The experience
My race preparations for the Boston Marathon began Thursday night with the ritual trimming of the eyelashes and eyebrows.
I grant that this is not a conventional ritual. However, my racing sunglasses have clip-on corrective lenses within them, and when my eyelashes and eyebrows are at full length, they are close enough to the lens to dump sweat and sunscreen on them – not good for visibility. Trim them back, problem solved. For the record, it takes a bit of skill to trim the eyelashes of your right eye with it closed and your glasses off, but I digress.
More seriously.
I arrived in Boston Saturday late afternoon. Got my self out of the airport and, via bus and subway, got to the convention center with literally seconds to spare to get my number and packet. The irony that my qualifying time was similarly close to the edge did not slip by me. I could have checked in on Sunday, but I wanted to get it done if I could. Another subway ride to the end of the D line and a trip on a hotel shuttle, and I was at the Marriott. I spent a quiet evening, but didn't sleep as long as I wanted.
After a leisurely Sunday morning, I made my way back to the expo. I also invested in the traditional jacket and a few other small items I needed. I found a place to buy some food for my room and sunscreen. I had a nice lunch with some folks from an on-line group; this was my "pasta feed". For long races, I've taken to the routine of having lunch before the race to be the last big meal, then small stuff after that.
Wake-up on race morning was 4:30 a.m. Getting to the race involved a subway ride to Boston Commons by about 6:30 a.m., where we got on school busses to go to the starting line, 26 miles away. The whole thing is amazingly orchestrated. Once at the start, you go to an "athlete's village" where there are big open-air tents, drinks, and basic food. There is considerable time to pass here, so you have to wear extra layers of clothing. You drop off a bag of clothes for the end of the race (like Ironman) before walking the ¾ of a mile to the start. But since they start getting you moving and dropping off that bag about an hour before the start, they still collect lots of discarded clothes between the village and the start, which are given to charity.
My starting number was 12079, which put me in the first wave, which started at 10:00 a.m. (This was seeds 1-13,999.) You go in corrals of 1000 each, dictated by your number, and they are seeded from fastest to slowest. I wasn't sure if I could see the start from where we were! I shed everything but my hat and gloves (and shorts and top... no worries!) before the start.
I never heard the start, but we started to move, very slowly at first, then a walk, then almost a jog. Interestingly, the starting line was not very well marked, i.e., no fancy banner across the top or anything. Thus newbies like me did not know where the starting line was until we were practically on top of it and saw the mats across the road and a sign. It took me about 10 minutes to get to the start.
Because the corrals are so tightly seeded, there was a lot less diving and dashing around at the start than in many road races. I found myself choosing to run very near the middle of the road to keep the surface level under my feet. Water stations were regularly placed first on the right and then on the left. I chose to take drinks from the left on the theory that most people would take the first opportunity. This worked well for me in that I only had to slow down from my general pace 2-3 times.
I had resolved to hold back in the first few miles, which I discuss in more detail below. Because of the seeding, the first mile was a lot closer to my target pace than it might have been at another race where I was 12000 people back! Knowing the course had lots of downhills, my mantra for the first half of the course was "feet barely touching the ground". I was all about trying to run my pace and trying to do it as smoothly as I could. By the end of the race, I was very glad I had done that. More than any other race I have done, it felt like running with good form was important here, because the terrain will chew you up as the day goes on.
The crowds along the Boston course are great, but probably comparable to a lot of big city marathons like New York and Chicago. I raced New York 20 years ago, but my memory of it was the fascination of the changing character of the crowds as you went through different neighborhoods. I had less of a sense of that here. There were surely some pretty amazing spots, among them the Wellesley women near mile 13, Heartbreak Hill, and several sections of the last 4-5 miles. The course itself is run largely on unremarkable suburban roads – pretty, rather than breathtaking, but there is still quite a lot of attractive scenery. There are also lots of places where the cant of the road is undesirably steep if you get away from the center. I should also note that the crowd of runners, at least at my pace, never seemed to completely disperse. I was slowly moving up through the field the whole race (because I ran steadily and finished faster than my seed time), and I can't count the times I looked ahead and thought I was going to be running into a denser crowd than I was already in. Most of the time, this was an optical illusion, but it's definitely a race you could find a pack and go with if you want to.
