2018 Marine Corps Marathon

2018 Marine Corps Marathon
October 28th, 2018 at Washington, D.C.
A lesson in how NOT to run a marathon
Watch time: 4:40:35 (26.64 miles)
Chip times: 4:39:21
Position: 920 of 1,756 (M35-39), 8,389 of 20,700 (Overall)

Back Story

In 2017, I had marathon fever. As part of that chaos (3 marathons in 7 weeks in spring 2017), I decided to put my name into the Marine Corps Marathon lottery.  Of course I was picked!  I was excited because this would be my first big marathon.  Every other one I have done was maybe 3,000 people, and this would be 10 times that amount!

But I also had developed an obsession with everything Barkley Marathons, and had put myself on the wait list for the Barkley Fall Classic 50k in September. Lo and behold, a few weeks before that race, I got in.  Luckily, it was still within the deferral period and I decided it would be a bad idea to attempt a marathon after a brutal trail race like that, so I deferred to 2018.

Weeks before race day

How to describe a training cycle that doesn't have a training plan? How about a hot mess? Especially hot because most of it was done during North Carolina summer heat.  That's not to make excuses, because many others do it, but it's not exactly easy for me to get motivated to go run for three plus hours when it's 90 degrees and 95% humidity.

And so I just..... didn't.  I didn't follow a training plan. I didn't do long runs. I didn't do track work. I didn't do tempo runs at my target race pace. I didn't really even set a race goal until a few days before the race. What did I do? I definitely logged the miles. I set a goal for the year to run 2000 miles. What that resulted in was the desire to get out all the time and keep adding to that number, which meant I was running 5-6 miles almost every day. That meant I wasn't getting enough rest days (maybe 1 a week), and my long runs suffered because of that... I'll detail my failures at the end of this report.

So about that goal..... I have said it for a while that this was going to be my last road marathon. Right now, I'm enjoying trail running and getting into the ultra mindset, and I think that racing a road marathon requires a different mentality - or maybe just a better running ability than I currently have. If this was to be my last, I was going to go for that elusive sub-4:00 race. I've been close a few times, only to have things fall apart in the last few as I trudged on alone. My friend Dave said he would run the whole race with me and keep me on pace as long as I was up for it. My ego spoke much louder than my brain and I decided to go for it.

Best race shirts ever!

We drove up early Saturday morning, a 5 hour drive that ended close to 6 because we stopped for lunch. We couldn't decide where to eat until we saw an exit sign for Fuddruckers, which is where we ate the night before Myrtle Beach marathon - where Dave BQ'd and I set a PR of 4:04. So we upheld that tradition. We got to the expo around 3:00pm, picked up bibs and our beautifully ridiculous shirts that got trashed on social media. We met up with Doug and of course had to get a group photo with said shirts to share with all of our friends back home. I also was able to buy the very last Marine Corps themed buff at the expo, even though it was from 2017 it still looked awesome (2018's had sold out before noon).

After wandering around for an hour we headed to our hotel. At this point, we still weren't exactly sure how we were getting to the start line. I had called them a week before to ask, and the man I spoke to said it wasn't very far away. When I checked in, someone asked the receptionist about walking and she said it was way too far - maybe she wasn't a runner because to me a mile is just a short warmup. We did some research and found that to get on metro and then take a shuttle and then walk could take us over an hour, so we decided we would just walk. Grabbed some dinner at a restaurant next door, and then got back to the room thinking we should get to bed, and it was... 6:00? Well that would be silly, so we stayed up and watch some of the World Series game until about 10. Alarms set for 5:15 since it is a later race start than usual (7:55).

Race Day

Alarms went off after an unusual good night's sleep. Must be I'm just not too stressed about this race - whatever happens, happens, and I'm ok with that. Maybe things hold together, and maybe they fall apart completely <shrugs>. Usual morning race day routine, and we are out the door to walk to the start at 6:10. It was a perfect morning for a race - starting at upper 40s and warming up into the 50s, and overcast so no worry about the sun making it too hot. Lots of people sitting around in the hotel lobby, but one other guy is walking so at least we aren't the only crazy ones. It ended up being a bit longer than we thought (about 2 miles), but I wasn't worried about it. I did get a little hungry so I went ahead and ate one of my Snickers bars - yes I know, not your typical race fuel but it works for me.

