A Charming Third Time

This morning I ran the Philadelphia Marathon 2012. It was my fourth running of this decidedly fun race. I completed the marathon in 3:16:02 (7:29s). While not a PR in this fast, flat course, the race was the end of my feat to run three marathons in four weeks. I did it!

Here are my unofficial results per my Garmin:

I really wasn’t sure what would happen in today’s race. Four weeks ago I ran the Atlantic City Marathon in 3:15:14, a time about 10 minutes faster than I had expected. Two weeks ago, I ran the NYC Replacement Marathon in 3:38 — it was actually an ultramarathon of 26.6 miles. Between then and today’s race, I did only two runs — a half-marathon training run and a 10k training run. Based on some prior history of running NYC then Philly with little training between them, I thought there was a good chance that my Philly would end up really slow. I surprised myself.

With the hope of pulling off a 3:25, I relaxed in the beginning of the race. I only had to run 7:49s to pull off that goal, so when I shot out of the gate running around a 6:40-6:50 without much effort, I was a bit surprised and knew I needed to calm down. I remembered seeing some portajohns Saturday and the course ran past them, so I hopped off the course and into a portable toilet. I lost maybe 30-45 seconds, managing a 7:28 first mile according to Garmin (I thought it was a 7:49??). Now without the urge to pee, I was comfortable and running, without pushing myself to go too fast. I remembered the course fairly well and knew there were places I could speed up, but I decided not to.

Instead, I thought I’d hold back until the hill around Mile 8 to turn it on and work. Just before then, I’d been stalking a City Coach runner, whom I’d picked out because of his singlet. Elizabeth trains with the City Coach team so their shirts are distinctive to me. I don’t know the team but I eventually caught him and introduced myself as a friend of Elizabeth’s. His name was Jeff. We chatted a bit (he was running with a guy named Jerry, so we became “Ben and Jerry”!) and I learned he was aiming for a 3:08. I knew I wasn’t going to achieve that today but he dismissed my statement as a lack of confidence. (It wasn’t a lack of confidence; it was a realistic estimate based on my training and history … a 3:08 would have been close to my PR and I wasn’t in that kind of shape.) I ran with Jeff and Jerry before charging up the hill around Mile 8, and I weathered it really well. Around Mile 10 or 11 (near the gel station) Jeff showed up in front of me out of nowhere! I caught up to him then went past him on one of my favorite downhills of the course. It wasn’t until near the half-marathon mark that Jeff passed me then I caught him and we talked as we tried to help Elizabeth (who was in town to watch her boyfriend also race) make ourselves more visible. She wasn’t where I had expected but Jeff and I stayed running together until eventually Elizabeth emerged near the cool old stone underpass on Kelly Drive, cheering us both on.

I ran with Jeff for a bit more. We were doing sub-7:00s at this point, which made me really happy yet I didn’t know how long I’d be able to sustain it. Another guy joined us, too, given our clip. However, inside the 17th mile, something changed for me. I was right there with Jeff when I decided it would be a good time to get some gel in me. Reaching into my pocket meant that I slowed just enough for Jeff to pull in front of me, and as I wrestled a bit with getting the gel into my mouth, Jeff was 90 feet or more ahead of me. My body wasn’t responding as much now to my impulses to catch Jeff, and sure enough I managed a whopping 7:22 in this mile. Whoa! I went from running about a 7:00 to a 7:22! I figured here was the shift in my race and maybe that I’d hit the wall.

Sure enough, my body was starting to slow in the 17th mile. My times started to climb but I knew I could get all the way out to Manayunk. I was pretty confident I could get out of Manayunk. I was even confident I could finish this race, though I wasn’t sure how much I would end up slowing. I remembered that the going out on Kelly Drive is long. Did it feel as long going back toward the finish line? I couldn’t remember but I figured it would feel long. Fortunately, it wasn’t that bad.

With about 4 miles to go, I had a caffeinated gel. In fact, I had two — one 2x-caffeine Tangerine PowerGel and one raspberry Clif Shot of unknown caffeine level. I’ve avoided running with much of any caffeine since a hot summer run left me with a racing heart, which made me feel really weird and knocked me out of the training run. However, I was curious if I’d get a needed boost to the finish line with the caffeine. I didn’t have the heart palpitations, yet I did have some increase in speed. Or rather, when I wanted to turn it on a bit more and get to the finish line, my body output some increase in speed.

With 2 miles to go, I talked to a guy named John. John told me a secret about his race (he was running with a buddy’s number, I believe), and he said that people were calling him by the name on his bib rather than his name. We connected a bit and encouraged each other in keeping it going to the finish. Eventually I pulled ahead of him and he wished me well. And then the speed really started to pick up for me.

