Once I had an epic fail at
The Empire State Marathon I was hooked. I no longer wanted to go the distance once to check the checkbox and move on. I wanted to learn everything I could about marathoning from any source that I could find. I couldn't fail twice. I needed to be as over prepared for this race as I was under prepared for the last attempt.
(Note: This was written in 2021 for posterity, but I've tried to tell the story from a 2013 perspective)
Everything Changed April 2013
I don't know what was most stressful, the race or the weeks leading up to the race. I had recently started a new job. A few weeks before the race, I had to travel to Nashua, NH. The trip was fine, but I had tried every manipulation I could to get the date of the trip moved by a couple of weeks. We had to pass through the outskirts of Boston on the way and I was looking for any excuse I could find to be in Boston on Patriot's Day to watch the marathon and maybe get a glimpse of the elites finishing. I had this crazy idea that after 6 months of preparing I might be able to qualify for THE Boston Marathon. BQ'ing less than a year after starting to run would be beyond epic and I was obsessed with the idea. It was very unlikely, but just on the edge of plausible. If I got a chance to soak in the experience at the 2013 Boston Marathon, maybe it would provide the extra oomph needed to see a dream come true.
April 15th, 2013 was a nightmare. I was streaming the race from my desk but was only able to glimpse back and forth a little bit on occasion so when someone saw the news and called out to the rest of the office that there had been explosions, my heart stopped. I wasn't there and didn't have to live through the terror, but like every other runner it was hard not to take the bombing personal. I'd read every article that I could find about the marathon leading up to the race. I was consumed by imagining what it would be like to be *there*, so when this happened it hit hard. I didn't know what to do, so I went back to obsessing about The Gettysburg Marathon.
Race Prep
Rebuild
Once I'd overcome the damage from the prior attempt with the help of an angel whose name tag said "Physical Therapist", I took
Hal Higdon's Intermediate 2 plan customized it to wean myself off of the elliptical machine and got to work. The training itself went pretty well, it wasn't perfect but my body was responding well, so what else could be done to get ready?
Reconnaissance
We went on a spring break cruise in mid-February that was leaving out of Baltimore. Hmmm, Gettysburg is in between home and Baltimore. Yep, we added an extra day and saw the sites in Gettysburg. The fact that I'd get a chance to drive the course and also get a long training run in on the hilliest part? How convenient! 😀The course was advertised as flat and fast. It was neither flat nor fast. The Empire State Marathon was the same way, and the best way to find out was to get my feet on the ground so we did.
Contingencies
Alright, but what if the weather on race day happened to be bad, what then? That one was easy, the backup marathon. One of the draws to running the Gettysburg Marathon was it was the earliest spring marathon that was in a reasonable driving distance from home. This meant that if the weather was bad or something unexpected happened there were several marathons a few weeks later that I could choose from for a redemptathon.
The Pace Band
OK, but what about the day of the race, what could I do on the day of the race to make sure that I have a race plan and am able to execute? Bring on the pace band! This wasn't going to be just any pace band. This was a pace band that showed all of the mile markers, the course elevation chart, when to drink water, when to take Gu, a variable pace goal for each mile and the cumulative total at each mile for the target paces.
Peeps
I needed peeps there to cheer. Who could I convince to come with me? Amanda and the kids had to be there of course! Who else? My Mom. It would be cool to have my Mom there. She used to watch me race cross country in high school. It would be special to have her come watch me tackle THE 26.2 mile distance. Fortunately, my Aunt lives near Gettysburg, so we drove my Mom to her house so that they could visit and then come to the race together.
Showing Off (Oops)
After the race? I'd need to celebrate! I was going to BQ (spoiler: I didn't). How could I celebrate? A custom T-Shirt that I'd get to wear around town afterwards telling the whole world that I did it! I had a graphic artist friend make an image for me. It was the famous "Welcome to Hopkinton" sign from the start of the Boston Marathon, but with a tweak that nodded to the site of the Gettysburg Marathon. The image was fantastic, I just wish I had lived up to the dream that day.
The Race
By the time the race got here I was ready to explode from the sugar high of carb loading for 7 days straight. The morning was surreal, but beautiful. The weather was cool, but not cold. The sun was out and the skies were clear.
I tried to sit on the side of the road waiting for the start but I couldn't. Too much energy, so I milled around and made chit chat with the rest of the runners. There was a young couple there and one of them asked if the course was hilly. Is the course hilly! Wow. My over planned, obnoxious self couldn't comprehend how someone could come into a marathon so under prepared! Never mind that they were both way better off than I had been 6 months earlier, at least they had trained! I choked back my surprise and very casually showed them the course elevation chart that was taped on my wrist. Yeah, I was that guy. They looked impressed. lol 😎
Before I knew it, we were called to the start line and the race was off. Some guys took off like they had been shot out of one of the nearby battlefield cannons. Wow. Impressive! I went to work trying to execute the plan but within a couple of minutes confusion set in. The leaders missed the first turn and kept going straight after they should have gone right. I didn't know what to do. Were they right or was my study of the course right? Fortunately, a few seconds before I had to commit to a direction the lead pack turned around and doubled back. For about 10 seconds I was leading the race and that felt very, very strange. Then, the lead pack blew past me like I was standing still and life was normal again.
Miles 1-7
Six out of the first seven miles were a net uphill climb, so by the time I got to the end of this first section there was 230 ft of potential energy stored. I hoped it would come in handy later, when I needed it. I spent a lot of time trying to relax while constantly checking my watch. We were quickly out into farm country and it was beautiful.
