Marathon Bests and Worsts

I have gotten the question several times – “What is your favorite marathon?”  I have never had an immediate answer because I want to know “favorite” for what reason?  Speed? Scenery? Fun?  There is no one answer.  So I have decided to look at my marathons – 123 as of the beginning of September 2015 – and make lists of various categories.

First Marathon:  Philadelphia, 1995, 3:46:05

First Boston Qualifying Time: Philadelphia, 1996, 3:26:55 (needed under 3:30), 3^rd marathon.

Fastest Time: Boston, 1997, 3:21:51, 4^th marathon, stops for cramps and portajohn break cost five minutes.

Most painful post-race recovery: Boston, 1997, had to walk down steps backwards for a couple days

Most marathons for one venue:  Boston, 13. 1996-8, 2000-5, 2007-9, 2012, 2014

   Delaware, 12, 2004-2015

  Philadelphia, 8, 1995-7, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005-6  

Most consecutive marathon at one venue: Delaware (Wilmington), 12, 2004-2015

Marathons where I felt most “in the zone”, excluding Philadelphia, 1996 and Boston, 1997:  Philadelphia, 1999, 3:33:12 (incl. 2:30 for “pit stop”); B & A Trail, 2001, 3:34:46 (inc. 2:09 “pit stop”); Mohawk Hudson Valley, 2003, 3:43:20; Ocean City (Md.), 2006, 3:49:30; Delaware, 2013, 4:07:59; Erie, 2013, 4:04:04.

Number of marathons requiring “pit stops”:  21, 13 of which were before 2003

Marathons involving injuries:  Washington’s Birthday, 2011, tore gluteal/hip muscle and had to walk almost 12 miles; Martian Marathon, 2015, fell and jammed elbow into rib, possibly breaking it; Gobbler Grind, 2015, fell again, scraped right knee, bruised hip, cracked rib.

Slowest Marathons + reasons:

50 to 54:  Delaware (old Middletown into Maryland course): 4:09:20, wind and “pit stop”

55 to 59:  Boston, 2001, 4:14:35. Knew I was not going to have a good day, took a camera and shot a roll of picture, had a full beer at the Hash House Harriers stop on Heartbreak Hill.

  Boston, 2004, 4:19:59, temps in upper 80s.

60 to 64:  Seashore Marathon (Rehoboth), 2008, 4:23:29, windy conditions caused hamstrings to cramp the entire second half, forcing me to alternate jogging with walking.

  Boston, 2009, 4:29:02, felt awful all day

  God’s Country, 4:24:08, long climb over Eastern continental divide left me so fatigued that I could not run much going downhill to the end

  Drake Well, 4:28:19, although the temperature stayed close to 70 most of the race, the humidity was 100%.

65 to 69:  G.W. Birthday, 2011, 5:40:17, tore hip muscle and walked

  Deseret News, 5:09:02, altitude and steep downhill early beat me up

  Boston, 2012, 5:24:57, 88 degrees and more humid than in 2014

Over 70:  Revel Rockies, 5:22:53, altitude and cambered road made running impossible in the second half

  Green River, 5:28:15, started at 6100 feet, went up to 7500.  Actual running was impossible and my speeds were, depending on the difficulty of the terrain at the moment, jogging, race walking, or walking.

Courses with most loops:  I don’t mind courses with multiple loops and, in fact, I preferred the older Delaware four-loop out-and-back course to the current two-loop course.  I may be doing a course in early 2016 with 13 out and back loops, essentially a one-mile course with one aid station. (I later abandoned going to this one.)

  Last Plain To Boston, 1999, 8+ loops – Put on by the DC Roadrunners in a year when the Last Train to Boston wasn’t being run, it took place in conjunction with the club’s 20K championship at Haines Point in DC.  The loop is 3.2 miles and the marathoners started an hour before the 20K runners.  It got awfully old having speedsters go past while one’s body was tiring.

  Around the Lake Marathon, 2010, 8 loops – This event is in late July in Massachusetts and starts in the evening.  Some people do 12 and 24 hours runs.

  Asbury Park, 2009, 5 loops

  4 loop courses – Delaware (Middletown), 1997; Delaware (Wilmington), 2004 -9; Last Chance for Beantown; Lucky Trail

  3 loop courses – George Washington Birthday; Fortitude for First Descents, 2011 and 2012

Marathons with finishes on tracks or football fields:  Freedom’s Run, 2011

  Canton, 2012 – Hall of Fame stadium

Marathons with notable places in the race:  Philadelphia, Independence Hall

  Boston – for runners the entire course is historic, including screaming Wellesley coeds at 20K, the Newton Hills, the Johnny Kelly statue, running past the Citco sign and Fenway Park with a mile to go, and the final 3/8 of a mile down Boyleston St.

