This past
weekend I travelled up to Erie, PA for the Erie Marathon at Presque Isle. I
really can’t say anything bad about Erie or about the race. My goal heading
into the weekend at a bare minimum was rather simple; qualify for the 2013
Boston Marathon.
As I posted
in my post on Friday evening, the desire to run Boston
again next year came about when I visited Wellesley over the summer. Driving
along the marathon course made me want to run again. The only problem was that
I didn’t have a qualifying race recent enough for next year’s race. The
registration period for the Boston Marathon began last week and continued this
week with their new rolling process admitting the fastest runners first. To be
on the safe side, in case the race fills this week, I knew I had to run a race
before this week to qualify. A quick search led me to the Erie Marathon and I
soon signed up.
My training
going into the race was not ideal. The first 4 weeks after I decided to run
were during the summer when I was working with children outside for 9 hours a
day. The last 4 weeks have been the first 4 weeks of the fall semester and I
never managed to get into a good training routine. Fortunately, I did compete
in some races during those 8 weeks, including winning a wet, hilly 11-miler 4
weeks ago in 1:05:58. Another race 2 weeks ago (10k in 37:31) proved I was
still in reasonable shape and one 14.5 mile training run that felt good gave me
a bit more confidence heading into the marathon.
My plan
heading into the race was to start out slowly – really slowly. I had planned to
go through 10k no faster than 42 minutes. I’m not sure I really expected to go
that slow, and by race morning I was feeling positive enough that I didn’t want
to start out that slow as it was time I wouldn’t be able to get back later on.
The first mile was fast. I hit the
marker in 6:13 before easing up for a 6:41 second mile. Midway through the
second mile, Justin Sicilia caught up to me and we proceeded to run
side-by-side for the next 20 miles. Along with the amount of conversation I had
back in my 11-miler, this has made me realize that I am an extremely talkative
runner in longer races. The official 10k split came by in 39:51 after Justin
and I had settled into a steady pace of miles in the 6:20s. According to
SportTracks, my first 10k split came in at 40:07, followed by consecutive 10k
splits of 40:17. This brought me through 30k in 2:00:41 along with an official
halfway split of 1:24:36 – 12 seconds faster than I had been in the Miami Marathon
when I set my PR!
After
hitting the official 20 mile split in 2:09:39, now 1:32 behind my pace in
Miami, I began to slow rather substantially. Really, this isn’t surprising
given that I was 6 miles beyond my longest training run with another 6 miles to
go. Over the final 4 miles I suffered considerably and fell from 8/9th
place alongside Justin to 11th place at the finish. Fortunately none
of my miles fell below 8 minutes, however, and I managed to avoid walking at
all. With the finish line in sight I thought I might still be able to get under
2:55 which would beat my qualifying time by more than 10 minutes, not that it
would matter having missed the BQ-10 registration period last week. I crossed
in 2:55:09 to place 11th overall. I would have loved to be top-10 or
even top-5 but given the amount of training I had done and my goal of simply
qualifying for Boston I can’t be unhappy with this performance. All there is to
really say is “Mission Accomplished” and look forward to my next few races.
Next up is the SECTC Collegiate Championship race over the Olympic distance at
Rev3 Anderson on October 14th before aiming to go sub-2:50 at the
Kiawah Island Marathon in December. Provisionally, I am planning on running the
Richmond Half-Marathon on November 10th as part of my build-up.
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