My goals for the Columbus Marathon were
(1) Finish (did that)
(2) Finish in under 4 hours (did that)
(3) PR (nope, my PR is 3:39 in Baltimore in 2004)
(4) BQ (nope, needed a 3:35 for my M50-54 age group)
My Time: 3:50:32 (8:48 pace)
Place: 1272 of 3972 overall
1023 of 2463 men
80 of 225 in my age group (Men 50-54)
Some general info on the Columbus Marathon:
The course is pretty flat. They say they have close to the best percentage of runners who BQ.
Besides the marathon, they also had a half marathon that started at the same time. And they had a walkers marathon and half marathon that began an hour earlier. And they had the wheelchair athletes. The half-marathon course is ALMOST the same as the first half of the marathon course. But at some point, the half marathoners took a shortcut and then rejoined us. They were then about 3/4 of a mile ahead of us. The problem with this was that we were suddenly joined by a bunch of runners who were running at a slower pace so we had to go faster than them to keep on pace.
There seemed to be a lot of Ironman triathletes in the race. In fact, the winner looked more like a triathlete than a runner (his time was 2:31).
The course was set up well for spectators. By just staying within a few blocks, a group could see a runner at the start, at the 9 mile mark, at the 13 mile mark and at the finish. That’s pretty good.
So back to me. A few
weeks ago, I doubted I’d even finish in under 4 hours. I
had a groin pull about 5 weeks ago. Three weeks ago, I
did my last long run, 20 miles. It was very slow and I
hurt afterwards. I expected to have my worst marathon
yet (this was #18). But then my training improved so I actually had visions
of getting that 3:35.
All last week I was
watching as the weather forecast for Sunday in Columbus kept getting warmer
and warmer. Uh oh, another Chicago ?
But it wasn’t. It was in the 50s at the start and the
breeze kept it so that I didn’t notice the heat. It really
didn't heat up until mid-afternoon.
I started with the
3:30 pace team. And I kept with them for the first half (1:46 at that
point). But then I slowed a lot. Near the end, I was
doing 10 minute miles watching lots of people pass me. I finished at 3:50.
I guess that's to be expected with my training interrupted a few weeks
before.
So I’m glad that despite the injury, I ended up with a sub-4 time. I also did not have the leg cramps for the last few miles that have plagued me in past years. I credit taking Endurolyte capsules during the race. I haven’t done that in the past and it seemed to pay off.
Besides the problem with the slower half-marathoners joining us, the only other problem was that there weren’t enough water tables. They had water every 1 ˝ miles and I took a drink at every one. But near the end I was very dehydrated.
The end of the race was a nice downhill and I was able to turn it on. That was fun. And crowd-support was very good throughout the course.
To sum up…it was a
very good weekend for me and my family. Had I not had
the injury, maybe I would have finally BQ’d. Maybe :-) .
One last thing...My son, who’s a junior at Ohio State (go #1 Bucs), said he’d like to try the marathon next year. I feel like I’m in an American Express commercial…running a marathon alongside your son…priceless.