Another item on the pack and the crowds: the crowd can't resist yelling the names of people who have written them on their shirts. I'm sure this is a boost to the people whose names are being called, but it gets old hearing their names over and over and over!
I cannot overemphasize how my impression of the course is that the downhills are far more important than the uphills. The Newton hills are not easy, but they are just rolling hills that happen to come at a fairly tough time in the course. However, if you've been pounding yourself for the first 16 miles, running with not-so-good form and hurting your quads going down the steep hill sections, they could break you. The first hill is gentle but long. This was the first place I saw people walking the course. I remember thinking that this was a very bad sign for those guys, because it just isn't that steep.
At the top of Heartbreak Hill, you know the work that will get your heart rate up is over. There are some steep downhills after this in the next couple of miles that are "work", but the work is holding form, not getting to speed. After that, the race is moderate downhills and flats to bring it home. My experience was that my legs were in pain, but that I was holding my pace ok. It was all control, all execution, all doling out my remaining leg strength for the rest of the race. My heart rate peaked at 166 at the top of Heartbreak (LT is a few beats higher than that), but went down and remained in the mid 160s for the remainder of the race, averaging 164 for the last two miles. Given how I often finish races in greater strain, I considered whether I could have gone faster. A few seconds? Sure. I didn't absolutely kill myself the last couple hundred yards, just ran in as hard as reasonable without feeling foolish. A minute? In all honesty, I doubt it.
The end of the race is just as orchestrated as the pre-race. The post-finish walk seems very long. First, through the water bottle people. Then, the Gatorade recovery drink people. Then the blanket people, followed by the tape-person. (These are critical, since it's cool and windy there apparently every year, from what I heard.) Keep going. Someone hands you a lunch-sack with food in it. Keep going. Finally, you get to the medal folks. Keep going. Then comes the busses with the dry clothes. I got my stuff, found a place to put them on, and wandered about for a while. The family meeting area is even further down the road. It's all great, and wonderfully organized, but it felt a little anticlimactic for me, because they kept encouraging you to go forward and I didn't feel like it was cool to linger and chat with other runners. I guess they need the space for people following behind you. All this said, everyone was VERY nice. My race day ended with a subway trip back to the hotel, feeling very sore, but very good.
The race and some number crunching
I did a serious marathon training prep for this race. I focused on building my endurance near race pace and raising my lactate/functional threshold pace. I peaked at a little over 70 mi per week a couple of times, and I set new PRs in training runs at both the 5K and 10K distance. So I put in the time and work.
Using tools like the McMillan running calculator or an online Vdot calculator, and my 5K test times of a little under 20 minutes, I found what seemed like ridiculously fast marathon paces for myself. However, these things are set up to assume that you are equally trained for both races. The fact is that almost none of us age-groupers are as well trained for the marathon as we are for a 5K, and all the reading I did indicated that a couple of Vdot points lower than your 5K Vdot was a more appropriate target. For me, that worked out perfectly, because I had a pretty good sense that 7:30 should be my pace from previous races and the "feel" of my long runs...and it corresponded to almost exactly 2 Vdot points lower than my 5K.
To cut to the chase, my final time was 3:16:40, which is as close to 7:30 min/mile as you can get. It's 7 minutes and 30.06 seconds per mile. It was a 9 minute PR, so obviously I'm very happy with it. I would like to claim something wild about how I "crushed" or "dominated" or whatever the race, but the truth is it felt a lot more mechanical than that. I neatly origami-folded it, put it in an envelope, sealed it carefully, put the stamp on exactly in the right place, and mailed it in. Not very emotional at all. It was just one of those days where I had earned the right to do what I tried, and I pulled it off.
