September
Marathons: Eerie and Not So Keen
OK,
so I stretched some words here to try to come up with a clever title. I’m referring to the two towns in which I ran
– Erie, Pennsylvania and Keene, New Hampshire.
Actually there was nothing “eerie” in Erie; however, my experience in
Keene really was not so keen. So on with
the tale.
I
had planned to run both of these marathons several months ago. The one in Erie was to be run on Presque
Isle, a narrow curl of land which goes out into Lake Erie. I figured that I needed to attempt a better
time than the 4:07:59 I achieved in the Delaware Marathon since that time was
only 2:01 under my qualifying standard for Boston, especially with so many
people interested in going in 2014. The three marathons I had run since
Delaware were either hilly, warm, or both and my best time was almost eight
minutes slower.
Leading
up to the event, the predictions on the weather seemed pretty close to perfect
– 50s, clear skies and a breeze. Things
felt right. Our ride up went up fairly
quickly and was uneventful. After
finding our motel, we found our way out to Presque Isle for the number
pick-up. We had to drive three miles
into the park on the very road on which part of the marathon would occur. By driving in and out, I saw twelve miles of
the two-loop course. It was indeed very
flat and the only trepidation I had was about the concrete sections. Later we went out to a local brewpub. Could the three specialty brews I had be
considered carbo-loading? Umm… you
decide. We got to our room and hit the
hay by nine.
Up
at four the next morning, I hurried out to a local fast food place. We ate and drank coffee and were prepared to
by five. The drive across town and into
the park took a while since everyone else had to go the same way. By quarter to six we were parked, right near
a restroom (yea, no portajohns). When
Carolyn had to avail herself of the facilities, I cranked up Tom Petty on the
stereo: Running Down a Dream and Love
is a Long Road are perfect tunes for getting psyched. In fact I was already
feeling that I was going to have a good run.
About
6:40 we started the 3/8ths of a mile walk to the start. The marathoners would be off at 7:00, while
Carolyn would wait another half hour for the start of the Half-Marathon. We could put our clothes bags in a holding
area right near the start, which was really convenient.
Then
it was off. There really aren’t many
details to report about this run. It
seems that for the first half I was clicking off very even splits, right around
9:12 pace. I went through half in
2:00:24. For a while I was thinking 2:02
was possible.
I
did try to avoid some of the concrete sections.
There was one area were there was an asphalt sidewalk next to the road
and I ran it on both loops. In other
areas, I tried running on the grass, but there were no consistent grooves worn
in the grass, so I would quickly go back to the road. It wasn’t as bad as I feared.
The
only real memories I had (aside from the almost constant shade and the cool
breezes, which kept my body at an ideal temperature for running), were the
three different guys I focused on during the run. All had on red. The first two were guys who seemed to be in
my age group. I remember the first guy
passing me about three miles in. He had a
pace chart on his wrist. I followed him
for seven miles. He may have gotten 75
yards in front of me before I began close on him. At ten miles, I was up to him and I asked him
what time he was trying. He said 4:05 or
4:10 at the worst. Yes, he was in my age
group. I said “So far, so good” as I
went past him. But I knew that he was
already slowing down. He finished in
4:18. Then there was another guy I
chased. I caught him in the second
loop. The third guy was not my age, but
he was stockier than me by a lot. He
passed me around 17 miles in. I was
impressed (because I always think about how much more work bigger people have
to do). But I wondered if he could keep
it up to the end. He pulled out of my
sight. But somewhere between 24 and 25
miles, I passed him as he was then laboring more than I. It always helps to be able to focus on people
to chase.
Meanwhile
my race was going well. I did slow up
some in the half second, but not that much.
The splits I recorded seemed uneven – 9:45, then a 9:02. But even my 26th mile was only up
to 9:47. The second half took me
2:03:50, only 3:36 slower than the first half.
Total time was 4:04:14, more than five minutes under my Boston standard. I knew I was in just by the fact that the
next day, BAA was taking registrations for people slower than five minutes
under their qualifying standards.
Meanwhile
Carolyn finished her half in 2:48:35 on minimal training. She felt sort of light-headed and her legs
hurt. But since then, with retirement,
she’s spending more time in walking and running. So there will probably be more half-marathons
in her future.