Calling my shots

The one complaint was how far we had to walk to for bag check. Had I known that, I wouldn't have brought one, but I wasn't sure how I would be feeling after the race. I wanted to have a long sleeve and some gloves to wear in case I got cold. But it made sense to have them at the very far end of the corrals, since that was where the shuttles dropped everyone off. I think it was an extra mile of walking to get from our place in the corral, to the bag check area, and back. After that we hit one of the seemingly 1,000 port-a-johns (no wait lines), then we got into our space between the 4:00 and 4:15 sign and I hoped these would be the people I would hang with all day.

The start was pretty cool. They had skydivers bring in the flag, then a few motivational words from a World War II veteran, and the National Anthem. They started the push chair racers at 7:45, and we had an Osprey flyover for that, along with a cannon blast. The duo racers (near and dear to our run club's hearts) started at 7:50, and then right at 7:55 we were off with a cannon blast, which kind of surprised us as there was no countdown or notice that it was going to happen.

We started running, and then we were jogging/trotting. Never have I been so crowded at a race, and we were running down a 4 lane highway! I figured it would probably thin out a little bit after the first few miles of "hills". I say that because to us, they weren't really hills, compared to what we are used to running.  So we hit our first mile about as expected, 9:30, knowing that the crowd would be an issue early on. The next mile had a few downhill sections and we just went with the flow, and ticked off an 8:48.  Figured I would check my heart rate as I wanted to keep it pretty low early on, but for whatever reason there wasn't good contact with my chest strap, so I had no reading (didn't get one until near mile 5). I wasn't too worried as we were chatting along the way so I felt like that was a good sign.

Flags lining both sides of the course
just past the Blue Mile

I have only been to D.C. once in my life, over 20 years ago, so I wasn't too familiar with where we were or what we should be seeing. There were some cool looking old church buildings across the Potomac River, in what I guess to be the Georgetown area. I feel like we ran around the Washington Monument area 3 or 4 different times. We ran right up to the Capitol Building shortly after mile 18. I guess at some point we ran past the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial and all of the museums, but I had blinders on at those points of the race and completely missed them. Probably the most moving section of any race I have done was at mile 12-13, the "Blue Mile", in which poster boards line both sides of the course of Marines that have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Every few feet I looked at pictures of young men and women, and the one thing I noticed was their ages - most were 21 or 22 years of age. It hurt thinking about their families, many of which were out there next to their lost love one's signs, cheering us on. That helped give me some motivation to run when things hurt - it was the least I could to honor them.

The support from the Marine volunteers and all the spectators was unlike any other marathon I've done. There were only a few short sections that I didn't feel like the streets were lined with people cheering. There were 7 or 8 different live bands out there playing. The aid stations were plentiful and never felt like more than a few miles apart. They were chaotic as you would expect at a crowded race, but they usually had a dozen or more tables handing out Gatorade, and then the same amount handing out water. Might have worked better to have them on both sides of the road, but I managed to get in and out without ever having an issue. They also had food stations with gu, oranges, trail mix and Halloween candy, etc, and another thing I've never seen - Vasoline on a stick to help anyone with chaffing issues. I just stuck with the chews and Snickers bars that I carried in my pack. Late in the race there were a few places giving out small cups of beer, and I stopped for that, but skipped over doing the shots of Fireball - my one regret as maybe I would have felt better at the finish!

So what about that pace? As I said the first few miles had some hills and were crowded, but after that we hovered between 9:05-9:15/mile for the entire first half of the race. A few miles crept below 9:00 and when I noticed that I backed off a bit. The pace was a little bit faster than I had planned - I was hoping to be around a 9:15-9:20 average at the halfway point, then run the second half faster.  There was one point when I checked my HR monitor again and it said I was around 145 which I thought was perfect.  I wanted to keep it below 150 for the first half of the race. But now looking at my HR data I don't know how reliable it was, and if it really was 145 when I checked, it was steadily rising to much higher than I wanted (170s). My legs felt great though, and I had been able to eat and drink all morning - never felt hungry or thirsty.

