Bust :(

I didn't have to think long about the title of this post. While the news is not quite that bad, the title of my last post was BQ or Bust, and even if I did establish a new PR, it wasn't nearly fast enough to qualify for Boston at my age. As I had outlined in my previous post, race strategy could go either way, what I didn't anticipate is that even while blowing up I would still land a respectable PR with 3h19m10s. The race itself was epic for me, as I guess every marathon is. I moved through the entire range of emotions in this race, from despair to elation to despair again.

I felt pretty ready for the race. Having traveled a full day ahead so that the day before could be spent resting and a proper night's sleep could be guaranteed. My pre-race nutrition and hydration was right on schedule. I went to bed even 1 hour earlier on the count of daytime savings being over. I woke up fresh and ready to tackle the distance.

I finally got to meet Marlene when I was headed to the start line. Her husband looked ready to race, even going through the effort of doing warmups before the race. Don't get me wrong, I totally respect warmups, but for a marathon, I need every mile in me before the race, there's no juice to spare for warmups. Things turned out differently for Marlene's Hubby as you will most probably read soon over Marlene's blog, he turned in a new PR by 16 minutes! I saw Marlene multiple times during the race and her cheering and M&M costume always brought a smile to my face and added speed to my stride.
At the start line, I realized how small a race this was. At 1500 marathoners, this is the smallest marathon I ever attended. A far stretch from LA's 25,000 or even Ottawa's 6,000. There was a pretty diverse crowd of young and old and everyone seemed upbeat about the perfect weather. I noticed how some people were carrying camelpacks. I found it funny to bring your own hydration at a race, kinda like bringing a sandwich to a buffet. I found out the reason why once I was on the course. Water stations were a bit sparser than I am used to and e-load was the chosen race drink. I am not very familiar with e-load but it did not feel sweet or taste like anything except salt. I regretted not bringing my own bottle of sports drink.

Warming up at the start line, I realized I was hanging out with the fast guys. It was a smallish race but being that close to the start line can be a bit intimidating. No waiting around after the gun looking at those heads bobbing up and down, when the gun goes off, you get going! Everyone settled into their own speeds fairly quickly.I settled into a good groove right at the start with a fast first 2 kilometers, right on pace for a BQ.

• 4:27
• 4:28

At about km 2, my left leg had a weird feeling in it. Not sure if it was the cold or if I was rusty from tapering. I didn't know if I should stop to relace my shoes, maybe they were too tight? I slowed down to see if that would help. I got a bit worried that there was something seriously wrong with my leg after the feeling didn't go away after a few kilometers and even considered dropping out to prevent serious injury. Eventually the feeling went away at about km 10.

• 4:30
• 4:33
• 4:38
• 4:32
• 4:36
• 4:32
• 4:33
• 4:33

At kilometer 10 I realized a was a bit behind on my 3h10 goal. Nothing major with about 20 seconds to make up but I realized that I had two choices if I really wanted to qualify for Boston, get faster or get older. I wasn't getting any older on the spot so I decide to get faster. Throughout the race, I pictured a fictitious runner called BQ and always remained aware of how far ahead (or even behind) that runner was. So I pushed a bit harder and got back on track.
It was great to see Alex cheering for me. I felt really good about the race so far. Marlene was also cheering a bit further down the line. Seeing her in her M&M costume was awesome and gave me an extra kick. Qualifying for Boston is what draws a lot of people to this race. Everyone was keeping track of where they were and where they needed to be. Some people had given up already by then and would wait for the next year when they would fall into a new category.

• 4:27
• 4:27
• 4:30
• 4:35
• 4:23
• 4:22
• 4:27

I was now back on track right where I wanted to be. The next portion of the course then started getting a bit downhill. I knew a downhill section was coming but if I knew how much of a slope it was, I wouldn't have stressed about getting back on track. It actually felt like cheating a bit to go down the slope.