Miles 8-18
There were some pretty good hills for miles 8-15 before it flattened out into some nice rollers for the last 3 miles of this section. The uphills were work, but it started to hit me just how much the sting of running fast downhill could linger. I didn't do much hill work before the race, because the race director advertised it as flat and fast. Of course, I knew better from the preview in February, but I was still never motivated to suffer through much up/down training.
I got to see Amanda and the kids for the first time after a sharp right turn at the bottom of a steep hill near mile 11. I was flying, whether I wanted to or not, from the release of unrestrained kinetic energy. There was a water station and a few spectators in front of an old white colonial house that was classic for the area. It meant a lot to me that they would make the trip and spend time bored on the side of the road waiting for me to go by for a few seconds. The pride I had from seeing them helped carry me through all of the hills for the next couple of miles along the highway.
Miles 19-26
At mile 18 the course crossed a highway that has frequent 60mph traffic. It was cool having police there stopping traffic so that I could cross. I was starting to feel pretty beaten up by this point but tried to soak in my surroundings and keep knocking out miles according to the plan.
The overall strategy was to run an even pace, adjusted for terrain, and then try to ratchet down the pace in the last few miles to create a buffer under the BQ time of 3:15. It almost worked ;-)
Once I started getting near mile 20, the struggle was real but I still thought I'd be able to hold it together and reach an epic goal. Nope. The wheels didn't come off like they had in the previous marathon attempt, but the wheels were definitely low on air and the rolling resistance was increasing. I did everything I could, but it felt like I was running through sand.
Amanda and the kids found me again on a long stretch of road surrounded by farm fields. I appreciated the support, but I was in trouble and knew I wasn't going to BQ. I did my best to look strong for them, but I was hurting, a lot.
When I was running mile 22, a thought occurred to me. "I'm not better than Jason." He was my running mentor this first year and while I'm sure I frustrated him by not listening as much as he'd like, he had been a big help. He changed his life with running a few years prior to me and I was in awe when he told me the story of his first marathon. We had talked a lot about trying to get to Boston. His fastest marathon time was close, but not quite close enough. Going into this race, I wanted to pull off an epic BQ at my first marathon finish but now that it was "put up or shut up time", I kept thinking about the absurdity of trying to beat my mentor's time. He wouldn't care. He'd be happy for me. I didn't care. I'd be happy for me. However, the thoughts that get stuck in your head when there is no gas in the tank can't be controlled so there I was, running as hard as I possibly could and simultaneously stuck on, "I'm not better than Jason."
The Finish
The last stretch of road is a slight uphill and then a left turn to a finish line a couple hundred yards away. I muscled up everything that I could to get to that turn and see that finish line. Once I made the turn, I was content to just run strong to the finish but then someone much younger decided that he wanted to sprint past me. No. Not allowed. I immediately responded and took off with all the adrenaline that I could muster. At one point, I'm not sure I was even breathing. Every ounce of energy that I had seemed to go straight to spinning my legs round and round as fast as I could. I caught a glimpse of Amanda and the kids on the side cheering me on despite the tunnel vision that was setting in. Must. Beat. This. Guy.
I managed to win the 1:1 sprint to the finish, but the biggest miracle of all was that I could still stand up when it was over with.
The wonderful volunteers gave me the medal and some goodies. The nice thing about a small town marathon is that Amanda, the kids and I were quickly reunited. I suspect everyone was relieved that this time I had made it to the finish under my own power. It didn't take long though before I wondered where my Mom and Aunt were. Nobody knew. Weird. We all hung out under a tree in front of the school for a while talking while I got a chance to eat and stretch. After a little while, I had to get up and walk. My legs were getting very stiff. Eventually, we meandered over to the corner at the last turn so we could cheer for other runners in a space that it should be easy for my Mom and Aunt to see us. About a half hour after I'd finished I looked down the long road before the last turn and I saw them walking toward us. They decided to park in a parking lot that was a little before mile 26 on the course. They were now walking down the side of the road toward the finish. When I saw them, I was horrified. That last 1/4 mile of slight uphill before the turn? They were walking down the shoulder, on the same side of the road as the runners. They walked together side by side. All the runners trying to get to the finish after a hard hilly marathon were crossing over into the middle of the lane of traffic to make their way around my Mom and Aunt. SMH. Sorry!
Once we were all together, I found out that they'd gotten lost on the way to the race and had spent a lot of time actually driving around the race course asking random people how to get to the finish line. We made plans to drive to a local restaurant for some pizza and after explaining a few times to my Aunt that she was not allowed to drive down the closed road, the one with the finish line arc spanning the roadway, we were all off for some delicious calories. White cheese pizza has never tasted as good as it did that day.
Epilogue
It didn't really hit me until I came back almost 8 years later to write this race report, but I'm really proud of how well I executed this race. I didn't reach my stretch goal, but now after finishing 15 marathons this one is probably in the top 5 for my best paced efforts. At the time I thought I'd fallen apart the last 4 miles, but in reality the pace only slipped by about a minute and that is nothing.
Back then, I still felt I had something to prove though. It seemed like all I really needed was a flatter course to match my mostly flat land training. The Buffalo Marathon was 4 weeks later and was my backup race in case I didn't toe the line at Gettysburg. Now the Buffalo Marathon was going to be my chance for redemption, but only if I could figure out how to recover enough in 4 weeks to get to that next start line. I did get to run 26.2 miles in Buffalo NY, but that is a story for a different day.
