Foot Traffic Flat Marathon: training and race report

Look, I ran another marathon: the Foot Traffic Flat Marathon on Sauvie Island outside Portland, Oregon! It's a fantastic event that I encourage others to do, even though my race did not go well. Since an actual human being recently mentioned to me that he had read this running blog, I'll take this opportunity to do some catching up.

After Chicago last Fall, my previous marathon, I had hoped to run a Spring marathon but a minor injury to my pes anserine tendon (of whose existence I thus became aware) forced me to take 10 days off in late February shortly after I had shifted back into marathon mode. At that point I was not far enough along to be able to recover my fitness quickly after 10 days off, but it was too late to start over and get in a full build-up. So I abandoned the Spring marathon idea and briefly refocused on running a half in April instead. But I only managed to get running again for 5 weeks before the flu forced me to take another 10 days off in late March and early April. So I ended up just doing a few club races this entire Winter and Spring, mainly as workouts.

Usually we head to Greece for the summer sometime in mid- or late-June. But this year my nephew's birth was the occasion for my son and I to visit my sister in Portland, Oregon, in early July. When we were making plans for this visit in March, before I got the flu, I mentioned to my sister that I noticed there was a marathon near Portland on July 4. She replied enthusiastically that she knew of the race, that I must do it and get the Portland race experience, and that she wanted to drive my son and I up to the race early that morning and hang out there with him while I ran. So I registered and booked our tickets. In retrospect, I don't think it was a good idea to do this race 4 weeks after my nephew was born, because my poor sister was hardly getting any sleep and had more important things to worry about. I should have done it another year instead. But she had been trying to get me to run a marathon in Portland for years and seemed to enjoy it, somehow, despite barely sleeping. She's really into biking and soaks up that outdoor, endurance sport ambience. I guess it runs in the family.

The day I started running again after being leveled by the flu was exactly 12 weeks before the marathon. Normally I like to make sure I'm generally fit before beginning a 12-week block of marathon-specific training, but this time around I was starting from ground zero. I had no residual fitness since the flu had hit me quite hard and I wasn't in great shape before getting the flu anyway. Plus, this year's germs seemed to take longer to recover from than usual, so it was really slow going at first. Here are my 12 weeks of training for this race since recovering from the flu:

Wk 12 – April 9-15

Mo: off

Tu: 3 miles

We: off

Th: 4 miles

Fr: off

Sa: 5 miles

Su: 4 miles

Week total: 16 miles

Wk 11 – April 16-22

Mo: off

Tu: 6 miles

We: 4 miles

Th: 6 miles with 6 x 40 sec. hills

Fr: 4 miles

Sa: off

Su: 10 miles

Week total: 30 miles

Wk 10 – April 23-29

Mo: 3 miles

Tu: 7 miles with 8 x 40 sec. hills

We: 4 miles

Th: Fartlek: 2 x (3, 2, 1 min.) with equal recoveries

Fr: off

Sa: 14 miles

Su: 4 miles

Week total: 40 miles

Wk 9 – April 30-May 6

Mo: off

Tu: Fartlek: (5, 4, 3), (4, 3, 2), (3, 2, 1) min. with half recoveries

We: 5.5 miles

Th: 7 miles

Fr: 6 miles

Sa: 16 miles, pushing 3 miles after 11

Su: off

Week total: 45 miles

Wk 8 – May 7-13

Mo: 4 miles

Tu: 5.5 miles

We: 8 miles

Th: 5.5 miles

Fr: 8 miles plus 5 strides

Sa: 5.5 miles

Su: 16 miles, pushing 3 miles after 11

Week total: 53 miles

Wk 7 – May 14-20

Mo: 8 miles

Tu: 6 miles

We: 9 miles

Th: Fartlek: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 min. with equal recoveries

