2023 Rehoboth Marathon race report

I guess I didn't feel much like updating this blog after my previous post in August. But for most of the previous several months I've been able to train and did in fact run the Rehoboth Marathon on December 2 - my first marathon since coming back from my hamstring tear. My goal was mainly just to make it to the start and finish lines, but I also hoped to run faster than I did in my previous marathon, the Shamrock Marathon in 2022 (3:15:34), which I ran on limited training after recovering from an earlier (and less significant) injury. I succeeded, running 3:15:01 (7:27/mile average pace) in Rehoboth on what is certainly a slower course than Shamrock. My hamstring tightened up a bit the last few miles, but otherwise it didn't give me trouble.

I won't give all the details of my training here. But here's my weekly mileage for the 16 weeks leading up to Rehoboth, beginning immediately after my last post: 35, 51, 54, 55, 21, 10, 33, 35, 35, 45, 50, 55, 60, 45, 37, 42 (race week including the marathon). Average: 41.4 miles per week.

The reason for the dip in mileage after the first few weeks was that I injured my back doing exercises to strengthen my recovering hamstring. All year I've been doing such exercises 2-3 times per week, and many hamstring exercises are effectively also lower back exercises. I think it was single leg Romanian deadlifts with a dumbbell, one of my staple exercises up to this point, that somehow tweaked something in my lower back. It was very uncomfortable for about a month, but eventually it recovered and I still had time to get the long runs and weekly volume up to a pretty good level before tapering. I stopped doing all single leg exercises after that back injury (but continued doing other exercises 2-3 times per week once my back recovered). I plan to experiment with new hamstring/back exercises going forward. 

Workout-wise, I basically just did some strides, threshold intervals, and a long run each week, in addition to easy/recovery runs (and always at least one day off). The threshold intervals of course got progressively longer over time, both in the sense that individual intervals got progressively longer and in the sense that I spent more total time at threshold pace per workout. They culminated in a 3 x 2 mile threshold workout two and a half weeks before Rehoboth, and then a 5 mile Turkey Trot probably a bit under my current threshold (6:27 pace) a week and a half before Rehoboth. Long runs ascended to a peak of 22 miles before immediately tapering. I didn't really do specific pace work during long runs but tried to run vaguely marathon effort during the second half of some of the longer ones. 

Going into the marathon, I thought optimistically that I might be somewhere around 3:10 shape. So, I planned on going out at 7:15 mile pace and seeing how that felt. I figured that on a good day I might be able to speed up a tiny bit later on, but realistically not much. So I was thinking 3:08 would be the absolute best time possible for me that day if everything went better than expected. 3:10-11 was the more plausible goal if I could just more or less hold 7:15 pace the whole time. But I at least wanted to run faster than I did at Shamrock. I was happy just to be running a marathon again and couldn't be disappointed with any time faster than my previous marathon.

I knew that nearly half of the Rehoboth course is off road, and I had never before run a marathon that was not entirely on roads. (This was my 19th marathon start and 18th finish). But I didn't really know what to expect from the off road sections of the course. I'd heard the course was flat, but how was the footing on the off road sections? Would they be super soft or muddy since it had rained the previous day? I wore the Nike Vaporfly Next%2, hoping that they would work well enough on the off road sections, since they're  my current choice for road races.

The first 4 miles or so of the course are on roads and boardwalk. I felt good and ended up running these miles around 7:05 pace, faster than planned, but I was comfortable. I then eased back to around my planned 7:15 pace for the rest of the first half. My watch said 1:35:32 at halfway, but that includes around a minute spent standing still in mile 8 trying to get a rock out of my shoe. 

The first off road section was around miles 5-8. The surface was pretty hard packed and didn't have any larger rocks or mud. There were also some extended sections of boardwalk. So the footing wasn't bad, but what surprised me about this section was that it was not totally flat. Much of it was rolling. The rolling terrain and softer surfaces took much more out of me than the asphalt sections before and after it. I was running around 10 seconds per mile slower than I had been on asphalt in the first four miles, but I was working harder. Then, running the same pace on asphalt in miles 8-13 or so was considerably easier.

The second off road section is around miles 14-17. It's actually the same as the first off road section but run in the opposite direction. Here I slowed down into the 7:20s and started feeling like I didn't know whether I could even maintain that pace all the way to the end. Again it was the rolling terrain more than the soft surfaces that I think slowed me down.

Miles 18-20 or so are back on the road, and then there's a different off road section in miles 21-25. This off road section is less rolling (but still slightly so) but was both rockier and muddier. It's also more crowded, or was for me, because marathoners and half marathoners share this part of the course. So, I was running more or less the same pace as some marathoners, as before, and we were continually passing slower half marathoners. It's an out and back section too, so both sets of runners are going both directions on a relatively narrow trail. I really did not like this part of the course. I gradually slowed down through the 7:30s and eventually struggled to run no slower than 7:40. For probably the last 3 miles my hamstring started sending me occasional warning signals, probably because my lower back had tightened up and forced me into anterior pelvic tilt, which lengthens the hamstrings. So, by that point I just wanted to finish without hurting anything.

