Grandma's Marathon 2013 Race Report

Summary: 

• 3:14:41 (7:26 ave pace)
• negative split (1:38:10, 1:36:31)
• 30th of 374 in AG
• 499/5613 overall
• PR by 2 min
• Weather low 50s, some rain in the last few miles. 
• Wind neutral or favorable…not much of a factor. 
• Course is lightly undulating to flat with one notable hill around mi 22. 
• http://connect.garmin.com/activity/332617767

Prolog

This marathon was prepared for in what can only be described as an unorthodox way. During the winter, I kept up a weekly 12-15 mile run. My A-race for the first half of the year was the KS 70.3, 13 days before the marathon. During the HIM build-up, I adjusted my weekly long runs so they would be more conducive to Marathon training, but didn’t otherwise adjust my running volume and even dropped a few short runs in favor of being able to do the long one. (The long runs did affect the way I did my bike training, but not significantly on the volume side.) Weekly running volumes were actually very modest, mostly close to 30 miles per week and not more than 35. The last long run was May 23 (20 mi), so as to go into the HIM a bit more rested and be able to recover.

Because of the relationship of the two races, it is important to note that the HIM went well. I had a PR on the course by 10 min out of 4 tries. A full report is at http://wsjinames.blogspot.com/2013/06/kansas-703-2013-race-report.html. The only other notable point is that I did not turn myself inside out for the last mile or two of the run at KS. I ran it hard – very hard, actually – but not as if there was someone within 30 seconds of me that was between me and the podium. ☺

Managing the two weeks in between the races was then the biggest thing on my mind. With some good advice from Patrick McCrann, modulated by the realities of my schedule and facilities availability, the time was managed thusly:

Week 1: Monday - off; Tuesday - light swim for active recovery; Wed - water running for about 45 min after swim warmup; Thu - Good strong swim; Fri: - More water running, a bit harder/longer; Sat - 2:15 very easy bike ride (IF 0.62, TSS 85); Sun off.

Week 2: Monday – Short morning swim and ~4 mi run in evening with some 0.2-0.3 mi TP pickups; Tuesday – 50 min swim in morning and 40 min steady run in evening; Wednesday short morning swim followed immediately by ~3.5 mi very easy run; Thursday – short swim; Friday off; Saturday Race.

By about Friday of week 1, I was no longer sore, but was still obviously fatigued. I did so much swimming in order to keep up my aerobic engine, with minimal stress on the legs. The three runs in week 2 were all pretty tough. The first one felt good to get going again, but was work. The second, steady state run was worryingly tiring on the legs, and the last one was done intentionally early in order to get every last hour of recovery. (I had hoped it would feel better and give me more confidence.) A more detailed discussion of this management is here: http://wsjinames.blogspot.com/2013/06/racing-on-quick-turnaround-him-to.html.

Prerace 

Friday, I was unable to leave work until early afternoon. As per my usual habit, I had eaten a lot in the morning and a substantial lunch. It is a 6+ hour drive from Ames to Duluth. Road construction and Friday rush our traffic in the Twin Cities delayed me considerably, and another mishap around registration and hotel check in delayed me further. By now, it was 9 pm and I hadn’t eaten much of anything since noon. This felt like a bad idea. I didn’t know what to do, since I wanted very little in my GI tract in the morning. I ad libbed and ate (of all things) a Dairy Queen ice cream…hoping that the calories would be super easy to digest, no fiber, etc etc. I am not recommending this procedure to anyone else, but it worked out ok. ☺

Wake up Saturday morning was 4 am. I took my allergy pill and drank a Naked Smoothie. A second Naked Smoothie and a small breakfast bar went down over the next 90 min or so.

The weather broke in our favor. It was around 50 ˚F and would remain relatively dry for a few hours. Getting the bus was uneventful, and of course I was excited. The race has a warm clothes drop off right at the start, so I was able to wear my soccer sweats until shortly before the race. Trash bags did the rest of the job.

The Race 

Having raced a half marathon at 90 min, and my HIM half-marathon at 96 min, I believed that a 3:15 pace was about as aggressive as was reasonable for me to attempt, given my recovery from the HIM. With that low of a running volume, additionally I probably wasn’t going to go as fast as a 90 min half might predict (ca. 3:10).

I had decided to be a bit aggressive about race nutrition; the last thing I needed was to bonk. Therefore, I carried 3 gels with me, which I would consume in the first 15 miles, getting sports drink at the other aid stations, which were every two miles up to that point. Gels were available on course at mile 17.

There was a 3:15 pace group at the race. I chatted with the Pace Leader about his strategy. He had done the race several times before, and said he planned to run two miles at pretty close to 8:00 pace, then go to the 7:27 we needed, then speed up from miles 10-20, and bring the race at pace. This was close enough to my preferred race strategy that I decided to run with them. I knew that if I broke down, I could almost certainly finish the race with 8:30 miles, so I would make it under the 3:25 BQ time. I didn’t think there was any chance of breaking down before mile 16-17.

I believe thoroughly that the Pacer was sincere in describing his tactic, but it didn’t quite go the way he planned. Our first mile was, indeed, a bit under 8:00. Whether group inertia or Pacer error, we immediately jumped to pretty close to the target overall pace. However, we kept running about 7:30s. A mile by mile split table is given below. My Garmin splits are a little short compared to race time because the race was relatively crowded and I could make no effort to take tangents — I believe by about 1.0-1.2%, based on how far off it was by about mile 20. Additionally, hit the wrong button at the beginning of the race and missed about the first 2 minutes. (I reset the autolap at mile 1.)

