2 Corinthians 12:9
9 But he said to me, âMy grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.â Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christâs power may rest on me.
Well, I think I'll just laught this one off to experience!!!
As you all know I had big expectations to complete this marathon and easily qualify for Boston. My gameplan was a little unsure until the morning of the race when I decided to just go ahead and shoot for the 3:15 I had been training for....What could go wrong? I get tired sometime in the race so I simply slow down a little and finish about 3:20-3:25 :-) Well, that plan went a little off course.
I went to the chute and lined up with the 3:15 pace group. As we were there talking I found out that our pacer was Ricky Cox (3 time winner of the Ft Worth Cowtown Marathon - Here's a aricle about him: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/02/03/3710723/three-time-champ-ricky-cox-to.html . I though, this will be cool, this guy has a great personality and I'll have fun running with him for a while.
So the gun goes off and here we go... running along at a sub-6 pace ...."WHAT" ... That's what I'm thinking to myself but I'm also thinking "Ricky know something about the course and this must be the right thing to do...he's won the this race 3 times" and the first mile is all downhill, so just go with it, I feel great! Through mile 1 and I feel fine so I just stick with Ricky. Mile 2 is the same....fast, mile 3 - "WHAT" 7:13 but that's ok I feel great and "I'll slow down when I get tired"...mile 4 still cruising at 7:15...man I'm doing good! Mile 6 I decide to eat a gel but oops I dropped it on the ground and had to stop, turn around run back about 10 yards and get it so I dropped behind my buddy Ricky a little, 7:41 with the backtrack :-) Two miles to catch back up to Ricky, 7:21 & 7:29 (I think he slowed down a little to let me catch back up) then came mile 9 which is all uphill so at the top at 7:40 I was feeling pretty good and thinking "that wasn't so bad". Usually at about mile 8-9, in my half marathons, I start thinking "whoo, I'm getting tired" but today I was thinking "I still feel good"! As I clicked along through mile 10,11,12,13 & 14 I just knew I was going to have a great time and not be feeling any pain at the end. I knew, at the halfway point, I was slightly faster than I needed to be for a 3:16 and knew when I got to mile 18 it was all downhill (literally -200' net downhill). Then ...Uh-Oh, at mile 15 my quads started to get a little tight. Mile 15 was the last uphill mile before the course levels out for 3 miles and then starts it's downhill decent. I was thinking "Ok...don't get excited, just run smooth, stretch out and look forward to the downhill". I decided at this point to let Ricky go and just run my own race from here on out so I said my farwell's and let him go. BTW...did I tell you that there was only one other guy running with me and Ricky? I think all the other 3:15 people said "the heck with this at mile 1 and ran their own race. Mile 16,17 both 7:39 but my quads were continuing to tighten up. Then, the greatly anticipated mile 18....YEAH!!!!.....Oh, wait a minute, running downhill puts more pressure on the quads...OUCH...now I want to run uphill :-( 8:08 on this mile and everything went downhill from this point (literally!!). I really don't know what caused the quad problem other than at mile 14 my HR% went to 90% and I'm assuming my body wasn't able to remove the lactate from my muscles at that point. After mile 17 my HR started to drop drastically and my quads just got more sore. It's funny because all my other muscles felt great (calves, ham's, etc.). Even today my body feels fine, no different than any other day after a long run except for my quads which are very sore.
The end of the race was very dissipointing seeing about 75 racers pass me in the 5 miles but I can still remember how much fun the first 15-17 miles were :-) Like I said at the beginning, I'll just laugh this on off to experience and start preparing for the next race. There is no question, I can BQ easily with the right race plan, I just have much higher expectation and aspirations than to just BQ :-)
| 2/26/2012 |
| Mile |
Time |
HR |
HR % |
|
| 1 |
7:10:00 |
143 |
74% |
|
| 2 |
7:09:00 |
156 |
83% |
|
| 3 |
7:13:00 |
161 |
87% |
|
| 4 |
7:15:00 |
162 |
87% |
|
| 5 |
7:14:00 |
163 |
88% |
|
| 6 |
7:41:00 |
160 |
86% |
|
| 7 |
7:21:00 |
161 |
87% |
|
| 8 |
7:29:00 |
161 |
87% |
|
| 9 |
7:40:00 |
161 |
87% |
|
| 10 |
7:21:00 |
165 |
89% |
|
| 11 |
7:25:00 |
166 |
90% |
|
| 12 |
7:29:00 |
166 |
90% |
|
| 13 |
7:34:00 |
165 |
89% |
|
| 14 |
7:27:00 |
167 |
91% |
|
| 15 |
7:40:00 |
169 |
92% |
|
| 16 |
7:39:00 |
169 |
92% |
|
| 17 |
7:39:00 |
172 |
94% |
|
| 18 |
8:08:00 |
170 |
93% |
|
| 19 |
8:34:00 |
163 |
88% |
|
| 20 |
8:49:00 |
158 |
85% |
|
| 21 |
9:41:00 |
153 |
81% |
|
| 22 |
9:32:00 |
150 |
79% |
|
| 23 |
9:17:00 |
151 |
80% |
|
| 24 |
9:06:00 |
154 |
82% |
|
| 25 |
9:36:00 |
152 |
80% |
|
| 26 |
9:35:00 |
157 |
84% |
|
| 26.3 |
1:35:00 |
165 |
89% |
|
| Total |
210:19:00 |
161 |
86% |
|
| Pace |
8:01:38 |
|
|
|
| Ft Worth Cowtown Marathon |
| 40Âș - 50Âș - 10-15 mph wind, Clear |
| 