A girl in fluorescent running clothes rivaled me. She sped up much too soon for the finish, which is really hard to gauge in this race. I think I caught her, only to have her eventually pull ahead of me. I was really starting to charge to find the finish, with tears welling up in my eyes in a fit of emotion. Eventually I saw the 26-mile marker, which I wasn’t confident I’d see. I knew that after seeing that, it’s about 2 minutes until the finish. I found the finish and charged ahead. And then I finished. 3:16:02 — just shy of running a 3:15. If I didn’t have the pee break, I might have run in the 3:15 range, but honestly, the having-to-pee would have drained my concentration, and that early break from running actually may have helped me out a bit.

After the race, I saw Elizabeth’s boyfriend Chris, who pulled off his first ever sub-4:00 marathon, running about a 3:57. I saw Elizabeth, too, but then I was on my way back to my hotel. I noticed a limp in my right knee had started to develop, most likely delayed onset inflammation of some sort. At worst I feared it was a cartilage tear but I’m thinking that’s not it for now, and that the inflammation will go down soon enough. My guess right now is that it’s a bit of inflammation of the IT band since the pain is a bit on the lateral (“outside”) part of the knee.

I slept a lot of the train ride back to NYC. I’m pretty happy with my accomplishment of three marathons in four weeks, even if I didn’t do them as quickly as I had originally hoped. Training for them was extremely tough for me this year. I didn’t have the luck this year of consistent stand-in gigs, so I was hacking together a work schedule among different productions, meaning my sleep was erratic and my runs couldn’t always work out. Many times I just didn’t run, too defeated by the stress of early calltimes and extremely early risings, and too wiped out at the end of the day to do anything about it. This goal makes me long a bit more for training for a single marathon again, though quite honestly I need a bit of a break from running after this experience. Running was enjoyable to an extent, but I would do whatever I could at times to delay my going for a run. I think it was my body rebelling against the goals I’d set forth for myself. I also had a book come out in this time, and the erratic nature of promoting it also wore on me, as did general life pursuits. This huge running goal is largely behind me now, thank goodness.

And I did it!

The NYC Marathon Was a No-Go, But I Wasn’t!

Today I was supposed to run the NYC Marathon 2012. However, Hurricane Sandy devastated the region including Staten Island, the island where the race begins. After the city’s saying the marathon would go on, on Friday the city and the New York Road Runners reversed and said that the NYC Marathon was canceled.

So, after a quick amount of publicity mostly via Twitter, I ran the NYC Replacement Marathon, a marathon I put together to begin and run in Central Park. Actually, it was more of an ultramarathon if you ran the course I advised. I ran my longest race ever today, running 26.65 miles in 3:38:07 (8:11s). If I go by when I finished 26.2 miles, I ran a marathon in about 3:34 (8:10s).

Here are my results per my Garmin watch:

There are two parts to this story: the organization of it, and the actual race. As for the organization of it, I blogged pretty extensively about it on my news blog, where I put the primary information:

Click here to read the organizational information for the race.
Click here to read the wrap-up for the race.

The wrap-up link contains articles that came out in the Huffington Post and Associated Press, from which the story of the NYC Replacement Marathon was picked up by countless other media outlets. I even had a documentary shot of the experience that is on YouTube, and I did an internet radio interview on the experience. Whoa! Click the wrap-up link to watch and listen.

Here I’ll talk about the race. As we started we knew there would be a lot of runners in the park. However, probably none of us knew just how many would be in the park. So many people, including so many legions of foreigners stuck in town to run the marathon, flooded Central Park and were running in both directions. Basically, there was no room for bikes as runners took up the entire expanse of the roadway.

Very quickly I realized this would be tough, not so much for the large amount of people, but for the lack of runner support. No water stations or Gatorade in particular. I ran with a couple of my NYC Replacement Marathon starters until I could tell they were going to be faster than me and I couldn’t keep up, then I caught them to tell them where the restrooms were and headed off to that building. But then I saw some portajohns and went for them.

After I was done, I was by myself in the mass of people. I ran shirtless with “NYC Replacement Marathon” written in permanent marker on my chest, and that got some verbal attention which motivated me. What demotivated me was finding that quite a few of the park’s water fountains had little pressure or no water at all! There was no way I’d manage this marathon with no water; I knew of just one that worked after having tested it the prior day, but one water fountain would mean a miserable go.

