This past Sunday, I ran in the Cleveland Marathon. I’d been training for the past 4-6 months for the race. So, how did it go? Well, I finished with a 3:43 time, so reasonably well. I beat my goal time of 3:45 by a couple of minutes, so overall I’m quite happy with the results.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve been quite worried that my right foot was going to bother me the entire race, but after about 2 miles or so, it went away or I completely forgot about it.
####My race plan:
Start out a little slow at a 9-minute pace for the first few miles and then begin to speed up.
Try to speed up in the second half of the race for a negative split.
Try to speed up after mile 16, in which the majority of the course would be heading down.
For the most part I stuck to this plan. I ran easy in the beginning and sped up a little, hitting the half marathon point at 1:50. I then actually did speed up for the next split at 30K, doing a 8:17 split. I was on pace and I was feeling great. We were running through Rockefeller park, underneath the shade, and it was perfect. But, then I started to slow up, particularly around mile 22. This seemed to be the loneliest, hottest stretch of the race. It was around I-90, there weren’t too many folks around, no shade and it was a long uphill. That was a battle. Between miles 21 and 25, I was really struggling. My heart was working hard and I was really starting to feel it. At the mile 23 water stop, I actually did stop to walk through it taking both a Powerade and water. I walked for a minute or so, but knew I needed to get going. Those couple of miles between 23 and 25, as I could see the downtown in the distance were tough miles. I tried to gut it out, keeping a 9:15 pace going. When I reached one mile to go, I tried to give it all I had and really got going up to speed with about a half mile to go. And I made it with a good time.
####My nutrition plan:
Clif Shot Blocks - eat one every two miles just before the water station and get some water to wash it down.
Then switch to the Honey Stingers - I broke these up and put them in a little ziplock bag.
I stuck to the plan. I took one package (6 pieces) of the Shot Blocks, so for the first twelve miles I did that and then switched over to the Honey Stingers for the second half. I think it worked for the most part as I didn’t have any noticeable sugar fall-outs in the race. I think for the next race I’m just going to do two packages of the Shot Blocks as I was a little uncertain about how much of the Honey Stingers I was getting in. The Shot Blocks are just nicely dosed, so they’re easier to manage.
My time and splits: http://live.xacte.com/cleveland/?id=110&tagcode=1458
####Takeaways from the race:
- My training over the 4-6 months prior was worth all the work.
- In particular, I really believe the weekly speed/interval training that I did was key for me maintaining my pace.
- My nutrition was solid and I like the Clif Shots, so I think I may go to those only for a race.
- There’s still some room for improvement and I’m going to move up my new goal to 3:30:
- I’m going to move my training pace up by 30 seconds to 9:30 pace.
- I need to stay on track with my weekly speed work and look into potentially adding a second day per week of speed work.
- I need to find a way to train myself better both physically and mentally for those difficult miles: 21-25.
- Begin training for the 50-mile ultramarathon (My hypothesis is that by training for a longer race, I will be able to easily run a shorter one).
- Take the VO2 Max test
