Race Report: Wisconsin Marathon 2010

VOICES FROM UNEXPECTED PLACES
A happy accident happened to me this morning on my way to run the Wisconsin Marathon. The drive to Kenosha takes a little more than an hour, so I decided to catch up on my NPR podcasts, specifically, an episode of RadioLab. They like to look at common everyday questions about the elements of life and being human and examine them in a scientific way. (It’s just an amazing show.) The episode was titled “Limits”.

The first segment was an interview with a woman named Julie, who, once upon a time, decided to go and run the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii. She was a P.E. major in college, and happened to see Ironman coverage on TV the year before. She was a surfer and thought it would be a cool excuse to take a trip to Kona, do some surfing, run the Triathlon and then use the experience to write her thesis.

Riiiight.

As the interview unfolded, I realized that it sounded a little familiar to me. It seemed like I’d heard it somewhere before. I listened carefully as Julie explained that she had trained for the event, but admitted that it was never “serious” training. She didn’t really worry about it until the gun went off and everything actually began. Still, she finished the 2.4 mile swim well enough, and had a strong 112 miles on the bike – so strong in fact, that as she transitioned to the marathon, she was in second place. More than that, the woman in first was dealing with an achilles injury and, about 8 miles into the run, Julie passed her and moved into 1st place among the women.

Now, I was sure I knew this story. “Julie” was JULIE MOSS. The interview hadn’t included any dates, and made it sound as though the events were recent. No, this was Julie Moss at the Ironman World Championships in 1982. The event was only 4 years old at that point, and it was still very much a fringe event. ABC’s World Wide of Sports had picked up coverage the year before, and that’s when Julie had seen it on TV. They were back again, covering the ‘82 race, and once Julie moved into 1st place, she was front and center on National Television.

Moss explained that after she found herself in the lead, something inside her changed. A competitive drive that she had never felt before emerged with force, and she became determined to win the race. She had a 20-minute lead on the girl in 2nd place, and was constantly aware of that woman’s imminent approach. She drove herself relentlessly forward.

But 1982 was also the wee early days of sports nutrition science, and Julie’s body began to fail her in the late miles of the marathon. 400 meters from the finish line, still in first place, but with her challenger closing fast, she began to lose control of her legs and collapsed. She rose but fell again. She pushed herself up with her arms, walked, found a trot and swaggered, then fell yet again. She staggered like a drunkard, bobbing up and down off the pavement until she was 50 feet from the finish line when she fell a final time and could not push herself back up. The crowd was mad with excitement, imploring her to continue. They and she could see the finish line waiting, so close yet out of reach.

Around the edges of the throng of people surrounding Julie, Kathleen McCartney bounced past, crossed the finish line and won the race. She didn’t even know she had won until race officials drop a medal and a lei around her neck and told her so. And in the background, 20 feet behind, on the wrong side of the line, Julie Moss had pulled herself onto her elbows – because her legs could no longer function – and began to crawl.

That’s how she finished the race, just behind Kathleen McCartney, in 2nd place. But she finished. And the whole thing was broadcast on National Television.

In the RadioLab interview, Julie says that she saw the feet of her competitor run past her as she lay on the ground in front of the finish line. Her legs had stopped working, but there was nothing wrong with her mind. She was completely lucid. She says her very first thought was to just quit; “F it,” she says in the interview. And then something else in her mind spoke: “Get Up.” Get Up. You Can Crawl. Whatever it took, she was going to finish.

That’s just about the last thing I listened to before I turned off the car to get out and go run my own marathon. I didn’t suffer on Saturday in Kenosha the way that Julie Moss did that day in Kona, but that RadioLab show did make a difference in my race.

I LOVE KENOSHA IN THE SPRINGTIME
The 2009 Wisconsin Marathon was a smashing success for me. I felt strong that whole morning, held my speed until late in the race, and ran a 3:44, chopping 15 minutes off my previous best marathon time.

