4 Hour Marathon...Should I try? (Read 1300 times)

Congrats on a solid race!

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My motto " Make the last mile your best mile"

mile 26**8:02 WTG.

Race report needed.

holy crap.  I'm no marathon runner but it seems you not only trusted your training you outpaced your training. 

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Awesome, awesome work!  I'm shooting for sub four this year, too, and I can only hope to end as strong as you did.

Inspiring!

Race report needed.

Thanks everyone!  A little info on my training.  90% of my running is on hilly trails, so the effort/pace would be different if it were on flat roads.  I did my long runs on a flat bike path to simulate the race conditions.

I decided on the bus ride to the start that I would try to go out at 9:09 pace and see what happened.  At the time I thought it was aggressive, but what the heck.  I trained hard, ran the long runs at slower pace, tapered well, and felt great that morning.  55 degrees at the start.

During the first mile I thought the crowd was moving way too slow and was looking forward to it thinning out.  Still in the crowd at 3/4 mile and looked at the Garmin- 8:50.  Wow, I thought its was going to read over 10:00!  I slowed down in fear, and hit 9:03 for mile 1.  One screen of my Garmin was set to current mile pace, and I just tried to stay in each mile and hit 9:00 +/-.  Turns out there were many others trying for the 4 hour mark, and we ended up in a large pack of about 20 for the first 4 miles.

 Around mile 4 there was a long downhill section.  I relaxed and just thought about leg turnover.  At the bottom I was running alone.  I caught up to a woman and we paced each other at 9:00 pace for the next 6 miles.  I do most of my training alone and found working with her to really help!  We came to the only uphill I remember on the course.  I kept the 9:00 pace and was alone at the top. 

My only mistake of the race was at 5 hours earlier.  I was using Bodyglide and thought it would be a good idea to apply some to my nipples, and then put on the band-aids.  Yep, around mile 11 I noticed the band-aids were gone, and I was wearing a white shirt.  I became "that guy".  At first I was embarrassed, but later in the race it became a badge of honor.  My wife has banned white shirts from all future races.

I hit the 13.1 mile point at 1:58 and still felt great.  A little down hill section gave me a mile under 9:00, so I decided to tempt the "wall" and stay in the 8:5x range the rest of the way.  No one passed me the rest of the race.  This felt great for a while, but gave me no one to surge or pace with the rest of the way.  Miles 14-19 went by in a flash, I don't remember much about them.

The last 6 miles were on a remote section of bike path along the Hudson river.  No crowd support, full sun exposure (75 degrees at this point), and passing many, many people at various levels of distress.  I found this section to be the biggest mental challenge I have ever faced.  I think with crowd support and/or other runners at my pace, this section would have been much easier.  The downside of a negative split a I guess.  At mile 24 I told my body, the faster you run these last two miles, the sooner we can stop!  There was crowd support for the last mile, and that really helped.  I finished with my fastest mile of the day at 8:03. 

It was a wonderful experience.  I am proud of the way I trained and ran my first marathon, and I am already thinking about running another in May.  Thanks everyone!

Great report. Thanks.