Fr: 9 miles

Sa: 7 miles

Su: 7 miles

Week total: 59 miles

Wk 6 – May 21-27

Mo: 18 mile progression, with miles 12-16 under 7:00

Tu: off

We: 7 miles

Th: 8 miles

Fr: 3 miles

Sa: 8 miles

Su: 16 miles

Week total: 60 miles

Wk 5 – May 28-June 3

Mo: 6 miles

Tu: 8.5 miles

We: Fartlek: 3 x (1, 2, 3 min) with equal recoveries

Th: 10 miles

Fr: off

Sa: 6 miles

Su: off

Week total: 40 miles 

Wk 4 – June 4-10

Mo: 6 miles

Tu: 18 miles, tied up early and slowed down after 12

We: 6 miles

Th: off

Fr: off

Sa: 6 miles

Su: 9 miles

Week total: 45 miles

Wk 3 – June 11-17

Mo: 6 miles

Tu: 7 x 1 mile (2 min. rests), from 6:46 down to 6:08

We: 6 miles

Th: 7 miles

Fr: off

Sa: 21.5 miles

Su: 6.5 miles

Week total: 60 miles

Wk 2 – June 18-24

Mo: off

Tu: 8 miles

We: 6 miles

Th: 4 mile tune-up in 25:14

Fr: 7 miles

Sa: off

Su: 11 miles

Week total: 45 miles

Wk 1 – June 25-July 1

Mo: 5.5 miles

Tu: 3 miles @ 6:37 (3 min. rest), 2 miles @ 6:32 (2 min. rest), 1 mile @ 6:20

We: 5.5 miles

Th: off

Fr: 5.5 miles

Sa: 3 x 1k @ 6:38 (1 min. rests)

Su: 4 miles

Week total: 38 miles 

Wk 0 – July 2-8

Mo: 4.5 miles

Tu: off

We: Foot Traffic Flat Marathon

As you can see, this was very much an abbreviated build-up. The first baby marathon workouts were in weeks 9 and 8, while I was still building mileage, and neither of them went well. It wasn't until 6 weeks to go that I had my first good long run workout while at a conference in Vancouver, running around Stanley Park on May 21. But that turned out to be my only good long run workout of the entire cycle, probably not coincidentally since the weather in Vancouver was so much nicer than in the DC area. Later that same week, back in DC on May 27, I tried to run 21 miles easy on a very humid day but barely made it 16 miles. The next long run on June 5 was not much better: that time I made it slightly further (18 miles) and briefly got going faster but then fell apart even more spectacularly. I finally concluded after that run that the shoes I had been wearing since January for faster and longer runs, the Nike Elite 9, were not working for me and probably had precipitated my pes anserine injury, which was then starting to bug me again. I just about pulled the plug on the marathon after that run too, but instead I hoped that reverting to my trusty Adidas Bostons would help me turn things around. (Why did I ever set the Bostons aside?) I was able to get in a couple of good workouts in my final pre-taper week (3), although I never got going faster than 7:15 pace in my final long run that week. I figured it might be just enough to run a slowish marathon in good weather, though. In the end I averaged 44.25 miles per week during these 12 weeks, compared with 53 miles per week before Chicago. But this time around I had done almost none of the major workouts that have formed the backbone of my marathon training blocks for the past several years.

I wasn't hoping to set any records in a summer race with inadequate training. But I thought my fitness was beginning to come around and figured I was capable of running 3:05 or so in ok conditions. My 3:10 in Chicago will probably put me in the second wave at Boston, so I was hoping to beat that by just enough to get into the first wave. The weather was indeed ok: at the start it was cloudy and cool, maybe 60 or just under, and not very humid. It warmed up gradually during the race to over 70 by the end, but the humidity stayed in check and the sun peaked out from behind the clouds only during that last 30-40 minutes. These were somewhat better conditions than I had in Chicago, which was more humid and warmed up sooner, although the Chicago course is flatter and I was in much better shape for Chicago.

I decided to take advantage of the cool start and go out a little faster than my goal pace, intending to execute a modest and controlled slowdown during the second half as it warmed up. Despite the name of this race, its course is in fact not flat but consists of rolling hills for most of the first 17 miles, including one or two modest hills, after which it is mostly flat with one bigger hill on a short out-and-back segment. Only the 250 or so marathoners start first at 6:30am, and the entire course is on farm roads around a rural island outside of Portland with majestic views of Mts. St. Helens (especially), Adams, and Hood. There were few spectators or really anyone at all out on the course, so I was quickly by myself in a semi-meditative state, alone with the views, until after a turn-around just past 10 miles, when other runners passed me going the other direction, and then after 17 miles when the marathon course joined the half-marathon course and I started passing groups of walkers until the finish. At each water stop there were a few people handing out water in absurdly small cups who sometimes noticed that a runner was coming. I didn't manage to get a great deal of water during the race.