  Monster Mash, 2013, first mile on Dover International Speedway, also run past historic government buildings in Dover

  Ocean Drive, 2001 and 2009, starts in historic Cape May

  C & D Canal Marathon, 2007, ran over and back on the St. Georges bridge

  God’s Country, 2009, crosses the Eastern continental divide

  Drake Well,  2009, starts near the site of the first oil well in the country

  Asbury Park, 2009, does go past the Stone Pony, where Springsteen got his start.  Truth be told, it’s just a concrete block dive.

    Freedom’s Run starts in Harpers Ferry, W. Va.  Later the course goes through Antietam Battlefield, site of the bloodiest battle in the civil war.

  Deseret News, 2011, starts outside Salt Lake City in the pass where Mormons first came through and found the Salt Lake Valley.  The marathon finishes at the park where Pioneer Day is being celebrated.  The runners go alongside the parade of covered wagons that is the main attraction.

  The Hartford Marathon, 2012, starts and finishes near the golden domed state capitol.

  Hoover Dam,  2013, starts in a park on Lake Meade and then climbs up to the trail originally used to bring supplies up to the people building the Hoover Dam.  There are several tunnels to run through and eventually the runners turn around after running onto the roof of the parking garage for the Dam.

  The Louisiana Marathon, 2014, starts right in front of the state capitol and also goes past LSU’s Tiger Stadium.

  The Savannah Marathon, 2014, goes through a historic area of the city and also through Savannah State University, where a choir sings.

  The Huntsville Marathon, 2014, goes under several rockets outside the aerospace museum.

Trail marathons completed:  Seven - The above slow times do not include any of the trail marathons I did:  five Stumpy’s, one Triple Crown, and HAT Run, which was actually a 50K, but I include as a marathon because it’s the only ultra I have done.  All those times were over five hours, except my first Stumpy’s in 4:48 in 2002 and second Stumpy’s in 4:50 in 2003.

Windiest marathons:  Delaware, 1995, 4:09; B&A Trail, 1999, 3:59 (I ran one here three years later 24 minutes faster); Asbury Park, 2009, 4:28:11; Gansett Marathon, 2011, 4:31:20; G.W. Birthday, 2013, 4:36:21; Vermont City, 2013; 4:24:54.  BTW, almost every marathon I have run near a beach had strong wind.

Marathon requiring qualifying time (other than Boston):  Gansett, 2011, 4:31:20.  The qualifying time was five minutes faster than Boston and the race is held two days before Boston.  I was the oldest person in the race and since everyone was capable of running a Boston qualifying time, I was the second to last finisher.

Marathons where the sounds of explosions were heard:  G. W. Birthday, 1998, 2011, 2013, near a military installation which tests munitions; Last Train to Boston, 2001, at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, which was never held again after 9/11; Hatfield-McCoy, 2013, put on by descendants of the famous feuding families in Kentucky near the West Virginia border.  After running pasts a house with about a dozen people watching from a porch, someone shot off a gun, which was unnerving to me.

Most poorly planned events:  Asbury Park, 2009, this course had multiple loops which ended up running north up the boardwalk into the teeth of gale force winds.  The rest of the course through town was more sheltered from the wind, so reversing the direction of running the loops would have been much easier on the runners.

  Last Chance for Beantown, 2013, this event was held in a gated community in North Carolina and the singular propose seemed to be to promote the community.  Held in the evening, sections were poorly lit, and there were no awards at all for running the marathon.  The event never was held again.

  Two Rivers, 2014, I can’t list all of the issues with this one.  The races are held on both Saturday and Sunday.  Promised a Boston certified course, but the finish was changed because of snow on the finish area parking lot (hadn’t snowed in weeks). The course was short and the water tables ran out of fluid early.  The director is stealing money.

  Revel Rockies, 2015, the website misleads about the ease of running a downhill marathon (starting at 11,200 feet).  But the biggest issue was the bus snafu.  Several dozen people could not get to the start, including the woman who may have won (she won the half and was ranting afterward).  1,200 half-marathoners could not get to the starting line.              

Most worrisome traffic issues:  Johnstown, 2006, the second half of the event was on small back roads and the runners had to go with the traffic with virtually no shoulder

Lower Potomac, 2007 and 2013, the first half is on islands with little traffic, but the second half was on the main two-lane road in the area.  Because of the camber of the road, people tried to run in the lanes when there was no traffic and then get to the shoulder when traffic came.  But a number of times in both the races I did, drivers seemed to resent the runners and would come quite close to us on the side at speeds over 50 mph.

