Race Report: Boston Marathon

Posted by Chen

Most of you reading this already know that I fell way short of my sub-3:30 goal for this race. While I’d normally be somewhat upset and disappointed after a performance like that, this time, I’m nothing but content and grateful. Yesterday was a great day, plain and simple. For 26.42 miles (need to work on those tangents), I was in awe at how many people had come out to cheer and support us. Boston needed a day like yesterday, and Meb winning for the men made it that much sweeter. And did you hear about the runner who collapsed mere meters from the finish line and the four runners who helped carry him across? #thereisstillgoodintheworld

Anyway, backing up a bit, Sandi and I woke up at 6am and started our usual routine of bathroom visits and baguette eating. Will drove us to a shuttle stop in Hopkinton, and we boarded a bus to the athlete’s village. (Side note: before boarding the buses, every athlete had to go through a security checkpoint, but I was very impressed with how efficient the process was. Overall, I think the race organizers and the city of Boston did a fantastic job of taking every precaution to ensure that the runners and spectators felt as safe as possible all weekend – kudos to them!). Most of our time in the village was spent eating more bread and waiting in line for the porta-potties. 10AM came around before we knew it, and it was time for our wave to walk to the start. As we were walking, I mentioned to Sandi that I really needed to pee again and was pretty concerned about it, as they had warned us over and over that there would be very few porta-potties near the start (which I assumed would each have a line a mile long). Luckily, that was a flat out lie, and a beautiful sea of gray and white plastic toilets with no lines appeared right before the entrance to the corrals. I made a quick pit stop while Sandi waited, and we headed over to the start together. After another short walk through the corrals, we crossed the start line and were off.

 Pre-race shot in the hotel room

While Sandi is capable of running much faster than me, she graciously ran my pace so that we could run the race together. She said it well when she told me that this day was bigger than her, and that she just wanted to enjoy the experience. We ran the first several miles at or around my goal pace (7:50-7:55), but within the first 10K, I knew it wasn’t going to be my day. I should have backed off earlier, but I thought maybe my legs were just getting warmed up and that I could shake the feeling of fatigue. No dice – even 8:00-8:05 miles were feeling like a tempo effort. The temperature was also heating up way earlier than originally forecasted, which wasn’t helping the situation. By mile 11 or 12, I told Sandi that I was going to have to ease up and that she should go ahead. Sandi’s too nice of a person to leave me, though, so as I did at CIM last fall, I had to ghost out of the situation (i.e., fall back without telling her). Sorry, Sandi – it was the only way J.

Photo credit: Super fan Will

I managed to keep a decent pace until I saw Sandi’s family around mile 14, but after that, the wheels quickly fell off. Like, way off. I had pushed too hard for too long, and when I do that, there’s no turning back. As you’ll see in my splits, from mile 15 on, my legs faded like whoa, which was terrible timing given the Newton Hills I had ahead (miles 16-21). I usually get really down on myself as soon as this happens in a race (and it has happened many, many times – I’m not very good at that lesson-learning thing), but I decided I was just going to keep it “easy” and enjoy what was happening around me. Of course, nothing felt easy during the second half of the race, but I did manage to smile at the spectators and wave at the cameras when I could. Heartbreak Hill was longer and more difficult than I’d remembered (same goes for the entire course, really), but I managed to run all of the hills without walking, which I was proud of. Despite what my splits might imply, I actually managed not to walk any of the course, save for the water stops, which I normally walk through anyway. Slowly but surely, I saw the iconic Citgo sign, followed by Hereford, and finally Boylston. I gave everything I had left (which wasn’t much) to the final stretch on Boylston and finally crossed the finish line in 3:47:10.

My friend from college was tracking me from work and managed to capture this shot of me finishing. See if you can find me!

Splits:

1: 7:46

2: 7:49

3: 7:51

4: 7:55

5: 7:58

6: 8:01

7: 7:57

8: 8:00

9: 8:00

10: 8:03

11: 8:13

12: 8:12

13: 8:18

14: 8:28

15: 8:35

16: 8:37 (Good-bye, 8:XX miles. It’s been real)

17: 9:11

18: 9:10

19: 8:58

20: 9:17

21: 9:43 (Oh hello, Heartbreak. So nice to see you again)

22: 9:01

23: 9:16

24: 9:38

25: 9:44

26: 9:39

26.42: 9:09

Races like this one are always SO much harder than any of my PRs or perfectly negatively-splitted marathons. While they’re usually pretty frustrating, they also remind me that I’m strong enough to push through, even when everything hurts and I just want to curl up in a ball with a beer. They also remind me that 26.2 miles is a distance that needs to be respected, even if you’ve run it 21 times before. And they mostly remind me of why I started running in the first place a couple decades ago: because I like the challenge. Running didn’t come naturally to me when I first started, but I liked the feeling of accomplishment I gained every time I completed two or three miles without stopping. Today, I’m not always guaranteed that I’ll feel strong in a marathon even if I’ve had a perfect training cycle, but I do know that, barring any major catastrophes, I will finish what I started.

So what happened to make me crash like that? Well, friends, while some factors are always out of our control (i.e., the weather), I really have no one to blame but myself. Between the three races that I ran in the four weeks leading up to Boston and the red-eye flight I booked that screwed up my sleeping schedule during the three days before the race, it really comes as no surprise that I didn’t meet my goal. There’s always the next one, though, and now I’m looking forward to tackling that sub-3:30 with Rachel in the fall.

In the meantime, though, I suppose I should get in a pool to see if I can still stay afloat. Triathlon training – here I come!