This year, I was eager for more. I was sure I could do as well as last year, had a goal of lowering that PR by any little amount, and had a dream goal of running a 3:3Anything. An 8:20 overall mile pace would get me that dream goal with a little room to spare, so I planned to start out at that speed and hold it for as long as I could. If I slipped off in the later miles, it would still give me an excellent jump on just lowering my PR, and even if I missed that, I could still have a very respectable race.

Conditions for the 2010 race were a little different from last year. The start temp in ’09 was 45 degrees, and got up to 58 before the end of the race, with a light breeze. This year we started at 62, the heat creeped upwards to 68 or 69, and the wind blew in hard from the Southwest at 12mph for much of the second half. Nothing nearly so bad as, say, Chicago in ’07 or ’08, but not ideal, to be sure.

The early miles went well. I felt free and easy and I was hitting my 8:20s or just below with little trouble. The feeling never lasts, but after the first 30 minutes, I felt like I could run 8:20s forever and ever.

Kenosha’s a small town, but there were a fair number of locals and friends of runners out on the street corners to watch and cheer. It really is a nice little race, and runs through a lovely little town with plenty of lake views on the course. The route twists and turns through the neighborhoods a good bit early on, until finally settling into a basic out-and-back on the north end, and another on the southern 2nd half.

It was easy to recall the race route from the year before. At 3 Miles, we ran past what would also be the 12-Mile marker and the Half-Marathon final turn around sign. One of the guys nearby me playfully called out to his buddies, “What!? That’s it? Time to head to the finish line already?!” and then looped around and took a few false strides towards the Park.

After 4 Miles a guy inched up behind me, breathing loud and heavy. I found it rather distracting, and had to move over and slow down so that he would run away from me. I kept thinking, even if he was only in the Half, it was way to early to be breathing that hard.

Just as last year, I opted not to carry my own water bottle, choosing instead to depend on the course aid stations. No matter what type of portable hydrations system I use, carrying that much extra weight affects my gate and therefore my pace. My personal experience with this is undeniable. Instead, I was wearing my RaceReady shorts and had gel packs stuffed in the pockets. I sucked down the first one of these at 6 miles, as we ran back through the heart of town headed north.

I caught my first sight of all the race leaders on the north end out-and-back near mile 7.5. I forgot to check the bib color of the first runner, but he was really truckin’ it back down to town. I assumed he must have been running the Half. Other men and, finally, women popped up behind him, but it was a long time before I saw the first female marathoner. She was less than a mile in front of me when she streamed by. (The first woman finished in 3:26:16, and the second place woman was 5 seconds after her.) Shortly after that, I made it to the northern turn-around myself, and headed south. I would spend the next 11 miles running into the teeth of a stiff wind.

The only trouble I had early on, was a tight, achy muscle group in the strangest of places: my left shoulder. The area connecting my left pectoral to my shoulder joint just wouldn’t loosen up. If I lifted my arm up and rotated my elbow in the air, the pain went away immediately, but as soon as I dropped back down into my normal running motion, the demon instantly returned. It started up in the first couple of miles, and plagued me the entire morning.

AROUND THAT OLD, FAMILIAR CORNER
This is an obvious thing to say, but experience affects your perspective so much. 26.2 Miles isn’t the uber-massive, intimidating distance that it once seemed to be. I still remember 2006, when I was training for my first marathon, how intimidating those first 10 and 12-mile training runs were. I’m not sure I would have made it through those without Abby, my training partner that summer.

Now, 22 marathons and ultras later, the first 20 miles go by and then the real effort begins. I’ve always heard that miles 1 through 20 are the “first half” of a marathon, the last 10K is the second half. That really is true, and the last 3 or 4 marathons have all been like that for me. The first 10 miles, I’m biding my time, the next 10, I’m finding out how I truly feel that day – how are my time splits looking, where are my strengths, where are the weaknesses in my legs, my form, my mind. Then I really check in with the race clock at the 20-mile mark, and set my goals for the last 10K, crunching numbers, dividing miles into minutes, trying to estimate what I’ve got left and what I can do.

