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ilanaramaI spent most of Sunday recovering from the Saturday night shindig at Beerworks: I ate real food for a change, avoided alcohol (more or less :-) and socialized with more of my friends from the RWOL forums at both brunch and dinner. (I did have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. I always drink a little bit the night before a race, and you know they say you shouldn't do anything new....)
On Monday morning I got up early and met Kazz and her husband in the lobby for the loooooong walk to Boston Common (and took a photo in front of the finish line!), where we would get on one of the race buses that were shuttling runners to the start. The lines for the buses were long, and it was maybe 20 minutes before we got on a bus...but then we could see that while we had been waiting, the lines had grown maybe three times longer! We got to the "athlete's village" just as the wave 1 people were leaving, but we found our wave 2 friends and hung out with them until it was time to move to the starting corrals.
Kat's goal was similar to mine, plus she was injured as well (I've been fighting peroneal tendinitis since the first week of March), so even though her bib number put her in the corral ahead of mine, she decided to start out with me. We ran the first two miles together before I pulled away. (Not to mention, we walked from the corral to the start, which seemed like another mile...) I also passed another forum friend (Robyn/Fit&Perky) while she was was taking a photo of a firetruck, but didn't recognize anyone else - but most of the people I knew had started in corrals well ahead of me, so in most cases I just never caught up.
The crowds were incredible (both on and off the course!). I had been told that if you put your name on your shirt or write it in marker on your arm, people would scream it; I didn't want to challenge them to pronounce "ILANA" so instead I wrote "DURANGO" on the back of an old race bib and pinned it to my shirt. It was awesome! People screamed, "GO DURANGO!" and I could tell by their inflections whether they knew it meant the city, or thought it might be my name, or wondered what it meant (in which case I waved and yelled back, "COLORADO!"). (Then there was the guy who yelled, "Go Durango! I love your truck!") The crowds were energizing, but also exhausting, because I felt I had to acknowledge them (by smiling at them, if nothing else) when they screamed for me. If I did the victory-arms thing the roar volume increased tenfold. I think I high-fived about 500 people; early on it was all kids, but near the colleges there were a lot of random people with their hands out. I even kissed a Wellesley girl (on the cheek; actually, I thought she was one of the rare Wellesley boys until I got close) in the fabled "scream tunnel."
There were a couple of costumes out there: I saw several tutus, one girl running in a toga ("GO TOGA!") and some tiaras and deelyboppers, while Santa watched from the sidelines near the Newton hills. I passed several blind runners with guides, and one deaf runner with a marked back-bib, one woman with a prosthetic leg (it was one of those "cheetah legs", very cool looking) and one guy running while breathing from an oxygen tank that someone else was pushing.
My paces for the official 5K splits make it look like I started slow, gradually sped up, and then slowed down again a lot at the end, which I suppose is technically true relative to a constant 8:12 pace which a 3:35 goal time would require. But I was using a pace band that took the hills and the crowding at the start (and man, was it crowded!) into account, so compared to my pace band, I started close to goal pace but immediately fell off, gradually slipped ever farther back by the half, and then really fell apart over the last 10 miles. Marathons are supposed to feel really easy at the beginning, and it never did, but stupidly I tried to stay on pace even though it was clear to me early on that I wouldn't be able to maintain it, and I think that hurt me in the end. At least I didn't walk, and I didn't feel totally miserable - but I sure felt partially miserable, and did not finish as strong as I have in other marathons.
Fortunately my ankle, which had been hurting right up until Kat and I got into the corral, magically stopped hurting when I began to run and didn't start up again until about five minutes after I finished. Unfortunately, everything else hurt! My quads hurt, my hamstrings hurt, my calves hurt, my freaking biceps hurt. My breathing was way too labored, and my heart rate was up in the half-marathon territory instead of down where it should have been.
I manually hit the lap button on my Garmin 301 each mile, but still ended up with some weirdities.
Mile 1: 8:48 (goal 8:48) - can't move very fast through the bazillion runners
Mile 2: 8:26 (8:31) - starting to get hot in the bright sun. Rolled my arm warmers down and handed my headband to some delighted kid.