It was a bit draining mentally when we hit the half marathon point and the clock read 2:04:xx. I knew we were a few minutes after the clock time, so we were really around 2:02 chip time, but the course was also measuring long (my watch was at 13.3x at the 13.1 timing mat) so I immediately had thoughts of not breaking 4 hours. I think Dave sensed the same doubt in me, and asked if I thought it was going to happen. Of course, that's when I started making all the excuses - course was long, both hips had been hurting, left knee hurt, I thought I had a blister on a left toe (I did but other things hurt more so I ignored it), etc. I said probably not and then....

As quick as a snap of your fingers, my race goal was gone. I lost the mental battle (in addition to the physical failures of training) and my legs responded by feeling like someone had tied cinder blocks around my ankles. I felt like the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz and it took every ounce of strength I had to run one step. I told Dave I needed to take a 30 second walk break to try to reset myself. That resulted in a 9:45 mile 14. I thought I would try to run a few miles around 9:30 and that might get me through the rough patch, but it never happened. Mile 15 required two 30 second walk breaks, and it was all downhill from there.

In front of the Capitol Building
after the disaster began

At one point I texted Katie, because she had told me the tracking alerts weren't working for her. I let her know that things were falling apart but I was going to grind it out to the finish. I also got on Facebook and noticed a friend had commented that our pace had slipped from 9:15s to 10 minute miles and the tracker must be drunk. I started posting on there also to let everyone know I was ok, just having a bad day. Being the great friends they are, they tried to encourage me and told me to get off my phone and run, but I just didn't have it. I had decided to just take some pictures and try enjoy the rest of the day.

It wasn't long before I was thinking about a 4:30 finish, or longer. This was going to be a miserable 12 mile death march to the finish line. I tried to settle into a 3 minute run / 30 second walk cycle, and that lasted for a bit, but eventually went to 3:1, 2:1, and finally ended up about 2:2 for the last few miles. And the running pace wasn't anything fast, as all the muscles were aching. The bargaining began, and I had to reset every goal I had in the race. For a while it was "don't run a 12 minute mile", then "don't run a 14 minute mile", then "just run for 2 minutes", and finally just actually finish this thing. I really wanted to be able to run up the last steep hill at the end, to the finish line, but I only made it about half way up before I had to walk the rest of the hill, before running across the finish line around 4:40:xx, my slowest marathon besides the Blue Ridge Marathon in 2017 (which wasn't even attempted to run and was more a run/walk party with friends). I ran the gamut of emotions from embarrassed to proud. Embarrassed that I had called my shot of a 3:59:59 the morning before, and had imploded so epically, but also proud to be a marathon finisher for the 8th time, something we were told before the race that only 2 out of every 1000 Americans will do this year. I also can't complain too much - despite having what I would consider a "slow" time for me, I know there are many people that would love to run the time that I did, and so I am proud and content with my results.

Post Race

Relieved to be finished

After the race, we were hoping to get back near the finish line to cheer in several of our friends, however we were herded like cattle through the finishers area and had no clue if it was even possible to get back to cheer. We got our medals, had some food and a beer, and then walked the 2 miles back to our hotel. Thankfully we were granted a late checkout at 3:00pm, so we had time to shower and sit for a minute before the long drive home. Surprisingly, it didn't take long to get out of D.C., but we had to stop 3 times along the way to get out and stretch, each time more painful than the last. My legs have been pretty sore for the past 48 hours, but I did get out for a 1 mile run around the neighborhood today (Tuesday) and felt a little better afterwards. Hopefully I can get one more run to flush out my legs, and then it's time to go for a 24 hour on Saturday!

