So I’m happy to share with you that I’ve finally run a marathon, in contrast to that mess that was the Tokyo marathon.
I’ve since departed the concrete jungles of Tokyo for the green burbs of Chicago, and at the beginning of the year my firm offered to pay admission to the Chicago marathon for anyone who wanted to do it. Unable to say no to such a fine offer (including people to run with in the office), I signed right up.
Fast forward to when I actually needed to start training for the marathon. The first two weeks went just fine. I was following one of Hal Higdon’s training programs to a T. Then work intervened, and one week not running quickly became eight weeks. I didn’t pick up my shoes again until Labor Day weekend.
Now that I basically had about six weeks to train, I had to do the best I could with what little time I had. I decided to use one of Hal’s training schedules as a basis, but just ramp up mileage every weekend until two weeks before the marathon, at which point I’d just hop back onto Hal’s two taper weeks. The plan actually went surprisingly well for the most part. Sunday runs ramped up to as high as 22 miles (two weeks before the marathon) and midweek runs were generally about 60% of the distance of the Sunday run (I ran a half midweek the week I ran the 22 miles). I also decided that I’d try to push speed on the taper weeks, and I found myself knocking off four-mile runs at 7:15 to 7:30 mile pace.
The one bump in the road was the very last week. I couldn’t get a long run in on Sunday, and trying to push that into the week failed because things got hectic at work. The end result was that I didn’t run on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday. I ran a fast four miles on Wednesday and two miles on Saturday. Additionally, I probably made a poor choice in saying yes when my kids asked me to take them to the local skate park on the day before the marathon, which inevitably ended up with me skateboarding with them in addition to having also run two miles separately.
My low-bar goal for the marathon was to come in at 4:20 or under, which basically means 10-minute miles. However, I separately had a high-bar goal of breaking 4:00, or about nine minutes per mile. In the lead up to the marathon, I read somewhere that marathon pace was generally about 50 seconds slower than 5K pace. Given that I was knocking out fairly easy four milers at no slower than 7:30, I figured that my current 5K pace would probably be in the high 6:00s, which led me to wonder if I could pull off something like 7:45/mile in the marathon. I figured that wouldn’t work, but the idea somehow got lodged in my head that if I tried and ended up in the low-to-mid 8:00s, I’d still be doing great with something like a 3:45 time.
At the start line, I saw pacers spread out through the group. I weaseled my way forward until I was near the 3:40 pacers, which were the fastest pacers at the second-wave start time. I then proceeded to quickly lose them. For a good while, I was in sight of the leaders of our second wave—for probably at least half a dozen miles. I came in the half at 1:44:33, or 7:58 per mile. Things were looking right on pace for me to end up with an average pace somewhere in the mid 8:00s.
Times slowed down a bit after that because I started stopping for food and drink more frequently after the half, but the real problem began around mile 18 when I started getting cramps. Quads, calves, and adductors (those muscles that get stretched in the butterfly stretch) were cramping up off and on for the remainder of the race. I slowed my pace significantly to deal with this, and stopped at just about every banana and gatorade stop to refuel—not because I really wanted to, but because I couldn’t run fast enough with the cramps for a full belly to be a problem, so I rationalized that I should try to re-up fuel reserves to try to deal with the cramps. That and concentrating on maintaining a very smooth form were the two options I had in front of me to deal with the problem.
The most frustrating thing about this turn of events was that I definitely had more in me. Before I started getting the cramps, my pace had fallen into the 8:00s, and at that pace I wasn’t struggling aerobically at all. My pace had dropped from anaerobic fatigue combined with the more frequent pit stops, but without the cramps I’m confident that I wouldn’t have been anywhere near the 10:34/mile or so that I averaged after mile 18; even on my worst long-distance runs during training, I never got over 9:30/mile. If I had ran the second half at 9:30/mile, I would have had a total time of 3:48, a result I would have been ecstatic about.
As it was, I ended up coming in with a 4:03 (my full results are here). Given that my high-bar goal was 4:00, I can’t say I’m displeased with this, but it was a little disappointing that I seemed poised to do even better than that only to be taken down by cramps.
To be fair, it’s not like the cramps weren’t my fault. Effectively training six weeks for a marathon is far from ideal, especially when you end up flubbing a good chunk of the last week. Although I blame most of it on insufficient training, I also wonder whether nutritionally I didn’t get enough of something, like salt or electrolytes.
That all said, running the marathon was great. The distance hardly seems intimidating anymore (guess it doesn’t take much for me to lose the intimidation factor), and I’m now looking forward to running another. Previously I had decided to focus on shorter distances because marathon training takes up a lot of time that I don’t always have (which can result in an insufficient training regimen, which is what happened for this marathon) and the concerns that running distances like marathons can actually have negative effects on your health. After today's race, I’m feeling pretty inspired to run another. I think that if I actually follow the training schedule I use, and if I can lose some weight (I’ve probably got an excess 20 pounds or so that could go—and actually have been going as I’ve been training for the marathon), I don’t think it’s unreasonable to aim for a time in the low 3:00s. Given that, at 35 years old, I’ve also got age pushing my potential marathon times in the other direction, it probably wouldn’t be a terrible idea to act soon on this. Guess I’ll keep you posted!
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