Mile 3: 8:08 (8:01) - this is where I pulled ahead of Kat.
Mile 4: 8:13 (8:05)
Mile 5: 8:24 (8:14) - ditched the water bottle I was carrying so I could take off my arm warmers and stuff them in my bra. I'm really feeling overheated, and my HR is way too high.
Mile 6: 8:10 (8:03)
Mile 7: 8:12 (8:07)
Mile 8: 8:17 (8:10)
Mile 9: 8:09 (8:04)
Mile 10: 8:08 (8:14) - it's starting to cloud up and I'm feeling better; the next several miles are all a little faster than pace. Maybe I can catch up...?
Mile 11: 8:12 (8:14)
Mile 12: 7:56 (8:02)
Mile 13: 8:08 (8:07) - I think I lost time here trying to read all the Scream Tunnel signs! "Kiss me, I'm a sophomore!" "Kiss me, I'm Asian!" "Kiss me, I'm gay!" "Kiss me, I won't tell your wife!"
Mile 14: 8:15 (8:12)
Mile 15: 8:23 (8:12) - ...nope, I can't catch up. Starting to feel Not Very Good At All.
Mile 16: 8:15 (7:55) - this was a steep downhill, and supposed to be the fastest split, but I was hurting pretty badly. At this point I was getting scared that I might have an ugly finish.
Mile 17: 8:39 (8:20) - first of the hills. Not too bad, so why am I so slow?
Mile 18: 8:46 (8:20) - next hill, ditto ditto.
Mile 19: 8:52 (8:04) - what's wrong with me? This is downhill!
Mile 20: 8:54 (8:17) - third hill. I'm thinking about throwing up. Must trudge on.
Mile 21: 9:10 (8:29) - Heartbreak Hill. The only consolation is that even though I am slow, I am passing people. And I am not walking. Yay?
Mile 22: 8:36 (8:04) - A bunch of cute guys from Boston College hold out their hands to be high-fived and call encouragement to me. I start feeling a lot better.
Mile 23: 8:38 (8:13) - I know my goal is lost, but I also know I can finish, maybe PR.
Mile 24: 8:35 (8:12)
Mile 25: 10:53? (8:12) - this "mile" is 1.22 miles long, so I'm not sure what happened.
Mile 26.2: 8:58? (10:04) - and this "1.2" is .84 miles long, ditto ditto. All I know is that I stumble down the road to the infinitely receding finish line, like Zeno's Arrow never seeming to quite get there, until all of a sudden the person in front of me is walking and I realize I'm there, I'm over the finish line, and although I missed my goal of 3:35, I PRed by about 4 and a half minutes with a 3:42:18.
So I'm done, right? Nope. I pass a medical tent. A volunteer tells me to keep walking. I really want water; ooh, there, finally, water! Yay! I grab two bottles and another volunteer tells me to keep walking. Just as I finish my first bottle another volunteer hands me a bright red "protein recovery drink." Oddly, it does not taste as bad as it looks. I'm starting to get cold. Another volunteer tells me to keep walking. Finally, FINALLY, after about six more miles of walking, I get my medal and my mylar Cape of Awesome, which is a damn good thing because I've started to shiver uncontrollably. Luckily, my drop bag is only another mile farther, and when I have it I retrieve my fleece jacket and hat and fumble my way into them. I'm still shivering so I wrap myself back in the Cape of Awesome and get completely lost on my way back to the hotel, but who cares? I finished Boston.
I'm happy with the PR, but still disappointed; not so much because I missed my goal but rather because it was my worst performance of all five marathons, in terms of pacing and how I felt during the race. Clearly I lost a lot of fitness over the past 6 weeks of not running much while trying to heal up from my peroneal tendinitis, and maybe if I had scaled back my goal even more - maybe paced for a 3:40 - I would have had a better race and a faster time. Speaking of which, my ankle hurts only about as much as it did the week before the race. Hopefully despite the insult of 26.2 miles, it is on its way to a full recovery!