Lessons Learned

• Respect the distance. In 2018, I have done race distances varying from 1/4 mile, 5k, 10k, half marathon, marathon, 50k, 40 miles, and a double marathon.  All of them present unique and interesting challenges, both within the race itself and with how you train for them. For me, without a doubt, the marathon distance is the most difficult. The shorter distances seem easier to me, because I'm able to maintain a much better pace and I know the pain will be over with quickly.  It's also fairly easy for me to get out and run for 1.5 - 2 hours every weekend - as long as I get out of bed at 5:30 - so a half marathon distance just feels "normal". I haven't trained specifically for shorter distances much recently, but I think it will be fun to focus on getting faster. The longer distances I have always been able to handle mentally. I approach those races knowing that I will go at a slower running pace and do a lot of walking. My goals for those races have just been to finish and that was something I could easily accomplish. The marathon is a different kind of beast. A distance you should train hard for and race hard. A lot of things have to align to even have a chance at a good race, i.e. weather, getting to the start line healthy, good crowd support/motivation, race day nutrition/hydration, and many other little things that all need to cooperate. I had all of those things lined up perfectly for me, except for just one teeny tiny little problem...
  
• Log the miles - but make sure they are the right miles. To say I didn't train for this race would only be half the story. I did train in a sense, but not necessarily for this race, more like for overall fitness. I logged 30-40 miles every week this summer/fall, except for the one week following BFC. But I know the most important thing for a marathon is the long run, and I failed miserably at that task. I have been chasing the 2,000 miles for 2018 as I mentioned above, so I was logging low mileage almost every day. I think that may be a good plan for ultras (focusing on total time on feet over the course of a week), but not so much for a 26.2 PR attempt. It was almost laughable when I got home from the race and looked back at my long runs ( > 10 miles) this training cycle:
  July 8th - 10.17 miles @9:53/mile pace
  July 15th - 10.01 mi @ 10:23/mi
  July 20th - 10.01 mi @ 12:23/mi
  July 28th - 13.11 mi @ 10:09/mi
  Aug 5th - 10.01 @ 10:48/mi
  Aug 19th - 12.01 @ 10:07/mi
  Aug 25th - 15.31 @ 10:42/mi
  Sept 1st - 15.51 @ 11:27/mi
  Sept 8th - 10.31 @ 11:13/mi
  Sept 15th - Barkley Fall Classic - 26.2 in 11 hours 40 minutes
  Oct 4th - 16.51 @ 10:05/mi - Heather Jones's run for her son Cam, where I ran 2-3 miles at a time then took walk breaks or sat down for 10-15 minutes in between.
  Oct 20th - 10.72 @ 10:47/mi
  
  WHAT IN THE WORLD MADE ME THINK I COULD RUN A SUB-4:00 MARATHON? I only had 2 legit runs barely over 15 miles, and those were not even close to the pace needed (most likely they were 3:1 interval run/walks). Because I had been doing so much higher weekly mileage, I thought I was better trained than I had been before. I didn't realize how terrible I had been about getting in the long runs.
  
• Respect it, but also CHALLENGE the distance. This is something I try to do at every race. Putting aside the fact that I wasn't trained for this thing, I think it is more exciting to shoot for a goal that is just a little bit more than what you think is attainable (even when properly trained). As someone once said, "There can be no great success without the risk of great failure."  With a level head, I could have reviewed my training and set a finish time goal somewhere in the 4:15-4:20 and probably achieved that. But I would have felt like I sold myself short if I didn't risk it all and shoot for the PR. So I did, I blew up completely, and I'm ok with that. I tend to learn more from epic failures than small successes and this race is no different. I can be proud of the grit I showed to continue after everything fell apart with more than 10 miles to go.
  
• Learn from mistakes, and move on. Part of why I write this blog is to have a personal record of success and failure. Next time when I think about signing up for a marathon and attempting a PR, I will look back on this report and see what I did wrong. Hopefully, I will do things differently next time and get a better end result. In the end, I had a great experience at a great event, and I would recommend the Marine Corps Marathon to anyone.
  
  So what's next? Oh, just a small little thing on Saturday - running for 24 hours. A few weeks ago I was considering going for 100 miles, so of course I let everyone know about it. What that probably means is that I will get somewhere around 30 and quit! Either way, find enjoyment in whatever you do, I'm sure I will find it at my next race!

A unique medal that I will always be proud to have