A 180º turn of events
It was about 12:30am last night and I was wide awake -- I went to bed just after 10pm and wasn't able to fall alseep! I was thinking about the race and couldn't relax. On top of that my legs hurt because my part-time job requires me to be standing and I worked two full-time shifts on Friday and yesteday. By 12:30 I was thinking that the marathon would be a total disaster and I even wasn't sure if I could race. But miracles do happen because I think I must have fallen asleep shortly afterwards and when I got up at 7 my legs felt good and I didn't even feel tired.
The race started at 8:15am and I felt very good from the get-go. Based on my previous experience I knew to start out slow and so I followed an 8:01min/mi pacer (3:30 total marathon time) for the first two miles. I sped up after that and never looked back. I didn't take my GPS watch with me because I didn't want to distract me and I'm glad that's what I did although it would have been nice to see a personal map of the run. At the 13.1mi mark, I clocked in at 1:37:19. When I started the race, my goal was to go under 3:30. The only other time I ran a marathon was in 2003 when I finished at 3:19:23 (Country Music Marathon in Nashville). When I crossed that half-way point today I knew I could go under 3:20.
Did my left leg hurt? Yes, but not as much as I thought it would and it didn't really bother me until the last 3-4 miles when the joints and muscles in both legs were hurting, which is really quite normal. So it will take me a few days to recover, but I will still run again :-). But I think I'm getting an idea as to why it hurt in the first place: I don't think I'm running in the right shoes. Yesterday, while I stopped at the Westin Hotel convention center to pick up my marathon pocket that had a bib and a timing chip, I talked to this guy at one of the vendor booths from the Seattle Running Company and he measured my feet and said I need at least a size bigger than I currently have because the part of the foot from the heel to the back-end of the toes is longer than normal, which means that in my current shoes, the shoe is not bending in the right place. Also, my feet are not very curved (but not quite flat) which also means that my shoes should not be curved in the middle but rather more straight. Anyway, next week I'll go down to the store where I can get an exact measurement and see a video of my stride. I'll pay full-price for a shoe, but the extra $10 or $20 compared to an Internet retailer will be more than worth it.
Now back to the race. The reason I felt so good was that I drank a lot of water yesterday. On Friday I had a lot of pizza and yesterday a regular meal. I ate a banana and an energy bar and drank two glasses of water about an hour and a half before the race this morning and then an energy gel an hour later. During the race, I ate two more gels and stopped about 4 times to drink Gatorade.
Now really back to the race :-). I kept up the pace past the half-point mark. There were a couple of hilly parts after that but it wasn't too bad, maybe a total elevation gain of 400 ft. There was a clock at the 30K point (the marathon is 42.2) and I was running on track for a 3:06 time, which really surprised me. Maybe it was 35k and that was the actual time?? Probably the former, but I can't be sure. In any case, by mile 20 I was feeling strained and by about 22 miles my legs were sore and the muscles were cramping. But, my breathing was fine. Miles 22 to 25 were the hardest. The last mile wasn't that bad because I just pushed it with the thought that I'll be done very shortly and so I lengthened my stride which also helped to loosen up the legs.
I ended up finishing in 3:14:10, just over 5 minutes faster than my previous time. My second split was 1:36:51 -- 28 seconds faster than the first. Now, I did make a pit stop that probably took me about that time or just a bit londer during the first half, which would make the 2 halves almost identical in time. I'm actually very satisfied with that, because almost all runners finish the second half much slower than the first. The most visible exception: the winner of today's race, Uli Stedl (who I think won the Seattle Marathon for the 6th time in a row today!). When I looked at the results, I only saw two other guys do that who finished ahead of me. That's why only a couple of guys passed me past 5 or so miles. Otherwise I was passing other people. I'm not saying that to brag, but the point is that it's important not to start out to fast and to really push it the last 8 or 10 miles. I'm sure there's a good chance I'll make that mistake in the future too...
I got 138th place in the men's division and I think there were 4 women ahead of me out of a total of ~1400 male and ~750 female runners. I'll update the results when they're official. As you can tell from my diatribe, I'm quite satisfied with the results.
