Today was the Baystate marathon, my first ever full 26.2. I ran a half marathon (the Lowell Sun - partially the same course as the Baystate) in '08, and wanted to do the full the following year. However, my IT band had different ideas. So even though I signed up on the first day of eligibility in January '09, by August that year it was clear that a full was going to be out of the cards, because at the time I wasn't able to run two miles without my IT band hurting. PT in the off season between '09 and '10, followed by a minor recurrance of IT band issues during the season in '10 - I knew last year that a full 26.2 miles was out that fall as well. So, I concentrated on finding out more precisely what the root cause of my IT band issues were (thats a whole other story in itself). Come spring this past year, I was ready to go, and with a couple 20 mile runs in August followed by a 23 mile run in mid-late September, I was 99.9% certain that this would be the year - barring any sort of catastrophic injury or accident.
So, how was I expecting to do? According to Jack Daniels VDOT system, which I've been sorta loosely correlating some of my times and performances against, my VDOT is a paltry 39 or 40 - depending on which run you are basing it off of. A VDOT of 40 projects my marathon time at 3:49:45, while a VDOT of 39 projects my marathon time at 3:54:34. Of course, that assumes that the appropriate training has been done - you can't just run a 5k, get a VDOT, and then go out and run the marathon and expect certain results. The question was whether I had been doing the appropriate training or not. I suppose if you ask Daniels, the answer would be 'no'. But a discussion on his running training program is not part of this post, so we'll just leave it that there was some degree of unknown - what I did know was that my 23 mile run in September was done at an 8:46 pace, which included the last mile being a 12 min/mile cooldown. So I had reason to believe I'd be in that range, equating to a 3:49 marathon - and that race-day performance with a taper might be worth a few minutes. So about 3:45 was about what I was expecting.
In this post I offer two versions of how things went. For those not interested in the details, I pictoralized how things went - a comparison of my mental and physical state during the event. It sums it up with reasonably accuracy:
For those who want to know the more detailed version:
Miles 1-3 - This was effectively the warm up. The field of participants seemed larger this year - in the past I remember half the road being closed off, but this time the entire road was closed off during this portion. Plus, there were still same-day registration slots open, whereas it has sold out the past few years. So, due to the large number of people, it was difficult to get a good start, unless you line up at the front (which I knew I am not good enough to justify without pissing people off). I was half-expecting 10 min/mil and higher times for the first mile, but was pleasantly surprised that we were moving right along at what I'd consider ideal pace for my warm up:
Oh, one other thing I should mention - every long training run I've done was using walk breaks, and I intended to do them here as well. I was very tempted to skip the first one - afterall, we had only just started and I'd have to be 'that guy' who was walking already when there was still 25.2 miles to go. But I sucked it up, and walked anyway. I lost count of the hundreds of people who passed in that 0.05 mile walk.
I did feel someone better and justified on the second walk break when a spectator saw me walking and said 'Jeff Galloway - good for you, nice going'. It took me a second to connect the dots, but I managed to say 'yup, every mile on the mile!' At least someone there knew I had a game plan and wasn't dogging it already.
Miles 4-14 - This part of the run was smooth sailing. Every mile, walk 0.05 miles, and run at a sustainable pace, trying to keep the HR managable. It took me until around mile four to even remember to consider what my marathon intensity would be - I had figured previously it'd be 150-155, but I was consistently doing about 8:30 min/miles at 150 or lower, so I opted to keep the HR down. Early on, my plan became to keep running along easily, and then unleash the fury at about mile 16 and blow by people during that last 10 miles. So far, everything was going surprisingly well - my legs felt fresh with a quick turnover, fleet-of-foot, and my HR was kept low.
Unfortunately, this is where the cracks in the ediface started to appear. It wasn't something that I felt at all, but right at mile 13, I noticed by HR notching up just a tad. At first, I was thinking it was the slight incline of going over a bridge, but the HR never settled back down, I knew that the fun times were coming to an end. True, mile 13 was one of the faster miles I ran, but so was mile 9 - and unlike mile 10 where the HR stayed low, mile 14 continued with the elevated HR.
Also, somewhere in here I saw the Galloway lady again (this time on the other side of the river). She caught me in the middle of a walk break again.