In 2007 at the NYC Marathon, when I was still trying to break 4 hours for the first time, I crossed Mile 20 in exactly 3 hours. I did my quick math and knew I just needed to do 9:30 miles ‘til the end to break 4 hours – and settled for less when my legs would no longer respond in the last 4 miles. I watched my splits slip further and further beyond the 9:30s that I needed, and settled for a 4:03.

The opposite happened 6 months later at the Madison Marathon, when I crossed 20 in 2:59, and clocked an averaged pace of exactly 9:40 for the final 10K to finally break 4 Hours with a 3:59 finish.

Despite my persistent shoulder cramp, the first 10 miles on Saturday were smooth and easy, but the second 10 miles proved to be a little more work. The north loop brought us back through downtown Kenosha before all the Half-Marathoners peeled off at the 12-Mile mark to head toward the finish line. I got to 13 Miles and, roughly, the halfway point (which was unmarked this year) in 1:49, one minute ahead of last year’s pace.

The long out-and-back on the second half of the course is not the most interesting place to run. It reaches down to the southern outskirts of Kenosha, a secluded residential area along Lake Michigan. While heading south, the course detours off of that main road onto even more secluded county roads, dotted with homes. Some of those roads are still dirt and gravel surfaces. After the final turnaround, the course is a straight shot back up along the lake roads to the finish line.

None of this bothers me much. I’m not a runner who is motivated much by the scenery. What did start to creep in on me was the rising thermometer. It still wasn’t “hot”, but it also wasn’t comfortably cool anymore, either. The southern headwinds, which had gained strength past mile 14, at least offered a little relief from the warm, humid air. Regardless, my split times started to slide up into the 8:30 range.

I got into a polite conversation with a couple guys in the 17th mile, but they were slowing down a bit, and my next split was an 8:45. I had to decide if I was going to relent or push on. I pushed. I left the guys behind and concentrated on my leg turnover. I dropped my next split down to an 8:39, but my effort felt harder than that. So, not the greatest sign.

It was a relief to get to that last major turnaround just before Mile 19 and head north again. I was on the homestretch and the wind was at my back, but that didn’t get much rebound and my split at mile 20 was 8:48. So, there I was at the “halfway” point, facing a moment of truth. The race clock was at 2:48:39. I did my mental math. I knew a sub-3:40 was out. That would require 8:15 miles through to the end, and that wasn’t going to happen. However, if I could keep putting out 8:50s I would cross the line with a 3:43 and a new PR. My legs were heavy, but I clutched my optimism.

I did alright the next two miles, with an 8:53 and then a 9:06, but adding 13 seconds from one mile to the next was cause for concern. And the truth was the life in my legs was gone. I felt as though I was plodding down the pavement in cement blocks. The sun was beating down on me. I was genuinely surprised to see that the splits were as “fast” as they were. I began to worry about how much longer I could hang on.

The next two miles got tougher. I split with a 9:21 and then a 9:25, and the mile markers weren’t getting any closer together, and I knew my PR would have to wait for another day. I could really feel the warmth of the day by that point, too. I was still without a water bottle, and I began to regret the 2-mile distance between aid stations on the last 6 miles of the course (a small improvement I might lobby for in future versions of the race). My sense of time began to stretch, and so did my splits. Several runners who I hadn’t seen in miles caught and passed me. I could do nothing but let them go and keep plodding forward.

And it was at that point when, yes, my mind cast back to that RadioLab segment with Julie Moss. I had two voices in my own head, too, the one saying, “just walk, relax, it doesn’t matter,” and the other – the stronger one – saying, “NO, you have to keep running.” The episode had gone on to analyze those reserves of energy that Moss had drawn on, with detailed research about the body’s tendency to lie to your mind about how much is actually left in the tank. Turns out the body tends to be very conservative on those estimates, and that lie is then communicated as pain, or variations thereof. My body was trying to tell me it was stiff and tight and exhausted. I decided not to believe the lie. I chose to believe in myself instead. I kept going. I know I wasn’t moving very fast, but I kept running.

