Week in Review: 20-26 March, and National Marathon Race Report

Okay, running the numbers:

20 March - 11 miles (79 minutes) around Canton, Fells, and whatever. Highlight was all of the people standing around freezing, waiting for their free first-day-of-spring Rita's (of which I was one after my run).

21 March - 13 miles (89 minutes), out to the Fed Hill run and back, not exactly running it with the group, which, given how I felt after yesterday, was not exactly bad.

22 March - 9 miles (60 minutes), Tuesday Night Track - workout of 4x(1000 @ 5K pace, 200 @ mile pace, 400m jog @ 8:00/mile pace) represented a minor miracle, as I went 4:25, 4:30+ (watch stopped), 4:30, 4:25, first time ever that after being "done," I actually came back and hit the paces.

23 March - 15 miles (105 minutes), on a rainy, vaguely miserable Wednesday night run from Canton, with tack-ons at either end. Wasn't entirely feeling this one, but wasn't feeling bad, either.

24 March - 10 miles (73 minutes), as part of my mini-taper for National, at APG, where I included a little run up and down a stupid-steep Barkley-style hill, which, given the climbing shape I'm in, didn't feel bad, and made me really wonder about doing the race for real . . .

25 March - 5 miles (35 minutes), still tapering down, passing a fire on South Clinton Street on my way back, dropping the "pace" quarter 7 seconds below 7:00/mile pace, which maybe meant plenty in the tank, or no sense of pace (yesterday's run ended with a 6:17 mile, so I was hoping the former) . . .

26 March - 27 (?) miles (181 minutes) - Okay, fine, 26.2, I guess, but with the last-minute course changes, lack of course markings, and the numerous GPS tracks reading even longer than GPS tracks typically do for this type of race, I question the accuracy with which the National Marathon course was certified. Also, dozens of times during the race, I felt bad enough to want to quit. Water under the bridge now, though, because I didn't quit, and redeemed myself after last year's debacle here.

Total Time: 622 minutes
Total Distance: 90 miles

Officially, my longest week distance-wise in 2011, capped off with a "marathon" that was 4.5 minutes short of my PR, feeling no particularly debilitating ill effects (cripplingly cramped left calf aside, but that will hopefully work itself out in time enough for my now-traditional 10 or 11 mile Sunday "recovery run"). The hidden stat here is that from 17-23 March (or up until my mini-taper), I logged 113 miles in 7 days, which might actually be a record for me (although granted, 40 of those miles were slower trail miles during the MMT Training Run).

But anyway, enough paralysis by analysis, and on to the race report:

Ever since the spring of 2006, when I entered the National Marathon on a whim, in spite of having crashed spectacularly at mile 17 of a 20-mile run just a week prior, and taking the entry mostly because Charm City Run was giving it out for free with the pair of Asics that I bought there, then proceeded to run a 3:08 and change on the then stupid-hard course that actually put runners on a rolling highway in PG County at and around the 20-mile mark (their attempt at simulating the "Newton Hills" at Boston, but really, the effect was just to make both runners and the stopped traffic irritated) . . . deep breath . . . the National Marathon has been, to me, the first running rite of spring. It's the race where I've reaped the first fruits of cold, wet, dismal days of winter training, it's the huge confidence boost that I need heading into Boston, and it's the race that I've vowed to return to every spring, from then until one of us dies.

All that said, it's been good to me, with (from 2006 forward, not on the same course every time, since the course seems to change every year) times of 3:08, 3:03, 2:59, 2:56:32 (my PR) . . . and then last year. Last year, I was supposed to pace the 3:00 group, and I gave it my best effort through 16 miles, at which point I tanked, took a bathroom break, walked a bit, and finally wound up finishing around 3:15. Which, still, compared to other crashes I've had in marathons, was a far gentler one, but, with the stakes being higher, an emotionally damaging one.

Naturally, this year, I jumped at the opportunity to pace 3:00 again. Because in case you haven't noticed, a major theme of my 2011 is redemption (if such a thing is possible) from my many failures in 2010, this being one of them. Last year, I raised the stakes here and failed, but this year, I would need to succeed to return this race to its rightful glory in my mind.

With the ghosts of last year flitting through the fog in my mind (the result of a full week of an average of 3 hours of sleep per night, something that really needs to change), I drove down at way-too-early-in the morning, and couldn't help contemplating all of this. In the pacer/elite tent before the race, I did my best to sound cheerful and confident about the prospect of hitting my ambitious 3:00 goal, while I stood next to elites (such as Falls Road's own Christine Ramsey, who went on to win the half in 1:17:01), and fielded questions from people who clearly thought my marathon PR was much faster than 3.5 minutes under the pace I was trying to hit.

