was a sure thing. While this was
comforting, I still needed to, as they say, actually do the running.
As a newbie to the process, I thought I would just get one of the 10
open slots that our running club gets each year for Boston and enter
that way.
“Bad idea,” my running friend
Patrick said. “You'll be starting with 5 hour charity runners. It
will be a traffic jam the whole race. You need to qualify.”
After some talking, he connected the
dots that I was going to San Francisco and that it was a cool weather
marathon, even at the end of July. He advocated and I accepted the
challenge of getting a BQ in San Francisco.
From the beginning of the race season
back in March, I had begun putting my race times and distances into
an online calculator that predicted my marathon finish time based on
the race I had just run. Even an easy race, 2 weeks after the
punishing 7-Sisters trail race, predicted a BQ, which was comforting.
Back in January, I had committed to doing the MassDash, a 24-hour
relay across the state which had me running 20 miles of road running
in a 18 hour span. My longest road race in my career up to that
point was 9 miles so I was committing to, within two weeks, putting
5x more road pounding then I had ever done.
So, arriving at the start line injury
free was a big concern. In April of this year, I had done a hard
9-mile road race that I hadn't prepared my legs or body for properly.
One of the after effects was that I put my back into spasm and was
in bed for 3 days. After recovering from that, I shifted from
running 6-7x a week to running every-other day. On the non-running
days, I got on the stationary
bike and peddled like crazy. While my
running volume was down, I always think of myself as a slow recoverer
and this seemed a good strategy.
Before the back spasm incident, I had
held a volume of 40 miles/week for 8 weeks. This left me incredibly
strong, running a faster pace for the 9 mile race then I was able to
hold for later, shorter races. It had also left me injured. Since I
had dicided to do so much racing during the 2012 season, I decided
that I would ere on the side of injury prevention over speed. This
balance seemed to be working for me as I reached the marathon
starting line injury free.
After the MassDash, my family and I
traveled to California for some visiting of friends and camping in
the mountains. I did no running for the week after the relay, as is
my system after a long race, then only light running after that. My
longest run in the 3 weeks before the marathon, not counting the 20
miles of racing, was 1 hour and at that, I only hit that mark 2
times. While I knew that endurance is slow to fade and that even
touching speed in strides is enough to hold on to most of the speed,
I still wanted to run a harder workout close to the marathon to
“test” my legs.
I did not do this. There is a story of
the 196? American olympic marathon team that traveled to Europe. 1
week before the marathon, they ran the course as a “warm up” at
about 2:45 pace. On the actual race day, the fastest member only ran
a 2:43, way slower then his training predicted. The others couldn't
even match their “practice” run pace. I knew enough to not make
this mistake, even though I wanted to. That resistance to desire is
certainly part of the discipline of the pre-marathon taper.
A key to success in any long race is
picking a pace at the beginning that you can hold at the end. Of
course, how does one know what pace your body will be able to
withstand after 2 hours of hard running? To find this, there is only
one place go to – past race performance.
In 2011, I had run the Pisgah 50k trail
race and, using my 2010 performance, had picked a pace that turned
out to be too slow. I say this because I raced the lats 11 miles
more then a minute faster then I raced the first 20 miles. A well
paced race should have no more then 10 second difference per mile at
the beginning of the race then at the end. I had been much too
conservative in the 50k pace prediction.
Knowing this, I agonized over my
starting pace. Julienne was infinitely patient as I daily spoke
about what I thought my body would be able to do on marathon day.
My best race, the pre-spasm 9 miler, predicted a 2:45 marathon. My
slowest 10k predicted a 3:11 marathon. I needed at least a 3:15 to
qualify. What would I run?
It used to be that anyone who wanted to
drop the registration money could run in the Boston Marathon. Then,
as the field sizes grew, the organizes put qualifying times in,
meaning every runner who went into the race planning and ready to
race it, had to have run a previous marathon. Then, only a few years
ago, there were more people with qualifying times then there are
spaces for runners on the roads. As a consequence, qualifying
times became tighter and even having a qualifying time was no longer
a guarantee of an entry spot – now, you wanted the fastest
qualifying time you could get.
So, just because I was pretty sure I
could run a 3:15 marathon, that wasn't good enough. I wanted a fast
marathon to ensure a slot in the big race. But could I run a sub-3
marathon? For many people, that is a central goal of the marathon.
I decided that a sub-3 marathon 2 weeks
after the Dash was more then my body was capable of. The zone of
my predicted performance narrowed as I put past performances plus
their elevation data and temperature date into online calculators to
estimate a performance on a cool San Francisco morning with its '1000
of climbing and descent.
I came up with a 3:08 time. This was
fast enough that, if I was feeling good at mile 15, I could start
running faster and possibly get below 3:05. Going below 3:05 meant
that I would beat the qualifying time by 10 minutes and would be able
to register for the big race earlier then most people. 3:08 was also
fast enough that if I started really struggling later in the race, I
had enough of a margin to probably finish below 3:15.
So, I went into the race ready to run
7:10 miles. I would start behind the 3:05 pace group and determine
to never pass then.
I kept that determination until about
mile 5. The first parts of SF are 4 mile of very flat running. The
miles, when I could find the hidden, pointing backward, small or
non-existent mile markers, were coming in at 6:50-7 min/mile. A
little fast but I still felt safe. Then, as we began the first climb
across the Golden Gate bridge, we click off a 7:40 mile that felt
much too easy for me.
I check with the 3:05 pace group leader
and based on his goals for the race, the group was on target. He
planned to be ahead some time in the beginning, lose some time on the
hills, then gain some time again toward the end of the race where the
was more downhill. This seemed like a good idea but in the moment,
that 7:40 mile felt and looked (on my watch) too slow for my 7:10
pace. I passed the pace group as I headed into mile 9 where I picked
up 2 GUs to replace the two I had already eaten.
