2011 Boston Marathon Race Report
And now for my long-winded ramblings on my race. No short version this time, and its a little heavy on random pictures.
The Day Before:
We stayed downtown at the Westin Copley Place, which is right near the finish line. The room was nice and we had a good view despite the glare in the windows:
Since we were right there, we decided to go get up close and personal with the finish line a day early, and take some pictures.
Penelope thought this was weird. She was probably right. She much preferred the climb up into the bleachers, though:
Early in the Morning:
The alarm was set for 5:15, but I was awake at 4:45 and I wasn't going back to sleep. I rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom, a.k.a. the dressing room. My main job was to get dressed and do the rest of the stuff a nervous runner does in the morning before a big race, without waking the other three people sleeping in the room. It was a strange parallel to the day 6 months prior, when I was perched on the edge of a tub in a California hotel bathroom at 6 AM, feverishly trying to register for this race while one credit card after another was seemingly rejected.
Between the flashbacks to registration and the futile attempts to talk a very noisy toilet into being quieter, I realized I was working myself up by being there. Even though I had agreed to meet Mandy, Andy, and Ed in the lobby at around 6:15, once I was dressed I saw no sense in prolonging my stay in the bathroom. I headed downstairs at about 5:45 to wait (mostly impatiently). Mandy showed up downstairs shortly thereafter, followed by Andy, then Ed. We got a cab for five, because we were going to have the driver pick up Paul at the Sheraton on the way over to the bus. Those were our plans. The cab driver seemed to have his own plan, though.
Getting to the Start:
We arrived at the hotel a minute or so after leaving the Westin, and there was no Paul. Someone (not I) was observant enough to notice that the driver had taken us to the Marriott, and so we were off again. We pulled up to the Sheraton a couple minutes later, Paul jumped in, and we were off to catch Duke's buses on Vassar street in front of MIT. Once again, our plans.. not necessarily those of our driver. We got across the river, and then the driver started asking for directions to Vassar street. Umm... ok. I thought that either knowing the area like the back of one's hand, or knowing how to work the GPS unit on the dashboard were among the job requirements for this position. Luckily, five runners in the cab had either printed out a map, or memorized the simple directions (take a left off Mass Ave. onto Vassar) in the unlikely event they would need to get there on foot. We breathed a collective sigh of relief as we turned onto Vassar and the buses came into view.
The driver went past the first few buses and started to pull over, then thought better of it, and went down the road a little further.. then started to pull over after the next set of buses, thought better of that.. etc. He did this a few more times, and I could feel my stomach getting tighter each time. We were passing the last set of buses when finally Andy vocalized what we were all feeling, "STOP! Let us out here! PLEASE!"
I'm not sure if the driver was just screwing with us or what, but it was really nice to get out of that cab and hop onto the bus. If I never see that dude again, I will be totally ok with that.
The bus was much better. We knew that they knew where they were going and they knew that we wanted desperately to get there. So they took us to Hopkinton. I sat next to Ed, who I have been running next to for the past couple months. We chatted. We stood in line for the bathroom. We ate our respective breakfasts. We sat in quiet contemplation. We chatted some more. We made some friends. We stood in line for the bathroom again. It was all good, except for the increasing sense of dread topped off with a healthy layer of excitement. I kinda wanted to puke.
Arriving in Hopkinton, we decided to step off the bus for a breath of fresh, crisp air. It was quite a bit colder than it felt in Boston but that's good. The temperature was near perfect, though the wind was making things a bit chilly. We got back on the bus to warm up and wait some more. Shortly after 9AM, it was time for me to go get in the starting corrals so I headed out, made a quick call to express my love to Stephanie, and dropped off my bag. One last portapottypitstop later, and I was on my way.
In the Corrals:
Time seemed to speed up as soon as I got near the corrals. Or maybe it had been moving slower all morning, and just warped back to normal. The point is, things felt like they were happening really fast all of a sudden. I could hear them starting the wheelchairs on my way there, and then almost instantly it seemed the elite women were starting. Then they announced that the elite men were on their way to the start. I could see sides of the start gate from where I was standing, and I got up on my tippity-toes (as my son would say) to try and catch a glimpse of anyone I recognized. It was futile. I was too far away. Then there was a commotion off to the left and I looked over. They were walking right past us! I just kind of stood there in awe. I would not be surprised to find out I was drooling on myself. I recognized a couple of the faces, but couldn't place any names other than Ryan Hall, who came bouncing (literally) past us, feeding on the crowd's energy. The elite runners at Boston are amazing - both the men and the women. These are literally the best athletes in the world. They go out and run an entire Marathon at a pace that I would be hard-pressed to match for 1/2 mile. But at the same time... looking at the faces, you could see that a few of them were feeling like they kinda wanted to puke too. After all, they're people just like you and I, except that their bones are made of a special aluminum-titanium alloy, and they drink diesel fuel for sustenance. Really! That's what they serve at those special "Elite Fluids" tables.
