Notes
Indy Monumental Marathon, 2:27:00, 16th place
5k 16:59, 10k 34:03, 15k 51:22, 20k 1:08:46, Half 1:12:25, 25k 1:26:05, 30k 1:43:33, 35k 2:01:07, 41k 2:21:48, finish 2:27:00
The week leading up to this one the weather just got worse and worse. Ended up being low to mid 60s, on and off rain, and sustained 15mph winds out of the south with gusts of 30+ mph. That wind meant it was mostly a tailwind the first half of the race and then mostly a headwind for the 2nd half of the race. Not great conditions for running fast
Even standing on the starting line I wasn't sure what I was going to do with regards to pace. With the big tailwind early I thought maybe it would be smart to really try to run a fast first half if it was feeling easy and right. But pretty much immediately once the race started I could tell it wasn't going to be a day to run fast. Ran a 5:30 first mile into the wind and then quickened up the next few miles into the low 5:20s. The pace really didn't feel very fast but based on how I was feeling overall I could tell I needed to play it conservatively to leave something for the headwind second half. Was rolling along with Austin OBrien for the first maybe 6 or 7 miles and felt like I was just chilling. Shortly after the split for the half marathon I looked around and realized Austin wasn't with me anymore which was kinda confusing to me but just kept pressing on
Not a whole lot of note happened between 7 and halfway. I was just trying to keep the pace honest but keep it relaxed. I was slowing a little bit according to my race splits, but I wasn't really aware of that when I was on the course running. Went through halfway in 1:12:25 and thought that was okay. Wasn't too confident I'd be able to come back even but thought something under 2:26 would still be realistic for the day. Maybe around mile 14 a couple guys came by me pretty hard, I must have been slowing down without realizing it, but I told myself to latch onto those guys and try to hang as long as I could. Making the decision to go with those guys was really good. They were doing great work and I just hung on as we picked up stragglers and moved past lots of people dying
After halfway we were heading back south towards downtown and into the wind but I really didn't notice the wind too much. I'm not sure if that was because we weren't ever running dead south or if the pack was blocking it, probably a bit of both. We were basically rolling along in that pack until somewhere after the mile 21 bottle tables. One of the guys was the leader of the pack and he took off and kind of splintered the rest of the pack after that. So then from 21ish to the finish it was mostly a solo effort with occasional passes
My splits had slowed by that point but I was still doing a decent job of keeping it in the upper 5:30's. My quads were by far the most problematic thing that was limiting me late in this marathon but they really weren't too bad until we got to the last couple miles. We made the last turn south a little after 23 and that was by far the toughest part of the race. Dead into the wind the last 5k of a marathon was not a lot of fun. Up until making that last turn I thought breaking 2:26 was still in the cards, but I ended up slowing to around 6:00 per mile at the end and didn't even break 2:27. I passed a few guys in the last few miles even with dying, and I managed a pretty good kick in the last couple hundred meters to kick down a guy who had a pretty good gap on me
Overall I'm not too upset with how this went. 16th place is pretty good, the last time Indy was run when the OTQ window was open was 2019 and 16th place that day was 2:20:19 which is a time I would have been pumped with. So it was just a really tough day. I'm happy with how I battled when things got tough in the 2nd half and I think I ran a really smart race, I was in the mid 30s place at all the first half splits and ended up moving up a ton the 2nd half to finish 16th. This was a good learning experience and will pay dividends when I run more marathons in 2023
This was also the first marathon where I've consciously done a carb load. Starting the Wednesday before the race I was getting in about 600- 700 grams of carbs and continued going hard on the carbs until Friday afternoon the day before the race. It was a ton of carbs and I was super over eating all those carbs pretty quickly but I think that helped me a ton. I took a Maurten gel right before the start then took in 6 Maurten gels during the race, got down about 20-24oz of pedialyte from my on course bottles, and grabbed probably 8 to 10 cups of water throughout. I had no stomach problems and didn't feel like I had any sort of glycogen or nutrition bonk which was really nice
Overall I think I probably wasn't in quite as good of shape as I thought, and the bad weather conditions didn't help either. This is the first marathon where I think I did the nutrition right, and my breathing really never felt too bad either. The limiting factor today was my muscles, especially my quads. They took a beating from all the pounding and I could feel they were getting kind of tired earlier than I would have liked. And now in the days after I am way more sore than I remembered being post marathon in 2019 too
Legs not being able to handle the pounding is probably just a result of only having about 5 months of good training for this race. When I had my marathon breakthrough at Chicago 2019 that came after 10+ months of really strong training. So I think this is a great 1st step to getting back to the marathon and if I can keep healthy and keep training at a high and consistent level for the next 6 to 12 months I am really excited about what I can do for the marathon in 2023