Woodlands Marathon

This week's off-day race report takes us back to last spring's marathon. Run February 28, 2015.

Books on marathoning often stress the importance of carefully setting challenging, yet realistic goals. Then, there's the Facebook approach. A friend says they're going to run a marathon. You click "like" and say you'll run it with them. Then when you go to register, you see that the elite standard for your age is a time you can actually run. An impulse response has now become your major goal for the next six months.

The friend in this case was Adam Brown, a very likable guy who's married to one of Kate's best friends, Kelli. After running a leg in the relay at The Woodlands Marathon in 2014, he decided he'd like to take a crack at the whole thing. There's something about the glow of a first time marathoner that's almost incomprehensible, yet entirely captivating, to a crusty veteran such as myself. So there I was, staring at the registration page and asking myself, "do you really want to put this on yourself?" And, after some thought, I decided that if I really wanted to get a sub-3 as a 50+ runner, this was as good a time as any, so I fired my credentials off to the RD.

Those credentials weren't as squeaky clean as I'd like. Sure, I'd run under the 50+ elite standard several times, but not recently. I tell myself that's just because I haven't tried running a marathon hard since 2011. This is true, I've been focusing exclusively on ultras, but that's still a rather stale result as a qualifier. It turns out to be good enough and I'm placed into the elite field. So, now it's obligatory: I have to prep.

Prep goes exceedingly well. I get in all the workouts that matter and my total volume is almost exactly according to plan. At the start of the cycle, I win the Osage 50K and with six weeks to go, I post a PR (84:22) in the Frostbite Half Marathon, winning 50+. With no nagging injuries or undue work stress, this is shaping up to be a no-excuses race.

Kate, Yaya, and I all fly down to Houston two days before the race. I prefer getting there two days in advance because if anything goes wrong with travel plans, there's still time to adjust without getting all stressed. The trip goes without a hitch, so I get two relaxing days in at Adam's house before the race. He lives right on the race route, so I jog around a bit each day, checking out parts of the course. There's not much to see, really. It's very monolithic: tree-lined parkways, concrete surface, no hills of any significance. That's not to say it isn't pretty; just that there isn't much to make note of.

With Alan Lawrence

I attend the elite briefing at packet pickup the day before. They've singled out four Olympic hopefuls to share their thoughts on the race. That's interesting, but the high point for me is meeting coaching legend Alan Lawrence, author of the very first book I ever read on running. I knew he lived in Houston, but I never bothered to check that he might be a pre-race speaker.

I am up at 4AM without the help of the alarm. A chronic early riser, that's normal for me, though I usually lie awake in bed for another half hour or so. I quickly reheat the oatmeal I cooked last evening and have it with some coffee before donning my headlamp for a very easy 20-minute jog. It's only a 15-minute drive to the start, so we get there shortly after 5:30. We sit in the car and try to talk about anything other than running until 6:15 when we finally decide it's time to face the task at hand.

The temperature is 35, but I don't feel particularly uncomfortable with my warmups on. Adam has to find the gear drop and get to his corral. We've miscalculated the time required to do this and he has to scramble off. I've got a bit more time to wander around as the elite field gets to just walk up to the start line and drop our bag there. I check in, jog for about a mile and then come back to shed my warmups. One of the EastAfrican runners is doing likewise and comments that this is waaaay colder than he was expecting. Like most 2:10 marathoners, he's much better at radiating heat than retaining it. I've got half a foot and 40 pounds on him, so I think the temperature is just fine.

We're led to the line, but allowed to continue warming up by jogging back and forth along the first few hundred meters of the course. We get in position with a couple minutes to go. The true elites are on the front row, most of them shivering violently. I've been in elite fields for ultras before, but this is my first time lining up with world-class marathoners. I'm struck by how tiny they are. Without any stretching, I can look right over their heads. Most of them are from the marathoning powerhouse nations of Kenya and Ethiopia, but there's also a German and a few Americans hoping to qualify for Olympic Trials.

With me in the next row is the rest of the "elite" field who enjoyed a relaxed time standard due to our advanced years. I'm the only one over 50; the others are in their 40's. Altogether, there are fewer than 20 of us and it feels very much like we will get trampled by the 1500 or so stacked up right behind us (the 7500 in the half are at a different start line a couple blocks away).

Fortunately, the great mob seems cognizant of the task ahead and, while a few scoot by in the first 100 meters, most are content to settle into something slower than what I want to run. In less than a minute, the front of the field strings itself out as we all find our paces. The first mile arrives at 6:35, which is a few seconds quicker than I'd like, but not enough to be a concern. The next is dead on at 6:42 then we get a bit of downhill in mile three for 6:24.