I settled into a pretty consistent pace just under 7:00 and went through halfway in 1:31:13 (6:58 pace). But I already started feeling crappy by 11 miles, which is really early in a marathon. In mile 11 I got the distinctive metallic taste in my mouth that I only get during migraines, though no migraine actually developed until later that evening. I've learned from 30 years of experience, however, that the symptoms I mainly associate with migraines are only the tip of an iceberg. Other physiological events occur below the surface that leave me mysteriously out of sorts for up to 2-3 days before and after migraines. Sometimes I'll feel incomprehensibly crappy during a workout and have to abandon it early, believing that I must be in worse shape than I had thought, only to realize when a migraine surfaces in the next day or two that it was the cause of my feeling crappy all along. Then it passes and I'm fine again, always relieved to have the migraine behind me. It has almost become a tradition for me to have a migraine 2-4 weeks before a marathon, which derails one workout but puts me at ease knowing that I'm not going to get another one that affects the race itself, since I usually don't get them very often (and the actual migraines I get nowadays are pale images of the ones I used to get). But this time around I did not have a migraine during my taper and one did affect me during the race. I felt crappy from 11 miles and never recovered. Despite getting the distinctive metallic taste in my mouth, I still wasn't sure that was the cause until the full migraine arrived later that evening. "Oh, that's what it was," I thought, almost welcoming this excuse to have run so poorly.

I did not immediately slow down in mile 11 but only started slowing a little in miles 15-16 when the rolling hills went more up than down, and then I stopped to stretch at a water stop at mile 17 where the marathon course rejoins the half-marathon course. After that I jogged a few miles more slowly and then basically jog-walked the final 10k. What first slowed me down was muscle tightness in all my usual weak spots. But in the final 10k it was GI discomfort that led me to jog-walk, which is consistent with both the warming conditions and the presence of a migraine, since at least my migraines have some sort of deep connection with my gut (the headache part is just the cherry on top). I finally crossed the finish line in 3:37:56, having assured my sister that I would take no longer than 3:45 even if I blew up spectacularly. This was in fact the least slow of my now 4 marathon blow-ups, which includes my first marathon and Houston a year and a half ago. This one was also by far the most fun, because my son and sister were there, the race environment was scenic and chill, and my hopes weren't very high in the first place.

I was hoping to run a solid, if not fast race, and didn't manage that. But more importantly I wanted to get my training back into the ballpark where, after recovering from this race, I can handle a proper marathon build-up to Richmond this November, and I did manage that. For Richmond I'm going to restore all the corners I cut for this race, since I'm now more familiar with the purposes they serve. We'll head to Greece in a couple weeks and I promised my wife that I wouldn't do serious marathon training there this year (since I did nearly all my Chicago training there last summer). But I do plan to establish a solid base of mileage with the usual hills, fartleks, eventually some tempos, and easy long runs by the time we return in late August and Fall marathon training picks up in earnest. I'm registered for the Parks half on September 9, the Army 10 miler on October 7, and the Richmond Marathon on November 10, and I may do the South Lakes 10k in late August as well.

So, on to Richmond....

Chicago Marathon and so on

I ran the Chicago Marathon three weeks ago and am just now getting around to registering that fact on my now rarely updated running blog. It was on the whole an underwhelming race experience. On a warm day, I ran 3:10:57, which is not a fast time for me but at least will get me back to Boston in 2019.

After running a warm and very humid marathon earlier this year (Houston), as well as a warm and very humid tune-up half-marathon a few weeks before Chicago (the Navy-Air Force Half-Marathon), I was not pleased by the weather forecast for Chicago predicting race temperatures mostly in the 60s. It ended up being in the upper 50s at the start and probably around 70 by the time I finished. At least it wasn't too humid, and I had done much of my training in far warmer conditions this past summer in Greece (which is not humid). But I've come to regard weather as nearly determinative of my performance in marathons: basically, the cooler, the better. My PR race was in the upper 40s and breezy, so overheating was not an issue. Although I've run poorly in cool weather before, I've never run very well in warm weather. The temperature in Chicago was not warm enough to make trying to run a decent time pointless, but it was definitely not PR weather. My coach and I agreed that I was in shape to aim for 2:55 in ideal conditions, but neither of us was quite sure just how much the forecast dictated that I should scale back my ambitions. The night before the race he reluctantly gave me permission to go out at 3:00 pace for the first half, but it was clear that I'd need to monitor carefully how my body was handling the conditions and adjust my pace accordingly.