Not So Keen
Two
weeks after Erie, I went up to Keene, N.H. with Ricky Singh to run the Clarence
DeMar Marathon. DeMar was a seven-time
winner of the Boston Marathon back in the early parts of the 20th
century when everyone was an amateur. He
worked at Keene Normal School, the forerunner of Keene State College from which
the marathon was to be staged.
This
year the marathon was bigger than it has ever been. I heard there were about 500 registered with
410 finishers. The two previous years
there were less than 200 finishers. This
size increase may help explain the problems as the beginning of the race.
In
order to get to the start, we parked at the college and were bused out country
roads to the parking lot of a lumber business.
We had taken the early bus and were there by 6:45. The race was to start at 8:00, so we stood
around or sat around. I took some
shelter from the slight breeze against the building, but over the course of an
hour, in the 45 degree air, I was getting cold.
Twenty minutes before the start, we were told we needed to begin walking
to the start. So then we had to strip
off our extra clothes. Walking in my
race outfit, we walking down the gravel driveway and were directed to walk out
into a gravel yard, over a line of rocks.
Ricky had to stop to pull some gravel out of his shoe. This detour kept us off the open road, but
was quite annoying. Once reaching the
road, we immediately turned a corner and walked about 3/8ths of a mile up the
road to the start. Unfortunately the
race was going to go in the direction from which we had just come. With some people in the larger field still
waiting to get into one of the 14 portajohns before making the trek to the start,
those of us already at the start had to stand there shivering until everyone
was there. The event did not get off
until 8:12 and it took me five miles to finally warm up. The waiting also forced some of the hydrated
runners to pull over for an early pit stop.
I feel the race organization needs to reconfigure the start so that
stragglers approach from the back and the race gets off on time.
I
had read the description of the course and had seen the video. I had the impression, especially with the
information that it was 501 feet of net downhill running, that the course would
be a gentle downhill run. I was sadly
mistaken. Instead, it might be described
as emulating the Boston Marathon course, which has its most severe downhill
running in the early miles. That tends
to beat up the quads, making later running painful and slow. That’s exactly
what happened to me. While I ran the
first half a few seconds faster than I had run the first half of Erie, I
actually ran the first five miles the fastest because of the downhill and then
started slowing up. The slowing was only
slight until I was running the 14th mile and then I began to slow
significantly more with each passing mile.
I ran the second half in 2:27+, over two minutes a mile slower than the
first half. At the end of 23 miles, we
entered a couple of graveyards. I was wondering if the race directors were
trying to convey a bit of black humor, but I knew that a previous course had an
even worse last few miles. The roads were sharply rolling and steep. I had to walk and recorded a 14:45 mile, my
slowest ever when I was trying to run. Total time: 4:28. Conclusion: A downhill course only two weeks
after a previous marathon is not the optimum venue for me.
Ricky,
meanwhile, had a breakthrough day. In
listening to him relate his workouts, plus the experience of running with him
in the warmth of the marathon we did in North Carolina in August, I was
convince he could run faster. The NC run
was a 4:15+. His PR was 4:10. I said he could do much better. He started out to run 4:05, but finished with
a 3:59! I’m sure he’s got more
improvement ahead.
One
small consolation for me was learning that Benji Durden was in my
age-group. He’s 62 and ran a 3:49. In
the 70s and 80s he was an elite runner with a lifetime best under 2:10 and over
25 sub-2:20s in one decade. I checked out what else Durden had done this
year. While he had run an even slower
marathon two weeks early on another hilly course in 3:56, he also ran a 3:24 at
the Houston Marathon early in the year.
So he was 25 minutes off his best of the year, while I was 24 minutes
off. So maybe it WAS the course more
than my incomplete recovery from the previous marathon.
Recommendations:
ERIE
– This is an extremely fast course. If
the temperature is cool, it’s a great place to attempt a last minute BQ
(assuming registration is still open when you try). In a typical year, 24% of the field
qualifies; this year it was 32%
CLARENCE
DEMAR – This is a very scenic course. If
you need to run a marathon in New Hampshire, this is as close as one is to the
southern border of the state. The race directors need to fix the start. Unless you are young or really good on hills,
this is not a good place to attempt a BQ.
This year 15% qualified.
