Erie Marathon at Presque Isle Preview

It's Friday evening, I'm lying in a hotel room in Erie, PA ready for what will be my 4th marathon on Sunday morning. The decision to run a marathon in mid-September came suddenly about 9 weeks ago when I visited Wellesley, MA for the first time since the Boston Marathon back in April. Driving parts of the marathon course gave me the urge to run Boston again next year but there was just one problem, I don't have a Boston qualifying time in a race recent enough to count for next year's event! That meant I needed to run another marathon (well) in order to get into the 2013 Boston Marathon. I was, and still am, planning to make a concerted effort to break my PR of 2:51:03 at the Kiawah Island Marathon on December 8th, but there's a very good chance that Boston registration will close before then. The two-week registration period began last Monday and is essentially a rolling process for those who have qualified by more than x-minutes faster than their qualifying standard for the first week before being open to all qualified runners in the second week. If the field has not been filled by the end of the second week, then registration remains open on a first come, first served basis until the race is filled. To be on the safe side I chose this weekend as the last realistic chance I had to qualify and be guaranteed to get into Boston provided I run under my qualifying standard of 3:05:00.

So that leaves me here, in a hotel room in Erie, 9 weeks later.

My training for this race has been pathetic. It's not that I didn't have a great plan to get me in shape, I just couldn't stick to it between the last 4 weeks of work over the summer and classes starting up for the fall semester. My long run peaked at 14.5 miles ten days ago. Despite feeling slightly under trained, I have reason to be optimistic. My recent races have been extremely solid, including a great win in the Lightfoot Series 11-miler 4 weeks ago on a hilly course. See here for my race report from that race as well as my other big races since May. In addition to the 11-miler, my 37:31 effort over 10k just a fortnight ago in 80 degree temperatures also indicates reasonable condition heading into the weekend.

My past marathons have produced a very mixed bag of results. I outlined this in a post last May when I concluded that marathons are almost entirely about patience. If you start out too fast it's impossible to run your best. On Sunday I plan on sticking to that philosophy by starting out more than a minute slower than I ever have in a marathon before. My goal is to split no faster than 42 minutes for the first 10k, however hard it may be to go out that slow. 42 minutes is 6:45 per mile and extrapolates out to 2:56:58 should I maintain that pace. In theory, I will be able to increase the pace slightly after that first 10k and ultimately run faster than 2:56, but if I can't then anything faster than 42 minutes would have been way too fast to start out.

Ideally, I'd like to descend each 10k split from 42:00 to 41:30 (1:28 at 13.1 miles), to 41:00, to 40:30. I realize that this may be extremely unlikely - especially for that final 10k, but if I approach the race with that strategy in mind, then it's equally as unlikely that I blow up in the final 10 miles and struggle to hit the qualifying time of 3:05:00.

My coach, Eric Limkemann, competed in the full distance triathlon at Rev3 Cedar Point last weekend. He took it out on the run somewhat hard - understandably as he was leading - and faded towards the end. My open run fitness is somewhat similar to his run after having swam 2.4 miles and biked 112. His race report can be found here and as he wrote,

"Looking at splits, all I had to do was run a 3 hour marathon to win the day.  If I had started out at 6:50 instead of 6:25 for the first 10k, I may have been able to hold on to the win.  I preach patience to my athletes and thought I was practicing what I preach.  I may have been wrong."

Heading into Sunday's race I am going to take marathon patience to a whole new extreme. Even in Miami when I ran 2:51:03 (race report) I felt as though I could have run sub-2:50 had I waited a few more miles to push rather than picking up the pace in the 3rd 10k. On Sunday I plan to negative split the two halves, and hopefully come close to running my last 10k as fast as my other 10k splits!

Right now the weather forecast looks ideal for Sunday morning with a start time temperature of 49 degrees. My first half-marathon plan of 1:28 should feel like nothing more than a leisurely jog in that kind of temperature. The course is also completely flat so a well-executed race should result in a great time!