As it happened, I had little idea how fast I was running during the first half of the race because the tall buildings and underpasses in Chicago threw off my GPS. By the finish, my Garmin thought I had run 28.4 miles and set a world record of 3:25 for the mile midway through (in mile 14). I could have hit the lap button at mile markers or just calculated splits by looking at the elapsed time, but I didn't because I figured that in the warm weather I was probably better off running by feel anyway. I went through halfway in 1:30:39, and that's pretty much the time I expected by that point, so my ability to judge pace by feel is apparently surprisingly accurate. But I was already feeling warm by then and knew that I was going to run a positive split. The only question was by how much. A little past halfway the sun started bearing down on us as we moved away from the tall buildings downtown. I slowed down preemptively, rather than wait until I had no choice a few miles later. There's no point in killing myself for a mediocre time, I thought. Since I had bombed at Houston earlier this year, and didn't run a marathon in 2016 due to injury, I had no Boston qualifier for the 2018 race and wasn't able to register. The Boston qualifying standard for my age group (40-44) is 3:15, and these days you need to run at least "BQ-5" to be confident that you'll get in. So in Chicago, by 18 miles or so, I just wanted to make sure to run a 3:10 so that I can run Boston in 2019. To do that after a 1:30 first half, I didn't need to run the second half fast but basically just needed to keep running. In the last 5km I did have to stop a few times, for perhaps 15-20 seconds each time, to avoid throwing up (which ended up happening after I finished anyway). I guess the heat was getting to my stomach, or maybe it was just the previous night's dinner not agreeing with me. If I had been on track for a great time, then I might have gotten to find out whether I'm badass enough to puke while continuing to run (probably not). But by that point my GPS was working well enough that I knew there was no need.

I suppose it's possible that going into Chicago I wasn't really in the sort of shape that I had thought I was in. Because of my injury-filled 2016, our primary goal for the build-up was to stay injury free. That meant scaling back my peak mileage (to 65 miles per week) and spacing out hard long run workouts to every other weekend. Also because an early October race meant that all my training occurred in warm summer conditions, and it was especially hot this past summer in Europe where I was for most of this build-up, I ran much more slowly on non-workout days than I ever have in the past. For the first time, I went by heart rate instead of pace, keeping my heart rate below 140 on all non-workout days, which often required me to run 8:45 pace when I might have run 7:45 pace in the past. I'm not really sure what effect this had on my fitness, but at least I didn't get injured, and that was the main goal. In hindsight I think it was a good idea to have very slow recovery days, but I should not have run so slowly on every non-workout day. Since I only do two workouts per week in marathon mode, I should distinguish the remaining 4-5 days into recovery and easy days instead of effectively making them all recovery days. Anyway, perhaps I wasn't really in 2:55 shape under ideal conditions - I'm not saying I wasn't, but I don't know whether I was or not since the conditions were far from ideal. I think that's what was most frustrating to me about this race: it didn't even give me license to mope around feeling like I didn't train hard enough. It just didn't really tell me anything at all. Well, it did tell me that I want to steer clear of warm weather marathons in the future.

It has been three weeks since Chicago and I'm back running regularly again, apparently injury-free and beginning to slowly get back into things. After working with a coach for three years, I'm also back to "coaching" myself now. My plan is to do several club races in the next few months from 5km to half marathon distances, starting with a 5 mile turkey trot on Thanksgiving. Then in January I'll decide whether to start training for a Spring marathon or stay focused on shorter stuff. Either way, I've registered for a small club race on rail trails in early April, the B&A (Half-) Marathon with the Annapolis Striders. I registered for the full marathon but can choose to switch to the half, which cost only $5 less anyway. I'll train toward that as a goal race whether I end up choosing the half or the full. If I choose the B&A half as my goal race, then I'm tossing around the idea of possibly doing the Vermont City Marathon in late May as well, not as a goal race, but just so that I don't have to wait a year before doing another marathon. We'll see. I'm pretty sure that the Richmond Marathon is going to be my goal race next Fall.

Update

In my last post here nearly two years ago, I laughed off the suggestion of a friend that maybe I'd quit running after going sub-3 at the 2015 Philadelphia Marathon. If there's anyone who reads my running blog and has no other contact with me, it might appear as if I did in fact simply quit running after that. At least I seem to have quit commenting about running on this blog. Much of the reason for this, however, is simply that I joined Strava around that time, which makes blogging about running seem redundant. In any case, I have not in fact stopped running, although I haven't managed any PRs or other great achievements since Philly that seemed worth writing about.