Total: Seattle Marathon Race (26.2mi); 3:14:10 (7:24 pace)
The race started at 8:15am and I felt very good from the get-go. Based on my previous experience I knew to start out slow and so I followed an 8:01min/mi pacer (3:30 total marathon time) for the first two miles. I sped up after that and never looked back. I didn't take my GPS watch with me because I didn't want to distract me and I'm glad that's what I did although it would have been nice to see a personal map of the run. At the 13.1mi mark, I clocked in at 1:37:19. When I started the race, my goal was to go under 3:30. The only other time I ran a marathon was in 2003 when I finished at 3:19:23 (Country Music Marathon in Nashville). When I crossed that half-way point today I knew I could go under 3:20.
Did my left leg hurt? Yes, but not as much as I thought it would and it didn't really bother me until the last 3-4 miles when the joints and muscles in both legs were hurting, which is really quite normal. So it will take me a few days to recover, but I will still run again :-). But I think I'm getting an idea as to why it hurt in the first place: I don't think I'm running in the right shoes. Yesterday, while I stopped at the Westin Hotel convention center to pick up my marathon pocket that had a bib and a timing chip, I talked to this guy at one of the vendor booths from the Seattle Running Company and he measured my feet and said I need at least a size bigger than I currently have because the part of the foot from the heel to the back-end of the toes is longer than normal, which means that in my current shoes, the shoe is not bending in the right place. Also, my feet are not very curved (but not quite flat) which also means that my shoes should not be curved in the middle but rather more straight. Anyway, next week I'll go down to the store where I can get an exact measurement and see a video of my stride. I'll pay full-price for a shoe, but the extra $10 or $20 compared to an Internet retailer will be more than worth it.
Now back to the race. The reason I felt so good was that I drank a lot of water yesterday. On Friday I had a lot of pizza and yesterday a regular meal. I ate a banana and an energy bar and drank two glasses of water about an hour and a half before the race this morning and then an energy gel an hour later. During the race, I ate two more gels and stopped about 4 times to drink Gatorade.
Now really back to the race :-). I kept up the pace past the half-point mark. There were a couple of hilly parts after that but it wasn't too bad, maybe a total elevation gain of 400 ft. There was a clock at the 30K point (the marathon is 42.2) and I was running on track for a 3:06 time, which really surprised me. Maybe it was 35k and that was the actual time?? Probably the former, but I can't be sure. In any case, by mile 20 I was feeling strained and by about 22 miles my legs were sore and the muscles were cramping. But, my breathing was fine. Miles 22 to 25 were the hardest. The last mile wasn't that bad because I just pushed it with the thought that I'll be done very shortly and so I lengthened my stride which also helped to loosen up the legs.
I ended up finishing in 3:14:10, just over 5 minutes faster than my previous time. My second split was 1:36:51 -- 28 seconds faster than the first. Now, I did make a pit stop that probably took me about that time or just a bit londer during the first half, which would make the 2 halves almost identical in time. I'm actually very satisfied with that, because almost all runners finish the second half much slower than the first. The most visible exception: the winner of today's race, Uli Stedl (who I think won the Seattle Marathon for the 6th time in a row today!). When I looked at the results, I only saw two other guys do that who finished ahead of me. That's why only a couple of guys passed me past 5 or so miles. Otherwise I was passing other people. I'm not saying that to brag, but the point is that it's important not to start out to fast and to really push it the last 8 or 10 miles. I'm sure there's a good chance I'll make that mistake in the future too...
I got 138th place in the men's division and I think there were 4 women ahead of me out of a total of ~1400 male and ~750 female runners. I'll update the results when they're official. As you can tell from my diatribe, I'm quite satisfied with the results.
Total: Seattle Marathon Race (26.2mi); 3:14:10 (7:24 pace)
posted by Severe Training at 3:57 PM
2 Comments:
GREAT JOB, Severe! You rock! You have every reason in the world to be proud of your fantastic performance today! Next year,with better fitting shoes, today's pb will be dust! Awesome day today, even better things ahead for you, I'm sure :-)
Thanks livestrongrrrrl. Maybe we'll run one together sometime? :-)
Post a Comment
<< Home