Angriest drivers:  Baltimore, 2001 (closed a four lane highway and cars sat for hours; changed the course after that first year; Canton, 2012, another first year event.

Most over-hyped Boston qualifiers:  Mo’ Cowbell, 2014 and Revel Rockies, 2015:  Both websites promised fast times, but neglected important details.  Mo Cowbell had a first half with a lot of concrete and a second half that was on a gravelly, cambered trail.  Revel Rockies misstated the difficulty of running at altitude and had a second half severely cambered to the right towards a creek.  I basically walked the second half.

Coldest marathons:  Delaware, 1995, a blustery day where temperatures did not get out of the 30s.

  Mohawk Hudson Valley, 2003 – It was a very unusual day where the temperature in the Mohawk Valley in early October was in the 30s with drizzle.  I ran a BQ, but my hands were stinging from the cold wetness the entire race.  Later I checked and found that area was the coldest place in the contiguous 48 states that morning.

  Route 66, 2013 – Who would imagine that in November in Oklahoma the temperature would be at 23 degrees at the start and not rise higher than 28 degrees by the finish?  I was forewarned and had multiple layers of clothes as well as charcoal warmers in my mittens and shoes.

Hottest Marathons:  Boston, 2004, the race still went off at noon then.  The temperature was in the mid 80s with a dry tail wind.

  Half-Sauer, Half Kraut Marathon, held in June, 2010.  The race didn’t start until 8:00 AM.  I was sweating just standing at the start.  I took it easy and took lots of fluids and ended up passing a runner who ordinarily was much faster than me, but who was overheated.  The dew point was near 70 with temps up to 88.

  Boston, 2012, 5:24:57.  With the now earlier start the temperature was even warmer than in 2004 with no dry breeze.  The run became a slog to just get from one water stop to the next.  Hundreds of people deferred their entry as the BAA offered the chance to not run.

  The Eastern most marathon to start in the United States (and also the only U.S. marathon to include 20 miles in another country) – The Bay of Fundy International Marathon, 2013 – starting in a state park outside of Lubuc, Maine, the runners goes almost six miles and crosses a bridge onto Campobello Island, which is part of Canada.  The next 20 miles are about and back on the island with only a quarter mile run to the main street of Lubuc after crossing back.

Easiest courses (for me):  I preface this by saying some people are good at running downhill, but I am not one of them.  Also, many beach marathons are relatively flat, but one frequently has to deal with winds at those races. 

B&A Trail, Severna Park, MD:  I have run this one three times.  Put on by the Annapolis Roadrunners, it goes out and back, first south and then north.  The first time I encountered winds going north, but the second time I ran BQ and had a negative split (second half faster than first).  The first half has some slight hills in the early neighborhood running and then only serious hill at the seven-mile turnaround.  So I ran conservatively until I got back up on level ground and then picked my pace.

Mohawk Hudson River - I had run this course three times, using each time as my qualifying time for the next two Boston Marathons.  The course drops gradually for a total decline of just a couple hundred feet – enough to speed you up without beating you up.

Erie – located on Presque Isle, this two loop course is totally flat and about 75% shaded. In early September on Lake Erie the air was cool and dry.  Perfect weather!

Scenic Marathons:  This category is different from the category with notable landmarks, concentrating on the views around.  First, six of the seven trail marathons that I did were in White Clay Creek State Park and Middle Run County Park.  The other was at Susquehanna State Park.  Running in woodland is obviously peaceful and tends to make you feel at one with nature.

  Other courses I have run that incorporate a lot of woods and sometimes dirt trails are:  North Central Trail, Mohawk Hudson Valley, B&A Trail, G.W. Birthday, Drake Well, Lehigh River Valley, Freedom’s Run, Delaware & Lehigh Heritage, Bucks County, Fortitude for First Descents (in Cape Henlopen State Park), Bob Potts, Veteran’s Day, and Two Rivers (not recommended).

  The truly scenic courses would be some of the latest ones I have done:  Deseret News, Bay of Fundy International, Hoover Dam, Revel Rockies, and Run with the Horses.  As I finish the Western states, I’ll probably do more scenic ones.

Marathons by state (as of 9/10/2015):

Delaware - 28
Pennsylvania - 25
Maryland - 15
Massachusetts - 14
New York - 5
New Jersey - 3
Virginia, Florida, South Carolina - 2
Each one - District of Columbia, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Ohio, Utah, Illinois, Indiana, Vermont, Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nevada, Louisiana, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Kansas, Arizona.