Show Time!
An instant (or maybe 10 minutes) later, they lifted the ropes and everyone moved forward several feet. The starter pistol went up in the air, fired (I could see and hear it this time!), and the race had started. It took about 30 more seconds before my own personal version of the race began. My goal for the first four miles of the course was to just take it easy, and *not* get carried away with all the other runners, or the steep downhill, or the nice tailwind, or the fact that I was running in the Boston-freakin'-Marathon... I did a really good job for that first mile. I adopted a mindset that I was just out for a nice jog in the perfect weather. Tall, light, relaxed running - no pushing, no braking, just flowing down the hills. The first mile was 7:03. I wanted to hit mile 4 at 28 minutes flat, so that pace at least was right on, and I tried to continue with it.
In the second mile, the crowd of spectators were beginning to thicken a bit. I was enjoying the scenery - focused on just relaxing. There were kids on the sidelines looking for high-5's, and I made my way over to the right side of the course to hand out a few. A long line of people were up ahead, with several little hands poking out into the road. I high-5'd a row of ten hands... it was uncanny.. the rhythm was almost exactly the same as the opening riff to "Eye of the Tiger" [clap] [pause] [clap, clap clap] [pause] [clap, clap clap] [pause] [clap, clap claaaap] (last claaap for illustration purposes only). And just like that, the song was playing in my head. I just went with it, smiling a big maniacal smile, and bopping to the music in my head. If there's one thing I had control over that I kind of screwed up this time around, it was my level of distraction at various points in the race. I lost my focus on keeping things in check for a while here. The second mile clocked in at 6:40. Damn Survivor. I was still running relaxed, and flowing down the hills though. I wasn't beating the crap out of my quads, which was the goal of going slower down these hills. I slowed down a little after I saw 6:40, but the pace plan for the first 4 miles was already kind of blown. I wasn't going to suddenly slow down to 7:20 to make up for it. I settled in near my goal pace for the next couple miles and ended up crossing mile 4 at 27:19 - 41 seconds fast. So it wasn't what I planned, but I told myself to put that out of my mind, and just focus on the next section of the course - miles 5 though 16.
The Middle Miles:
At the end of mile 4, I modified the plan for this section slightly, from "time to find MGP and stick with it" to "time to maintain MGP", since I was already pretty much there. And as it turns out, I pretty much stayed there. This part of the course went exactly according to plan, right down to the minutest of details (except for all the parts that didn't.) To begin with, I seem to have developed a problem drinking Gatorade on the run. I was alternating between the Gatorade and water that appeared after each mile marker. The water, I had no problem with. I'd get a cup, squeeze it, drink what I wanted, and motor on. But grab a cup of Gatorade, and half of it would end up on my arm. Half of the rest would end up on my face, shirt, legs, inside my lungs, etc. as I simultaneously drank, spilled, and inhaled it. It got so that I was dreading the Gatorade stops and slowing down to try to compensate for my lack of coordination, but nothing really worked. I just kept doing that through the rest of the race.
In contrast to my drinking problem, something awesome happened in the mile 9 - mile 10 area. I was running through a section that was very sparsely (for the Boston Marathon) populated with spectators, but the crowd was just going insane. I was closing in pretty fast on a runner that from a distance seemed to be running with really odd form. As I got closer, I saw that it was Team Hoyt, and near them another wheelchair athlete was pushing himself backwards up the hill. I started cheering, and saw that all of the other runners in my vicinity were cheering too. Everyone - spectators and runners were pouring their energy onto these people. I have never seen anything like that. It is hard to describe what an amazing feeling that was, but it is very easy to say that this was the highlight of the race for me.
And shortly after that was going through Wellesley and the half, which is cool in its own right, even though you come out the other side deaf. I had planned to cross the half at right around 90 minutes. When I checked my watch, I was about 15 seconds fast, which was good. It meant I was at least near my goal pace, and not killing it or dogging it.
I maintained that effort level though the next few miles as well, but in miles 14-16 I was kind of on auto-pilot. My body was running the race, but my mind had decided to take a vacation. Perhaps it was just that I knew my next Gu was due at mile 16, or maybe some of the pacing anxiety I had been feeling was no longer concerning me.. but I was completely checked out. Since I was losing focus in the race, this is an appropriate time to take a little detour.
Back to training - Coach Schrup had told us from day one that our runs should be light and relaxed. It didn't matter if we were running an easy run or something a bit higher on the gut-wrenching/butt-clenching (GWBC) scale, he wanted us to be relaxed and fluid, and learn how to run at those faster paces as efficiently as possible. I sometimes struggled with this in the workouts. I could go from just floating along to pounding the pavement, running the exact same pace, without much notice. Then last week, he sent an article that helped me understand this concept a little better. One of the things that resonated with me was how this guy talks about using his breathing to gauge whether he's in "hybrid" or "gas" mode. Let's detour a bit further for a minute..
