Notes
Official time 3:29:37. Pace= 8:00. I started 50 seconds after the gun. Adjusted splits: 10k=46:47; Half=1:40:06; and 20 miles=2:36:02. Placed 460th out of 2941 overall, and 72nd out of 297 among men 35-39.
I think my average pace at halfway was around 7:35 on my watch (7:38 here for the first 13 miles), which would mean that my pace for the second half was something like 8:15 on my watch (8:14 here for the last 13 miles, not including mile 27). So the gap between my average pace for the first and last 13 miles was 36 seconds. I did succeed at running the pace I aimed to run during the first half - 10 seconds slower than my overall goal pace, which still seems to me the right plan - but that just turned out to be the wrong goal pace for me today. From the beginning I didn't feel very strong. I pretty much knew that 3:15, my goal time (7:25 pace on my watch), was out of reach today by around mile 7, long before I actually slowed down much. But I started feeling pretty bad quite early: just before halfway. I slowed down and rallied somewhat, but in general I had less in me today than I had hoped and expected. I wonder if that had something to do with not eating enough, not processing gel well, and/or not reacting well to tapering? Maybe I just overestimated my fitness, but I think that my 18-miler averaging 7:45 three weeks ago felt better than today's race. I think my average pace was exactly the same at 18 miles today, but I had started out faster and was slowing way down, whereas three weeks ago I started out slower and sped up. Even if this was just an off day for me, I need to reconsider how I taper and put more emphasis on training runs designed to make me run stronger during the second half of a marathon race.
Next day: my goal time was too ambitious, and I could have run a faster time yesterday if I'd aimed, say, for low 3:20's. It's not that I overestimated my fitness in general, but that I overestimated the speed at which I could get the hang of running the marathon distance. My shorter races have been better, but in part that's because I've run more of them, and in part it's because the marathon is much more complex and takes longer to master. Besides just sticking with it and trying again, I think I should (at the appropriate time in a training cycle) do longish runs in which I start fast and try to hang on into biggish distances (and get used to eating gels while doing that). That's the opposite of what I normally do in long training runs and the opposite of the ideal pacing strategy in a race. But perhaps over time it'll help me stay stronger later in a marathon, and I'll just need to remember that in actual races I should start slower and speed up. Maybe do that now and then in training too, then. Also, do rethink tapering, at least to the extent of simply tapering less.
This was 24:21 faster than the 2010 MCM. But at the end of mile 16 I was only 3:16 ahead of my time at that distance during the MCM. So my last 10 miles were 21:05 faster (or less slow) than the last 10 miles of the MCM.