A New Marathon PR

Well, it wasn't pretty, but I did get a new PR in the marathon. I wasn't sure how I would do. My goal at the beginning of the training season was 3:45, but I had problems with my quadricep, which seriously affected my training for at least a month, and last week I did a 40 mile run with Kathy, and I was still probably a little tired from that. Still, I thought I would go for it. I thought I would stay close to the 3:40 pace group and probably fade a bit after mile 20 or so. But, it was worse than that. I was right on pace for 3:40 until somewhere around mile 17 (average pace to this point was about 8:24), and then things started to fall apart for me. I guess I hit the wall. I really pushed hard the 18th and 19th miles, but couldn't get the pace below 9 minutes. Then I started to run a few minutes and walk about a minute, run a few minutes, walk a minute. I thought, "Oh, if only I can keep the pace at 10 minutes, I can still get close to 3:50." But by that time my body was pretty well spent, and it was all I could do to keep an 11 minute pace. My splits from the race are listed at the bottom of this blog entry.

I was glad to finally get the downhill on 15th Street. I coasted for under 10 minutes in that mile, which included some walking on Boston. The last half mile I hit pretty hard, and my legs - calves hamstrings, and quads - were cramping pretty badly. I forced myself to ignore the cramping, and I held on to finish strong. It really helped to have Lisa and her family cheering me on at 18th and Boston.

When I crossed the finish line, I was exhausted and weaving around. A couple of volunteers asked if I needed to go to the medical tent. I regained my composure and said no thanks. After I picked up my medal and shirt I started to walk over to Lisa, and it was really weird. I started to cry. I wasn't in pain, or sad, or particularly happy, but I was so exhausted that I couldn't control my emotions. By the time I got to Lisa, though, I had pretty much recovered, though.

From our seats on Boston, we were able to cheer most of the runners from our training group. That was a lot of fun!

By the way, not only did I set a new PR of 3:57:10 in the marathon, which betters my PR by a little over a minute, but my 1/2 marathon split of 1:50:05 is six minutes faster than my 1/2 marathon PR. Woohoo!

Even though the race didn't go exactly as planned, I was satisfied with the results. And even though the last eight miles were quite agonizing, I still enjoyed the race and will definitely do another marathon. I am having second thoughts about my goal of trying to qualify for Boston in a year.

Splits
1 - 8:23
2 - 8:18
3 - 8:28
4 - 8:22
5 - 8:32
6 - 8:36
7 - 8:24
8 - 8:20
9 - 8:18
10 - 8:06
11 - 8:13
12 - 8:26
13 - 8:27
14 - 8:24
15 - 8:24
16 - 8:26
17 - 8:42
18 - 9:07
19 - 9:16
20 - 10:25
21 - 9:56
22 - 10:13
23 - 11:27
24 - 10:59
25 - 11:16
26 - 9:45
26.2 - 1:53