My reasons for writing all this stuff down have varied quite a bit since I started doing this, and they vary from one entry to the next as well. Part of it is entertainment - I know there are people who enjoy reading this. A lot of it is really for me, though - especially these race reports, and the times when I write about some particular workout where I failed. Part of my race prep for a Marathon is to go back and read through my previous Marathon race reports, and try to put myself back into those moments. I try to remember how things felt, especially the crappy parts and the good parts. I think about all the things I did right and all the things I didn't, and I try to prepare myself by coming up with some ideas on how I will deal with the same situations when/if they arise. I had read through all of that while forming my race plan this time, and it was somewhat fresh in my mind when I read the article I mention above. And now the detour is leading us back towards the race a bit...
After reading the article, I went back and read my Austin 2010 race report again, and I thought about how I was feeling during that race, in particular. The thing that my brain had latched onto was just the briefest mention of how I noticed my breathing getting heavy towards the end of the race, implying that my breathing was of little concern earlier in the race. And the more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that I ran that race the way this guy is suggesting you should run the Marathon. Not consciously, of course - I just happened to be fit enough to sustain the paces and remain in the right zone long enough. So I thought that perhaps there was something in that breathing idea that I could apply for this race - consciously. I knew where I wanted to be in "hybrid" mode (up til the top of Heartbreak Hill), and I knew where I wanted to be in "gas" mode (everything after that). If I paid some attention to my breathing, it might help me gauge my real effort out there. And we're popping back onto the Boston course now.. we're in the middle of Mile 16, and we're distracted a bit...
So I have this image in my head of a particular place on the course. There's a very steep downhill, followed by the first uphill of the Newton hills. The picture in my head is very clear.. I can see the hill all the way down, and I can see that it takes a bit of a right turn across to where it starts up on the other side. And in my brain, that downhill happens in mile 16, while the uphill happens in mile 17 (my brain is right, I checked). But here's where things got a little confusing - somewhere in these miles, I started thinking that the mile markers were the mile I was entering, as opposed to marking off how far I had gone. So the road sloped down in what I was calling "Mile 15" in my brain, and I wasn't paying much attention to the topology - I was still just running and trying to stay relaxed at MGP. I got to the 16 marker, and thought "Ok - one more at MGP, and then it's on to maintenance mode in the hills", and I was expecting to see that big downhill up ahead, even though I had just run down it. If I had been more coherent at the top of the hill, I might have seen that image that I remember from the last time and known where I was, but I completely missed it. I don't know how I got so confused - I think it may have had something to do with the Gatorade I was snorting every other mile - but when I started up the first of the Newton hills, my wonderful little brain convinced me that this was just a little bump in the road before that steep downhill, and I didn't have to start thinking about it yet.
Up The Hills:
As I started up the hill (in Mile Seventeen) I noticed that I was breathing a little quicker. Not even being "in the hills" yet, I backed off a little bit, to where I was breathing three in, three out (see, the detour had something worthwhile in it). When I got to the downhill part, which I was expecting to be the "big" downhill, that's where I started to get confused. It was not as steep as I remembered it. I couldn't see across to the other side. And the sharp right turn into the next hill was confusing as well. I thought that didn't happen until the second hill. But I ran up to the top at a modest pace, conserving energy, and thought "one down, three to go". Some guy next to me almost gave me a seizure when he vocalized what was going on in his own head: "Halfway!"
"Halfway to what?" I thought "...through the hills? So that actually was the second one?" My mind did a couple backflips and a somersault, then everything became clear, and the mile markers snapped back into their rightful designations, and I realized where I was on the course. On the one hand, I was elated - I just subtracted one hill (and one mile!) from the race. On the other hand, I knew that if my mind was that absent at 18, then the mental game was already a bit tougher this time around.
I re-gained some focus, ran down the back of the second hill and ran up the third. It seemed short. Then down the third and up the last one. It was longer, but didn't seem very steep. I'd like to describe a torturous battle here, of me vs. the hills, and how I slayed the mighty Heartbreak dragon. But honestly, that's not what I was feeling here. The hills really didn't seem like a big deal. They were much worse the first time. But they did take some of my mojo. I still had some apprehension about the last miles of the race, where everything imploded last time I was here, and that was growing as I neared the top.
