I’ve always struggled with the marathon, compared to other distances. Maybe my mix of fast and slow twitch muscles isn’t quite right for it. I seem to do pretty well in 12k’s, 15k’s and halfs, which have often predicted faster marathon times than I’ve finished. But marathons aren’t run on paper or in an internet pace calculator. All that matters once you’re out there is, well, what you can do once you’re out there.
In my first one (San Francisco ’93, age 21), I raced from the start just like I was used to doing for a 10k or a half. 6:00 was an easy pace, and after all, all I needed was 6:05s to break 2:40 (my ‘B’ goal in that race, ‘A’ goal being a sub-6 avg). At 16 I felt great and said to Maria Trujillo (one of the fastest women marathoners in CA at the time), who I’d been running with to that point, “We’re doing awesome, only 10 miles to go.” She didn’t say anything, but just looked over at me with a irratated look on her face like ‘What an idiot.’ About 3 miles later, I hit a major wall, she pulled WAY away (and won it in 2:38 or so I believe), and I slowed from my high-5’s to high 6’s then eventually to something like 7:32 as I finished in 2:47-high off a sub-6:00 pace through 18 miles. A harsh welcome to the marathon. And a sign of future struggles.
Maybe I’m too thin, and just can’t train my body to burn enough fat. But wait, the best runners in the world have just as little body fat, if not less, so that can’t be it. Maybe my training hasn’t been optimal or marathon-specific enough. Often true, but I really tried to correct that this time with a super-base (55-70mpw for 22 wks) followed by an intensive 18-week Pfitzinger program (70-85mpw). Maybe guys like Dan Sheil and Tim Knox are right in running 100+ mpw in marathon build-ups instead. Maybe even higher mileage would boost my race day endurance at the faster speeds. Brian Sell did that. Pretty sure you won’t see me going 130-160mpw, though =).
Or maybe I don’t have enough years of good marathon-level base mileage, even with all my years of general running base (this is the first year, really ever, that I’ve taken marathon base training super seriously). I have no problem covering the distance evenly or better when at a slightly slower speed (i.e. 6:25 pace for a recent 25.5 mile training run with negative splits toward the end), but running down close to 6:00s for that long seems to accumulate just enough lactate so that I’ve still never, in 26 marathons, run even or negative splits during one I was truly racing. I really believed CIM 2011 was going to be different, but in the end it wasn’t. My 2nd half was 92 seconds slower than my first. I burned through at least 75 seconds during the final 10k that I didn’t expect to. Of course most of us have blown up WAY beyond that, sometimes 75 seconds or more per mile toward the end. But again, this time was supposed to be different. It is so disappointing that the final 2 miles were so slow despite how hard I was trying for them not to be. I just could not hang onto anything near race pace at that point.
Then again, I saw an interview with Brian Sell right after Boston 2009 where he’d just tanked and finished in 2:16, way back. He said his prep and workouts were very similar to 2006 where he’d run phenomenal to finish 4th, and just didn’t know what happened. Of course the headwind there didn’t help in 2009. Everyone has their days. Great, good, bad. Sometimes there are no answers. I thought I was having a phenomenal day at CIM, and really felt that way through 12, even through 15, before it got too hard way too soon, around 30k. If only my quads had survived even a couple more miles before giving up.
I told a few people I wanted to be sure to be over 79:00 at the half, so was pleased when I went through in 79:15 and thought, oh man, this is so perfect. My training got me here. I’m just floating at 6:00 pace, feeling good. My plan to improve my half speed the first part of this year worked out, getting me to near 75-flat by July. I need that speed to break 2:40, I figured. And that 6:lows would feel so easy compared with 5:40/5:45 pace I’d run for 15k to half races all year long.
I heard someone say earlier this year: “It’s one thing to have the will to run a good marathon, but it’s a whole nother thing to have the will to put in the training to run a good marathon.” I read another quote along the lines of: “I’ve run good marathons on poor training and poor marathons on good training, but I can guarantee that I’ll never run a great marathon on anything but great training.”
