A quick run down: I had a great first half, and dissapointing second half. It was a bit warm, but I'm unsure how much that affected my performance today. Being my 10th. marathon this year, maybe my body was telling me to back off. I was hoping for a pr, but it wasn't to be. More details later...
Initially, my goal was to go sub 3:00. If that didn't work out, I felt that I'd be close and at least have a new pr. I felt great the first half, and hit it around 1:32:30. With the major hills behind, the second half should have been an easy negative split. I continued feeling decent, but knew there was some work to be done, so I took nothing for granted. Around mile 20, a dreaded slowdown started to hit me. I didn't 'hit the wall,' but my pace began to lag and it only continued to decline as the final 10k progressed. I figured I could still hold on and make the best of it, so I became more focused on the finish and not so much my bombed out splits. It was around mile 25 when I had the realization of not setting a new pr, being slower than last year, and it was not a fun feeling.
I'm begining to really wonder if my recent marathons have taken their toll on my speed. When running them close together; I spend my time recovering from one before running the next, and not getting in good quality mileage. My training mileage has therefore gone down, and I have become a little stale. I guess this year has been more about sheer numbers rather than speed. I have no regrets, but have to accept the reality of quantity over quality. | 