Down the Hills:
I was once again breathing quick when I hit mile 21, and my calves started feeling like they were going to cramp on me on the way down the back, but I just ignored that. If my legs were going to cramp, they would cramp, and I would deal with it when and if it happened. This was the section of the race where I planned to just roll, start pushing the pace, and begin to pass people until the finish. It sort of worked that way.. for a while. A lot of people had begun to walk at this point, and coming down the back of the hills, I was passing a lot of people, both walking and running. I was choosing specific runners, closing in on them, and then choosing someone else, closing in on them. But it wasn't a simple task. I was struggling, and I think just as many people were passing me. Around mile 22, Andy passed me and asked how I was doing - I said something about my calves, but that I was still doing ok, and how was he? He said something that I didn't catch as he kept on going and I watched him disappear into the pack of runners up ahead. I didn't know it at the time, but the pace at this point, which I figured was probably about 6:40, was actually a little over 7 minutes per mile. I had stopped paying attention to my watch somewhere in the hills, because it was giving me laps before I even saw the mile markers. I'd see a marker, look down, and notice that my watch had already taken a lap and was working on the next mile. There were clocks every mile, but math was completely out of the question, and I didn't much care - it is not like I would have been able to adjust much. I was riding a pretty thin line. The fatigue was setting in, and my preparation for a nice strong finish was really a slow erosion of the last bit of MarathonMondayMojo I had remaining in the tank.
The Last Couple Miles:
I ran out early in mile 24. My legs turned into two lead weights, filled with dark matter ("each pound of which weighs over ten thousand pounds"). People started passing by me left and right. I was still passing the walkers and the people who were stopped completely, but the runners were all going faster than I was. I pushed myself as fast as my legs would go for the last bit of the race, but I really just kept getting progressively slower over the last couple miles. I wanted desperately to stop and walk as I passed the 25 mile marker, but I walked enough of this course the last time I was here, and I told myself the only way that was going to happen in this last mile was if I landed on my face first. That almost became reality, as I stumbled several times, but I stayed upright. Two bright spots emerged in the last mile. The first was the underpass where I stopped and stretched in 2008. I gave it the proper two-fingered salute (one on each hand) as I ran past. It would not defeat me this time. The second of course, was the run down Boylston street to the finish line.
Another quick detour - the fan base I had brought with me for the trip had set up camp near the finish. The original plan was to watch from down on the street, but that didn't work out so well:
So they headed up to a walkway above the street, for a much more kid-friendly venue.
Yeah, I know there's a bunch of pictures of my kids in here. Sorry. But just a couple more - one of these is from three years ago, and the other is from this year. I just liked the symmetry.
2008 2011
And then one pic of the actual race (yes... I am putting exactly one picture of the actual race in this "race report" of mine) from their vantage point:
That's me in the white shirt a few moments before finishing the race. But to me, the more interesting part of this picture is the crowd. Check out the spectators on Starbucks!
I was still getting passed left and right, but that crowd is awesome. I crossed the finish line at 3:04:46 - not quite the 2:58 I had hoped for, and not the race I planned, but still a really good time for me.
After:
I walked nice and slow for several blocks to pick up my shiny tinfoil blanket and my medal. Someone handed me a bottle of water. Someone else handed me a cup of Gatorade. I downed the Gatorade without spilling, sloshing, or inhaling a drop. Yay for small victories! One of the lifeguard / tennis referee guys in the tall chairs was telling people in the crowd about the elite races - four of the Men had broken the course record, one had set a new American record, and two had broken the world record. A couple of those are being disputed as "records" due to the way the course is laid out, but whatever. It is cool to know that all that stuff happened while I was there. I could continue on with all the other random foodstuffs they handed me, the picture guys, the bag retrieval etc, and the rest of my afternoon, but there's not too much of interest there.. except maybe a couple more pictures:
Post-Race Brew. Medal out for picture purposes only.
Post-Brew Yo. Medal out for comic relief.
Two people have asked me if I'm going to run Boston again next year. The answer is a resounding and definitive : I don't know. I'm posting this in the waning hours of the day on which I am leveling up. My required qualifying time just increased by 5 minutes. Those 5 minutes get taken away in 2013, but with the new registration process I fall into the second-tier category for 2012, and could probably make it through registration without having to worry about being a speedy typist too. So without any reservation or hesitation, I will say "We'll see."
Thanks:
Again, I'm not going to thank everyone in the universe, though I am grateful for every piece of motivation, company, congratulations, and support that people give me throughout the training and the race. The two people who really do deserve a bit more of my gratitude are my Saturday morning Running Widow, Stephanie, who is always supportive every step of the way, and Coach Schrup, who gave me a boatload of excellent advice, support, and encouragement over the past 20 weeks, and who put up with a lot of whiny emails when my nose was doing more running than I was. Thank You.
And the only thing left are the splits from the geekometer. It has a mind of its own:
Miles 1-5
7:03, 6:40, 6:48, 6:46, 6:57
Miles 6-10
6:48, 6:44, 6:54, 6:47, 6:45
Miles 11-15
6:52, 6:43, 6:53, 6:50, 6:51
Miles 16-20
6:44, 7:05, 7:04, 6:55, 7:12
Miles 21-25
7:19, 6:59, 7:07, 7:02, 7:39
Miles 26, 26.36 (includes ~10 seconds of walking before I stopped my watch)
8:18, 2:55
The Day Before:
We stayed downtown at the Westin Copley Place, which is right near the finish line. The room was nice and we had a good view despite the glare in the windows:
Since we were right there, we decided to go get up close and personal with the finish line a day early, and take some pictures.