Oh, you can see my Official Race Photos here on the MarathonFoto site. You might need sunglasses to handle the combination of bright pink compression socks and blaze orange shirt.
On Monday morning I got up early and met Kazz and her husband in the lobby for the loooooong walk to Boston Common (and took a photo in front of the finish line!), where we would get on one of the race buses that were shuttling runners to the start. The lines for the buses were long, and it was maybe 20 minutes before we got on a bus...but then we could see that while we had been waiting, the lines had grown maybe three times longer! We got to the "athlete's village" just as the wave 1 people were leaving, but we found our wave 2 friends and hung out with them until it was time to move to the starting corrals.
Kat's goal was similar to mine, plus she was injured as well (I've been fighting peroneal tendinitis since the first week of March), so even though her bib number put her in the corral ahead of mine, she decided to start out with me. We ran the first two miles together before I pulled away. (Not to mention, we walked from the corral to the start, which seemed like another mile...) I also passed another forum friend (Robyn/Fit&Perky) while she was was taking a photo of a firetruck, but didn't recognize anyone else - but most of the people I knew had started in corrals well ahead of me, so in most cases I just never caught up.
The crowds were incredible (both on and off the course!). I had been told that if you put your name on your shirt or write it in marker on your arm, people would scream it; I didn't want to challenge them to pronounce "ILANA" so instead I wrote "DURANGO" on the back of an old race bib and pinned it to my shirt. It was awesome! People screamed, "GO DURANGO!" and I could tell by their inflections whether they knew it meant the city, or thought it might be my name, or wondered what it meant (in which case I waved and yelled back, "COLORADO!"). (Then there was the guy who yelled, "Go Durango! I love your truck!") The crowds were energizing, but also exhausting, because I felt I had to acknowledge them (by smiling at them, if nothing else) when they screamed for me. If I did the victory-arms thing the roar volume increased tenfold. I think I high-fived about 500 people; early on it was all kids, but near the colleges there were a lot of random people with their hands out. I even kissed a Wellesley girl (on the cheek; actually, I thought she was one of the rare Wellesley boys until I got close) in the fabled "scream tunnel."
There were a couple of costumes out there: I saw several tutus, one girl running in a toga ("GO TOGA!") and some tiaras and deelyboppers, while Santa watched from the sidelines near the Newton hills. I passed several blind runners with guides, and one deaf runner with a marked back-bib, one woman with a prosthetic leg (it was one of those "cheetah legs", very cool looking) and one guy running while breathing from an oxygen tank that someone else was pushing.
My paces for the official 5K splits make it look like I started slow, gradually sped up, and then slowed down again a lot at the end, which I suppose is technically true relative to a constant 8:12 pace which a 3:35 goal time would require. But I was using a pace band that took the hills and the crowding at the start (and man, was it crowded!) into account, so compared to my pace band, I started close to goal pace but immediately fell off, gradually slipped ever farther back by the half, and then really fell apart over the last 10 miles. Marathons are supposed to feel really easy at the beginning, and it never did, but stupidly I tried to stay on pace even though it was clear to me early on that I wouldn't be able to maintain it, and I think that hurt me in the end. At least I didn't walk, and I didn't feel totally miserable - but I sure felt partially miserable, and did not finish as strong as I have in other marathons.
Fortunately my ankle, which had been hurting right up until Kat and I got into the corral, magically stopped hurting when I began to run and didn't start up again until about five minutes after I finished. Unfortunately, everything else hurt! My quads hurt, my hamstrings hurt, my calves hurt, my freaking biceps hurt. My breathing was way too labored, and my heart rate was up in the half-marathon territory instead of down where it should have been.
I manually hit the lap button on my Garmin 301 each mile, but still ended up with some weirdities.
Mile 1: 8:48 (goal 8:48) - can't move very fast through the bazillion runners
Mile 2: 8:26 (8:31) - starting to get hot in the bright sun. Rolled my arm warmers down and handed my headband to some delighted kid.
Mile 3: 8:08 (8:01) - this is where I pulled ahead of Kat.