In my first sixteen years of running marathons, having done a total of 73, I had only done them in eight states plus the District of Columbia.  In the next five years after having decided to attempt to complete a marathon in every state, I will have added 31 more states by the end of 2015.

Marathons by year:

1995 - 2   2008 - 7
1996 - 1   2009 - 8
1997 - 4   2010 - 8
1998 - 2   2011 - 9
1999 - 3   2012 - 10
2000 - 3   2013 - 15
2001 - 5   2014 - 8
2002 - 6   2015 - 13
2003 - 4
2004 - 4
2005 - 4
2006 - 5
2007 - 7

Revel Rockies Marathon: 

I went up to 11,000 feet and it was all downhill from there!

In September of 2013 I ran the Erie Marathon, which is flat, in 4:04:14 at the age of 68.  After that performance I started wondering whether I could run a time better than the existing Delaware state record for a 70 year-old man, which is 3:57:06, in a little more than a year when I turned 70.  Well, I didn’t really work on it in terms of training and my first attempt at the Mo’ Cowbell Marathon in October 2014 was miserable as half of it was on a rough gravel trail.

The next two marathons I did in the fall of 2014 were better – 4:14 and 4:15, easily Boston Qualifiers for man of 70, but nowhere near the necessary sub four hour time.  Over the winter I gained weight – maybe ten pounds.  In 2015 my times were slower between 4:31 and 4:45.

 But by spring I had found a marathon in Colorado – the Revel Rockies.  It was advertised as a totally downhill event, dropping 5,400 feet from a starting altitude of 11,200 feet.  The website talked about PRs and how the altitude would not be that much of a problem since the run was downhill (much easier aerobically than a level or uphill course).  So I resolved to do it as my Colorado marathon.  Carolyn would come with me, we’d take a week and see some sights.

The beginning of June after my slowest marathon of the year in 4:45 in Minneapolis, I resolved to again shed the excess fat.  I restricted my caloric intake to the essentials for several weeks and did a lot of walking in addition to my normal running.  As the date approached in mid-July, sure enough I had lost close to ten pounds.

The one thing the race website told me to do was to become inured to downhill running.  In April and May, I did some half-mile downhill repeats on New Linden Hill road.  But going back up the hill was taking to long.  I was saving my energy for the downhill running, so I was walking back up the hill.  It was taking me close to ten minutes on the uphill.  That wasn’t going to work.

By June I had decided on running down a portion of Duncan Road at Delcastle.  The section was a bit over a quarter mile. I was running them at a pace of 8:30 or better, and would do the last one each time under a 7:00 minute pace.  I started with ten repeats and did each subsequent workout three days later, each time adding two more repeats.  I did my last workout of 20 repeats two and a half weeks before the marathon in order to recover.  I figured that was the best I could do with a compressed training schedule.

We flew out to the Denver area just the Friday before the Sunday race.  No, there would be no acclimating to the altitude as I wanted to recover before going home, rather than get on a plane with sore legs.  In fact I realize now that acclimating to such attitude takes at least a couple weeks. Even getting used to being a mile high would not make me ready to deal with even less oxygen in the entire marathon, which is all higher than a mile.

On Saturday we drove to Golden, Colorado, site of the hugely massive Coors Brewery, which draws its water from the creek running through the middle of town.  The expo was at a pavilion at the Colorado School of Mines.  We were not there long.  One nice feature was that each registrant had the choice of taking a long-sleeve shirt, a short-sleeve shirt or a singlet.  I chose the singlet, because I already have dozens of both long and short sleeve shirts.

We got to bed early that night – by 8 pm – because we had to get up by 2:30 A.M.  I wanted to catch the bus from the finish area out up the mountains to the start early.  Eight pm still felt like close to our normal bedtime having just come from the East Coast where it would have been ten pm.  We had bought some good coffee before retiring and stuck it in our motel room refrigerator.  Getting up, we heated the coffee and I also ate a granola bar and a banana.  That helped me use the bathroom before leaving the room. 

Then I drove out to Banadmire Speedway, outside Morrison, where we were to park and I was to catch the bus.  Carolyn stayed in the car, for several hours, until it got lighter.  Eventually she went into Morrison, where the race would finish, and found a place to eat.  Later she watched the finishers while waiting for me.

Meanwhile I walked deeper into the Speedway parking lot where a number of runners were gathering for the first buses.  It was not a good sign when the buses showed a few minutes later that they had to circle around us once in order to pull up to where we were.  Once the buses pulled away, it was also not a good sign that many of the windows on the bus would not close all the way, letting in air that was cooling down to 45 degrees as we ascended the mountains. 