Penelope thought this was weird. She was probably right. She much preferred the climb up into the bleachers, though:
Early in the Morning:
The alarm was set for 5:15, but I was awake at 4:45 and I wasn't going back to sleep. I rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom, a.k.a. the dressing room. My main job was to get dressed and do the rest of the stuff a nervous runner does in the morning before a big race, without waking the other three people sleeping in the room. It was a strange parallel to the day 6 months prior, when I was perched on the edge of a tub in a California hotel bathroom at 6 AM, feverishly trying to register for this race while one credit card after another was seemingly rejected.
Between the flashbacks to registration and the futile attempts to talk a very noisy toilet into being quieter, I realized I was working myself up by being there. Even though I had agreed to meet Mandy, Andy, and Ed in the lobby at around 6:15, once I was dressed I saw no sense in prolonging my stay in the bathroom. I headed downstairs at about 5:45 to wait (mostly impatiently). Mandy showed up downstairs shortly thereafter, followed by Andy, then Ed. We got a cab for five, because we were going to have the driver pick up Paul at the Sheraton on the way over to the bus. Those were our plans. The cab driver seemed to have his own plan, though.
Getting to the Start:
We arrived at the hotel a minute or so after leaving the Westin, and there was no Paul. Someone (not I) was observant enough to notice that the driver had taken us to the Marriott, and so we were off again. We pulled up to the Sheraton a couple minutes later, Paul jumped in, and we were off to catch Duke's buses on Vassar street in front of MIT. Once again, our plans.. not necessarily those of our driver. We got across the river, and then the driver started asking for directions to Vassar street. Umm... ok. I thought that either knowing the area like the back of one's hand, or knowing how to work the GPS unit on the dashboard were among the job requirements for this position. Luckily, five runners in the cab had either printed out a map, or memorized the simple directions (take a left off Mass Ave. onto Vassar) in the unlikely event they would need to get there on foot. We breathed a collective sigh of relief as we turned onto Vassar and the buses came into view.
The driver went past the first few buses and started to pull over, then thought better of it, and went down the road a little further.. then started to pull over after the next set of buses, thought better of that.. etc. He did this a few more times, and I could feel my stomach getting tighter each time. We were passing the last set of buses when finally Andy vocalized what we were all feeling, "STOP! Let us out here! PLEASE!"
I'm not sure if the driver was just screwing with us or what, but it was really nice to get out of that cab and hop onto the bus. If I never see that dude again, I will be totally ok with that.
The bus was much better. We knew that they knew where they were going and they knew that we wanted desperately to get there. So they took us to Hopkinton. I sat next to Ed, who I have been running next to for the past couple months. We chatted. We stood in line for the bathroom. We ate our respective breakfasts. We sat in quiet contemplation. We chatted some more. We made some friends. We stood in line for the bathroom again. It was all good, except for the increasing sense of dread topped off with a healthy layer of excitement. I kinda wanted to puke.
Arriving in Hopkinton, we decided to step off the bus for a breath of fresh, crisp air. It was quite a bit colder than it felt in Boston but that's good. The temperature was near perfect, though the wind was making things a bit chilly. We got back on the bus to warm up and wait some more. Shortly after 9AM, it was time for me to go get in the starting corrals so I headed out, made a quick call to express my love to Stephanie, and dropped off my bag. One last portapottypitstop later, and I was on my way.
In the Corrals:
Time seemed to speed up as soon as I got near the corrals. Or maybe it had been moving slower all morning, and just warped back to normal. The point is, things felt like they were happening really fast all of a sudden. I could hear them starting the wheelchairs on my way there, and then almost instantly it seemed the elite women were starting. Then they announced that the elite men were on their way to the start. I could see sides of the start gate from where I was standing, and I got up on my tippity-toes (as my son would say) to try and catch a glimpse of anyone I recognized. It was futile. I was too far away. Then there was a commotion off to the left and I looked over. They were walking right past us! I just kind of stood there in awe. I would not be surprised to find out I was drooling on myself. I recognized a couple of the faces, but couldn't place any names other than Ryan Hall, who came bouncing (literally) past us, feeding on the crowd's energy. The elite runners at Boston are amazing - both the men and the women. These are literally the best athletes in the world. They go out and run an entire Marathon at a pace that I would be hard-pressed to match for 1/2 mile. But at the same time... looking at the faces, you could see that a few of them were feeling like they kinda wanted to puke too. After all, they're people just like you and I, except that their bones are made of a special aluminum-titanium alloy, and they drink diesel fuel for sustenance. Really! That's what they serve at those special "Elite Fluids" tables.