Finally, as I approached the last aid station at Mile 25, I allowed my self to walk the length of the water tables. I was shocked at how my legs felt when I hit the brakes. My walking gate was FAR wobblier than I could have expected. Each foot plant was stiff and uncertain. As I poured water cups over my head, and sipped down servings of Gatorade, I had brief doubts that I would be able to force my legs back into a running pace again. Luckily I was wrong.

My math skills were getting fuzzy, but my watch read 3:35, and I figured I still had to run for maybe 11 more minutes. A 3:46 finish didn’t sound awful. Just a few minutes later, I thought it would have to be more like a 3:47. I decided I could live with a 3:47. I can’t explain why, but 3:48 just sounded kind of awful in my head. I don’t know, 7s are skinny and lucky. 8s are fat and crazy.

The clock was at 3:45:50 when I crossed 26 miles. I could see the finish line around the bend in the park ahead of me. I was going to have to push as hard as I still could to come in with a 7. What I had left wasn’t a whole lot, but I threw it out there and tossed myself across the finish line at 3:47:54. My second fastest marathon ever, and just 3 minutes off my PR. Not too bad. I’ll take it.

Considering the extra heat, I have to feel like this year’s 3:47 is comparable to last year’s 3:44, but I don’t think that alone accounts for all 3 of those minutes. I put a lot more miles on my legs this spring than last year as well, all in preparation for the 100-Miler in San Diego in 6 weeks. The miles took a different toll, and my basic speed peaked and was sharpest about 6 weeks before the marathon – too soon. I still have a lot of things to learn about how my body responds to training.

JUST ONE MORE THING...
It’s worth your time to listen to that RadioLab show. Both the Episode and the Series are just phenomenal. The Julie Moss segment is from the episode titled “Limits”, and you can listen to, or download the Podcast for free HERE. (You can also subscribe for free on iTunes.) After you've heard "Limits", I recomend you listen to the episode titled "Stochasticity" next. If you're not hooked on RadioLab after that, there might be something wrong with you.

You can watch a video recap of Julie Moss’ 1982 Ironman finish on YouTube HERE. (Just ignore the cheesy, low-rent background music.)

And finally this is a print interview with Julie before the 2003 Ironman, the 25th anniversary of the event. She went back to run it again for the first time since the 1980s and reflects on the overall experience in a little more detail than in the RadioLab segment. That link is HERE.

As for the original broadcast of the Moss’ Ironman finish in 1982? It was a phenomenon. People watching the broadcast called their friends and insisted that they turn on their TVs because they “had to see this.” Julie was instantly famous and so, too, was the Ironman. After Julie’s brutal finish on Wide World of Sport in 1982, applications for the event began to skyrocket so much that a qualifying system had to be put in place for the athletes. That’s right: Watching Julie Moss suffer on National TV made people want to do the race more.

Just further proof that I’m not the only one.

This One's For Mom, in Particular...

Got some of the official photos from the Wisconsin Marathon back today. One of the photogs at the finish line had some good timing. This is me, just a few feet from the end, having sealed my massive PR, trying to control my emotions as a million incredible thoughts run through my head.

Everything came together last Saturday. Not so many days of our lives can we say that. When it does, it rarely happens in a way that anyone notices but you yourself. I got lucky. One of my days happened when there were people to see it and clocks and photographs to prove it. And when it's all real and undeniable and you finally, really know it's that day... well, I guess that's a picture of it above.

I thought about all the time and the effort and struggles and the failures and the triumphs, and I knew that the very next day I'd have to get up and start all over again, but at least I got another one of those days along the way.

And I thought about the people important to me. The ones who pick you up, and cheer you on, and give you advice when you need it, and keep their mouths shut when you don't, and laugh when you laugh and cry when you cry - just because they love you.

Thanks to all of you, because people don't get nearly as many days like I got on Saturday, without people like you.

(Happy Mother's Day, Mom.)

Coolest Race Results Feature Ever

Not only did I have a fantastic finish time at the Wisconsin Marathon on Saturday, the event also found a way to post the results in a fantastic way.