I’ll admit I’m a slow learner (including a stretch starting with Boston '97 doing 10 marathons in 18 months with similar training and similar results as I chased 2:3x and never got there), but I realized late last year that a number of things would need to change to race a great marathon. At my age, injury history, and past challenges at the distance, it would take great training, getting to the starting line healthy, and everything coming together to get south of 2:40. Last December as I ran the Holiday Half along Willamette Blvd and was fading to 6:20s into a stiff headwind by the end, having not done a run longer than 8 miles in several months, and finishing in 80-low, I thought ‘What are my chances of ever running this pace again for a full?’. A realistic answer at that point seemed about 15%, a pretty long shot. So late last year I decided 2011 would be the year I stop slacking, work extremely hard, and see what I can really do. Afterall, I’d be turning freakin’ 40 in Nov. So I bought a book on training, first one ever. And then worked. And worked. And worked. 2422 miles in 243 consecutive days. 60 mile weeks. Then 70s. Then 80s. 85s. 97 in 7 days once. Long runs, tempo runs, races, VO2 max workouts, marathon pace runs, track workouts. I was determined to be a living, breathing Pfitzinger product, the guy who at the end of the race epitomizes the well-prepared marathoner from this quote in his book Advanced Marathoning: [regarding 20 to F]: “This is the part of the race that poorly prepared marathoners dread, and well prepared marathoners relish.” I would be the guy who relishes the final 10-12k; it would be super-hard but still fast, with no fade, maybe even a slight pickup. By mid-November, nearly a year later, I was putting my sub-2:40 chances at 85% which, in my mind, had climbed steadily throughout the year from the 15% chance I originally gave myself.
In 2011, I sacrificed some productivity at work. I went to bed by 9:00 most nights. Trained every morning. Up at 4:00am for Wed AM 15-milers, by 5:15 most other days. Trained in the heat. The rain. Wind. Through creatine withdrawals. When sick. When tired. When sore. Through achilles, hamstring, groin, and other pains. On the track. With younger guys. When unmotivated. After work when the schedule called for it, as much as I hate running end of day anymore. I did ALL the workouts. Didn’t always hit the Pfitzinger recommend paces, but still did ALL the workouts.
Did I overtrain this year by nearly doubling my mileage from what I’d done the last two years? Did I overdo it on shorter races? Did I go too hard on those final 2 long runs, 23 miles three weeks out and 17 two weeks out? Was my taper too steep? Not steep enough? Too long? Too short? Did I eat the wrong foods leading up to race day? Should I have done more on gradual downhill to simulate the course? Did I eat enough for dinner? Breakfast? Did that final night's lack of sleep affect my muscles? Should I have worn trainers not racers?
The questions of course are are endless, and no one really has any answers better than guessing, but if I went back in time and had a chance to prep for CIM 2011 again, I wouldn’t change a single thing (well, maybe I’d cut out Klock XC =) and the creatine experiment, but that’s about it). I had what I had on race day, and it wasn’t quite enough. The weather, my groin, my calves, my stomach, my core, my shoes, my mind, they all not only cooperated, they were perfect. But my quads weren’t, and the extent to which really surprised me. I really don’t know why. It happens. As anal and obsessive as I trend, I’m saying a big “Oh, well” and moving on. It feels great to have this race over with, and is a HUGE weight off my shoulders. I don’t think I’ve ever put as much pressure on myself with such long lead-time for a single performance in the 30 years I’ve been doing this, yet I dealt with my own expectations & demons pretty well (although I wish I could have slept better Sat night). I honestly don’t know how top athletes handle the pressure, the prize money, the expectations, the Olympics, the media, and all the rest of it. Well, I guess some of them do so better than others. They need not only the physical abilities, but nerves of steel. Which blows my mind. It was super-awesome to hear someone screaming around mile 23 “Don’t think, just run.” So pure, so honest, so raw. Just run. You’re almost there. That’s what it’s all about. Especially by mile 23 =).
Time to rest, regroup, refocus, and come up with a raceplan for Houston which, to be completely honest, is really TBD depending on how my recovery & training goes. It’s only 6 weeks out, and the last time my quads felt like this (Boston 2009, same year Sell tanked), it took the better part of 3 weeks for the soreness to go completely away, but then I ran reasonably well at Newport, which was 3 weeks after that (6 wks total between marathons). Hoping for 2 weeks until full muscle recovery this time, and will be looking for some remedies to speed that along.
Thanks for reading. Comments welcome.