I was able to speed back up a bit to 7:27 pace for mile 26 on the road, and then a little more for the last bit before the finish. I was trying to speed up just enough to sneak under 3:15 while aggravating my hamstring as little as possible, but I ended up missing it by a couple seconds. I didn't care, though, since I'm happy to have run faster than my previous marathon. I don't think I was wrong about being somewhere around 3:10 shape on a flat, road course in the same weather. Maybe 3:12 or 3:13 at the slowest. By the way, the temperature was in the upper 50s. It was humid and cloudy. There was some wind but not too much and it didn't bother me. It was a bit warmer and more humid than ideal, but in comparison to all my other marathons I'd classify this as closer to good weather than bad.

So, I think I ran well enough and I'm happy with how my race went given the course and where I'm at right now. But frankly I wasn't a fan of the course. I don't understand why people I've talked to describe Rehoboth as a fast course. It's not the slowest marathon course out there, but it's definitely not a fast course. And the off road sections make it quite unique - to my taste, not in a good way. The other thing people always say about Rehoboth is that the after party is great. You get free food and three free beers, although there isn't room for everyone to sit down. I was amazed to see runners lined up to get into the after party immediately after crossing the finish line. Later I saw videos on social media of people at the after party doing the limbo to loud music with medals around their necks. To each his or her own, but that's about as far away as possible from what I want to be doing immediately after running a marathon, and I certainly didn't want to stand in a long line waiting to get into that sort of scene. (I skipped the after party). So, I'm glad I ran Rehoboth and enjoyed many aspects of it, but it isn't really my cup of tea and I don't plan to go back.

Next up for me is an extended trip to Greece for the first half of 2024. I plan to run a Spring marathon in Europe, but right now that's TBD. Who knows, maybe I'll post running updates here? I'll return to the US in midsummer, and I've registered for the Richmond Marathon next Fall. At the moment I'm thinking of giving Boston another try in 2025. (I was registered but had to miss it this year because of my hamstring injury). By then I'll be 50, so the qualifying times get easier and even my Rehoboth time should easily get me in. As usual, though, all such plans depend on staying healthy.

Back at it

My effort to restart this running blog last summer was in good faith, but I got injured a few weeks after my last post. It was my most serious running injury to date, which means I've been quite lucky given all I've put my body through. On October 19, 2022, I felt some tightness in what I thought was my right glute as I finished up a standard fartlek workout. I then stretched a bit and did a cool down jog back home. I was training for the Rehoboth Beach Seashore Marathon at the beginning of December but knew I needed to take some time to let whatever this was recover. For the next two and a half weeks, I only went on a few short jogs of 2-3 miles to check on things and spent a lot of time at the PT and chiropractor and doing the exercises and stuff they assigned me. Eventually I decided that whatever it was - I still didn't really know what had happened - was ok enough and started easing my way back into running in hopes of maybe still doing Rehoboth but mainly looking toward the Boston Marathon in the Spring, which I had just registered for. I still thought I had strained something or other, probably several things, in my glute. The PTs were giving me lots of glute exercises, sticking pins in my butt, and telling me to roll out my glutes a lot. But they also said my hamstring was involved, because it attaches up there in the area where the allegedly strained glute muscles criss-cross. At a certain point, as I was getting back into running in mid-November, I started thinking it odd that they didn't give me any hamstring exercises along with all the glute stuff, so I added in some hamstring exercises of my own. I told the PTs about this, and they said good idea. The exercise I added was hamstring curls using a swiss ball. At first I used both legs at the same time, but soon I was doing single leg hamstring curls with the swiss ball. I keep meticulous logs, which indicate that I did the single-leg curls on three occasions. Jumping to the punchline: I think what happened on October 19 was that (perhaps among other things) a small tear formed in my proximal hamstring tendon, which is way up under the glute max in the hip area. Over the next few weeks it started to heal a bit, but then each time I did those single leg hamstring curls I tore it a bit more. In the second half of November I started getting more and more pain at my sit bone on the right side. Eventually I could barely tolerate sitting down and spent all my time either standing or lying down. Running became impossible. My last run was on December 3, the day of the Rehoboth marathon (which I did not try to run). A bit after that I stopped going to the PT and instead went to my primary care physician, who ordered an MRI. It hurt all the time and I was having trouble concentrating on anything. On December 21 I finally got the MRI, which showed proximal hamstring tendinosis with high-grade partial tearing. I was later told by a different doctor who did an ultrasound that I had roughly a 50% tear in my right hamstring tendon.