They announced, just days before the race, that they had hooked up with a service called ZumTri (which piggy-backed, somehow or other, onto the Chicago Athlete Magazine sponsorship. The subtleties are a mystery to me). ZumTri used the times our chips recorded at several checkpoints on the race course to construct a "Virtual" recreation of the race. When I plug in my bib number, I can watch a little digital "me" run the course, along with every other runner in the race. It shows a full map of the course, with me as a big red dot among the field, and also an alternate view that zooms in and focuses just on my position. I could also select more bib numbers to watch at the same time.

Really, it's easier to see it, rather than me trying to (badly) describe it. Just check it out. Here's a link directly to ZumTri's Wisconsin Marathon event page. You will need to select "Marathon", then on the next page type in my bib #396, then just skip the next option to get to the virtual race.

I was fortunate to run pretty even splits for a long time and to fade at the end far less than many other runners, so my little virtual self spends a lot of time passing the other runners on the course. And, yes, that's a lot of fun for me to watch.

This is not a completely new feature to me. The New York City Marathon offered a similar feature for the last several years (and maintains an archive of it, too). But, this ZumTri version is much more extensive and really feakin' cool. In addition to the two alternate views of my virtual race, it also posts a small collection of charts and graphs that deconstruct my race in some interesting ways.

The Wisconsin Marathon is the very first marathon in the U.S. that has used this ZumTri Service to chart their race. It'd be even cooler if there had been more than just four check points on the course. Getting a split in the system at every 5K might have been really ideal. I hope it's something that, say, the Chicago Marathon gets on board with this year, because I really do think it's pretty cool.

Race Report: Wisconsin Marathon

Alternate Titles for this Blog:
“Orange Shoes = the Winged Feet of Mercury!”
or: “I love Wisconsin in May!”
or: “My Girlfriend Gave Me 15 Minutes for Christmas!”
or: “If I Were a Woman, I’d be Going to BOSTON, Now!”

But the best one really is just this:

3:44:39!!!!!!

No if ands or buts, I destroyed that course yesterday morning. Destroyed it. I have never felt that good for that long in any race I’ve ever run. And I slashed, eliminated, lopped, chopped, and supercalifragified 15 MINUTES off of my previous Personal Best. Even when I set my previous PR in Madison last year, I had to work in some strategic walk breaks in the final miles. Not yesterday in Kenosha. I averaged just under 8:30 pace for the first 22 miles and even though miles 25 & 26 were my slowest of the day at 9:17 and 9:11, I finished strong, and never walked. Not only did I smash my old PR (3:59:09), I broke what I have long considered my pie-in-the-sky dream time of 3:45.

Everything just seemed to come together yesterday. The weather was kind of perfect. It started out in the high 40s and never got over 58. The sun was out all morning, but there was plenty of shade on most of the course, and there was a cooling breeze coming in from the west throughout.

It seems that my training and race schedule, haphazard though it was at times, was an unqualified success. I was responsible with my mileage build up. I didn’t push myself to run long or hard on days when I didn’t feel it. I worked on the theory that it was wiser to cut miles when in doubt. Better to get to race day a little under-trained but fresh, rather than doing all the miles I’d laid out and waking up marathon morning with weary legs. And I ran no other marathons or ultras in the months leading up to Kenosha. So, no extra tolls taken.

I didn’t think about it much before the race, but yesterday was my 7th road marathon (out of 18 marathons or ultras, overall), but it was the first one since my “debut” marathon in Chicago back in 2006 that wasn’t run either in extreme heat, or preceded by other, recent marathons. It was about dang time, you know what I’m saying?

The other major factor? As Spike Lee famously said: It’s gotta be the shoes! It was my first marathon in racing flats. The same flats that Laura bought me for Christmas. The same flats in which I ran a new 5K PR just last weekend. I don’t know any scientific way to quantify the effect that switching from trainers to flyweight shoes had on my race, but I can tell you they just felt good. From the very start, they felt good. I clocked the first mile in 8:26. That made me nervous, because it was a lot faster than the pace I’d projected for myself. I’ve gone out fast a couple of times before and then bonked big time later in the race. I tried to dial back my pace for the second mile and instead clocked a nearly identical 8:27. Again, I tried to lay off my pace in the third mile. This time I succeeded in slowing down, but only to 8:33.