For the first half of 2016 I was on sabbatical in Greece, mostly Athens. Since I was in Europe, I planned to run the Paris Marathon in early April. But after months of hard training, I got injured during my taper only two weeks before the race. I still had a nice family trip to Paris but was unable to run the race. That injury, mainly to my lower glute but also implicating my upper hamstring and other nearby muscles, continued to plague me for most of the rest of 2016. I probably would have quit running if Dr. Josh Bross at Elite Chiropractic & Sport hadn't helped me turn things around that Fall. I went to see him only as a last ditch effort, not really expecting ever to be able to run again like I had the previous few years, if at all. But he was not so pessimistic and encouraged me to keep running while receiving treatment. I ran some pretty dismal races that Fall, but after a couple months I managed to give my PR a scare at the Richmond Half Marathon. Although the glute was not yet fully recovered, it was just strong enough for me to move forward with training for the Houston Marathon in January of 2017. I didn't end up running well at Houston, but not because of that injury. It was warm and humid, and I didn't slow down early enough to avoid cratering two-thirds of the way through the race. Mostly I was happy just to have made it to the start line in Houston and to be in a position to look forward to future races.

My plan for 2017 was to hit the gym in late Winter and Spring in order to get my glute strong again, while running some shorter races. Then I hope to return to PR form by Fall at the Navy Air-Force Half Marathon in September and especially the Chicago Marathon in October. Currently I'm back in Greece, where I've started training for Chicago. For details (and photos) see my Strava profile linked above. Maybe I'll even get back to updating this blog occasionally as well.

2015 Philadelphia Marathon race report

This was my second time running the Philadelphia Marathon. In 2013 I over-trained for the race, hoping to break 3 hours for the first time in the city I called home for nearly a decade during and immediately after graduate school. When I hit the wall in mile 18 that year and later dragged myself across the finish line in 3:06 (which was still a PR by 6 minutes and my first Boston qualifying time), it crushed my willingness to push myself in distance running for the foreseeable future. For the next six or seven months I basically just jogged when I got around to it instead of really training. Although I still ran races in the first half of 2014, my times then were much slower than they had been for the previous couple years.

In mid-summer 2014, however, I decided to recommit to running. I started training hard again; and for the first time I enlisted a coach, who helped me train smarter as well. It took some time for me to get back on track, and it wasn’t until this past summer and fall that I was really able to put together a good, long stretch of consistent training. So it is fitting that my first breakthrough in years and my first sub-3 hour marathon finally occurred in Philadelphia (albeit two years later than originally planned).

I knew I was in good shape going into the race this year, but the weather was a concern. The temperature was (for me) perfect – around 47 degrees – with overcast conditions but no threat of rain. The problem, however, was the 10-13mph wind from the WNW. The loop course was such that this was a headwind for runners from the halfway point until about 20 miles, and then it was a tailwind for the final 10k. Before halfway there are a lot of turns on the course and the wind seemed to be coming from every direction. My question was: could I handle the wind, especially the headwind after halfway, and get to 20 miles in a condition to take advantage of the tailwind for the remainder of the course?

The short answer is: yes. My splits tell much of the story:

Mile 1 – over 7:00 (my Garmin was messed up)

Mile 2 – 6:47

Mile 3 – 6:42

Mile 4 – 6:49

Mile 5 – 6:49

Mile 6 – 6:33 (excited by crowds on Chestnut street)

Mile 7 – 6:36 (same)

Mile 8 – 6:58 (first hill in university city)

Mile 9 – 6:47

Mile 10 – 6:59 (second hill by the zoo)

Mile 11 – 6:51

Mile 12 – 6:48

Mile 13 – 6:48 (halfway in 1:29:41)

Mile 14 – 6:43

Mile 15 – 6:47

Mile 16 – 6:45

Mile 17 – 6:49

Mile 18 – 7:04 (two bridge crossings, a hill, and a turn-around)

Mile 19 – 6:46

Mile 20 – 6:50

Mile 21 – 6:40

Mile 22 – 6:46

Mile 23 – 6:46

Mile 24 – 6:47

Mile 25 – 6:56

Mile 26 – 6:49

Finish – 2:58:56 (average pace 6:49/mile)

I aimed to go through the half just under 1:30 and nailed it. The wind in the first half was definitely noticeable, but it didn’t seem to be consistently blowing in any particular direction. Occasional gusts would blow us this way and that, but there was never a steady head- or tailwind for very long. So it was little more than a nuisance in the first half. My energy level seemed pretty good at halfway and I had no muscle issues.

