Notes
I'm not going to give my usual mile-by-mile account, I'll just talk about the race a little bit instead. This wasn't a goal race, so I didn't put much pressure on myself and I'm not disappointed. I just wanted to try to see how my body handles piggybacking a second marathon onto one training season. Ideally, I did want to keep the pace between 7:00 and 7:10 (closer to 7:00), and then see what I had left for the final 10k, but the main goal was to just run by feel.
It was clear and the temperature was 48 degrees at the start and 59 at the finish. I don't know anything about dewpoint, but I'll post since everybody else is. 46 and 47.
The marathon is a nice little race 800 people. The start is about a mile from the finish, so the logistics are easy. It was a pretty scenic and moderately challenging course, but it was pretty lonely out there. If you like small races, this might be your thing, but if you need people to run with or to use as pacers, then this might not be for you. Crowd support was minimal as well. Most of the course was pretty sparse, except for miles 13-17 and the finish. I pretty much ran the entire race by myself. Once we determined our positions, there weren’t too many people out there in the sub-3:10 area. I caught up to and tried to run with small groups of 2-3 3 times, but each time the groups’ pacing was found to be unreliable. The first group of 2 males around my age that I left really came out of nowhere at some point when I thought they were long behind me, and I could hear they were coming on really strong. I was starting to think oh good, maybe we can try to work together but then I decided to step on the gas myself and never saw them again until the out and back portion when they looked like they were dying and probably close to a mile back haha!
Around mile 14 I could feel a blister start to develop, which really sucked because I was already having trouble with mental focus being out there alone and that was just one more evil voice put inside my head. Since I didn’t have anybody to run with, the only thing that really helped to focus on keeping on pace was playing the catch the person in front of me game, but all those people in front of me were so far in front since we were so thinly spread out. Well, I did catch everybody in those last miles that I did want to catch, but that was more a result of them slowing down. There was one guy whom I thought I might not catch until the finish, but he decided to take a break at the last aid station. Poor guy. After the initial jostling for position, I don’t think anybody passed me.
The course was rolling for the first 4-6 miles, then relatively flat. After those first miles, it was an out-and-back along the bay. I don’t remember running down this hill on the way out, but on the way back the 26th mile was all uphill except for the first ¼. Then it was a steep downhill to the finish.
I don’t think it ever gets too hot this time of year in Newport, so this would be a good option for a late spring marathon if you don’t mind doing a solo supported time trial with a few people around you. I do prefer having more people around, but I will be back to do this race again one day.
If I heard correctly, I think a women’s course record was set today. 2:47:xx.
I wonder how ORR did today.
So now I’ll be taking a week completely off, then I’ll be racing a 5k, half, and 10k in June and July before starting to prep for Chicago. Even if my training doesn’t indicate sub-3 by that time, maybe I’ll just go out at that pace to see how long I can hold on. I’ve never had a blow up in any of my 4 marathons, so it’s about time! I couldn’t risk doing that today because I had a flight to catch.
If there was a halfway marker, I didn’t see it, so I estimated my half times to be 1:33:28/1:33:05. I know these don’t add up to my garmin time of 3:06:43, and that’s because I dropped the decimals when I was doing the calculations. Close enough! Speaking of Garmin, it says I ran 26.24 miles. The course must be short or something There's no way I should be that close!