For the first several miles, I ran practically shoulder to shoulder with the pacer, and was much chattier than I usually am. I knew how I should feel in the race, and I began a light concern about mile 9, where I began to feel the familiar twinge in the quads that becomes worse as a marathon goes on. I thought this was far too early. It was nothing awful, but I knew it wasn’t going to get better. Nonetheless, I was doing well, and I just resolved to carry on.

At miles 10-11, I was surprised that the pace did not pick up. We did pick up for a bit, but we seemed to lose momentum. Again, I am not sure if this was a group dynamic or not. I knew I was not concerned about the time of 3:15 particularly, but others were and were asking when we were going to make up the difference. The Pacer said we would at the 13-20 range.

At the half-way mark, I mentally disconnected from the Pacer. Although as it turned out I would never be all that far from him the rest of the way, I was feeling my legs more than I knew I should, and I knew I had to bear down. Perhaps the talk of the 3:15 of some of the other runners also affected me, and I decided that I needed to actually be a little more aggressive about pace soon, because speeding up a lot in the last 5K didn’t feel like it was going to be a good idea.

I allowed myself to drift ahead of the Pacer. Miles 14-16 reflect that on my mile-to-mile pace chart. Mile 17 was one of my two hardest and the pace is slower. I had quickly become more aware of my legs and I really had to shift my focus to the mechanics of my running. It was about doing it from my head and keeping the knee drive good and straight. By this point, I had fallen mostly silent. I began the “how much left” countdown, focusing very hard now on getting from one aid station to the next. (They were now every mile, and a little easier to latch on to than the mile markers.) I rebounded for a couple of miles, learning to just live with the distress of my legs.

Miles 20-21 were again very difficult. I thought I was running almost as fast as I could, even though I was losing time to the 7:27 average I was now so focused on.

Somewhere toward the end of this period, the Pacer caught up with me again. The only significant hill was in mile 22 (and really, it’s not that bad). I give him all the credit in the world for barking at his crowd (with me now back with it) proper directions about form and getting up this incline strongly. The group as a whole did well over this hill and its gentler follow-up, but I knew he was still a little behind the 3:15 pace that meant so much to the people trying to BQ at it.

The momentum of the good mile going uphill carried through mile 23. At this point I was running two conversations in my head at the same time: my own internal dialog, and quite separately the conversations the Pacer was having with other people.

We shortly reached the 5K-to-go mark. Up to this point I had kept my HR below or at threshold, though it had been drifting up. From here on out, I could manage whatever it had to be. The last 5K is net downhill, and a cool rain had begun. Even though I had struggled before, I was seeing that I was, on the whole, moving up through the field, if very slowly. I also realized that there was no way I was going to stop or walk an aid station because I doubted I could get going again!

For this last 22 minutes, it was a matter of taking the run out of my legs and into my head. When I was running through my legs, I would struggle. When I could get it up to my head, I would go faster. Perhaps this is hard to see on the Garmin trace, but I am convinced of it from my on-site glances. The Pacer was still in my vicinity, as was a fairly good sized remaining group, but it was pretty clearly a parallel individual thing now, not the group run it had been for the first half. The Pacer was working hard to encourage anyone who was falling behind.

Mile 25 felt like it was being run at threshold pace at the end of a long training run, and although it wasn’t that fast, it was at that Heart Rate. At the 25 mile marker I tried to speed up with my legs. I knew I would be around 3:15 flat, but I was pretty determined by now to make it. Without the absolute time on my watch, I didn’t know exactly where I was…just that it was close. I tried desperately to go faster but could not…until (I suspect) I took the race away from my legs again and back up to my head and thought about some hard training runs. It clicked, and I found some pace for about the last half mile. It doesn’t look like much on my mile to mile chart, but it was there.

 The race supplied a great split chart, which I also include here. I think that the 25 mile pad was a little misplace, making the last 1.2 miles too long, but who knows. The more interesting thing is the pass vs pass by column. For the last 10 miles, I maintained a ratio of about 6 people passed per person that passed me, and that’s very rewarding for a marathon for me. The half-way split is negative by 99 seconds. Given how I finished not feeing like there was much left, I am pleased with the pacing decisions I made.

And now I get to recover with less of a sword of Damocles hanging over me!

Mile	Pace (min/mile) From Garmin
1*	7:52
2	7:29
3	7:24
4	7:26
5	7:25
6	7:20
7	7:20
8	7:26
9	7:25
10	7:13
11	7:31
12	7:28
13	7:17
14	7:13
15	7:20
16	7:16
17	7:27
18	7:23
19	7:11
20	7:31
21	7:28
22	7:20
23	7:26
24	7:19
25	7:03
26	7:09
27**	6:52 (0.4 Mi)

* Started about 2 minutes 10 seconds into the race.
**About 0.4 miles due to accumulated error in the Garmin (or, more likely, me running too far by not cutting the tangents)

Location	Race Time	Time of Day	Pace Between	Overall Place	Division Place	Sex Place	Age Graded Place	Passed / Passed By
Time	3:14:41	11:02:30	7:22	499/5613	30/374	439/3271	439/5613	19/3
25M	3:05:51	10:53:39	7:12	516/5595	31/371	453/3260	420/5595	38/5
23.1M	2:52:12	10:40:00	7:27	548/5607	32/374	484/3270	454/5607	56/10
19.3M	2:23:56	10:11:44	7:29	603/5609	33/374	531/3270	497/5609	48/4
16.2M	2:00:47	9:48:35	7:18	648/5607	38/374	570/3269	532/5607	42/1
13.1M	1:38:10	9:25:58	7:28	701/5610	44/374	616/3269	579/5610	59/15
10K	46:48	8:34:37	7:32	761/5610	54/374	663/3270	677/5610	139/114
ChipStart	0:41	7:47:49		743/5613	58/374	646/3271	646/5613
GunStart	00:00	7:47:08