Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon

Run October 4, 2015.

It wasn’t love at first sight.

I ran my first marathon (Chicago) in 1993. Having just retired from pro cycling, I was plenty fit. But, I had no idea how to run long distances and, as I staggered across the line in 4:35, I was thinking I didn’t really need to do that again. Ever.

Since then, I’ve run marathon distance or further over a hundred times, but pinning on a number for a competitive road marathon still brings back anxiety from that first attempt. There are few things in life less pleasant than a marathon gone bad. It’s not like ultras where you have time to walk it off and wait for your body to come back. You can do that, of course, but it’s no longer a “competitive” marathon. If you care about your result, you have to keep digging, even when it’s obvious that you’re only going to suffer more as a result.

So, even though I have no qualms about running eight or nine ultras in a year, I usually limit my marathons to one. The training investment is too high and the recovery too long to justify many more. Frankly, I might not do them at all except that there is no other event that does such a good job of scaring me into decent training. Any time I feel like blowing off a tough workout, I merely need to conjure the memory of those six miles along Lake Shore Drive where the misery of staggering through the howling wind and sleet was compounded by the knowledge that those final few miles were going to take twice as long as they should.

All that said, I have come to love marathoning. Even with proper preparation, they are tough. But, doing a tough task reasonably well is a gratifying thing. So, knowing that this was the last year I’d have enough training time to prepare properly, I decided to do two. My spring effort at The Woodlands went exceedingly well, so I had pretty high hopes coming into the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon in the fall.

This is a sufficiently emotional activity that I like to bring the family along, even though it significantly increases both logistics and expenses. Yaya has been at every one of my 3-hour marathons and Kate has only missed one. Knowing they are there makes a difference. We drive to Madison Friday and spend the night with my college teammate Tom Rickner. After lunch Saturday, we make the short trip to Milwaukee in time to pick up my number. An easy jog around downtown confirms that my legs have come back from a few too many races during the preceding weeks; my stride is fluid and relaxed. There’s a little tightness in the hips from sitting in the car for seven of the last 24 hours, but nothing alarming.

I’m up at 4AM on race day. The hotel breakfast won’t be set out for two more hours, so I reheat some oatmeal I cooked at Tom’s house. I follow that with a short jog to get my engine started and then walk the mile to the buses. The temperature is 47F and a light mist is falling, which makes it pleasantly chilly. The course is almost a direct line south from start to finish, so the bus ride is half an hour, mostly on interstate. It’s not quite the jolt you get driving two hours to the start of a point-point hundred, but it’s enough to underscore that we’re going long today. By the time we arrive at Grafton High School, the precipitation has stopped.

I’m on one of the first buses, so I take advantage of the fact that there’s no line for the indoor restrooms. Unfortunately, my body isn’t yet ready to cash in on this opportunity. I try again twenty minutes later (lines are still pretty short), but still can’t poop. Those who don’t run long distances may find reporting such details unnecessary or even unseemly, but very few things destroy a good run quicker than intestinal distress, so this is no trivial matter. Shortly before 7, I go for my warmup. 

After about a mile, I feel like I may finally be able to take care of business. There’s no hope of using an indoor toilet 20 minutes prior to start, but I only have to wait about five minutes to get a porta-john. The results are still less than hoped for given last night’s fairly robust meal, but it will have to do. I check my warmup clothes at the truck heading for the finish and jog over to the start.

It’s still pretty chilly, but I feel fine in just my technical shirt and shorts. I’m happy to find that people are doing a pretty good job of honoring the projected finish signs. There are fewer than a hundred of us standing between the 3-hour sign and the start line, which seems about right for a field of 3500. 

Among those up front is fellow SLUG and national team member John Cash. He’ll be running a whole lot faster than me, so I say hi, but then find the 3-hour pacer. While I’d like to finish two or three minutes faster than that, I figure running the first few miles with the pacer will relieve a fair bit of stress; I can just relax into the effort and not worry about whether I’m taking it out too fast.

Turns out this pacer is pretty good at his job, taking us through mile 1 in 6:54, just 2 seconds over 3-hour pace. The next mile is a downhill 6:35, followed by a 6:50. That puts me 19 seconds off intended pace, a price I’m happy to pay as insurance against over baking the early miles. I gently move ahead of the 3-hour group and am dealt my first unpleasant surprise of the day: the legs are not digging 6:40’s.