Show Time!
An instant (or maybe 10 minutes) later, they lifted the ropes and everyone moved forward several feet. The starter pistol went up in the air, fired (I could see and hear it this time!), and the race had started. It took about 30 more seconds before my own personal version of the race began. My goal for the first four miles of the course was to just take it easy, and *not* get carried away with all the other runners, or the steep downhill, or the nice tailwind, or the fact that I was running in the Boston-freakin'-Marathon... I did a really good job for that first mile. I adopted a mindset that I was just out for a nice jog in the perfect weather. Tall, light, relaxed running - no pushing, no braking, just flowing down the hills. The first mile was 7:03. I wanted to hit mile 4 at 28 minutes flat, so that pace at least was right on, and I tried to continue with it.
In the second mile, the crowd of spectators were beginning to thicken a bit. I was enjoying the scenery - focused on just relaxing. There were kids on the sidelines looking for high-5's, and I made my way over to the right side of the course to hand out a few. A long line of people were up ahead, with several little hands poking out into the road. I high-5'd a row of ten hands... it was uncanny.. the rhythm was almost exactly the same as the opening riff to "Eye of the Tiger" [clap] [pause] [clap, clap clap] [pause] [clap, clap clap] [pause] [clap, clap claaaap] (last claaap for illustration purposes only). And just like that, the song was playing in my head. I just went with it, smiling a big maniacal smile, and bopping to the music in my head. If there's one thing I had control over that I kind of screwed up this time around, it was my level of distraction at various points in the race. I lost my focus on keeping things in check for a while here. The second mile clocked in at 6:40. Damn Survivor. I was still running relaxed, and flowing down the hills though. I wasn't beating the crap out of my quads, which was the goal of going slower down these hills. I slowed down a little after I saw 6:40, but the pace plan for the first 4 miles was already kind of blown. I wasn't going to suddenly slow down to 7:20 to make up for it. I settled in near my goal pace for the next couple miles and ended up crossing mile 4 at 27:19 - 41 seconds fast. So it wasn't what I planned, but I told myself to put that out of my mind, and just focus on the next section of the course - miles 5 though 16.
The Middle Miles:
At the end of mile 4, I modified the plan for this section slightly, from "time to find MGP and stick with it" to "time to maintain MGP", since I was already pretty much there. And as it turns out, I pretty much stayed there. This part of the course went exactly according to plan, right down to the minutest of details (except for all the parts that didn't.) To begin with, I seem to have developed a problem drinking Gatorade on the run. I was alternating between the Gatorade and water that appeared after each mile marker. The water, I had no problem with. I'd get a cup, squeeze it, drink what I wanted, and motor on. But grab a cup of Gatorade, and half of it would end up on my arm. Half of the rest would end up on my face, shirt, legs, inside my lungs, etc. as I simultaneously drank, spilled, and inhaled it. It got so that I was dreading the Gatorade stops and slowing down to try to compensate for my lack of coordination, but nothing really worked. I just kept doing that through the rest of the race.
In contrast to my drinking problem, something awesome happened in the mile 9 - mile 10 area. I was running through a section that was very sparsely (for the Boston Marathon) populated with spectators, but the crowd was just going insane. I was closing in pretty fast on a runner that from a distance seemed to be running with really odd form. As I got closer, I saw that it was Team Hoyt, and near them another wheelchair athlete was pushing himself backwards up the hill. I started cheering, and saw that all of the other runners in my vicinity were cheering too. Everyone - spectators and runners were pouring their energy onto these people. I have never seen anything like that. It is hard to describe what an amazing feeling that was, but it is very easy to say that this was the highlight of the race for me.
And shortly after that was going through Wellesley and the half, which is cool in its own right, even though you come out the other side deaf. I had planned to cross the half at right around 90 minutes. When I checked my watch, I was about 15 seconds fast, which was good. It meant I was at least near my goal pace, and not killing it or dogging it.
I maintained that effort level though the next few miles as well, but in miles 14-16 I was kind of on auto-pilot. My body was running the race, but my mind had decided to take a vacation. Perhaps it was just that I knew my next Gu was due at mile 16, or maybe some of the pacing anxiety I had been feeling was no longer concerning me.. but I was completely checked out. Since I was losing focus in the race, this is an appropriate time to take a little detour.
Back to training - Coach Schrup had told us from day one that our runs should be light and relaxed. It didn't matter if we were running an easy run or something a bit higher on the gut-wrenching/butt-clenching (GWBC) scale, he wanted us to be relaxed and fluid, and learn how to run at those faster paces as efficiently as possible. I sometimes struggled with this in the workouts. I could go from just floating along to pounding the pavement, running the exact same pace, without much notice. Then last week, he sent an article that helped me understand this concept a little better. One of the things that resonated with me was how this guy talks about using his breathing to gauge whether he's in "hybrid" or "gas" mode. Let's detour a bit further for a minute..