Miles 14-23 - The slow drain
Even with the increased HR, I still generally felt strong. Around mile 16, I started to notice fatigue building in my legs. Every mile accumulated a tad more, but I was still feeling 80% or better. At mile 18, I started noticing some the dropping of the flies - as it were. More people were taking breaks, pace seemed to be slowing down a bit. I was not passing people nearly as often as I was up until this point - so either I caught up with those who rocketed out of the gate and were running out of gas, or I was slowing down. However, when I looked at my mile times, I was still maintaining faster than 8:40 min/miles. I was paying for it though, as evidenced by the still increasing HR, which was now pushing close to 160. At the time, I wasn't too concerned in terms of it affecting my ability to finish - I knew from experience that I'd be able to maintain the remaining 8 miles at that HR, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was that the distance itself was causing the higher HR, instead of a faster pace. The idea of turning on the afterburners was starting to fade away.
I decided to slow up a bit for mile 19, to try and get my HR down. At this point, I didn't want to take an extended walk break, because I was concerned I'd tighten up too much. I was happy to see that I was able to get my HR down a bit, but it was very touchy, because it went right back up as soon as I sped up again.
At this point, I was at the dreaded wall of 20 miles. However, I didn't feel like I was suffering too greatly, to be honest. I felt like I was in better shape than many of the people around me. Sure, I was fatigued, and my body was obviously under stress, but I was definitely not being pushed beyond what I've pushed myself before - I was simply trying to manage things appropriately so I could still have a sprint-like finish for the last few miles. The problem I was having, though, was that miles 22 and 23 felt dog slow. I had accepted the higher HR, knew I could maintain it, but truth be told, I was starting to get bored, and kept looking at my watch hoping to see the mile lap almost over, only to see that I ran a few hundred feet. At this point, the run switched from a physical battle to a mental one.
Miles 24-26.2 - The real marathon
Some people say the hardest part of a marathon is the last 0.2 miles. For me, on this day, the hardest part was miles 23-25, hands down. Although 25-26.2 comes in second place, for sure.
At this point, I'm getting more and more physically beat with every step, which only amplifies the mental struggle. Really, there are two positive thoughts in my head at this point: (1) I'm going to die and therefore my suffering will end soon, and (2) I can count the kilometers I have left on one hand. Unfortunately, that thought of death only lasts for about a mile, when you realize that no - there is no easy escape.
To add insult to injury - I ran out of gatorade (I had 48 oz with me), so I was now dependant on the water stations, which were not spaced with my normal mile by mile walk breaks. So this meant that during these miles, I snuck in extra walk break every mile. This had a double-edged sword effect - stopping for a break felt soo good - but I paid for it whenever I started up again. My cadence was also sluggish by this time. I tried to pick it up, but it just wasn't happening - the muscles used to maintain it were fatigued, and it was easier with a slightly slower cadence because other muscles got engaged - muscles that weren't nearly as fatigued.
Somewhere around mile 25, I realized that as worn out as my muscles were, a lot of my discomfort overall was actually my feet themselves - all the pounding and flexing to absorb impact was taking its toll on them.
Somewhere around mile 25.75 and 26, as I was getting closer to the finish line, I started thinking about food. The idea of a burrito from Chipotle (my typical post long-workout food) was sounding really, really good. Then, I smelled burgers from over yonder, and they smelled really good. Then I saw a sign for Sal's pizza, and contemplated devouring a whole 19" pizza pie by myself. I was really looking forward to the post-race food.
When I got home and loaded the data from my Garmin into SportTracks, I found this graph to be pretty revealing:
There is a distinct difference between mile 13 and 14 in terms of HR. Up to that point, its fairly steady - and while a bump of only 5 bpm (a measly 3% of the base HR of 150) may not seem like much - anyone who has done HR training will tell you that it is certainly significant. For me, 150 bpm is LSD run intensity - a 10% increase to 165 quickly becomes tempo pace, sustainable only for mileage in the single digits.
So the immediate jump at mile 13 tells me a few things:
(1) It is an indication that most of my runs have been 13 miles or less (true - a couple halfs, and only four runs > 13 miles this year)
(2) Keeping a comfortable HR during that time is indication that the threshold runs of ~10 miles are effective for that distance, but that doesn't translate to distances much longer.
(3) If I want to make miles 23-26.2 easier, I have to do more long runs. I have to condition my feet to the impact and I have to condition my hip muscles to maintain fast turnover for that amount of time.
(4) If I want to avoid boredom, I have to run faster.
Oh yeah - Garmin results.
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