When we reached our destination, I headed for the porta-potties first. At that point there were plenty of them and not that many runners yet.  Then I grabbed a couple of mylar blankets and tried to keep warm, sitting on the gravel. I feel the race organization would do better by the marathoners to have an area with some tarps on the gravel so that people could wait with a bit more warmth and comfort.

At some point there were announcements that the race would start ten minutes late because the last bus was late in leaving the staging area (more on buses later).  I wandered off down a closed off gravel road to find a tree after pounding down a quart of Gatorade and not wanting to deal with the now long porta-potty lines.

Finally we were told to line up and everyone walked about a hundred yards down the road to the start.  Being either ambitious or delusional, I lined up near the 3:45 pacer, figuring I could back off to the 3:55 pace if necessary..  Remember that in training, I was running downhill faster than this and not breathing hard at all.  Well, about 30 seconds after the start, I knew that my calculations and the assurances of the race website were wrong.  Running at what I considered a reasonable downhill marathon pace had me breathing is if I were in an all-out 5K effort.  I was sucking air.  For a few minutes my arms felt weak.  I thought maybe my breathing would catch up in a mile, well two miles, maybe four miles.  It didn’t.

  

Meanwhile, we passed the one-mile mark.  Already I had let the 3:45 group slip away, but not by much yet.  That would be an average pace of around 8:30, yet my watch read 9:48 at one mile.  After I finished, another pacer confirmed the first mile was long.  For the first eight miles I averaged a 9:10 pace, including the extra distance in the first mile.  But my quads were accumulating a couple thousand feet of downhill pounding.

Just after eight miles came the first uphill, something which the race website and course map did not prepare me.  As soon as I started uphill, I could not run.  I could not get enough oxygen to my muscles.  I simply started to walk and immediately scrapped any illusion about running a fast marathon.  That was a good thing as there were eventually four hills. 

I passed the half marathon point in 2:08 something, under a ten minute pace.  But then the course became problematic for me. For the entire second half we ran along a creek on the right side of the road.  For some reason that makes no sense to me, the course was in the right lane with the left lane open to traffic.  The right lane naturally cantered fairly severely towards the creek to run off any water (whereas the left lane appeared much closer to level).  That played right into my leg length discrepancy (right leg is shorter) and the fact that I was already dealing with soreness from going downhill.  So I basically walked the entire second half, doing it in 3:15.  Truth be told, back where I was, most people were walking from 15 miles on. There was very little distance in the second half that was even close to level where I could have attempted a bit of jogging.

Near the end as we approached the town of Morrison the road got closer to level and I covered mile 26 in 13 minutes, as opposed to the 16 and 17 minutes miles I had been walking.  But again, as with the first miles, what should have been the last two tenths of a mile was long.  It took me over five minutes to cover it.  I heard someone yell that the course was more like 26.6 miles.

 

 Once I finished, Carolyn was there waiting.  She had figured I was walking and was not worried, even though I was around an hour slower than I might have reasonably figured I was have run.  Last year’s results (the first time for the event) had no male runner over 70, but this year I couldn’t luck into an age group with a 5:23.  I ended up fifth.  Two of the other men were from Colorado and two from California.  I wondered how much more used to altitude were the two from CA.

Carolyn caught me up on the bus mess.  Recall that the last bus for the marathon was late.  It turns out that a few dozen were not able to catch a bus to the start.  When the women’s winner of the half marathon came in, she was angry and fuming.  Apparently she had actually signed up to do the marathon and dropped down to the half when she couldn’t get on a bus for the marathon.  But that was just the beginning of the mess.  While 800 plus people were registered for the marathon and only a few dozen missed out, there were over 1,600 registered for the half-marathon.  But less than 400 caught a bus and finished the race.  NOT ENOUGH BUSES showed up.  Carolyn had seen hundreds of runners, who were ready to run the half, take off and go for a group run in a park near to the parking lot.

In the next couple of days the information came out that the bus company had been under a cease and desist order from the state of Colorado as it owed thousands of dollars in fines.  Apparently the race organization took a low bidding bus contractor. A day later it sent out an apologetic email offering all those affected (not me), either the entry fee back or free entry in another event.

Recommendation:  The scenery is beautiful.  If you are taking a summer vacation in Colorado, this could fit into your plans.  But do not be under any illusions of having a fast time at attitude that starts at 11,200 feet and is still over a mile at the finish.  The race organization needs to figure out some issues – measuring the correct distance to start since it wants the race to finish at the town park in Morrison; putting the race in the second half in the left lane, instead of the right; hiring a legitimate bus company.  It did own up to its mistake, but created a lot of ill will in that area among runners.