{"id":775,"date":"2011-11-20T19:14:30","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T00:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/?p=775"},"modified":"2011-11-20T19:15:41","modified_gmt":"2011-11-21T00:15:41","slug":"keep-calm-and-carry-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/2011\/11\/20\/keep-calm-and-carry-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep Calm and Carry On"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning I ran the Philadelphia Marathon 2011.  I ran it in 3:07:47, making this my second-fastest marathon time.  I missed my 2009 PR time (also in Philly) by only 15 seconds!  Still, quite an accomplishment given that I ran the NYC Marathon two weeks ago in 3:13:49.<\/p>\n<p>Unofficial Garmin Results<br \/>\n<iframe width='465' height='548' frameborder='0' src='http:\/\/connect.garmin.com:80\/activity\/embed\/129971607'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t really sure what would happen in this race.  Last year I also did NYC-then-Philly.  While at the time I made a PR for NYC (but about a minute), I actually ran the easier Philly race <em>slower<\/em> than NYC (by about a couple minutes).  Then, my training had diminished because I was working long hours and when I got off work, I chose to spend time with my girlfriend over training.  Also, between the two races, only did one (slow) training run of about 8 miles.  This year, having no girlfriend, the conflict of interest was eliminated, making for more regular training despite a hectic work schedule.  I also managed 4 training runs between the two races, including on 12.27-miler.  The overall result was that I was fitter this year than last year, but I still wasn&#8217;t sure if I would run Philly as fast as NYC, or faster, or what.<\/p>\n<p>My original goal for Philly was to run a sub-3:00 marathon.  I knew that was not likely in the cards, so I rewrote in my head my goal to be sub-3:07:32, meaning my goal was to beat my best Philly time and run my faster marathon ever.  A secondary goal was to at least do a sub-3:10 (which would coincidentally qualify me for the Boston Marathon 2013), and a tertiary goal was to run at least better than my recent NYC Marathon time of 3:13:49.  I wasn&#8217;t sure what was in the cards.<\/p>\n<p>For this race, I strategized to hold back a little in the beginning.  The day before, I printed out my Garmin results for the two marathons last year and the one I ran a couple weeks ago.  I folded the results so that the splits were all lined up.  Then I studied them.  I was looking for trends.  At what mile do I tend to slow down?  At what point in the races do I lose steam?  Etc.  I tried to remember these trends so that I could make running calculations when I was out today.  They definitely helped. I started to slowly realize that I was able to maintain a competitive pace, but I also knew I needed to push as much as I could at the end.<\/p>\n<p>You may have seen the posters that read simply &#8220;Keep Calm and Carry On.&#8221;  For some reason, that motto came into my head early in the race, and I used it to help steady my breathing and keep me from &#8220;race panic&#8221; in hillier areas that taxed my breathing.  The other motto was more like a command, one that I heard someone say rather forcefully early on in the race: &#8220;Let&#8217;s go!&#8221;  I decided to tell myself that to see if it could excite me as it did early in the race.  (It seemed to help a little bit, but it didn&#8217;t seem to endure.  It seemed to take a few seconds for my body to respond to the command.)<\/p>\n<p>In studying my race results today and comparing them with <a href=\"http:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/2011\/11\/06\/holy-cramp\/\" target=\")blank\">my NYC results<\/a>, I noticed some interesting effects of the different courses on my body.  For one, NYC&#8217;s bridges do a number on my body.  Essentially, they are draining, zapping my energy and sending me eventually into high-7:00s and 8:00s.  At the same points in today&#8217;s race, which didn&#8217;t have really anything like the bridges of NYC, at least late in the race, I was maintaining a fairly even pace, and that pace was able to endure.  In Philly today, none of my splits were greater than 7:40, which is just incredible to me.  It&#8217;s the bridges and late hills of NYC that send me into the 8:00s.<\/p>\n<p>My body held up today.  I was at the start line a bit concerned, having just had a bathroom concern develop (the kind that could lead to in-race embarrassment), and having noticed that bouncing would probably trigger.  I also had to pee slightly.  I was less concerned about the pee sensation, because I&#8217;ve learned that a slight pee sensation goes away for me in races.  However, the other sensation struck fear in me.  I bargained that if it happened, I wouldn&#8217;t be embarrassed, and it would be a valuable experience.  But, Eureka!, it never developed!  At some point early in the race I forgot about the sensation and I was fine.<\/p>\n<p>At times in the last hour or so of the race, I really tried to push myself a bit, especially on the downhills.  While I probably succeeded to some degree, I wasn&#8217;t able to really drive down my time in a significant way (like bringing myself down to low 7:00s).  My pace felt slow but constant, but I really couldn&#8217;t get my body to speed it up into a sprint.  As the race went on, I was starting to see that I had about 5 minutes in the bank&#8211;that is, 5 minutes ahead of a 3:10.  I knew some of that would be used up in the later miles, but it was seeming to me that I would probably finish around 3:06.  It was only toward the last mile or so that it was getting a little dangerous, and it wasn&#8217;t until I rounded the slight turn and saw the finish line that I knew that my dream of beating my PR was <em>just<\/em> out of reach.  I did, however, manage a sprint at the end that felt like about 90-95% of my maximum speed, so I finished strong despite just missing my PR.<\/p>\n<p>During this race, I was fearful of the cramps that flirted with my calves in NYC.  To guard against them, I decided to consume a quart of coconut water the day before in order to load my body with potassium.  To see what it might aid me, I consumed 1 ibuprofen an hour before the race, and one Gatorade Prime 15 minutes before.  I also tried better to hydrate myself, taking water and Gatorade along the course at probably 80% of the stations.  I consumed somewhere on the order of 6 PowerGel or Clif Shots, but with the PowerGels I actually dialed back the caffeine just a little bit.  More importantly, I tried to strategize my use of them.  I wasn&#8217;t exactly sure how long my body would get a bolster from their ingredients, but when I predicted a hill (like the one near Drexel, or even the bridge about a half-mile before it), I consumed a Gel in hopes that it would kick in at the hill and help me out.  Also, I made up a strategy in the race to take Gatorade in stations and then try to pick up the pace coming out of them.  The theory was that I would want to slow down so don&#8217;t do that, and by the time I&#8217;d tired from that pickup the Gatorade would kick in and rescue me, allowing me to keep up the pace.  It seemed to work out, at least as a nice idea.<\/p>\n<p>The 3:00 pace team passed me around Mile 10.  However, the 3:10 pace team never caught me.  They weren&#8217;t that far behind me (when I was getting back onto the bridge in Mile 17 area, they were just leaving the bridge), but I was a little concerned that they were close enough if my pace dropped off.  Fortunately it didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>I realized based on what I wanted to say that I was a little disappointed that I didn&#8217;t make a PR with this race.  But as the day went on, I realized I was shocked I did so well, considering that I also ran so well at the NYC Marathon two weeks prior.  It was cool to be able to do this.  Elizabeth also ran this race and did incredibly well (running a 3:15 and some change), and her boyfriend Chris ran the half-marathon and surprised me with his awesome finish time of 1:51:06.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"photos\">Photos<\/a> coming soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning I ran the Philadelphia Marathon 2011. I ran it in 3:07:47, making this my second-fastest marathon time. I missed my 2009 PR time (also in Philly) by only 15 seconds! Still, quite an accomplishment given that I ran the NYC Marathon two weeks ago in 3:13:49. Unofficial Garmin Results I wasn&#8217;t really sure &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/2011\/11\/20\/keep-calm-and-carry-on\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Keep Calm and Carry On<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathons","category-races","tag-philly-marathon-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":784,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions\/784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}