After halfway the course thinned out, because the half-marathoners and marathoners had started together. I was worried that this could leave me fighting a headwind alone. But it turned out that I had plenty of company. There was indeed a steady headwind with occasional stronger gusts, so runners tended to cluster together in packs. For the first four or so miles after halfway, I settled in with a pack of at least 6-8 runners behind two guys running side-by-side who seemed content to lead: one of them was wearing an ironman triathlon kit, and the other was wearing union jack arm sleeves. I’m not sure how much running behind them actually helped block the wind, since it kept gusting from slightly different angles. But at least they were holding a steady pace in the upper 6:40s, right where I wanted to be. Unlike in Pisa a year earlier, the wind prevented me from making the mistake of speeding up at this point and trying to move forward from group to group. Instead, I just tucked in and rolled with it.

My least favorite part of the Philly course is mile 18, where runners briefly leave Kelly drive and cross a bridge over the Schuylkill River, run down a hill, turn around, run back up the same hill, cross back over the same bridge, and then continue down Kelly drive in the same direction toward Manayunk. This is the point on the course where my wheels came off in 2013. Again this year, I had a bit of a low point there. The pack I had been tucked into kind of broke apart. The two guys who had been leading it side-by-side separated from one another. The tri-guy ended up behind me somewhere. Union jack continued running strong, so I stayed glued to his back even though I wasn’t feeling great. Once we got back on Kelly drive everything seemed fine. My low point had passed and a slightly smaller pack reformed, with tri-guy and union jack resuming their positions at the front, along with a tall guy in white whom I hadn’t noticed earlier. We settled back into the same pace we had been running before the diversion in mile 18. It was work now, and the course starts undulating a bit as you approach and enter Manayunk. But I knew that the turn-around was just ahead and the headwind would soon become a tailwind for the remainer of the race.

Before the race I had expected to slow down from miles 14-20 because of the headwind. So I had mentally flagged that turn-around as the point in the race when I was going to shift into another gear and take advantage of the tailwind to make up some lost time. As it happened, though, the headwind hadn’t slowed me down at all and I was right on my goal pace at the turn-around. It hadn’t crossed my mind even to dream of finishing this race faster than 2:58, and I didn’t want to screw things up by speeding up and then blowing up in the final 10k. So my plan from that point was basically just to hang on without pushing the pace. Still, the final 10k of a marathon is tough no matter what. With the wind at our backs now, I had no need to stay tucked into a pack and immediately pushed ahead of the group I had been running with. It was a race now. I was getting competitive in order to make sure the pace didn’t slow down.

The final 10k is kind of a blur to me now. Tri-guy and union jack were left behind, but the tall guy in white and I fed off each other for maybe four miles or so. Whenever there was even a slight uphill, he’d push ahead of me, and then I’d pass him when the course evened out again. At some point around mile 24 I passed him for the last time, but then tri-guy reemerged duking it out with a woman whom I hadn’t seen before that point in the race. I stayed with the woman as tri-guy floated ahead a bit, and she and I went back and forth for the final two miles. After 24 miles I knew that I had sub-3 hours in the bag. Now it was just a question of whether I could get under 2:59. I seem to have slowed down very slightly in mile 25, which I don’t recall, but maybe I was gathering strength for the final mile, which is steadily uphill. Most of the course in the final 10k has very few spectators until you reach that last mile, but their presence helped me finish strong. The woman won our little duel in the last couple miles, finishing a few seconds ahead of me. But my Garmin shows me running 6:21 pace for the final few tenths of a mile, so we were both moving. Tri-guy suffered on the final hill and I passed him just before the finish line, which means only one person managed to pass and stay in front of me in the final 10k. I must have passed dozens of people.

I finished in 2:58:56 (chip time). Having aimed to run that kind of time for so long, I half expected fireworks to go off when I crossed the finish line, or for it to require an unprecedented super-human effort to keep running sub-3 hour pace after 20 miles. But none of that happened. I was considerably more emotional after my 22 second PR in Boston this past Spring than I was in Philly. Perhaps that’s at least partly because I was physically in a much better condition when I crossed the finish line in Philly than I’ve probably ever been at the end of a marathon. I recall thinking around mile 22 that I didn’t feel any more uncomfortable up to that point than I usually did in marathon pace training runs. It just went on for longer. The last 2-3 miles were indeed harder, but not massively so. I never hit the wall or needed to dig deeper than I have in other marathons that I’ve finished in slower times. In fact, I think that each marathon in which I’ve hit the wall – which is every marathon I’ve run before Boston and now Philly this year – was harder and required considerably more effort than Philly did, even though my time in Philly was much faster. I’m not saying it was easy. But in a way my big breakthrough was really earlier this year in Boston, when I managed for the first time to measure my energy level appropriately, so that I could still run strong after 20 miles. Once that clicked, it was just a matter of putting together a consistent training block so that doing the same thing again would get me to the finish line much faster. I see no reason why further consistent training of the same sort won’t lead to still faster marathon times.