More specifically, my hips aren’t happy. That tightness apparently was worthy of some alarm (though I don’t know what I would have done about it). It’s shortening my stride just enough that I can’t get down to 6:40 without resorting to an unsustainable push off. I hate to force things this early in the race, but I don’t want to completely give up on this one, either. It generally takes something in my PR range (2:57) to win the Senior division here and I’d like to stay in the hunt. I spend the next few miles oscillating between 6:40 and 6:50, trying to find something that’s both fast and comfortable. By mile 9 (at exactly 61 minutes, 1 minute off target), I concede that it’s just not going to be that kind of day. A decent result is still possible, but there will be no cruising through the first twenty; it’s going to be a fight the whole way.

Trying to get the time back with a mid-race surge would be suicidal. Instead, I hold the pace I’ve got and hope that the slow start will help me limit the fade in the late miles. While it will require more discipline than usual, I’m sure I can run the next 9 in 61 as well. That still puts me in with a very outside shot at 2:57. The chances of this working out are augmented by the fact that mile 24 is something of an annuity on this course, dropping nearly 100 feet from the bluff to the lakefront. It seems a pretty safe bet that I’ll gain some time there.

Aside from the last two miles along the lake, the course is undulating everywhere. While the opening and closing miles are net downhill, the middle section offers no such compensation. My pace continues to bounce around, but it’s generally consistent with the terrain and never too far from 6:45. There’s a little shuffling of the field, but my position seems to be holding pretty steady. I’m not really sure what that position is, but it’s not changing much, so I conclude I must be running much better than I feel. While it’s been a frustrating hour, I get to 18 in 2:02:06, in line with my revised plan.

I hit the timing mats at mile 20 in 2:15:51. That split will be automatically posted on Facebook and I wonder what’s going through Kate’s mind. I had told her that I’d finish around 45 minutes after passing 20. If she takes that as 45:00, she’ll be bracing herself for an unpleasant ride home with me sulking over missing 3 hours on a day when course and conditions suggested far better. While there’s not much chance of saving a 2:57, breaking 3 is still very doable. A 10K is too much to fathom right now, so I focus on each individual mile, trying to stay around 6:50. Mile 21 is fine, but then the bomb goes off.

Astute readers may have picked up on the foreshadowing earlier in the story and seen this coming. Having gotten this deep into the race, I was starting to think I might get through this without my gut exploding. Now, it feels like I’ve been run through with a pike. This is hardly a unique condition and marathon organizers know to have plenty of porta potties along the route. However, such a stop would kill any chance of finishing under 3, so I have to try to run through this. I back off, but not too much (slowing to a jog can lead your body to believe it’s getting its way and then things really turn ugly). After about 5 minutes the pain has subsided. Mile 22 takes 7:15, but I’m still running, so there’s nothing to do but push on.

My distress has only cost me a couple places and I focus on pulling them back in. My stride is back and I feel like I can safely push at this point, which is a good thing because I only have half an hour for the last 4.2 miles. The downhill in mile 24 does help, yielding a 6:35 split. The last 2.2 are completely flat and I manage a bit of a surge to pass three more people and finish at 2:58:48.

Kate and Yaya are there; Kate seems visibly relieved that I came in under 3. Olivia is just happy that the girl at the chocolate milk tent is sharing her supplies with spectators as well as runners. The amenities at the finish are fairly good, but I’m glad we have time to zip back to the hotel for a quick shower before awards.

It wasn’t pretty but, as a competitive effort, it holds up reasonably well. Times were off across the board which probably means conditions weren’t quite as good as they seemed (though they sure seemed pretty good). I finish in 47th place, winning the my age group. Holding it together at the end mattered as second place was less than a minute back. I didn’t get the Senior prize (that goes to Chris Reed in 2:57:10), but 98 seconds back certainly qualifies as being in the hunt.

This is almost certainly the last time I’ll ever run a sub-3. The first two months of grad school have made it brutally obvious that serious running, doctoral studies, a full time job, and a family are at least one obligation too many. As I would rank those in the opposite order, serious running gets the heave-ho. Interestingly, my finish time was exactly the same as my first sub-3 marathon five years ago. In between were a handful of 2:57’s. There’s a nice symmetry to that and it probably indicates that no amount of training would result in big improvements. I’ll step back with no regrets.

Of course, I won’t stop running altogether. My time alone on the roads and trails serves needs that go far beyond being fit. Oddly enough, despite the decrease in training, it’s the shorter races that will get eliminated from my schedule. There’s not much to like about running a 10K slowly. But, longer events taken at a modest pace have a life far beyond finish times and age group trophies. Whether it’s reveling in the running community or introspective meditation, distance running takes you places physically and spiritually that are hard to get to any other way. It wasn’t love at first sight, but true love rarely is.