At that point I had a big decision to make. Based on my pre-race projections, I was running too fast, but the pace felt effortless. The weather was ideal. The flat course would present no “heart-breaking” hills at any point in the morning. More than that, my 5K results from the previous weekend had suggested marathon results even speedier than my current pace.

On the other hand, in every other road marathon I have run, the early miles have passed with light legs and lofty hopes, only to end with 10 kilometers that, at best, felt like I was only barely hanging on, and at worst, resembled a death-march to the finish line.

Well, if you don’t already know this about me, I’ll tell you now: at heart, I am an optimist, and, for better or for worse, I like to dream big. So, the decision wasn’t very difficult. I would keep aiming for that 8:30 pace and see how long I could hold it. My race was 3 hours old before I finally slipped off.

The course wasn’t terribly extraordinary, but I found I enjoyed it quite a bit. Kenosha isn’t a very big city, but it has a modest-sized city center. We started out east of downtown in Harbor Park, which juts out into Lake Michigan. Most of our first mile was run in a great big circle which brought us all the way around the park and underneath the Start Line banner a second time. This granted us the perk of getting to run past all our friends and family twice without them having to move.

After that, the course was set up with two out-and-back sections, first to the north, then to the south. Both halves hugged near to the lakefront the whole way. The event included a half-marathon distance as well as the full, with all runners sharing the same course. At the 12-mile point, the half-marathoners would make a U-turn and head toward their finish, while the marathoners would continue onward to points south. The total field was capped at 2000 runners. 1209 runners finished the half, and 529 finished the marathon. Even before I knew that, it was a sure bet that the field would be thinning out quite a bit after 12 miles.

The route was billed as flat and gentle, and it was. There were, in fact, a number of rolling hills in the first half, as we wound our way through and around the numerous parks that dot the lakefront on the north side of Kenosha, but none were steep, none were taxing, and all were merely a polite variation on a level repetition.

The southern half of the marathon was completely flat. Pancake. Like the surface of a lake on a calm afternoon. It was also run mostly on a rural route road with few houses and even fewer curious residents – a far less interesting place to be than those nice parks on the north end. Personally, I was fine. It didn’t bother me. But it’s not hard for me to imagine that some of the less experienced marathoners out there, who were maybe suffering through those final miles, would have really hated that long stretch down and back on Lakeshore Drive.

I risked another significant decision before the race. With all the thought and planning about my shoes and the weight I could shed by wearing the comps instead of my heavier trainers, it began to seem like a silly idea to then go and carry my water bottle during the race. It would be filled and refilled with 16 ounces of fluid that I would be carrying in my hand for all 26 miles. The race organizers promised repeatedly that aid stations would never be placed farther than 2 miles apart anywhere on the course and all would be stocked with both water and Heed sports drink. One wants to believe such promises, but hey, a marathon is a huge event to plan for, stuff goes wrong, and I’ve experienced aid station problems and unfulfilled promises at races new and old, alike.

So, I’ve never run a marathon or ultra without carrying my own bottle or hydration pack, but the goal of shedding excess equipment weight seemed like a worthy one this time. All I carried on my person during the race were 5 gel packs in the pockets of my RaceReady shorts. I planned to suck one down every 5 or 6 miles. With those, I’d be good with just a little water here and there. The event, however, didn’t let me down at all. The aid stations came and went with regularity, and I never felt like I was stuck for too long between them. Plus, each was fully stocked with water and Heed. Everything was so well organized. Even the mile markers themselves were easy to see and properly placed on the course.

