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.
