Chicago Afterthoughts

ORN: {}  I'm resting.

 

It's been a few days since the Chicago Marathon, and I have had time to collect my thoughts.  I've thought about how the race went, how training went, what went right, what went wrong.  I decided I might benefit from writing down some of these lessons learned.

 

First, I am proud of myself.  Before I start criticizing, I want to make it plain how happy I am about how I ran the race.  Dare I say it?  I ran a fun marathon.  One of the first spectator posters I saw, and one I frequently saw throughout the race, said words to the effect of "Your feet are hurting because you are kicking so much asphalt."  That is true.  I ran well.  I smiled most of the way.  I interacted with the crowd, drawing strength from them and giving back my gratitude.  I know I did the best I could have done on that day.  The criticism below should be read with all that in mind. 

 

Still, I didn't do as well as I had hoped.  Before the race, I wrote an unpublished blog post about my goals for the race.  In it, I specified three levels of goals.  My bronze medal goal was merely to finish.  My silver medal goal was to beat my last marathon time by 15 minutes.  I did that.  My gold medal goal was to beat my last marathon time by an hour, which would have meant a 4:25 finish.  Surely, this was a stretch goal, but not one that was out of reach.  Why did I fail to make this goal?

 

Honestly, the big reason is that I did not fully do the FIRST marathon training plan.  I didn't do the weight training component more than a few times, and sometimes I played free and loose with the cross training.  And I skipped some runs, either due to laziness or illness.  And I almost never ran my long runs at the correct pace; I ran them too slow.  Of all these mistakes, the last one was most critical.  But I don't know what I can do about it.  I've noticed I can run a 10-minute-mile pace for only so long.  Six miles?  Easy.  Ten?  Tough, but I've done it.  Thirteen or more?  Looking back at the data, I have never been able to maintain a 10-minute-mile pace beyond 12 miles.  That seems to be my most urgent training challenge.  Since I have not been able to run at marathon pace [9'19"] for any distance approaching a marathon, or even a half marathon, it's no wonder I fell short of my beyond-my-wildest-dreams goal.  Until I can, I'm stuck with the silver.  I have to dig deeper on my long runs.

 

Still, the 20 minute improvement over my last marathon should be credited to the FIRST plan.  Without all that speed-work, I never would have run as fast as I did Sunday.  Those long intervals and long tempo runs were the key.  Thanks to them, I was still [inconsistently] running 10'30" miles up until mile 14. 

 

So I need to renew my commitment to the FIRST plan -- the strength training, speed-work, race-pace long runs, stretching, all of it -- as I look forward to training for my next race, the Kentucky Derby Festival Mini-Marathon on April 24, 2010. 

 

But the big failure of the marathon was Rudy.  The buildings and tunnels wreaked havoc on my poor little Garmin Forerunner 305.  My data is totally whacked.  Somehow, in Chicago, I managed a 6,888 foot elevation gain!  I teleported through the Sears Tower, weaving around like a drunken sailor, even doubling back on the course several times.  What's up with that?  Also, check out that loop-de-loop I ran in Lincoln Park.  That's where I watered a tree.

 

One last thing.  If I had the ability to bend over in the last miles of the race, I could have cleaned up on personal electronics.  I saw at least one iPhone or iPod Touch, a Blackberry, and a brand new iPod Nano.  All of these items had been dropped along the course by some unlucky marathoner, and I'm serious, if my hamstrings weren't tighter than piano strings, I would be like Batman with the gadgetry.