• 4:18
• 4:19
• 4:19
• 4:26
• 4:20
• 4:13
• 4:12
• 4:17

I felt like I was flying. I accumulated a lead of almost 2 minutes over my fictitious BQ foe. I was so happy, I felt like it was now impossible for me to mess up and not make 3:10. Images of flying over the finish line at 3:08 flew in my mind while I ran down the slope. Once the downhill section was over, my pace felt slow even when it was 4:30m/km. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to keep it up. I kept chugging along as as much as I could.

• 4:23
• 4:25
• 4:27
• 4:49
• 4:31
• 4:25
• 4:30

Marlene was waiting after an underpass and her M&M costume brought another smile :)
By that point I was becoming a bit thirsty. Avoiding the salty eloads at the water stops may not have been the best decision. I had brought my own gels and some starburst candies as well so I hoped that my carbohydrates were being replenished in time but there just wasn't enough water out there to quench my thirst. Shortly after km 32, my slow descent into hell started.

• 4:43
• 4:38
• 4:55
• 4:46
• 4:51

As I entered into the final stretch of 10km, I felt the wall coming on. I mentally calculated my minimum pace to keep my 3:10 goal alive and realized that a 4:40m/km pace would be difficult with what seemed like a pretty strong headwind. Environment Canada reports winds of up to 25km/h yet I don't think everyone felt the wind the same way. The wall sometimes has its ways with runners. I watched helplessly as my fictitious BQ opponent closed the gap and passed me. My legs were painful, the juice was gone and my spirits were quickly falling. As we turned around the final bend, I was hit by what felt like a wall of wind. It literally took all the energy I had just to keep going. I started the painful mental process of adjusting my goal to 3:12 then 3:15 to finally dig deep just enough to actually keep going instead of sitting by on one of the comfortable-looking and appealing park benches by the side of the path we were running on.

• 00:06:18
• 00:05:28
• 00:06:39
• 00:05:44
• 00:05:14

These last few kilometers were the most difficult I ever had to run. Finishing this race was even more difficult than the painful crawl of my first marathon. I just wanted to get the race done and over with and move on. Seeing everyone passing me by while I took walking breaks and extended every effort I could to just keep going. The disappointment I was feeling at not meeting my objective added to my exhaustion and made me feel really bad. Some really happy runners were prancing around shouting to the world that they were heading to Boston after trying for 10 years.

The final lap was pretty cruel with the runners going by the finish line and looping an extra few hundred meters. Wouldn't this race ever end? My Garmin reports the final 450m at 3:46 for an official chip time of 3:19:10. Marlene caught this great picture of an exhausted runner trying to stay together long enough to cross the finish line.
I was really glad to have finished. Coming in under 3:20 was actually fairly impressive given that the last 10km took me over 53 minutes. It's a new PR but could have been much lower if I raced smarter. I will learn from this to study the course profiles ahead of time to better plan my races. I could have taken it a bit easier on the first half to keep more ammo for the last end. Knowing that the water stations were 3km apart and knowing that eload wouldn't agree with me, I could have designed an hydration strategy that would have helped a bit.
I think the speed heat map tells the story pretty well.
And I wish I had taken a look at this elevation chart before I raced:
Overall, I think Hamilton's Road2Hope Marathon is a really well organized race. It's very small so there's not as much cheering as a bigger race could offer but there were cheerers peppered around the course. The course itself is fairly fast, if raced smart, even if a bit boring. The finishing kms would be very scenic if one had energy to take in the scenery. I'm not sure I would race this one again unless I was specifically looking for another go at the BQ. I think that I will do my time and train so that any race can be a BQ rather than try to cheat and pick a fast race to qualify.

My plans for now is a two weeks vacation from training. I know that I probably will not be able to withstand 2 weeks without getting out there but I'm not entering a training plan anytime soon. Miami is still on the table but I started wrestling with the idea of switching to a half marathon or at least of taking is easy and enjoying the scenery instead of pushing again for another PB/BQ. I know that I have a much faster race in me if I race smarter next time. I think 3:15 would be doable and I could hold it together until the end. As with every marathon, I learned a lot about myself during training and even more during the race. Marathons are life changing experiences in any case, difficult ones are even more meaningful if you ask me. As a friend told me yesterday, the fact that I ran faster than ever and managed not to get injured means I am doing something right.