Opposites Attract

I’m going to do a race report even though there is a push to document more of the training.  To be honest, there wasn’t any real training on my part anyway so I don’t have much to talk about on that front.  Here is a report of the Paavo Nurmi Marathon that Sandi and I ran on August 9th.

Our experiences were on each end of the spectrum.  Sandi was the 4^th female over all, but hated almost the entire experience.  I had a blast and felt great, but posted a time 70 minutes slower than my PR 9 months ago.

I’ll start at the beginning.  We made our way over to the finish line where we boarded a bus that took us up the road to the start line.  On the way to the bus we drove past the local high school athletic fields; home of the Hurley Midgets.  That has nothing to do with the marathon, isn’t a lie, and is absolutely worth mentioning.

 

 

We arrived at the start line where we joined less than 300 other runners to start our journey towards Hurley, WI.  We were both a little nervous, but ready to go.  At 7:30 the gun (a large woman who yelled “go”) fired and away we went.  Immediately Sandi began to pull away while I tried to keep it conservative.  The first couple miles are downhill, so it was very difficult to keep it as slow as we should have.  Neither of us succeeded but both were able to settle in around mile 3.  I ran with a guy for most of the first half who competes in Ironman 70.3 and 140.6.  I believe he qualified for the 70.3 championships in Mont-Tremblant next month so this was just a training run for him.  The rest of the first half was pretty uneventful.

Here is an elevation chart from MapMyRun because my Garmin Connect isn’t working and I can’t get to my activities.  This chart minimizes the impact of the last three peaks, but I can assure you, they seemed a lot like the Alps.  In all seriousness, there is only about 560ft of climbing so with the right training and good weather it has the potential to be a great race.

Mile 15 was a game-changer for this race.  Sandi missed the water stop which started a downward spiral that ended in a mouthful of vomit and walk breaks.  My trip was more of a gradual slide as the heat and long rollers started to take their toll.  The second half was void of any shade and temperatures crept into the 70s.  Water stops were more frequent in the second half (about every mile or two) and each one had bags of ice and cold sponges.  I learned a lot about running a hot marathon.

Keys to running a hot marathon:

1. Drink the electrolytes
2. Use the sponges, even if they smell strange
3. Accept that you should run a slower pace than your ideal-condition marathon pace (I’m going to start calling this “CIM Pace”*)

*CIM – California International Marathon: known as one of the fastest (if not the fastest) marathon courses in the Western US.

The finish was probably the most difficult finish of any marathon I have ever run.  It is an up-hill finish on the shoulder of a busy highway without shade.  Further, there is a large group of Paavo veterans who had the insight to leave enough in the tank to power through as well as fresh-legged relay runners who constantly fly by you.  Through the adversity Sandi was able to hold on and salvage a great time of 3:38:20 and 4^th overall.  I, on the other hand, was greeted by my old friend ITB* who I thought I got rid of.  I went into this race with woefully low levels of training and made the decision to run based on perceived effort, which would be apparent if I was able to show my mile split times here.  I just wanted to keep my heartbeats in a range that would allow me to stay just on the edge of comfortable.  I made the decision to walk through the last water stop (~mile 24.5) in order to get enough to drink before making the final push up to the finish.  I took my last gulp, threw the cup to the side, and began to accelerate from a walk back to a jog.  That acceleration lasted two steps before coming to a complete stop.  The quick walk through the water stop was enough time for my ITB to tighten up and made running impossible.  I took time to do some targeted stretches to see if I could stretch things out, but had little luck.  My next idea was to attempt a fast walk to see if I could loosen it up with dynamic movement.  This also was a failure and I began to accept that the running portion of the day had finished and would likely post a PW.  Lucky for me, my worst is so much slower than my normal times that even a complete blow-out won’t do it.

*ITB - Iliotibial Band: connects the knee to the pelvis and stabilizes the knee during running motion.

 

It is likely that we will be running this race again.  And at this point you might be asking yourself how I came to that conclusion based on how terrible this was for both of us.  Well, Sandi feels as though the race got the best of her and she needs to get her revenge.  I feel as though this race would be even more amazing if I were to have put just a little bit of effort into training for it.

 

Now we are both going to focus in on the fall training plan that will include a couple 5Ks in September, a half marathon in October, and CIM in December.

Will