Grandma's Marathon 2014 - Wandering through the Fog

Thursday evening was a late arrival up in Duluth, and everyone pretty much went straight to bed. Friday was cold, so I was wearing a large fraction of the clothes I had brought with down to bib pickup, including some pretty classy John Deere tractor pajama pants my mom sewed for me. In the excitement of the Expo I decided to take the plunge and sign up for the Birkie Trail Marathon in September. I did this race in it's inaugural year and haven't been back since due to it being on the same weekend as the Trail-Loppet half marathon. I talked Nate and Jake into signing up as well, so TNC will be well represented up there. It should be a fun race, so I encourage anyone reading this to sign up (hint, hint). Then we headed out to do a shakeout run and preview the last mile or so of the course. This would prove to be helpful information for race day, since the last mile is a bit of a maze.

TNC Crew at the Expo

 The rest of Friday was spent on last minute physical and mental prep for the next day. Topping off the glycogen stores, formulating mental strategies, planning gel strategy for the next day (Nichole gave me a fail in this department), applying nail polish, and laying out all our gear for the next morning.

Team glitter, thanks Sharon!

Marathon morning was a bit surreal. Everything was shrouded in fog, narrowing my focus to just what was going on in my immediate vicinity. All I had to think about was keeping the nervous race day energy in check and getting the body ready to GO. I got to the start line with just enough time to get a quick bathroom stop in, get my warmups off, and get a spot in the corral.

My goal pace was 6:00 miles, my end goal of running sub 2:40 required a 6:05 average, so I started a bit conservatively at a 6:10 before dropping down to six minute pace. I ran the first few miles with Shad Gausman, a River Falls Alum. We worked our way through the thinning race field over the next few miles, just staying relaxed. The mile marks seemed to come and go remarkably fast (one every 6 minutes, duh). This worked well until one of my shoes came untied. I have to say I was quite frustrated with myself for having to leave let a great pacing partner get away because of a rookie mistake like this. I hadn't double knotted them because I wasn't sure if I would need to take them off to get my warmup pants off before the race, and I just plain forgot to check them before race start.

Not a good sight mid race

This minor shakeup led to a 6:11 mile, actually my slowest of the whole race. I was a bit off my game after this, turning in several 6:08 and 6:09 miles. After passing the 10 mile mark and seeing I was behind my goal pace to break 2:40 I decided I would have to let myself start hurting if I wanted to have a shot at my goal. I stopped to tie my other shoe before it became a problem and brought the pace back down to 6:00 miles until about mile 17, with a couple sub 6 miles when there were cheering cows on the course for added motivation. I was running tangents well, using the bright jerseys ahead of me in the fog to get a feel for the curving of the course. The miles were not seeming to pass as quickly as they had been, but I was still feeling alright.

The course is curvier than it looks, but visibility was low.

I hit mile 17 where there was supposed to be Gu available, but for whatever reason I didn't see it. Again, a pretty minor issue since I still had 2 gels in my pocket and wasn't even sure my stomach could handle them. I was a bit bothered by this for about a mile and at mile 18 decided I needed to try to take a gel and hope my stomach could hold it down. I sipped on it slowly as Nichole recommended (and got sticky, gooey gel all over my hand, as I predicted) but it sat well until I got to mile 19 where there was water and banana waiting. For a while I was trying to juggle a half eaten gel, a mushed and half unpeeled banana, and a glass of water all while trucking along at 6:00 pace. I heard there was a guy who ran the marathon juggling the whole time, I could have used some of his dexterity.

Where were you when I needed you Gel?

Mile 20 I had another 6:11 mile, but for the first time I passed a 5 mile checkpoint ahead of my goal time, so this gave me some measure of confidence. I decided to start making myself hurt and just take it one mile at a time. I figured if I could put more time in the bank whenever I did blow up I would hopefully be close enough to the finish line to limp in under 2:40. With 10k to go it was time to get serious, leave tactics and pacing aside, and race, hard! It helped that a guy in a red jersey with a very exaggerated arm swing passed me as I was putting on my gel/banana/water juggling act, so I literally dropped everything and gave chase.

