March 20th, 2011. What a difference a day makes. It is with unbridled joy I share the successful completion of the marathon this morning!!! Even better, I completed the circuit in 4:05:29 --- a bit longer than the “pre-wrist” goal of four hours, but WAY better than I have been anticipating since then.
Haven’t seen the official times yet from the marathon folks, so this reported time is preliminary, per my Sports Watch (official “chip time” was 4:06:00). But I’m willing to bet it is pretty much dead on and I was tremendously encouraged by the feedback it provided, revealing an astonishingly consistent pace. During my long training runs, I typically had a few miles at eight minutes out of the gate, followed by pace degradation to near eleven minutes as the latter miles got tackled. But for the marathon, my fastest mile (mile three) was 8:57 and my worst was 9:46, and that was the first mile, where the glut of humanity dictated speed. Maintaining every mile within a one minute window was surprising!
Shooting for consistency was my only game plan, and I will tell you that it took a MUCH more disciplined effort to maintain the stride after mile seventeen. Kim got up with me at 4:30AM to drop me off at the trolley to the start around 5:40AM and then waited for me near the finish – even though the last 3.2 miles were the longest damn 5K I had ever endured, seeing her smiling face at mile 23 inspired me to push on.
Another memorable moment involved my doctor (the one suggesting a half marathon in November and today’s race as a good way to train), who also ran the marathon. He passed me around mile six, where I showed him the Hammer Gel I planned on eating after the first 10K à he has helped me reinforce eating before lapsing into low blood sugar during long runs. I had a check-up just before the race and he shared that he was shooting for four hours, so I bid him adieu and thought that was aloha. As fate would have it, however, I was passing folks the last few miles by virtue of not allowing my pace to slide and overtook him with just under two miles remaining. As I passed by, my exclamation was that he’d have to sign my waiver for Le Grand Raid if I beat him, and that was the final inspiration to maintain a strong pace to the end!
Other impressions included how supportive everyone was. Before the start I felt like a loner, walking briskly by my lonesome to stay warm, past small groups excitedly chatting about the upcoming challenge amongst themselves. But once the starting gun sounded, people lined the streets throughout much of the course, even at 6:40AM when we started…everyone shouting encouragement and many clanging cow bells. The number tags had your first name printed in large letters, so often I would catch a “way to go Vance, keep it up” while chugging along and I cannot tell you how motivating that was!
Awesome job! Keep up the great work.
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