A few more details: I’ve now completely mastered race nutrition for marathons. I eat two pieces of bread or a bagel with honey about two hours before the race, and then a banana sometime in the hour after that. Between 60 and 30 minutes before the race, I take a 100mg caffeine pill (more than that gives me the shakes). Around 15 minutes before the start, I eat a gel with a small amount of water. Once the race begins, I eat a gel with water every 3-4 miles until I get to the fourth gel, when I need to gauge how my stomach feels. If my stomach is even slightly unsettled, then instead of eating the next gel I’ll drink some of whatever sports drink they’re giving out on the course. Then I’ll eat the gel a couple miles later, again with water, and follow it with more water at the next fuel station if it gives me any trouble. In Philly this plan worked perfectly. I ate five gels during the race and resorted to sports drink twice, finishing the race with one more gel in my pocket. My stomach never gave me any real trouble.

Shoes: I’ve run in Adidas for years now, but this was the first marathon I’ve run in their Boston 5 Boost. I used to race marathons in various incarnations of the Adidas Adios, but in Pisa it finally dawned on me that me feet were hurting in the last third of marathons because I needed more support. In Boston I went with the much heavier Supernova Glide, and sure enough my feet didn’t hurt. This time I wanted something lighter that still has more support than the Adios. The Boston Boost hits the sweet spot, in my opinion. At 8.5 ounces, it’s almost as light as the Adios (8.0 ounces) but somehow has as much support as the Glide (10.7 ounces). I’m not sure how that’s possible, but I do know that these shoes feel fast and that my feet never hurt in Philly. I strongly recommend Birkenstocks after the race, though.

Several people have asked me: what’s next now that I’ve achieved the goal I’ve been aiming at for years? I’ve never come close to achieving my goal time in any marathon I’ve run until now, and this time there’s literally nothing I had even secretly hoped to achieve in Philly that didn’t actually happen. One person even asked whether I was going to quit running altogether now. I mean, what else is there to aim for after you’ve run a sub-3 hour marathon? But I’ve never regarded the sub-3 hour marathon as my ultimate goal in running. It’s a nice round number, which makes it into a kind of psychological barrier for runners around my ability level. But I’ve always hoped and expected to cross that barrier and then continue improving. I want running to be less about time and more about competition with other runners, in my age group or whatever. In the past I had considered running under 3 hours as a kind of prerequisite for being competitive in the marathon, but now that I’ve done it I’m not sure that was ever actually true. There are people to compete with at all paces – they’re just different people. I guess what I’ve aimed and still aim for is to be among something like the top 10 local runners in my age group at longer distances, so that I can feel like I’m pretty good at this stuff and compete with other guys who are too. Honestly, I already felt that way before Philly, perhaps because I already thought that it makes sense for me (and others at my ability level) to aspire to crack the top 10 among local runners in my age group, even though my 2:58 marathon still wouldn’t rank me that high. To get there I’d probably need another 7 minute PR, or maybe more. So what’s next is that I’ll continue aspiring and competing, encouraged by having crossed this psychological barrier. Hopefully this will help me obsess less over times in general and nice, round-numbered times in particular. But my sights still remain firmly set on getting faster and more competitive in distance running, especially in the marathon.

The Veterans Day 10k and final training for Philly

Since I haven’t posted here for a while, I’ll briefly describe my final few weeks of training for the Philadelphia Marathon, which included a 10k race:

October 12 – 18

Mo: 30 min. easy

Tu: 7 easy

We: 9 easy

Th: 23 steady @ 7:48 avg.

Fr: 8 easy

Sa: 7 easy

Su: 2 x 4 miles @ 6:47 avg. w/ 2 min. rest in between

Week total: 70 miles

October 19 – 25

Mo: 8 easy

Tu: 8 easy, plus 8 strides

We: 10 easy

Th: 2.5 easy, 3 x 2k @ 6:26/mi., 5 easy, 3 x 2k @ 6:19/mi., 2.5 easy (2 min. rests)

Fr: 9 easy

Sa: 7 easy

Su: Fast fartlek: 3 x (4, 3, 2 min.) w/ equal recoveries

Week total: 75 miles

October 26 – November 1

Mo: 6 easy

Tu: 7 easy

We: 9 easy

Th: 10 miles @ 6:49 avg. (aimed to do 16 miles)

Fr: off

Sa: off (migraine)

Su: 5.5 easy

Week total: 42 miles

November 2 – 8

Mo: 7 easy

Tu: 8 easy

We: 9 easy

Th: 18 @ 7:25 avg. w/ miles 13-16 @ 6:45-50 (no water!)