To make things more interesting, nobody else wanted to take 3 hours. Sure, nobody else was signed up to do it, but considering that we had a 3:05 and a 3:10 group, surely somebody might be willing to step it up a few minutes . . . Nope. 3:00 is definitely one of those "mental block" sort of times, that seems infinitely faster than a 3:05, and adds to the pressure of the pace.

Finally, to raise the stakes as high as they could conceivably go, I would be carrying this stupid pace flag (perhaps I'll update with a picture here) and wearing a balloon on which I wrote "3:00" tied around my waist, two annoyances that had the potential to take their toll. And let's not forget the orange "3:00" bib on my back, making me a moving target for the entire race.

As we stood shivering at the start (well, lots of other people were, but I've developed quite a bit of cold tolerance this winter, so I was fine in a short-sleeved pacer shirt and shorts), I was up-front with the group that assembled around me. I told them that I had broken 3 hours here twice, on a similar course, and that I believed that, barring a bad day, I could do it again today, but no hard-and-fast promises. They joked that they would get me through it (and in a way, they did), and after a disorganized, several-minutes-late start, it was time to throw down.

I should mention that coming into this race, in spite of the high mileage and low sleep I was running on, I was feeling strong. The question was whether or not I had rested enough to be "fresh" enough for this distance at this pace. My longest run this year up to this point at a pace comparable to what I'd be doing was 15 miles, and even then, I wasn't trying to sub-7 all 15 miles. (Of course, if you believe the Brooks-Hansen philosophy, 15 miles at a fast-enough pace - which mine probably wasn't - is sufficient to run fast in a marathon, but I digress.) The point is, I had no idea how my body was going to respond to the accumulated fatigue at that pace beyond 2 hours. Today, I suppose, was a good day to find out.

I told the group if anything, I would go slow and pick it up, and, true to my word, we crossed what was, by vague consensus of GPS tracks and course markings, the first mile in a little over 7:10. Slight panic, as this was about 20 seconds too slow, but felt comfortable. We came through the GPS-consensus second mile (because there was no 2-mile course marker) on a 6:30 mile - oops. After a (GPS-measured; again, no course marker) 3rd mile at 6:35, I remarked that we needed to slow down, which was not just because the pace was too fast, but also because I started feeling hints in my legs that it might be difficult to sustain this.

Sure enough, somewhere between miles 4 and 5, the pain started. Shifting pain, in my quads, in my hips, just above my knees, just on the tolerable side of crippling, and a sign that I was clearly not "fresh" coming into this effort. This was where the thoughts of dropping out begain, every couple of minutes, as the pain pulsated and radiated. Here I was, with my 10-dollar Wal-Mart watch which just tells you the time, and no mile markers on a slightly-changed course, making me slightly uncomfortable with my progress at any given moment, surrounded by a bunch of GPS freaks, checking their watches literally about every 30 seconds and judging me, while the flag was creating unnecessary tension in my arms, shoulders, and neck, and the stupid balloon was periodically getting caught on runners behind me, pulling me back ever so slightly ever few minutes, trying to run an evenly-split near-PR time. When I thought about it that way, the thought of continuing was distinctly unappealing.

Nevertheless, thanks to this week of training, including Monday's Fed Hill run where I sped up on the way out to Ft. McHenry to pass some idiot in Nike Frees who thought he was going to house me, and Tuesday's track workout, where I came back from the dead to goal pace by the end of the workout, I had a few mental tricks up my sleeve. I made minor form adjustments to shift the pain. On the hills, I mustered my best form, powering through the uphills and riding the downhills, ultimately bringing the group back to me every time they started getting away (and there were definitely a few close calls).

At around mile 9, I passed Keith Knipling, and we made small talk about last week's training run, and then I took off - minor confidence boost. Of course, we were still not even halfway through the race, and the 1:30 half group had long since passed us (who knows what they ended up running), so emphasis on minor. And then, a man in black in headphones came up alongside me, and asked me if we were on pace. I said "I think so," and he said "you're my bus to the end," and okay, way to raise the stakes a little higher here. I felt like telling him what I had told my group at the start, that I had no idea how long I would hold on. But for some reason, the way he said what he said (and the fact that he immediately put his headphones back in, and probably wouldn't hear me) prevented me from saying it. Shortly thereafter, on yet another long, straight stretch of the course, where the apparent lack of progress makes quitting an attractive option, Ryan McGrath was on the sidelines, yelling at me to "pace that 3:00 group," and that was just enough to get me over what, in retrospect, was probably the point where I was in the most danger of dropping.

