My first marathon is in the books! (Read 578 times)

Well, I successfully ran my first marathon yesterday morning - the Chickamauga Marathon. This is a small marathon - only 323 finishers last year. I think there were more this year. The course is a double loop with an extra mile or so out of the loop at the beginning and end. You run through the Chickamauga Battlefield, the site of the largest battle of the Civil War I think (130,000 soldiers fought in an area of something like 4 square miles). You run along roads through fields with monuments. I saw deer. The trees were changing colors. The volunteers were great. They provided a nice long sleeved technical shirt, the race was run with chip timers, and they even had a special gift for first time marathoners waiting at the end - your bib in a frame. Pretty cool experience all in all. The weather was perfect - clear, low 40s to start, mid 50s when I finished. As I said, the course is a loop, with mostly just gently rolling hills. Oddly, I felt as it the entire course were gently UPHILL, though. Somehow, I never noticed the downhills, even though I know they had to be there! OK, here's the sad story of my race. This having been my first marathon, and the fact that my fitness has been steadily improving over the past year (I started running October 2006), it was quite a challenge trying to figure out what pace I should shoot for. Normally, since this was my first marathon, I would have picked a conservative pace and just get this one under my belt. But the pace I thought I could achieve, according to several races and race time predictors, was somewhere between 3:20 and 3:30. Given my age and birthday, what this meant was if I could run a 3:20 (never in the cards by the way) I could run Boston in 2008. If I could run a 3:30, I would qualify for Boston 2009. So instead of picking a reasonable pace, I foolishly succumbed to the temptation to shoot for 3:30, or even 3:20, despite the obvious fact I wasn't ready to run a 3:20, and the fact that running a 3:30 would be very challenging for me. So I did what I swore to myself I wouldn't do - I ran out of the gates too fast!! A predictable rookie mistake made by the rookie that I am! The first 10 miles I ran a 3:24 marathon pace (7:48 min/mile). Reality then caught up to me, and I slowed for the next 6 miles to 8:19 min/mile. Sometime after the 16 mle mark, the 3:30 pace guy caught up to me. He was like the energizer bunny. I knew I was in deep trouble at this point, but I also now had a target to try to keep up with. And I did - for about 3 miles. The next three miles my average pace was 8:02 min/mile. The pacer was great - he tried to distract me and the two other runners who were trying to keep up with him with stories and stuff. Unfortunately, he told us a story about how he'd run the Pikes Peak Marathon 2 years ago and almost died - took him over 8 hours to finish, and they put him on an IV immediately after the race to keep his kidneys from shutting down. Not the best topic for a guy running his first marathon and barely hanging on to his 3:30 goal pace!! Anyway, sometime between 19 and 20 miles, I could no longer keep up with the energizer bunny man. I tried to keep him in sight, but eventually I failed. I really hit the wall around 22 miles. My pace slowed dramatically, I had to walk up some 'hills' (really shallow slopes, but they seemed like mountains by then). My worst mile was the 23rd - I ran that in 11:41! More than 4 minutes slower than my fastest mile, which was mile 5 which I did in 7:33. When I passed the 24 mile marker, a woman spectator, trying to encourage me, shouted 'you're looking great, keep it up'. Almost immediatedly after that, as if to answer her, my left hamstring cramped and I pulled up to a complete stop. This has never happened to me before, and at this point I was afraid I'd be walking/hobbling the last 2 miles. Fortunately, the spasms stopped after some stretching, and I was able to 'run' in at a recovery pace. The 24th mile I did in 10:29, and the 26th mile I did in a blistering (ha ha) 9:19! Despite my horrendus strategic errors, I'm not disappointed with the result. I'm gald I was able to gut it out towards the end and finish somehow, and it was a great feeling to cross that finish line with my 'support crew' (my wife and youngest son) there to great me. I'll worry about beating 3:30 next time! The thing I wasn't prepared for was what happened the next 45 minutes or so after I finished. I think I actually felt my very worse during that time. Lots of pain in the lower body, I could barely walk. I felt cold and a little light headed a couple of times. I went to the gym where the food was to be somewhere warm. I laid down and stretched, drank my recovery drink, ate banannas and bread. They had pizza, but it wasn't appetizing to me at this point. It was a good 30 to 45 minutes before I felt like a human being again. But despite all this, never once did I feel like some feel after their first marathon - that they will never run one again. In fact, my son found that there was a raffle to win a free entry fee into the ING Georgia Marathon to be held Mar 31, 2008, so I entered the raffle. That will be my next race and I'm really looking forward to it. And for that race, I will pick a realistic pace and stick with it, no matter what!!! (I hope! )

Hey frowzy, 3:43 is a great time for your first marathon!!! Congrats! You'll have your BQ in no time.

Nicely done, and you certainly learned something! Can you believe the winner? 2:44:40 and the guy's 48 years old! In fact, all 4 winners (overall and masters M/F) are in their 40's. Sheesh, that ain't fair.

You still did fantastically--rookie mistakes, and all! I have no doubt that a BQ is in your future! k

Joe, you gotta call it a good day. It's a great finish for a first marathon. I had some friends from another forum at that one as well. As you said, you made a few mistakes but I hesitate to call them rookie errors. I recently ran Louisville, my 15th, and let my mind go into Superman mode and thought I didn't really need my gel or water. I crashed miserably at 19-20 and ran 3:35 instead of the 3:20 I felt like I was trained for. Hearty congratulations to you and rest up. There are many marathons ahead and you'll achieve your goals in due time. My first was a 3:43 in St. Louis in October of '95. I ran my second in March of '96 at Va. Beach (the Shamrock) and ran 3:22. Marathon life is great.