Marathon Done and it's Officially IM Training Time! (Race Report Included)

Team Mizuno!  Yes, we're all wearing 'em!

     We (Marty, Chrisy, Becky, and I) had another great time at an awesome event!  I encourage any marathon runners to do this race.  It's well organized, lot's of spectators, and a great course.  If you like to collect medals you can get three of them, one for doing a 5k on Friday which is the night before, one for the day of the marathon for running either the 10k, half marathon, or full marathon, and one if you do both the 5k on Friday and one of the Saturday races.  Can't beat the finish line that ends on the football field at Memorial Stadium, any Illini fans?

50 yard line finish

     The four of us did the 5k Friday evening.  Tons of people, just over 5000 people I think so it ended up being really crowded.  But, no worries, we took it as an easy run and ran all together...didn't want to mess up our big race for the next morning!  It was fun, the finish was also on the 50 yard line in Memorial Stadium.  To tell you the truth I can't remember having this much a good time at any other 5k!

     Well, here's a recap of the marathon.  First of all, it's good the race was fun because it helped level out some of my disappointment (ok, I'm only a little disappointed).  I trained hard for this race, probably harder than any other race I've trained for including last year's half iron distance races.  From races and training paces I feel I know what I'm capable of, but I didn't even meet my "I'll settle with" goal.  In the end and looking back I think it was nutrition choices and bad pacing.

Cool medals!

     The race started out well, I went out at a pace that felt good, but my Garmin watch was showing a pace of 6:58/mi.  I decided to hold that pace until I got to the mile marker since the GPS can be a little off sometimes.  I got there at exactly 7:00, so yeah, my GPS was right and I was going too fast and had to slow down to keep it between 7:10 and 7:15.  Even after slowing down I think I was still averaging 7:10/mi most of the time.  I remember smiling to myself at mile 3 because I was feeling GREAT at this point, this pace feels like nothing!  Kept feeling good until mile 10 or 11 when the feeling of effortlessness started to go away, not that it felt bad, though.  Then came the halfway point just after mile 13 and the pace somehow felt better again and my mile split was 6:43!  Not sure what I was thinking, but I think there was a runner in front of me who I wanted to catch...must have forgotten I was running a marathon!

Showin' some Ragnar Relay love post marathon

     Ok// now for the hard part, you might wanna close your eyes!  Well, at first it was fine, the next 7 miles went uneventful and I was still feeling pretty good.  Even mile 19 I was holding a 7:20/mi pace and my overall pace was 7:10/mi.  I was slowing down a little on mile 19 but I still felt Ok.  I even felt Ok enough that I told myself "you got this!".  If I slowed down it was fine, I would come close to my stretch goal of 3hrs10min and definitely beat my "I'll settle with" goal.  Mile 20 came along and halfway through it I felt my legs get heavy and start to cramp a little...finished that mile in 7:37.  10k left to go and my legs kept feeling worse and I slowed to get through mile 21 in 8:09.  Mile 22 was brutal, this is where I truly hit the wall and it hit me good!  I walked for the first time in after grabbing some Gatorade at the aid station, not too long but long enough to bring my mile down to a 9:04.  

     The next three miles were hard, I was in bad place, a dark place, swearing at myself for going faster than planned and realizing I hadn't had enough electrolytes in the first half of the marathon.  I really just wanted to get it over with.  I think the worst moment in the race was when the 3:15 pace group went by me and I tried to get up to their pace and I couldn't for the life of me.  That's where I gave up.  I even stopped by a port-o-potty not even having to really use it.  Funny thing is I didn't feel all that tired, I was breathing hard at all even at mile 19.  Mostly it was cramping in my quads and this is really what led me to think it was bad nutrition decisions.

Doesn't even look like he ran a marathon!

     I passed up mile 25 and thought "Ok, 1.2mi to go, I'm not going to finish like this."  I at least wanted to finish proud of the training I'd gone through, the sacrifices I'd taken, and the pain I've endured throughout the past 5 months for this marathon.  I have no idea where it came from, but I brought my pace down from well over 10:00/mi to finishing the last 1.2mi at about a 7:45 pace.  I finished strong with a time of 3:21:01, almost 52 minutes down from my first marathon 11 years ago so I guess I can't complain too much// but it still sucks knowing I didn't reach a goal that I should have.

     I've been saying I won't do very many marathons and definitely none too soon, but I think I will do this one again next year to redeem myself and possibly qualify for Boston.  But, for now, it's officially time to start training for Ironman Cozumel!  I'm excited to get back into triathlon after a long winter!

     I also want to congratulate Chrisy Tang on an awesome 15min half marathon PR, Becky Cohen on marathon #17 and second marathon since last Sunday, and my brother Marty Bernardo on a great finish for his first marathon!  Good job all of you, I had a great time!

My Awesome photography skills.  That's
Marty finishing by the way.

The End of My Marathon Training

Haven't updated this in a little while, so it's about that time!  Training has been going great hitting all my planned mileage and paces.  Lately I've been working on VO2max, which is pretty much a measurement of the maximum amount of oxygen your body can utilize during highly intense efforts.  I did these at the track by my house doing intervals as short as 600m and up to 1mile and all done at 5k race pace.  Pretty tough workouts!  I remember the first time doing them it was:

1mi warm up
5 x 600m @5k pace followed by 400m jog
3mi moderate
1mi cool down
(Note - I wouldn't recommend doing these workouts unless you're consistently running 40+ miles/week)

I had a really hard time keeping up the 5k pace for those intervals, especially still being fatigued by long runs and races.  I was wondering how the heck I was supposed to do that for the last VO2max session at 1mile intervals!  Well, I ended up doing the last workout on Wednesday and decided I'm going to hit this one hard.  It hurt, but the satisfaction felt great as I hit all the miles faster than all of the other shorter intervals I've done in the past few weeks.  It's nice to see improvement with all the running I've done since December.

I've also been tapering for the past 2 weeks, so long runs have been dropping in mileage.  The first long run during taper was a 16miler and I ran that with Arlie Ramirez.  He's an awesome runner training for the Leadville 100mi trail run...yes, that is One Hundred Miles!  I usually don't run my long runs at a hard pace, but Arlie pushed me that day!  It was a good confidence booster for this Saturday's marathon and I feel I should hit my goal.  The second medium/long run was a 12miler I ran with my son riding his bike.  Timmy (my son) is 7, but he can ride his bike for quite a long time without getting tired.  He actually gets bored before he even starts to lose energy!  But he had fun, especially with this being his longest ride so far.  I think he may be able to get to 15+ miles this summer.  We'll see!

Now that I've reduced some running mileage in the past couple weeks and some of the fatigue has left my legs, I'm finally getting excited for this marathon.  I've been dreading it for a few months, I think because the monotony of running day in and day out was getting to me.  I'm a triathlete at heart and love to mix things up with swimming and cycling.  I guess being tired often is part of marathon training and it takes a lot of mental toughness to keep going.  One thing I suggest is if you're doing your long runs by yourself, don't wear headphones as it's a great way to train your mental capacity and to really get in touch with your running.  Anyway, I'm feeling great and ready to see where this training has taken me.  And, of course, I'm ready to get this over with so I can get on my bike!