Fueling during a long race is very
important, another key to a successful marathon. In the edition of
Running Times that had come out just before the race, there was an
article by researcher, Tim Noakes, who had written the Lore of
Running, a thick, research based book on running. I had learned a
lot reading that book and in his recent article about hydration, I
learned another key fact. Don't drink too much liquids.
During the 50k race of 2011, I had
stopped to pee 3 times. This felt excessive to me but at the time, I
was operating under the plan that one needs to replace fluids as
quickly as they are lost. I was also under the impression that one
of the reasons for a Bonk (my 2010 Pisgah experience) was lack of
fluids. After reading Noakes article, I changed my thinking.
Bonking, he advocated, was only about
low blood sugar, not hydration. Only drink when you're thirsty.
Marathon finishers can end with a 7-10% body weight drop and are
otherwise in fine health and recover just fine.
Based on this, I stuck with my 2 GUs an
hour and only drinking based on thirst.
From mile 10-20, the course was mostly
through a large park, the Golden Gate Park. At one point, we
marathoners ran past the finish of the 1st ½ marathon and
it I felt envious to not be stopping. Or, maybe more of a feeling of
“Hey, good for them.” It's nice to try to keep it positive.
I chatted with another runner for a
little while from around mile 14 to mile 15. We both commented on
the bad mileage markers. He too was working to qualify for Boston,
after failing to qualify for Boston at Boston due to high
temperatures. He later went ahead of me and was successful in his
bid.
Things really began to get going at
mile 20. Up to this point, my legs were working fine but they showed
signs of growing fatigue. At the top of a rise near mile 20, I
suddenly felt bad. I noticed some regurgitated GU in my mouth, my
legs felt crampy and I felt light headed. I slowed way down for a
few paces, took a few deep breaths and....
nothing. I was suddenly fine. I
realized that at mile 20, I needed to shut up, calling out to the
crowds “Hey, thanks for coming out!” and focus inward on the
running. Frank Shorter has a running book where he speaks of
disassociating and associating. Early in a race, he advocates lots
of mind wandering and being lazy brained. Later, as the body begins
to fatigue, he advocates focusing, or “associating” and bringing
your brain back to the task at hand.
And so, starting at mile 20, I began to
really focus. I stopped saying “Nice job man,” when I passed
runners. I stopped hooting back to the crowd. And I especially
stopped calling out to the young women holding signs that said such
things as, “Hey, Sweaty Guy! I Know We're Strangers. This Might
Seem Strange but... Give Me A Call!”
I found that as fatigue became greater,
I was still moving nicely. Toward the end of the race, there are a
large number of downhills. These were a challenge to my tired legs
but not so much that I was forced to slow dramatically. I did find
that my vision started to be a problem. Toward the end of the race,
if I ran too fast, I started getting stars in my eyes and tunnel
vision.
Later, I talked to Jay, my running
Guru. During the race and after, I had thought this vision problem
was due to lack of oxygen.
“What kind of pace were you holding?”
he asked.
“7 minute miles.”
“Nope, not oxygen, not for you. You
have to be at max heart rate to get oxygen debt problems. What kind
of calories were you taking in?”
“2 GUs an hour,” I said.
“That should be enough. Sounds like
you had an electrolyte imbalance,” he said.
“I figured the GUs had that covered.”
“That's what their advertising says
but in practice, there is almost never enough either Potassium or
Sodium in those. Where you drinking a lot of electrolye replacer?”
he asked.
“Only enough that I wasn't thirsty.”
“Hmmm. There it is.”
So, next marathon, I'll have to carry
some of the electrolyte tabs they sell and toward the end, start
throwing some in my body.
At about 1 mile to go, I started
speeding up but again, my vision was the limiting factor, not my
legs. I was certainly tired but I felt I had a bit more speed to
give. In the last ½ mile, I slowly accelerated. A guy came up on
my right and I said to myself, “Nope, no more passers,” and I
began to squeeze down on my remaining reserves. I also squeezed my
eyes tight and shook my head because as I accelerated, even though I
was forcefully breathing to get more oxygen into my system (wrongly
thinking this was the problem,) I was concerned I might trip and fall
so close to the finish.
As it was, I probably passed 15 runners
in the last mile, some I had last seen many mile before. Some were
moving very slowly, which I had great compassion for, having
experience it before. I also knew the cause - they did not eat
enough during the run.
I came though the finish line in
3:04:20, a very pleasing result given that I beat my qualifying time
by 10 minutes and that it was my first marathon and only 2 weeks
after 20 miles of racing. I stumbled around for a bit, had a few
smoothies, chatted with two guys who I had chatted with during the
race, and then my teeth began to chatter.
Between the cold smoothies and the
cool day and the depth of my fatigue, I was tired and cold. I limped
to the UPS truck that had my bag and retrieved my sweats. After
talking myself through the process of dressing and keeping the
reflective mylar plastic under my jacket, I then began to negotiate
the walk back to the car.
For a few block, I was lost, unsure
exactly which way I had walked 4 hours before. At that time, there
had been many people streaming toward the start line so I just joined
the herd. Now, alone, it took some doing but I soon found a few
identifiable features that guided me safety.
It was on the walk back that I began to
get giddy laughter about my feeling of success. By the time I had
gotten back to our friend's house, Julienne was still able to see the
lingering phase of the giddiness. All I had to do was think about
how I had just run what I feel was basically the fastest marathon I
could have done under the conditions, I would start to have giddiness
bubble out of me.
I was glad she shared that and I was
glad to be on the way to Boston!