Mile 4: 8:13 (8:05)
Mile 5: 8:24 (8:14) - ditched the water bottle I was carrying so I could take off my arm warmers and stuff them in my bra. I'm really feeling overheated, and my HR is way too high.
Mile 6: 8:10 (8:03)
Mile 7: 8:12 (8:07)
Mile 8: 8:17 (8:10)
Mile 9: 8:09 (8:04)
Mile 10: 8:08 (8:14) - it's starting to cloud up and I'm feeling better; the next several miles are all a little faster than pace. Maybe I can catch up...?
Mile 11: 8:12 (8:14)
Mile 12: 7:56 (8:02)
Mile 13: 8:08 (8:07) - I think I lost time here trying to read all the Scream Tunnel signs! "Kiss me, I'm a sophomore!" "Kiss me, I'm Asian!" "Kiss me, I'm gay!" "Kiss me, I won't tell your wife!"
Mile 14: 8:15 (8:12)
Mile 15: 8:23 (8:12) - ...nope, I can't catch up. Starting to feel Not Very Good At All.
Mile 16: 8:15 (7:55) - this was a steep downhill, and supposed to be the fastest split, but I was hurting pretty badly. At this point I was getting scared that I might have an ugly finish.
Mile 17: 8:39 (8:20) - first of the hills. Not too bad, so why am I so slow?
Mile 18: 8:46 (8:20) - next hill, ditto ditto.
Mile 19: 8:52 (8:04) - what's wrong with me? This is downhill!
Mile 20: 8:54 (8:17) - third hill. I'm thinking about throwing up. Must trudge on.
Mile 21: 9:10 (8:29) - Heartbreak Hill. The only consolation is that even though I am slow, I am passing people. And I am not walking. Yay?
Mile 22: 8:36 (8:04) - A bunch of cute guys from Boston College hold out their hands to be high-fived and call encouragement to me. I start feeling a lot better.
Mile 23: 8:38 (8:13) - I know my goal is lost, but I also know I can finish, maybe PR.
Mile 24: 8:35 (8:12)
Mile 25: 10:53? (8:12) - this "mile" is 1.22 miles long, so I'm not sure what happened.
Mile 26.2: 8:58? (10:04) - and this "1.2" is .84 miles long, ditto ditto. All I know is that I stumble down the road to the infinitely receding finish line, like Zeno's Arrow never seeming to quite get there, until all of a sudden the person in front of me is walking and I realize I'm there, I'm over the finish line, and although I missed my goal of 3:35, I PRed by about 4 and a half minutes with a 3:42:18.
So I'm done, right? Nope. I pass a medical tent. A volunteer tells me to keep walking. I really want water; ooh, there, finally, water! Yay! I grab two bottles and another volunteer tells me to keep walking. Just as I finish my first bottle another volunteer hands me a bright red "protein recovery drink." Oddly, it does not taste as bad as it looks. I'm starting to get cold. Another volunteer tells me to keep walking. Finally, FINALLY, after about six more miles of walking, I get my medal and my mylar Cape of Awesome, which is a damn good thing because I've started to shiver uncontrollably. Luckily, my drop bag is only another mile farther, and when I have it I retrieve my fleece jacket and hat and fumble my way into them. I'm still shivering so I wrap myself back in the Cape of Awesome and get completely lost on my way back to the hotel, but who cares? I finished Boston.
I'm happy with the PR, but still disappointed; not so much because I missed my goal but rather because it was my worst performance of all five marathons, in terms of pacing and how I felt during the race. Clearly I lost a lot of fitness over the past 6 weeks of not running much while trying to heal up from my peroneal tendinitis, and maybe if I had scaled back my goal even more - maybe paced for a 3:40 - I would have had a better race and a faster time. Speaking of which, my ankle hurts only about as much as it did the week before the race. Hopefully despite the insult of 26.2 miles, it is on its way to a full recovery!
Oh, you can see my Official Race Photos here on the MarathonFoto site. You might need sunglasses to handle the combination of bright pink compression socks and blaze orange shirt.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-23 10:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-23 05:49 pm (UTC)