Laura and I drove up to Kenosha early on race morning with her bike attached to the back of the car. She used it to ride up and down the course all morning and managed to plant herself in at least 8 or 9 different spots to see me come by and give encouragement. The small town, rural route and low number of runners and spectators made it easy for her to do this; she often biked up and down the actual race route beside the runners to get from place to place. So I ask you, which is better: 2 million strangers screaming at you for 26 miles, or getting to see one of your loved ones over and over again during the race?

It was so much fun to be feeling so good for so long into the race that I unleashed one of my trail runner habits and actually dared to speak to a number of the other runners while we ran. It’s telling, I guess, that the only person I encountered who was up for a real chat was a fellow trail-ultra guy. I found him because he was talking to another runner about the Winter Rock Cut Trail Series that I also did two seasons ago. I don’t remember that we ever introduced ourselves, but in my mind, I assigned him the name “Bob”. Imagine my surprise when I looked up his bib number after the race and discovered that his name really was Bob! Bob and I hung together for about half an hour, from miles 4 to 7. Then he slowed going over a hill and didn’t catch back up again. (I found, later, that he finished his race in a little over 4 hours.)

After that, I made a point of speaking to 3 or 4 other runners, either as we paced each other, or as I moved slowly past them. To a person, they each ignored me entirely, barely even turning their head to glance at me. (Ah, road racers.) So, I resigned myself, instead, to the brief exchanges offered by the spectators who were scattered around the course. Much to my surprise, even when I didn’t initiate contact with a “Good Morning!,” I frequently heard – and I do mean frequently – “Hey, man, nice shoes!” Have I mentioned that my magical, new racing comps are bright orange? I think all of Kenosha noticed. “Love the orange shoes!” “I like your shoes!” One guy even followed up admiringly with, “Now, that’s quite a fashion statement.” I started to wonder if maybe the local sports team had bright orange and blue as their team colors, but that didn’t seem very likely. The compliments never stopped coming. On the sections of the course that we repeated, people remembered me and my shoes from the first pass around and then called out to me again. At one point, I turned to a runner nearby and said, “They keep telling me this like I chose the color myself!” (For those of you that don’t know, running shoe companies rarely offer multiple color options for a shoe style. Each model gets one color, like it or not.) I guess, added to my customary all-black racing attire, the orange shoes did stand out quite a bit. I’m too self-conscious to write my name on my shirt for people to call back to me during a race, but I admit, the attention my shoes got was kind of fun.

I was continuously astonished at just how fleet & fresh I felt all the way through the 22-mile mark. The second time I saw Laura was around mile 8.5, which was close to 1/3rd of the way through the race. To that point, I had been running just over an 8:30 per mile pace, and everything still felt effortless. I voiced to her, then, what I already knew: “It’s gonna be a good day!”

I decided that was a good time to slide the pace back up a notch. For miles 9 to 16 I averaged, roughly, 8:20 per mile, including my best split of the whole day, an 8:09 for mile 14.

Miles 17 to 21 were all on the southern-most section of the course, with the big u-turn at the bottom coming right before the 19-mile marker. I did the whole of this section while pacing, pretty consistently, alongside a couple of ladies who must have been in a running group together. I talked to them some, but, even though they were not unfriendly, one of them had a set of ear buds in and the other didn’t have much to say back to me. They did talk to each other a bit, and also to a number of other women who they knew and passed on the course. I gathered that it was a group women, aged over-40, who all were hoping to qualify for Boston. Some of them might have been new to the marathon, but none of them were novice runners. I was still feeling pretty good, but it helped me a lot to be able to tag along with that duo for a while. The three of us cruised along at an 8:35 pace for that 5 mile stretch.

After 21 miles, I finally started to drop off a bit, though not in a horrible way. I had come through 20 miles in 2:49:02. It is a remarkable thing to me that in all 6 of my previous road marathons, no matter how I started, or how I finished, every time I’ve come through 20 miles within about 2 minutes of 3 hours flat (the one exception being the Chicago Steam Bath of 2007). So, coming through 20 in only 2:49 was a pretty big deal. It meant that for the rest of the race, my pace could drop all the way to 11 minutes per mile and still I would finish with a new PR – and yes, of course I was doing all that math in my head on the spot.