I probably had tendinosis up there for years without realizing it. All the PTs and the chiropractor I went to didn't catch it. Hamstring strengthening exercises could have stopped it progressing, but I didn't know and never did them. Eventually the tendon degraded enough that an ordinary workout was enough to tear it a bit. Even if I hadn't torn it more by doing an exercise that was too aggressive (which is what I think happened), it would not have gotten better on its own and would have just torn again from something else without a proper strengthening program. So the silver lining is that the painful tear got my attention and led me to get the MRI. Now I know what the problem is, and it isn't anything to do with glutes. When I posted my MRI result on Strava, lots of other runners told me they had dealt with this sort of injury. I asked them all how they dealt with it and got lots of helpful advice. I wanted to avoid surgery if at all possible, and I figured the way to do that was to start with absolute rest for as long as necessary, and then very, very patiently to follow a rehab protocol - which these days you can easily find online and do yourself if you have some experience and access to the relevant equipment. (I was no longer in the mood to trust PTs). I ended up taking around 6 weeks of absolute rest. The area mostly stopped hurting over the first 2 weeks or so, after which I began doing some slow walking, which gradually became more comfortable over the next couple weeks. When I judged that no further improvement was forthcoming from rest and slow walking, on January 18 I began following the rehab protocol I had decided upon after reading and watching practically everything on the internet about this injury. I also started walking a bit faster and later introduced some run-walking until I worked up to a continuous run of 3 miles on February 4. The exercise protocol I followed was solid. For good measure (and to keep myself from going crazy) I also did a lot of strengthening of other muscles, including upper body stuff (which may have contributed to some of the weight I gained during this period). Unfortunately I overlooked calves, though, and by the time I noticed this oversight it was too late. My hamstring held strong, but a few weeks into my return to running I strained my soleus, which had atrophied from all that rest. This too may have been a blessing in disguise, because I had been so surprised by my hamstring's progress that I started thinking I could run Boston after all. The previous year I had taken a month totally off after straining the same calf and then ran Shamrock 10 weeks after I started running again, and Boston was also around 10 weeks after I started running again this time around. But it was not to be, and frankly I wasn't too disappointed. I had gotten a bit ahead of myself anyway. The calf strain dragged on frustratingly long, but it gave me more time to strengthen my hamstring and shifted my focus away from the next race to just getting back into healthy training. 

It was May by the time my calf finally chilled out. Since then I've gradually worked my way back into things. In the past I had always done hill repeats to prepare my muscles for workouts, but my hamstring needed to avoid hills at first. I still don't do hill repeats, but last month I was finally able to do some harder runs over hilly terrain in Greece. When I returned to the US, I did a couple club races, a 5k and an 8k, for the first time since the injury. I'm predictably slower and still getting back into shape, but my muscles are holding up. I continue to do hamstring exercises 2-3 times per week. When I reached the milestone of 50 miles per week for the past two weeks, I figured it was time to resuscitate this running blog. Daily details for those two weeks are below.

My plan from here is basically to continue returning to the sort of training and racing I love. Last year I deferred my registrations for both the Annapolis Ten Miler in late August and the Rehoboth Marathon in early December. So I plan to run both of those this year, as well as the Army Ten Miler as usual. I'm thinking of the A10 in two weeks as sort of the next hard training effort after the 5k and 8k club races. After that I'll shift more fully into marathon mode with longer workouts and some pace work during long runs. I hope to race the ATM in October and not just treat that as another hard training effort, but we'll see how things go.

Before tearing my hamstring, I felt like my running was kind of on autopilot for a while. I set some PRs in 2019 but then the pandemic happened and for some reason my heart wasn't altogether in it when things opened back up again. I was going through the motions but didn't really know why or care much. But getting injured and thinking I might never be able to run again put some fire in my belly. I generally need to hold myself back since I'm the sort who will simply run myself into the ground, and my body already has a lot of wear and tear on it. But it's wonderful to feel that drive and love running again. I don't have to do this or that workout today. I get to go out and run now, and it's glorious. I want to run as fast and far as my body will let me. I'm thankful for what my body can do and accept its limits, but I'm going to push them, still.

July 31 - August 6:
Mo: 5 miles
Tu: 8.5 miles with 10 x .25 miles (1:15 rests)
We: 6.5 miles
Th: 14 miles @ 7:49/mi.
Fr: Off
Sa: 6.5 miles
Su: Steve Thompson 8k in 34:38
Week total: 50 miles

August 7-13:
Mo: 5.5 miles
Tu: 6.5 miles
We: 10 miles with 3 x (1, 2, 3 min.) with equal recoveries
Th: 7 miles
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 15 miles @ 7:54/mi.
Su: Off
Week total: 50 miles