My reasons for writing all this stuff down have varied quite a bit since I started doing this, and they vary from one entry to the next as well. Part of it is entertainment - I know there are people who enjoy reading this. A lot of it is really for me, though - especially these race reports, and the times when I write about some particular workout where I failed. Part of my race prep for a Marathon is to go back and read through my previous Marathon race reports, and try to put myself back into those moments. I try to remember how things felt, especially the crappy parts and the good parts. I think about all the things I did right and all the things I didn't, and I try to prepare myself by coming up with some ideas on how I will deal with the same situations when/if they arise. I had read through all of that while forming my race plan this time, and it was somewhat fresh in my mind when I read the article I mention above. And now the detour is leading us back towards the race a bit...
After reading the article, I went back and read my Austin 2010 race report again, and I thought about how I was feeling during that race, in particular. The thing that my brain had latched onto was just the briefest mention of how I noticed my breathing getting heavy towards the end of the race, implying that my breathing was of little concern earlier in the race. And the more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that I ran that race the way this guy is suggesting you should run the Marathon. Not consciously, of course - I just happened to be fit enough to sustain the paces and remain in the right zone long enough. So I thought that perhaps there was something in that breathing idea that I could apply for this race - consciously. I knew where I wanted to be in "hybrid" mode (up til the top of Heartbreak Hill), and I knew where I wanted to be in "gas" mode (everything after that). If I paid some attention to my breathing, it might help me gauge my real effort out there. And we're popping back onto the Boston course now.. we're in the middle of Mile 16, and we're distracted a bit...
So I have this image in my head of a particular place on the course. There's a very steep downhill, followed by the first uphill of the Newton hills. The picture in my head is very clear.. I can see the hill all the way down, and I can see that it takes a bit of a right turn across to where it starts up on the other side. And in my brain, that downhill happens in mile 16, while the uphill happens in mile 17 (my brain is right, I checked). But here's where things got a little confusing - somewhere in these miles, I started thinking that the mile markers were the mile I was entering, as opposed to marking off how far I had gone. So the road sloped down in what I was calling "Mile 15" in my brain, and I wasn't paying much attention to the topology - I was still just running and trying to stay relaxed at MGP. I got to the 16 marker, and thought "Ok - one more at MGP, and then it's on to maintenance mode in the hills", and I was expecting to see that big downhill up ahead, even though I had just run down it. If I had been more coherent at the top of the hill, I might have seen that image that I remember from the last time and known where I was, but I completely missed it. I don't know how I got so confused - I think it may have had something to do with the Gatorade I was snorting every other mile - but when I started up the first of the Newton hills, my wonderful little brain convinced me that this was just a little bump in the road before that steep downhill, and I didn't have to start thinking about it yet.
Up The Hills:
As I started up the hill (in Mile Seventeen) I noticed that I was breathing a little quicker. Not even being "in the hills" yet, I backed off a little bit, to where I was breathing three in, three out (see, the detour had something worthwhile in it). When I got to the downhill part, which I was expecting to be the "big" downhill, that's where I started to get confused. It was not as steep as I remembered it. I couldn't see across to the other side. And the sharp right turn into the next hill was confusing as well. I thought that didn't happen until the second hill. But I ran up to the top at a modest pace, conserving energy, and thought "one down, three to go". Some guy next to me almost gave me a seizure when he vocalized what was going on in his own head: "Halfway!"
"Halfway to what?" I thought "...through the hills? So that actually was the second one?" My mind did a couple backflips and a somersault, then everything became clear, and the mile markers snapped back into their rightful designations, and I realized where I was on the course. On the one hand, I was elated - I just subtracted one hill (and one mile!) from the race. On the other hand, I knew that if my mind was that absent at 18, then the mental game was already a bit tougher this time around.
I re-gained some focus, ran down the back of the second hill and ran up the third. It seemed short. Then down the third and up the last one. It was longer, but didn't seem very steep. I'd like to describe a torturous battle here, of me vs. the hills, and how I slayed the mighty Heartbreak dragon. But honestly, that's not what I was feeling here. The hills really didn't seem like a big deal. They were much worse the first time. But they did take some of my mojo. I still had some apprehension about the last miles of the race, where everything imploded last time I was here, and that was growing as I neared the top.
