The Running of the 2008 Frederick Marathon

Okay, I ran the Frederick Marathon this morning. The new course was *much* better than last year. The weather was great. I think that it was a little evil of the Race Director to have all the hard hills between miles 17-23, but that's okay too. My family and I went up to Frederick yesterday afternoon to sign in (there was no race day packet pick-up). The expo was better than last year, and I was able to quickly get my bib, chip, and browse around the expo. It wasn't too crowded (at around 5 pm) so we got in and out pretty quickly. Since we don't know downtown Frederick very well, and the kids were starting to have a very long day, we ended up going to Olive Garden (take out) since I knew where one was from last year.

The hotel was fine. We got changed from a 1-bed to a 2-bed room (I had originally booked with just me in mind) and the kids watched TV while eating dinner. We *all* got to bed before 9 pm (quite a feat) and I was up at 4 am to shower and get a 10 minute warmup run on the roads around the hotel. We left the hotel at 5:40 am and were parked at the Fairgrounds a little after 6 am. We walked around a bit, and warmed up a little more, and then we sat down. I kept hearing the Race Director do time checks at 6:20 and 6:23, so I double-checked the start time. Whoops! It was 6:30 am (I had thought it had started at 7 am). I quickly got the the start line with about 2 minutes to spare and we started the race.

The first half was great. We went through down, and the surrounding neighborhoods for the bulk of it. We went down some farm roads as well, and at mile 12, I was passing people going up hills. I had to slow it down to stay around a 9:00 pace. At the 13.1 mile marker, I was feeling strong.

Between miles 9 and 10 I intentionally started walking to eat a 1/2 peanut butter sandwich. Right after mile 10 I saw that there was only 1 person in line at a porta-potty so I stopped. Between these two events, I lost around 3 miles, but I still hit the 1/2 way mark at a 4:00 pace for the marathon.

According to my GPS, at mile 17 my lap times started slowing down. They were at the 9:30(-ish) race at this point until mile 20. Miles 20 and 21 were in the 9:45-9:50 range, mile 22 was 10:26, 23 was 11:58, 24 was 11:21, 25 was 11:04, and 26 was 11:45. As you can see, I hit the wall. The course elevation chart shows that at mile 17, there is a sharp hill. Again at mile 18. and at 19. A smaller one at 21, and it levels out again at 23. However, as you can see by my times, I was whipped by mile 22. I think I would have recovered if the hills stopped by mile 21, but they didn't, and I didn't survive. In addition, my body decided to lash out at my decision to run a marathon. My body went through the normal options for injury, hamstring, hip flexor, achilles tendon, but decided upon my left ankle. At one point, I had to stop running to stretch it, as it felt like I was impacting my foot to my leg by squeezing the cartilage out of my ankle. I was grimacing at several points, and although I tried to pick up it up with 2 miles to go, and again with 1 mile to go. I couldn't do anything until .1 miles to go (home stretch). Even then, I don't think I was going very fast.

Right now, my legs are quite sore, and I'm going to sit in cold (okay, cool) water to reduce any swelling my legs (hey, it really works). I'll definitely take a couple days off, but hopefully, my motivation will return and I can start running again next week-end.

Final: 26.2, 4:16:41, 9:47 pace. My GPS read 26.44 miles, for a 9:43 pace. Doesn't matter though. 9:43 or 9:47, it's still above a 4:10 total, or 9:32 pace. Oh well. Don't know what the future holds for me in marathons, as this was the only one I was considering this year. I'm doing a trail ultrarun later this year, and I expect my pace to be MUCH slower. I'm hoping to complete a 50k in 7 hours (or a 13:22 mile). I actually have NO idea what my time will be. The only reason I chose 7 hours is because the race cut off is 9 hours, and I had to choose something when I registered.