So close, yet so far away

A couple weeks ago (dec 13th) I did the Tucson Marathon.  In typical fashion, I’ve only gotten to blogging about it two weeks later. 

It was the culmination of all my training this year: an attempt at a Boston Qualifier on a fast, downhill course.  Coming off of my run at the Harrisburg marathon only a month earlier, I had some confidence going in – there I had run the BQ pace (7:15/mile, a 3:10 marathon)  through 13 miles, and wasn’t far from it through 16 miles (3:11 pace), before falling to a 3:14 pace at 20 mile, and hitting the wall there, dropping to finish at a 3:27.  It was a confidence builder, however, since it was the first time I held that pace for that long, and it was on a flat course.  Tucson is a notoriously downhill, fast, Boston Qualifier course, so I thought that the fitness gains I had made leading up to the race, combined with a more favorable course would be just enough to get me my BQ.  

I had one injury concern leading up to the race.  To prepare my body for the downhill course, I did some downhill repeats in the weeks leading up to it.  I knew it was a bit of a risk, but I thought to get a BQ, it was a risk I had to take.  It did not pay off, rather, I hurt my lower back, glutes & hamstring.   Thankfully, the hamstring trouble ending up going away pretty quickly, but the lower back & glute pain persisted.  I had some chiropractic adjustments, and curtailed some of my mileage, but it continued to be an on-off problem.   I went easy on a particularly important weekend – two weeks after Harrisburg, two weeks before Tucson, right in that sweet spot between recovering from one race and tapering for the next.  I did manage to get a good 8 mile long-tempo run in a week before the race, which went well.  I came in at a 57 mins, a 7:06 pace.  The miles came easy, and I finished strong, with my last mile in a 6:16.  Leading up to the race I went easy, but even a little 3 mile run on a treadmill was enough to aggravate it.  The injury on a whole was rather minor, not a lot of pain, rather, just some discomfort, but it can be hard to know how something will hold up after 26.2 miles, especially on a downhill course.  

The Race

The day began with my first and only complaint about the organization of the race – the burden of getting to the start.  The traffic getting to the shuttles that would take us to the start was just horrible, but not entirely unexpected.  Once we got there, we found the correct shuttle, and waited on the bus for forty minutes.  We ended up getting to the race start just 20 minutes before the start.  I typically like to have an hour, so I can use the rest room (takes a long time w/ those lines!) and warm up.  Of course, this wasn’t ideal, but I did have enough time to run around a little bit while shedding my warm up clothes, putting them in my drop bag, putting that on a drop bag bus, and to give some dry desert plants some much needed moisture

 

The race started, and I was right with the 3:10 pace group.  This was generally a strange feeling.  Strange, first of all, that there even was a 3:10 group.  Most races don’t have them.  Stranger, secondly, because I was actually keeping up with them.  I soon fell in to a pattern of passing/catching up to the group on downhills, keeping pace with them on the flats, and letting the group pull away a little bit on the uphills.  I was willing to take the pain that I knew would come from doing these downhills fast, and didn’t want to tax my energy early on the uphills.  Knowing this, I begun to strategize.  I knew that from miles 10-13 there would be some rolling hills before starting the massive descent (800 ft over 11 miles).  I decided I’d pull away from the group, especially on downhill and flat sections around mile 7, let them pass me during the rolling section, but stay close behind.  I’d then catch back up to them on the downhill section.  

Passing a 3:10 group seems like a tall order.   It came easier then I could have ever imagined.  I pushed forwad during this downhill section, passed the pace group at mile 6, and kept passing other runners.  I felt invincible.  I felt like I could run a 3:00 marathon.  I wasn’t too far off – I ran my first 9 miles in 1:04:14, which was a 7:08 min/mile pace, a 3:07:45 marathon pace.  I’m an experienced runner though, so I knew it wouldn’t last, and I knew it would be highly unwise to go any faster, if it even was to be going as fast as I was.  I kept the pace, and felt encouraged by how the race was going.  

Inevitably, the group caught me as we turned onto biosphere road, where the rolling hills started.  I tried to keep up with the group, but I had to let them pass me.  The hills certainly slowed me down in this section – after runing no slower then a 7:17 mile through my first 10 miles, my 11th mile was a 7:45, and my 12th mile was a 8:01.  I didn’t let it affect me, because I knew I had built in some padding, and that I was right on pace.  In the 13th mile, the descent started, and so did my resurgence.  I ran a 6:52 there, and was at a 1:34:05, enough for a 3:09:42 pace.  

The 11 mile downhill stretch from miles 13-24 is what I came out to Tuscon for.  A long decent at this stage of the race certainly makes things easier.  I was right on pace at mile 14, and had the pace group in my sites.  I wanted to catch up to them gradually, rather then make a sudden move that might just send me tumbling into oxygen debt.  Through 16 miles I was at a 3:09:31 pace, ahead of my Harrisburg time.  I kept the pace through miles 18 & 19, but was seriously starting to wonder how long I could keep it up.  The ubiquitous wall had hit me hard in each of my previous races somewhere around miles 20-23.   

At mile 20 I was still miraculously on pace.  2:24:38, a 3:09:36 pace.  It was truly amazing that my race pace at 13 miles, 16 miles, and 20 miles had only varied by only 11 seconds.  I knew the wall was coming, but I was also willing to fight it.  Having been there so many times before in just the past few months, I wanted to battle it again, and push past it.  It came, and it hit me hard.  My pace dropped from mile 20 at a 7:37 to a 8:39 at 21.  A BQ was still salvageable in terms of pace, but I was fading.  I tried to motivate myself by trying to keep up with other runners, but it was hopeless.  Mile 22 I dropped to a 9:20.  A runner with a pi symbol on his back passed me.  I knew I wasn’t going to run better then a 3:14…

When you’ve hit the wall in a marathon, your goals very quickly change.  At this point, I was hoping to just run under a 3:20, but I continued to fade.  I would pick up water at aid stations, though I didn’t need it.  I was perfectly hydrated.  I think my body knew that by picking up water I’d slow down a little bit, and thus grant it some mercy.  Mile 23 was a 10:07.  I kept telling myself to go faster, but my legs just wouldn’t respond.  The 3:20 group had passed me, without much of a fight from me.  Now I just wanted a personal record, something I had done in each of my marathons this year.  At mile 24 I came in a 10:48, and 25 I was completely done, a 12:25.  I just kept hanging on, knowing the end was near, and that I still had a shot at a PR.  I ran my last 1.2 miles in 12:19 (translates to about a 10 min mile), including my usual dash to the finish.  My overall time was a 3:28:11, 23 seconds off of my personal record.  

There’s always a swirl of emotions after finishing race.  You always feel good on some level, knowing what you have just accomplished.  Of course, physically, you feel exhausted, especially if you ran well.  It’s hard to even walk, especially down hills and stairs.  It’s even harder to pick things up from the ground.  After this race, I felt disappointed, just knowing how much I put into it all year, and how close I came, before falling apart.  My final time does not reveal just how close I came.  I still think of it as being on pace through 20 miles.  That’s a start.  I can say that I have done something amazing this year, and that the training adjustments I made really paid off.  I went from a personal record of a 3:54:59 to having run 4 races faster then a 3:36 in a period of 4 months, and have really put myself in reach for a Boston Qualifier.  Next up: Year end review/analysis of how I improved drastically, and how I intend on improving further.