Down the Hills:
I was once again breathing quick when I hit mile 21, and my calves started feeling like they were going to cramp on me on the way down the back, but I just ignored that. If my legs were going to cramp, they would cramp, and I would deal with it when and if it happened. This was the section of the race where I planned to just roll, start pushing the pace, and begin to pass people until the finish. It sort of worked that way.. for a while. A lot of people had begun to walk at this point, and coming down the back of the hills, I was passing a lot of people, both walking and running. I was choosing specific runners, closing in on them, and then choosing someone else, closing in on them. But it wasn't a simple task. I was struggling, and I think just as many people were passing me. Around mile 22, Andy passed me and asked how I was doing - I said something about my calves, but that I was still doing ok, and how was he? He said something that I didn't catch as he kept on going and I watched him disappear into the pack of runners up ahead. I didn't know it at the time, but the pace at this point, which I figured was probably about 6:40, was actually a little over 7 minutes per mile. I had stopped paying attention to my watch somewhere in the hills, because it was giving me laps before I even saw the mile markers. I'd see a marker, look down, and notice that my watch had already taken a lap and was working on the next mile. There were clocks every mile, but math was completely out of the question, and I didn't much care - it is not like I would have been able to adjust much. I was riding a pretty thin line. The fatigue was setting in, and my preparation for a nice strong finish was really a slow erosion of the last bit of MarathonMondayMojo I had remaining in the tank.
The Last Couple Miles:
I ran out early in mile 24. My legs turned into two lead weights, filled with dark matter ("each pound of which weighs over ten thousand pounds"). People started passing by me left and right. I was still passing the walkers and the people who were stopped completely, but the runners were all going faster than I was. I pushed myself as fast as my legs would go for the last bit of the race, but I really just kept getting progressively slower over the last couple miles. I wanted desperately to stop and walk as I passed the 25 mile marker, but I walked enough of this course the last time I was here, and I told myself the only way that was going to happen in this last mile was if I landed on my face first. That almost became reality, as I stumbled several times, but I stayed upright. Two bright spots emerged in the last mile. The first was the underpass where I stopped and stretched in 2008. I gave it the proper two-fingered salute (one on each hand) as I ran past. It would not defeat me this time. The second of course, was the run down Boylston street to the finish line.
Another quick detour - the fan base I had brought with me for the trip had set up camp near the finish. The original plan was to watch from down on the street, but that didn't work out so well:
So they headed up to a walkway above the street, for a much more kid-friendly venue.
Yeah, I know there's a bunch of pictures of my kids in here. Sorry. But just a couple more - one of these is from three years ago, and the other is from this year. I just liked the symmetry.
2008 2011
And then one pic of the actual race (yes... I am putting exactly one picture of the actual race in this "race report" of mine) from their vantage point:
That's me in the white shirt a few moments before finishing the race. But to me, the more interesting part of this picture is the crowd. Check out the spectators on Starbucks!
I was still getting passed left and right, but that crowd is awesome. I crossed the finish line at 3:04:46 - not quite the 2:58 I had hoped for, and not the race I planned, but still a really good time for me.
After:
I walked nice and slow for several blocks to pick up my shiny tinfoil blanket and my medal. Someone handed me a bottle of water. Someone else handed me a cup of Gatorade. I downed the Gatorade without spilling, sloshing, or inhaling a drop. Yay for small victories! One of the lifeguard / tennis referee guys in the tall chairs was telling people in the crowd about the elite races - four of the Men had broken the course record, one had set a new American record, and two had broken the world record. A couple of those are being disputed as "records" due to the way the course is laid out, but whatever. It is cool to know that all that stuff happened while I was there. I could continue on with all the other random foodstuffs they handed me, the picture guys, the bag retrieval etc, and the rest of my afternoon, but there's not too much of interest there.. except maybe a couple more pictures:
Post-Race Brew. Medal out for picture purposes only.
Post-Brew Yo. Medal out for comic relief.
Two people have asked me if I'm going to run Boston again next year. The answer is a resounding and definitive : I don't know. I'm posting this in the waning hours of the day on which I am leveling up. My required qualifying time just increased by 5 minutes. Those 5 minutes get taken away in 2013, but with the new registration process I fall into the second-tier category for 2012, and could probably make it through registration without having to worry about being a speedy typist too. So without any reservation or hesitation, I will say "We'll see."
Thanks:
Again, I'm not going to thank everyone in the universe, though I am grateful for every piece of motivation, company, congratulations, and support that people give me throughout the training and the race. The two people who really do deserve a bit more of my gratitude are my Saturday morning Running Widow, Stephanie, who is always supportive every step of the way, and Coach Schrup, who gave me a boatload of excellent advice, support, and encouragement over the past 20 weeks, and who put up with a lot of whiny emails when my nose was doing more running than I was. Thank You.
And the only thing left are the splits from the geekometer. It has a mind of its own:
Miles 1-5
7:03, 6:40, 6:48, 6:46, 6:57
Miles 6-10
6:48, 6:44, 6:54, 6:47, 6:45
Miles 11-15
6:52, 6:43, 6:53, 6:50, 6:51
Miles 16-20
6:44, 7:05, 7:04, 6:55, 7:12
Miles 21-25
7:19, 6:59, 7:07, 7:02, 7:39
Miles 26, 26.36 (includes ~10 seconds of walking before I stopped my watch)
8:18, 2:55