So I used part of my race to chase down water fountains and drink when I got some water from them. As my race went on, lines developed at many of these fountains, which slowed me down a bit. Also what slowed me down — quite a bit — was the finish line area of the park, which was packed with people taking photos and congregating. I passed through that area five times today, and I was brought to a near standstill as I tried to get through the people.

I finished in 3:38, and I wasn’t really sure why I’d run this “race” so slowly. I wasn’t disappointed really — just curious why it took me so long, especially after having run the Atlantic City Marathon two weeks ago in 3:15:14. Here are some factors that I believe figured into my slower time today:

1. I ran 26.65 miles, not 26.2, so the 3:38 is not a marathon time but an ultramarathon time! Remember that, Ben!

2. I had to stop at water fountains to get water rather than run through water stations. This added minutes to my time as I stood in line at times to get what turned out to be only a trickle of water.

3. The finish line area was packed with so many people, sometimes I had to stop or walk to get through the people. I couldn’t maintain a faster pace.

4. I was underhydrated over the course of this race, and had I brought Gatorade, I would probably have been better hydrated and more energized.

5. I stopped for a quick bathroom break once.

6. There were a lot of people in the park running, though I don’t recall that really interfering with my stride or time.

7. I wasn’t really out to PR, and when I realized I wasn’t running superfast, I didn’t push myself to go faster.

8. I ran a 3:15 marathon two weeks prior!

9. The Central Park course of 4 loops plus a lower loop is pretty tough considering!

Those are some of the many factors that went into my race today. Running a 3:38 makes me wonder what I’ll run in Philadelphia. I did four runs between Atlantic City and NYC, and I want to run more than that between now in Philly. However, my body took a bit of a beating today so I don’t know when I’ll want to get back out to run!

Surprise! You Didn’t Run a 3:20! Or a 3:25! You Ran 3:15:14!

This morning I ran the Atlantic City Marathon.  I ran it in 3:15:14 (7:27s).  This exceeded my estimated finish time of 3:20, which I figured would potentially end up being 3:25.

Here are my unofficial Garmin stats, or click here if it looks funky:

The weather for today’s race was perfect.  The thermometer was hovering around 50 degrees, the skies were cloudless, and there wasn’t much of a wind on the Boardwalk where this race started.  I had forgotten how small this race is, which was quite a surprise to me — this was perhaps my smallest marathon ever!  Most of the people were there for the half-marathon which was run simultaneously.

As I was in the corral, I spied the 3:15 pacer.  I also spied the 3:35 pacer.  Where was the 3:25 pacer?  I asked 3:15 (Tony) and he said some others were going to split off and unofficially run 3:25.  I figured they were the people I’d be looking for because I couldn’t imagine doing a 3:15.  Without much mental prep or really any nerves, we were off and running not much later.

The AC Marathon is largely a flat course.  Where you hear that kind of thing, if you don’t know better you tend to think it’s entirely flat without a hill to speak of.  Well, that’s not true, as there are some on ramps that have a wee bit of a hillage to them but nothing that really taxes your body overly so.  Much of the first part of the race is pretty fun as you go on a winding path that takes on some highwayesque roadway.  In fact, during your second mile you’re actually in a tunnel and I lost signal on my Garmin.  When I emerged, my second mile beeped and it was a 7:44!  I’m not sure if that was right but I had been chatting with a runner during much of my time in that warm tunnel so I might have slowed.  However, I picked up speed again and as you can see from my stats, most of my early miles were sub-7:00s or in the low 7:00s.

Chatting with some runners about pace, a couple remarked that I was much too fast for aiming for a 3:20.  I realized this, but deep down I was experimenting with my current ability.  My training this month had been lighter than a taper, and largely inconsistent — not following very well my training schedule.  I was set in running what felt good then seeing where I tanked.  It came as a bit of a surprise that these same guys who warned me about my pace started to pull ahead of me … but eventually, I overtook them all!  I was a bit perplexed by this move on my part, which I thought would surely correct but I don’t think it ever did.  I maintained my fast pace for quite some time!

I entered back onto the Boardwalk and passed the finish line.  But what happened at that moment couldn’t have been timed better: I was passing the finish line just as the first-place runners for the half-marathon were finishing in what looked like a photo-finish sprint!  Wild!  I remarked to the runner who was running near me at the time.  I eventually passed him and wished him luck.

At the point, the AC Marathon gets a bit lonely.  It’s a monotonous, lonely jog to the turnaround point for the half-marathon … but it’s an even more monotonous and lonely jog past that point if you’re doing the full marathon!  The loneliness actually wasn’t that bad.  It was nice to see a bit of encouragement here and there from people on the Boardwalk, but too much attention would have drained me a bit.  I was prepared to run from the 8-mile mark where I reentered the Boardwalk to the 15-mile mark where I thought we’d turnaround.  However, I misinterpreted the map and we didn’t run all the way down the mile 15 on boards; instead, we turned off at some point around, when was it?, mile 13-ish?, and ended up running on the street!  That was a complete surprise and a bit mysterious to me.

