Rubber Side Down

Don't try this at home folks!

So I finally posted another finish. One DNS is enough and frankly when I thought I might have a stress fracture I was pretty bummed. Looking back at my calendar it was exactly 1 month ago when the doctor noticed something odd about my MRI and ordered the bone scan and followup. That took most of 2 weeks to sort itself out with my training on complete hold. Add another week of total demotivation and there I was one week out from my marathon, deciding I was going to do it with 3 weeks of muscle atrophy.

So, let me tell you here and now, a 10 mile run, 20 mile bike ride and a few 400m sprints do not make up for 3 weeks of couch potato-ism.

The race went okay for the first half. I am lucky enough to have ID and PS, 2 great runners who came out for some fun and support and we spent the time talking and everything went by reasonably well. I finished the first half in something over 1:58 (this is very close to my time for the SF Half that I did a year ago, but back then I was done, and couldn't have gone on for another 13.1. +1 for a year of training.)

That is around a 9:02 pace for the first half. By this time I knew I was in trouble, my quads were already feeling beat up and it seemed a real possibility that I'd be doing 12 or 13's by the end. This was just hammered home as I came out of LG High School and headed up, up, up one of the roads there. This was supposed to be a flat marathon!

After I painfully made my way to the top, I was lucky enough to run into another Fitter making his way back into Vasona park and the trail. I crunched another couple miles just making small talk with him. From then on it was slog, slog, walk through the water stations, slog some more. Sometime after 3 hours I grabbed a mango clif shot, it was nirvana. Those things really taste good!

It was after this I had a pretty good couple of miles, 20 and 21 and so I made a point to eat a clif shot at the next 2 water stations, but it was all just borrowed time.

Miles 23-finish were kind of a haze of pain, except I clearly remember being passed by Yuka and just never making up the lost ground. Curses! Mentally I was undone and I walked for about 40 seconds every water station or mile mark and a couple half mile marks as well for good measure.

The finish through the park was mixed both with relief at being done (almost) and sheer torture getting my legs to move those last few hundred strides. Finish time was 4:14:33 which is a 9:42.5 pace, but my second half split time was 2:16+ which is really a 10:25 pace. Almost a full minute and a half per mile slower than the first half. Which is why I say, don't try this for your next marathon :)

On the positive side it was almost 20 minutes faster than my Sacramento time. And my 2nd half pace for SV was the same as my overall pace for Sacramento, meaning I had 13 good avg. 9:00 pace miles. Its a good trend that I'll try to keep going in the right direction!

posted by Patrick el Coyote @ 1:34 PM