But at that time, I was far from out of the woods. Questions about the pace and the distance (everybody's GPS was consistently reading 2-tenths long, and increasing, relative to the mile markers, from about mile 5 onward) were mounting within the group, and all I could say was "I think we're on track." When we hit the half (or what they claimed to be the half) in 1:29:45, the mood within the group shifted, and I let out a perhaps-not-too-kind "there you go" in response. Assuming that the half mark was approximately correct, this was dead-on for 3:00, and everybody knew this, and suddenly, other runners in the group were offering me water and food (headphone man in black especially), and perhaps believing in the group. We pushed through to the pivotal straight stretch between mile 16 and 17, where I crashed this year. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel borderline about doing that this year. But oddly enough, a little magic trick I discovered here was to picture myself doing push-ups on the Perfect Pushup gadget (which I've been regularly doing since the beginning of the year), and imagine the pain of the last few. Somehow, this resulted in transfering the perception of pain at least partially from my legs to my arms, enough that I could convince myself that I was fine to keep up my current pace.

And as we passed into mile 18, and the "good" waterfront, I could feel the strength gathering, and the confidence in my pace, in spite of the physical pain, increasing. There was no way to guarantee that I wouldn't, dozens of times between now and the finish, experience the blinding pain that I felt during Club Challenge, and be on the cusp of quitting, but with about 8 miles to go, and the group gaining strength and passing all those people that went out too fast, I had this under control.

We went over the bridge without incident (sigh of relief), although I could feel my legs getting wobbly over the metal grating on the downhill, and passed the 20-mile mark in 2:16, leaving us with 44 minutes for the final 10K, and well within our goal. Still not out of the woods, though, because the nearly three-mile section along the non-scenic Anacostia, with the cold wind in your face, and the particularly cruel "turn around the bucket" at the end, was just ahead. The group, gathered behind me in a tight pack now, was pushing me through this, and as I gained momentum in this section, I could feel others start to drop back. Not surprising, since the 20-mile mark in the marathon separates the men from the boys. The man in black stuck by my side (as he had since we met - disconcertingly enough, he would actually say "excuse me" as he passed other runners to stay right on my shoulder) through this ordeal, and while I could feel my mental resolve weakening, his dogged persistence strengthened my stride with every step.

At last, we left the waterfront, and continued on the rolling road to the finish. At Mile 24 (the marker, anyway), man in black (whose name, by the way, was Daniel) thanked me for my effort and ran off, and I told him to "go for it," and one other guy, who had joined the group mid-stream after fading from his early race pace, went off with him, assisted by a bandit pacer. This left me entirely alone, as the cruel waterfront section had, predictably, caused everybody else to fall off. From here, it was a game of calculating pace against the mile markers, without the aid of the GPS-obsessives, so when I hit 25 miles at 2:50 and a few seconds, it seemed as though I had plenty of time to at least go 3:00 and some seconds in the last (mostly uphill) mile. Unfortunately, somebody's estimate was wrong, as I crossed the line, alone, in 3:00:12, 13 seconds slower than technically acceptable "pace" time, although nobody, except for the two guys who broke away from the pace group, passed me in the second half of the race.

I gratefully accepted my medal, and now, overcome with fatigue and apparent electrolyte depletion, staggered forward, coughed violently for several minutes, and then experienced the most painfully debilitating cramp in my left calf that I had ever felt, which caused me to sit down at the edge of a tent, and not get up for at least 15 minutes. In a way, this was not bad, as it was a good position for me to welcome those from my pace group who made it in near their goal time, and to chat with Keith, who finished in 3:09, and who fortuitiously had salt tablets to give me to ease the cramping. After what felt like far too long, I hobbled back to the armory to collect my things and hobble back to the car, wherever that was.

So as I write this, I assess "mission accomplished." While I would have liked to have a finishing time that looked a little prettier in the results, the fact remains that I have never felt like quitting more times in a race, but then not actually done it, than in today's race, and using every mental and physical trick in my book, I pushed through the proverbial wall, and restored this race to its former glory in my mind. This performance gave me the confidence that if I can keep up my training, and go into Boston on fresh legs, a PR (at least a small one) is well within reach. So now, if the cramping in my calf (which, in retrospect, I think I may have experienced following my 2:59 at this race) would just subside, I could go about the business of building for Boston, starting with my traditional 10 or 11 mile Sunday "recovery" run . . .