Notes
Been a long day of driving and drinking, so here's a drunk race report. Zoom-Zoom and backroadrunner wrote better reports so I'll just stick to race stuff.
I did three new things for the race:
1.) Ran in flats for the first time (had about 12 miles on them).
2.) Ran with gels (never trained with them, but had one a single day and figured it was ok).
3.) Bought new shorts the day before.
It all turned out ok.
It was a nice weather day except for a pretty good wind in the face. At the start, about 6 guys went out pretty quick. My first mile was about 5:35, which was fine since I knew all 5 or 6 runners were 2:30-31 runners and if I didn't keep up it'd be lonely running. I figured they'd slow, but they had different thoughts. They all started surging and sprinting to 5:15-30 about 2.5. I thought it was stupid and let them go and resigned myself to lonely running.
I went through 10k, I think, at 35. It was a pretty cool headwind and I started to stiffen a little bit. I ran a crappy slow mile to reduce some of the tightness and decided to run 5:50's from then on. One nice part about the race was that volunteers called splits at every mile. I could just focus on hitting even 5:50's from there on in. It was the wrong choice.
I hit my pace for the next 20 miles and finally saw my first runners at mi 22. The first guy was really hurting (last yrs winner) and the second guy was about 500 meters in front. The first five guys and had all run 1:13's and these two were on a death march (1:13/1:23-4). The first guy ended up in the med tent.
Mile 23 was a pretty steep downhill to the lake front and into a 20-25 mile wind off the lake. I was feeling really good and a spectator told me the third place guy was "falling the eff apart". I didn't see him until mile 24.5. I passed him on an idiotic grass section of the course and caught sight of the 2nd place runner. I started sprinting after him until we came to ANOTHER grass section. My legs turned to mush on the mush. I'm convinced I'd have got him w/o the grass.
I finished feeling really strong and full of energy. I thought I could go for another 5-6 miles and actually went for about 3 more after the race. I wished I had been healthy enough to run a race 2-3 weeks before the marathon. It would have helped my confidence. I went into the race wanting to hit 2:29, but didn't believe it and never really went after it. I realized after that the goal was stupid. My goal should have been 2:27 and I think I now know how to get it.
1.) Do intervals before tempo work during training weeks.
2.) Run harder
3.) Run longer
4.) Run harder