We ran neck in neck for several miles at about 5:50 pace, neither of us getting more than 2 or 3 meters or so on the other, until I finally got a bit of an edge going over Lemon Drop Hill thanks to some great cheering by Brendan Huber. I kept driving on, deciding I want to look like I'm running fast when I see my friend Erik downtown. I felt like my legs were no longer working correctly, but to my own surprise I was still running sub 6:00 pace when I hit mile 23. Miles were seeming quite laborious at this point, but then I saw Erik and he reminded me rather loudly that I was in a race and I should be chasing people down. This was the shift in mentality I needed, and for the next couple miles I went on the hunt, doing my best to chase down anyone I could see. According to the results I passed 13 people from 20-25 and another 6 in the last mile.

As the finish line came in sight I saw the clock ticking it's way towards 2:39:00 and my final drive was to make it under this mark. I ended up with 2:38:57 gun time (2:38:47 chip time), good enough for 82nd place.

TNC Crew post race (I missed out on this one)

After the race walking was hard, as is to be expected post marathon, but I was absolutely over the moon at surpassing any realistic expectation I had for the race, especially the second half. Thinking about the race still boggles my mind days later. Not necessarily my finishing time, although that is pretty decent and a 13 minute PR is crazy, but the fact that I was able to execute my race strategy so well, run a negative second half, and race hard all the way through the finish line. Every marathon I have finished before was just about finishing, this one was a true race, especially in the final 10k.

So now that I've had few days to think about the race what do I think?

The biggest part of me is still super excited with how well everything turned out, how well I raced, how much mental fortitude I was able bring to bear late in the race, how great it is to prove to myself that all that training was effective. I'm excited with how well all the TNC athletes did, all these great folks that understand and share in my excitement over the race.

A large part of me is also relieved. So much had to go right for this to happen, and it all did. My training was far and away better than it has been for any other marathon. I have run over 800 miles this year so far, more than I did the entirety of 2013, with no injuries. I had my first 100+ mile week, pushed my tempo pace down to 5:40, and set a half marathon PR on the way. The weather for race day was pretty close to perfect (good enough for a 30+ year old course record to finally go down). I had friends and teammates racing and cheering to add a strong motivation to perform well. It made it extra exciting that all the TNC athletes who were racing set huge PR's, so the atmosphere after the race was very celebratory.

A small part of me is still dissatisfied, or at least curious. Could I handle more miles next training cycle? Can I bring my tempo pace down further? Running a 3 minute negative split is not an ideal race strategy. How much harder could I have pushed that first half, what if I had remembered to tie my shoes and could have continued to cruise with the pack I was with? What if my stomach had felt better, could additional fuel have helped me go faster? 82nd place means there are a lot of people for me to still chase down. This already has me excited to get back to training. I'm smart enough to work back in to it slowly though, right after the Tri-loppet which I'm racing next weekend.

If you want to read more about the race:

• Nichole put up a really great blog post that summarizes how all the TNC athletes did and captures the day from a coaching perspective.
• TNC athlete Sharon Snyder, who came all the way up from Indiana to race, has a great blog post about her weekend.
• Northlandnewscenter has a video that features Claire as a cheering cow, and has a shot of Sharon crossing the finish line.
• And I'll have a couple more posts up later in the week about race day nutrition (this one will be boring) and the mental side of the race (this one might actually be good).

Finally I want to say thanks congratulations to all my training partners who set marathon PR's last weekend. Great work Jeff, Jake, Nate, Sharon, Amy, Rael, and Brian. Also thanks to everyone who was up there cheering, Nichole, Claire, and Cary the best cheering herd ever, T-1000 (aka Kara) who gave me such a great high 5 that my hand hurt for miles afterwards, Brendan for being in just the right spot, Ben Kirmse for running along for a bit on a lonely stretch of road, Erik Teig for getting me in race mode for those final miles, and another thanks to Nichole for all the support and strategizing leading up to the race and Nate for joining me for some hard workouts in truly terrible weather this spring.