However, if I actually blew up that badly in the final stages, it would have been a major disappointment after starting out with 20 stellar miles. No, my sights were already set on a much faster time than just a simple PR. I had passed the half-way mark at roughly 1:50:45. That would have doubled to a 3:41 finish, but my legs were telling me that a negative split wasn’t going to happen. (How crazy, though, that a sub-3:40 could even be in my head after 20 miles?) But a 3:50? Totally doable. I had already declared, earlier in the week, that a sub-3:50 would equal an excellent day’s work for me. More than that, though, if I could just manage to keep my per-mile pace below 9 minutes for the final 10K, I thought I could break 3:45. (!)

Once I realized that, I quit doing math altogether. I just didn’t need to anymore. No matter what happened in the end of the race, I was going to set a huge PR, so the math and the worry were simply unnecessary. Besides, when I started thinking about it too much at that 20-mile point, I started to cry, which made my throat swell and breathing became noticeably more difficult. Not so good.

All of this was such new territory for me. The final 10K has eaten me up so many times before. At Chicago ’07 it was the heat, and in Atlanta that same year, it was the heat and the hills. Both were devastating and seemed as though they would never end. At NYC in ’07 and Chicago in both ’06 and ’08, I had passed 20 miles on pace for or in reach of a sub-4-hr finish, only to watch in frustration as my legs failed to push me forward fast enough to keep up with the rapidly spinning time clock, until my goal ultimately eluded me in the end each time. Even in Madison last year, when I PR’d and finally did go sub-4, the final 6 miles were an agonizing, constant negotiation between exhaustion and math, and I was never sure I was going to succeed until the final yards before the finish line. (At which point, I was promptly rewarded with a bought of dizziness and nausea that didn’t pass for 30 minutes after the race.)

What a glorious pleasure it was then, yesterday, to be able to turn off all of these concerns and just run. All I had to focus on was my turnover rate, the next mile marker, and my sturdy will to push onward.

Nevertheless, I did continue to hit the splits on my watch. I crossed Mile 22 in 8:52. Mile 23 was 9:03 – the first split all day to be slower than 9 minutes. I rebounded for the 24th mile with an 8:43. It was the last 2 miles that finally, truly felt hard. My legs were heavy. My mouth was feeling dry. With the turns in the course through the neighborhoods near downtown, there were several stretches when I couldn’t see a single other runner ahead of me on the road. When I did creep up on someone else, I tried to hook onto them and use them to pull forward.

Mile 25 was the slowest of the day, a 9:17. So close, but still another long jaunt up 3rd Avenue, and I still couldn’t see the finish area. I needed to keep pushing. We finally made the last signifigant turn on the course onto 56th Street and back into Harbor Park. At last, I could see the 26-mile marker and what would be the finish line area. I didn’t have much kick in me, but I gave it everything I had left. I crossed 26 in 9:11, but I also saw that my total time lapsed was only 3:42:52. There was no longer any doubt. I charged through the final 385 yards, fighting off the tears at my accomplishment and brought home my sub-3:45. Laura snapped a couple of pictures as I came in, and then ran over to greet me just past the finish line. Hugs and tears all around.

I’ve had two nights to drink it in now, and I’m still buzzing. It’s been a while since I’ve had a running week as good as this past one. All of 2008 was one running let-down after another. My sub-4 at the Madison Marathon was very much the exception, not the rule, as I logged slow races, missed goal times and even posted my first-ever DNF (because of a knee that I injured when I fell on it during a training run). Now, in just a seven day stretch, I’ve cut 30 seconds off my 5K PR, and 15 minutes off my marathon. And in neither race did I feel like I ran as hard as I absolutely could have. I might have pushed harder; I might have set even loftier goals and attained them. If I improved my training, did better stretching, worked to improve my core strength, I know I could run even faster.

It’s so good to feel like I'm still discovering more potential, more reward. I worried at the end of last year that running had become a bit of a drudge. Now I feel vindicated for the little changes I made, and suddenly running is completely fun again.