After quite a lot of reading, both books and on-line, I decided to take a conservative strategy of intentionally going below my average pace for the first 5 miles or so. I then found a calculator on line that gave a geography-adjusted equal effort pace for Boston, and sat down to make a plan.
I broke the race down into four sections
1) The first five miles (largely downhill) Idea = add 10 seconds to the pacing guidelines
2) From 5 to Newton, 10-11 miles (flat) Idea = subtract 5 seconds from even pace
3) Miles 16-21 = Newton (mixed, but net uphill) Idea = no change
4) The last 5.2 miles (some steep downhill, other parts moderate downhill or flat) Idea = go with whatever's left
After reviewing the terrain adjusted paces and simplifying a bit, I came up with these goals:
1) (first 5 miles, downhill) 7:30
2) (next 11 miles, pretty flat) 7:25
3) (Newton hills, net substantially uphill) ~7:40
4) (last 5 miles, downhill and flat) ???
This was easy enough to remember, and easy to implement with the auto-mile-lap on my Garmin.
Results:
My Garmin had me running 26.6 miles, or 1.5% too long. That's probably accurate, since we don't get to cut the tangents in mass races, and a little weaving is inevitable. Thus, I can correct my "Garmin pace" to a "forward motion pace" for each section
1) Hit section one pretty close. Maybe a couple seconds/mile slow, but much better than you might think for a mass start race. Mile 1 was not ridiculous and I didn't weave.
2) Garmin says 7:19, which is about 7:26, adjusted
3) Garmin says 7:34, which is about 7:41, adjusted
4) Garmin says 7:18, which is about 7:25, adjusted
My half split was 1:38:09. My finish time was 3:16:40. Pretty darn close to an even race overall. To me, that's pretty close to perfect execution, given that the second half of this race is the more difficult one.
Here is a link to my full Garmin data Ignore the "watts"; that's from software trying to guess your watts assuming you are riding a bike!
Here is a link to my full Garmin data Ignore the "watts"; that's from software trying to guess your watts assuming you are riding a bike!
The first half of the race went unremarkably for me, except for one time. I started chatting with a guy running next to me early in the race. After a bit, I looked down at my watch and I was running 20 seconds/mile slower than I intended, and figured I had been for 2-3 minutes. At that point, I felt a little anti-social, but I resolved that I needed to shut up, focus, and run my race. I don't think I said another word after that, except "water!" or "excuse me" as I went by someone.
The weather was near perfect. No complaints at all. For nutrition, I took a gel right before the race, and at every fourth mile. Packed 4 in a pocket in the small of my back (wore a triathlon top) and picked up two at mile 17 from the course. Took water at every aid station starting at mile 3 (except one I missed) until mile 14, where I started taking Gatorade at the non-gel even ones, i.e., mile 14, 18, 22. I found myself slowly passing people the whole race. Only in the last 200 yards was I not going a little faster than everyone else. Other people had more of a kick than I did. :-)
I didn't find that I got physically or psychologically too tired - instead, the pounding of the downhills started making my quads progressively more sore. I started feeling them at the half way point. I had a little conversation with them in which I invited them to go along for the ride, and for the most part they did. I had still a little lingering hamstring soreness, but it never got worse at all. The only really tough part was a very steep downhill in the mile 21-22 region. I didn't feel quite strong/steady enough to really let it fly, but the "braking" that I had to do to not just fly also was hard. But after the hill mellowed out, I felt good again and less like I was making hamburger out of my legs.
For what it's worth, I finished in 3780 place, with a 12079 place seed time, so that's obviously good. But I also recognize that a lot of people focus on getting to Boston, and then just running it for fun. Regardless, I don't think anyone thinks Boston is a particularly fast course, even though it is net downhill, so I'm very pleased with the PR. I hope to take some lessons from it for the future.
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