I completed the half-marathon in 1:32 and change — I think I was on the Boardwalk but maybe I was on the streets.  It was during this stretch on the street that I was running solo for the whole time until I got to the turnaround at mile 15.  After the turnaround a guy caught me and passed me — he was aiming for a 3:05 and I’m betting he made that time easily given his clip.  After this long stretch and turnaround, we then turn off and head into suburban neighborhood streets.  I remember this area from the map of the course, and I remembered that it would take some time to get out of this maze.

Maze it was.  I actually got so twisted up in my head that I thought maybe the route had changed, but in hindsight I think all was there.  I started to realize I was actually doing pretty good when I started to double back over the course (it’s an out and back) and saw the fitness levels of some of the people.  I’d seen the 3:15 pace group during this time, though, too, and I could tell it was getting closer to me.  I needed to keep my pace up because with a 1:32 half, I figured there was a good chance I’d do somewhere around a 3:10 …

When I got out of the maze and back onto the street where the stretch began, the distance looked very daunting.  You could only see cones for days into the horizon, and I started to feel a bit demoralized.  I quickly refuted that thinking with comments like “I will!” and I pressed onward, trying to avoid thinking about the recession of cones.  Eventually, I could see lights from a cop car, and of course eventually I reached the place where I turn back onto the Boardwalk.

My pace was started to really lag.  Here I was trying to pace myself and get enough energy into my body from gels and the like but mainly just persist.  A great time was pretty much assured but just how great wasn’t clear to me, especially as my times drew above 7:00s and into the high 8:00s.  I remembered from the half I ran in AC in 2010 that the finish takes quite a bit of time to get to once you see it (you see the pier that is also a shopping mile from more than a mile away), so you get a bit impatient to finish.  I also knew that this year’s finish was past the shopping mall rather than before it.  I kept onward.

Eventually, the finish was within range.  I saw no “Mile 26” marker, but I did feel another runner come up near me.  He sped up — so did I.  He sped up again — so did I.  Each time he sped up, I responded and held him off.  As I went into the chute toward the finish, we were both sprinting though I felt I’d pulled ahead of him solidly.  I wanted to go faster, but my calves held me back with cramping sensations!  I held off this runner, whom I talked to after we finished.  His name was Dan.  He finished 2 seconds after me but we had the same net time — and he ended up with the higher place than me.  What a great balance of power.  Afterward, I learned he PR’d by about 8 minutes; I was so impressed!

I came in 27th place, 26th among men (only one woman finished faster than me), and 13th in my age group.  I was pretty wasted at the end of this race and moaning a bit.  I was so much sore; I was more in agony if that makes any sense.  I leaned for a while, lay down for a while, … I took my time after learning I had more leeway with my hotel checkout.  And then I headed back.

I was really happy with my 3:15:14.  I eventually realized that the 3:15 pace group didn’t pass me, and then I learned from Dan (whom I saw as I was leaving) that he was part of the 3:15 group and noticed that it was off pace so he left the group.  Apparently the 3:15 pacer finished in nearly 3:17, which made me feel very sad for him.  According to Dan, the pacer had run something like a 2:50 in Chicago earlier in the month, so I’m guessing running nearly a 3:17 was a bit of a shock.  I just hope the guys running with him weren’t upset.

For the run, I had a lot of fuel in my system.  I used Seamless Web to track down some macaroni & cheese (really just pasta was cheese on top) and some garlic bread and seasoned fries for dinner after I realized I’d missed out on registering for the pasta dinner. (Note to future self: Register early! It’s not automatic!)  I had a bag of Gu Chomps just before the race and I may have had a bag about an hour prior (I can’t recall).  During I used some PowerGels without caffeine, though at some point in the second half I opted for some 1x caffeinated ones they were passing out.  I was getting pretty sick of these things, though, wanting real food later in the race.  For this race, I probably weighed about 178 lbs.  I don’t know what I weighed after but I had a lot of liquid during the race (I’d heard the wind dries you out faster) — but I probably still dropped around 8-10 lbs. during this race I imagine.

My legs held up for this race!  The main pain I felt was soreness in the front of my hips.  I got on compression socks for the rest of the day.  I ate at Applebee’s after while I waited for the train ride back to NYC by way of Philly.  Other than being a bit tired from running a marathon, I held up pretty well.