Tough race today. I went for the BQ and crash and burned pretty hard. Things felt really good for the first 5 flat miles so I didn't hold back on the major hills miles 6-9. Although it felt easy at the time, the speed on the downhills took its toll. My time through 9 miles was 1:02:25 and about 35 seconds ahead of my plan. There was a big crowd including my wife and dog at the bottom of the hill after mile 9 and I felt great. Immediately after, we had a pretty significant climb. People started passing me so I looked down to my watch to see I had slowed down to a 8 minute pace. I realized shortly after that this wasn't going to be my day to BQ.
I finished the first half in 1:32:45, which for me was a PR by about 2 minutes. That gave me some temporary motivation and I was able to keep a decent pace for the next 3 miles or so.
The last 10 miles got slower and slower. Right when I passed the 20 mile mark, the 3:15 pace group passed me (the group I was planning to run with had I not tried the long shot BQ attempt) and I knew the last 10k was going to be really bad. The last 10k was pretty miserable, but I was happy that I didn't give up or stop to walk.
I decided to go for the BQ just so that I would have no regrets once I was finished. I learned a big lesson here. From my training, I believe the speed was there, but I lacked the long tempo runs and marathon simulation long runs to build the proper endurance. I guess I should still be happy for taking almost 50 minutes off my previous marathon PR though.
Here were the mile splits: 7:15, 7:05, 7:04, 6:59, 7:00, 6:55, 6:40, 6:32, 6:47, 7:13, 7:19, 7:32, 7:21, 7:38, 7:59, 7:19, 8:10, 8:15, 8:31, 8:52, 8:29, 8:38, 9:06, 9:38, 9:36, 10:00 (estimate for mile 26 since my garmin died)
I'm going to give it a few days before deciding to sign up for the Philadelphia Marathon in November. Hopefully it doesn't sell out in the meantime. | 