Not quite the negative split I had in mind, but what did I know? Overall the course was ok. It was flat, but the surface was uneven and the bike lane portions were not great until the end (when I did not really notice them). Lot's of turns, there were a couple of spots in the early miles (8-12 or so) where I thought I was going to fall, lots of jostling and elbows flying in some of the tighter turns. There were a lot of marathoners that missed the marathon turn off at mile 11 (some might have actually missed 4 miles of the marathon course) - the bike path was really narrow and there was a lot of back-up caused by the marathoners coming up to their mile 15 and running into marathoners coming into their mile 11. But, all and all it was ok. I did almost do a face plant at mile 16 or so, we were running on brick speed bumps! wow. I did not see the first one and tripped as I was looking longingly at what I thought might be a bathroom.
Marathons are really hard. My legs started cramping up at 21-22 miles ... I didn't really slow down until mile 23-24, and then my gel must have kicked in because I was able to get a couple sub 8:00 miles in there. But I have to say miles 22-25 were the hardest miles I have ever run at any pace. I am both disappointed and happy with my time ... but I am very happy it is over. Funny thing that Dean said, and I agree, in his first marathon he was disappointed that his legs kept hurting after he stopped running -- usually, when your legs hurt during a race it feels so much better when you stop running -- but not today. I stopped and geez, they still hurt ;-).
Anyway -- I finished my first marathon and now I am a marathoner.
ok ... so here goes:
Raining at the start - luckily stopped raining soon after the race started - couldn't really ask for better weather the rest of the time (other than cold, wet feet and chafing due to wet shorts).
miles 1-6: 8:25, 7:41, 7:46, 8:05, 8:12 (gu)
start was packed, I didn't want to spend a lot of energy trying to catch the pacer ... so I just kept them in view and relaxed. The pacer was really not very good, he kept speeding up and then when the split was too fast he would slow down and we would all bunch up. At mile 6 I just decided to run my own race and did not follow the pacer.
miles 7-13: 7:40, 8:05, 7:57, 8:06 (hill, gu), 7:49 (13.1 1:44:55)
at mile 11 we separated from the 1/2 marathoners and we did this little 4 mile loop (on a bike path) - things did get spread out here but then we actually hooked back up with the 1/2 at their mile 11 - which was bad because all of a sudden there were a bunch of people on the bike path again who were running about 2 mins/mile slower and we had to go around them and it got pretty packed up. I was not feeling bad at this point, I wasn't actually feeling like it was "easy" but I was talking to this nice woman from Portland for a while.
miles 14-20: 8:07, 7:57, 7:53, 8:03, 8:05 (gu), 7:57, 8:01
stayed with this one group until about 18 and then I lost my Portland friend at a water stop. I was happy there were only 6 miles left!
miles 21-26: 8:00, 15:55 (7:57 average, gu at 22), 8:04, 8:27, 7:58
I really did not feel good here at all, lots of things hurt. By the time I hit mile 23 my right quad was hurting really bad and I felt pretty sick. I really don't remember a whole lot about the specifics here. Lots of guys (I remember mainly guys - I think it was because there were more men in front of me than women) stopping in this section. Dean jumped in at 23 to run the last 3 miles with me - I don't remember much but everyone was yelling how strong I looked and we must of passed 10 -15 people from 24-25 ... it was not because I felt good I was totally running on autopilot and felt really crappy. I just wanted to make it to 25 because Dean told me that once I got there I would know I could finish (I believed him). I made a pathetic attempt at a sprint at the finished and managed to pass 3 people in the 1/4 mile finishing chute, I think they had given up.
There you go. I guess I never actually "fell apart", I just did not execute things the exact way I had envisioned (who does? everyone warned me about this!). There were lots of "micro runs" (e.g., ebb and flow of the run). I don't think it ever actually felt "easy", if I had to do anything differently in my training I think I would add some much longer runs (24-26) and some longer MP runs. I think I would have been a little stronger at the end, but maybe not, maybe you just have to get through it the first time.
Thank you all for your support over the past few months and all the sweet messages today! | 