Let's start at the end: 3rd place, behind one local guy and one out of town African. Doesn't sound that bad right? Well here's some perspective: 1:13:25 and 1:21:17. The former is my time at the half marathon mark last week. The latter is a time I would in other circumstances not even consider a workout, but here it was my closing half of the race. My final time was less than 10 seconds faster than my 2008 performance at this race, when I was in significantly worse shape, and also stopped midway to use the bathroom...
So the question becomes, how did I arrive at this sorry state of affairs? The sad fact of the matter is I don't really know. There are things that I would do differently in training if I could do it all over again, to be sure, but I don't believe that was a major issue. And once you remove training from the equation, all you're really left with is a list of lame excuses.
It was hot and humid. Yes, but only for me? Nope. It only gets worse from here. I had a cold that week? A runny nose and some gross yellow mucus aside, it didn't bother me in training at all, so not much reason to think it derailed my race. Maybe all I'm left with at the end of all that obsessive second guessing is the old cliche: it just wasn't my day.
Which is such a lame cop out.
I made it through the first 10 miles in just under 56 minutes feeling fine, and I kept it moving ok through the halfway mark. During miles 14 and 15, I noticed that the same effort level was only getting me 5:45s or so, where previously it had gotten me mid 5:30s. I began to contemplate the possibility that I was in trouble, but I figured if I could keep my pace to the mid 5:40s, I could still come away with a decent performance.
Well by mile 17 that ship had already sailed. I was hurting, and hurting good. Dizziness, exhaustion, and all of the other usual suspects that have previously come to bear during the last 3 miles of marathons were now here to stay for an entire goddamn hour. So I jogged on. By mile 20 I was above 6 minute pace, and I was resigned to suffering through it. I slogged through at 6:30 pace until mile 25, when nausea and lightheadedness rendered that impossible as well. My last mile was probably somewhere north of 7:30.
Since we are now several weeks removed from the aforementioned debacle, I’ve moved on to focusing on the winter and spring seasons, but I still feel some lingering disappointment for how things turned out. In the end, I believe that feeling the sting of disappointment means that you actually care about what you’re doing. And to paraphrase an old classic, caring is half the battle.
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| Looks like a beautiful day, huh? |
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| Already looking a little grim, but better than that Kenyan dude back there |
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| At the time, thought I was going strong. In hindsight, hanging on for dear life. Last two photos courtesy of Mark Wright of Wright Stuff Photography |