Fr: 5 easy

Sa: off

Su: Veterans Day 10k in 37:41

Week total: 57.5 miles

November 9 – 15

Mo: off

Tu: off (sick)

We: 6 easy (but sick)

Th: off (sick)

Fr: 6 easy

Sa: 8 easy

Su: 12 @ 7:15 avg. w/ miles 9-11 @ 6:44, 40, 43

Week total: 32 miles

November 16 – 22

Mo: 7 easy

Tu: off

We: 5 x 1k @ 3:58 avg. w/ 1 min. rests

Th: 5 easy

Fr: 30 min., plus 4 strides

Sa: off

Su: Philadelphia Marathon

Basically this entire marathon training cycle went really well. After Boston this past Spring, I asked my coach what he thought I could generally do better in training. He replied that, at least since he’s been coaching me, consistency has been my biggest weakness. My training for Pisa last Fall and for Boston this past Spring went well at times but was also somewhat inconsistent due to illness, injury, or bad weather. Sometimes you can’t control that sort of thing, but this time around I decided to focus on getting more sleep each night in order to help avoid getting sick or injured (because sleep enhances recovery).

Maybe it was just a coincidence that this turned out to be my most consistent training block probably ever, but I don’t think so. I did get sick twice – immediately after each of my tune up races – but neither cold derailed my training in any significant way. After the Cherry Blossom race (during the first week listed above) I had a mild cold that didn’t prevent me from putting in a lot of easy recovery miles. After the Veterans Day 10k I got a worse cold, but by then all the real training was done, and the extra days I took off probably helped me rest up for the marathon.

Really the only hiccup that affected my training during this entire build-up was a migraine that coincided with what was supposed to be a kind of the peak workout for the whole cycle: a 16 mile marathon pace run on October 29. Sometimes when I get migraines, I’ll be lethargic and generally out of sorts for a couple days before and/or after the actual migraine itself, which is like the tip of an iceberg that is much bigger under the surface. When I struggled even to run 10 miles at my goal marathon pace on October 29 before finally stopping, initially I worried that the training was wearing me down more than I had realized. But two days later, when the migraine finally surfaced, I realized that it had probably been responsible for my weakness that day. This was a relief, since I don’t get migraines very often anymore and recover fully from them within 2-3 days. In hindsight I don’t think the training was wearing me down too much, although it could be argued that it triggered the migraine.

A week after the migraine, I came within 18 seconds of my 10k PR in spite of the fact that I was in the middle of marathon training. My PR was set in 2013 at Pike’s Peek, which is a point-to-point net downhill course and the weather was perfect that day. By contrast, while the Veterans Day course is fast, it’s a flat loop course in Potomac Park, where wind coming off the Potomac River is almost always an issue. This year we had a moderate tailwind in miles 1, 2, and 4; and a moderate headwind in miles 3, 5, and 6. Here are my Garmin splits:

Mile 1 – 5:54

Mile 2 – 6:00

Mile 3 – 6:02

Mile 4 – 5:58

Mile 5 – 6:09

Mile 6 – 6:03

Finish – 37:41 (official)

My plan was to run 6:00 pace for the first half and either pick it up from there or just hold on in the second half. I got out a bit fast with the tailwind but then fell back to my goal pace. In mile 4 I passed a few people but then found myself leading a train of drafters once we hit the headwind in mile 5. I took considerable pleasure in listening to the sound of them huffing and puffing behind me even though I was the one bearing the brunt of the wind, but soon I started getting tired and drifted off the pace a little. When we passed the 5 mile mark, one guy on the train who had come up from behind (that is, I hadn’t passed him earlier) bolted ahead and tried to gap the rest of us. I was very tired at that point but somehow found a secret vault of energy and managed to stay with him, leaving the rest of the train behind. Now I was drafting him as we passed a couple other runners in the final mile. His kick was better than mine, but if he hadn’t surged right when and where he did I probably would have run that final mile much more slowly.

My Garmin had me running 6.3 miles at 6:02 pace, versus 6:01 pace at Pike’s Peek for my PR. But I think this race was a superior performance, not just because of the wind, but also because I raced better and paced evenly. There’s no question that I can go faster when not in marathon mode. But two weeks before Philly this was a very positive sign of good things to come.

Me finishing the Veteran's Day 10k