I'm running in a little pack of five. Only one of the runners, Chris Weir, feels like talking much. We have a fair bit in common. His PR is nearly identical to mine, he likes hillier terrain (he moved to Houston from Atlanta a few years ago), and he's done some multisport races. The miles go by easily, but as we're still averaging a few seconds under my optimistic 6:40 pace, I decide to back off the just before 10K. I'm further slowed by a couple "hills" (gentle rises of 30 feet or so) and the fact that the course turns into the wind, so I hit mile 9 at 60:03, exactly 1/3 of a second per mile off best target pace. So far everything is going about as well as one could hope, but it's about to get better...

This really isn't schadenfreude. I wouldn't wish a mid-race meltdown on anyone; particularly not one of the best runners in the world. But, how often do you get to pass a guy who's been paid to journey halfway around the world for a race? One of them (the same guy who was commenting on the temperature at the start) is walking along the side of the road. Presumably, he's going to pack it in at the next aid station, but for now he's still on course and wearing his number, so it's a legitimate pass. Several others in front will also bail by the end so, I'm not sure who he was, but I don't really care. I won't be last in the elite field and that's good enough for me.

I hope he does stop at the next aid station because shortly after that I encounter pretty much the most tasteless fan display I've ever seen. (That includes the 6-foot paper mache penis that was thrown on the ice during a Cornell hockey game. At least some effort went into that stunt; it really did look like a giant penis with "Harvard Sucks" painted on it and the choreography of busting the emergency doors and running down through the stands to just the point where it could be thrown over the glass and getting back out of the rink before security realized what was going on had clearly been rehearsed.)

This one is just stupid. A cardboard sign in marker that says, "Run like the guy behind you has Ebola." Really? In a sport dominated by Africans? Classy. I consider saying something but decide this is not the best time for such a debate.

The course is now mostly into the wind, so I'm still giving back more of my opening pace. I hit the half at 87:50. I'm not too concerned about the fact I've lost another 15 seconds; I never really thought I'd run a 2:55 anyway.

At mile 16 the course does a short out-and-back to get the total distance to exactly 42195 meters (actually, 42237, since a certified course has to be measured to 100.1% the stated distance). The four that I was running with early on have split up, ranging from 1-2 minutes ahead of me. A couple minutes behind is a little cluster of runners following the 3-hour pacer. I hadn't realized there was a 3-hour pace group for this race. It's nice to know they are back there. If I run into problems in the late going, I might be able to latch onto that group and save a sub-3 finish. For now, I'm feeling pretty good about my current velocity and see no reason to adjust.

Mile 18: rain just starting

And then it starts to rain. Not hard, but given that the temps are still sitting in the mid-30's it's pretty chilly. I pass Chris who says he's fading. He's not alone; apparently Texans don't like freezing rain because despite running the second half 12 minutes slower, he hangs on to 26th place. Just past 18 (in 2:00:57, still in great shape though there's no denying the slowing), I'm happy to see that Kate, Kelli, and all the kids have still come out of the house to cheer me on. It's a much needed boost given the deteriorating conditions. Yaya runs across the street to hand me a gel pack. Not needing one, I just give her a high-5. Half a mile later, the course turns and I pick up a tail wind for a mile. When my split for 19 shows a 6:54, I know the "real" race has begun. I'm starting to tighten up in the cold and I'll have to fight for the pace from here on in.

I don't fight it very well; 20 is an even slower 6:58. The course turns again and it's back to a cross wind, but the rain has let up, so I'm no colder than I was. My stride is considerably shorter than it was an hour ago so I focus on keeping my turnover as high as possible. While slightly less efficient, the inefficiency is realized in the form of heat, something I can use right now. I'm very glad I didn't toss off my gloves and hat earlier in the race when I was feeling more comfortable.

The half marathon course has merged in and the 13.1-mile head start wasn't enough for a fair number of folks. Most are quick to get out of the way when they hear me coming, but these are obviously not serious runners, so many of them are wearing headphones and listening to music. There are a few near misses, but I manage to get through them without spending much extra energy or losing time. After running alone for the last 90 minutes, it's actually a nice stimulus.

At 23, it's my turn to get caught. Well, you can't slide off the pace forever and expect not to pay. Still, I hate getting caught late in a race. Worse is the realization that this guy is not a youngster. I may well be losing the 50+ win. I latch on for all I'm worth (resulting in my fastest mile split in the last six miles), but it's just too much. This dude ain't slowing down and I can't hold this for another 15 minutes. I back off for mile 25 to compose myself then get back on the gas for the final mile. Of course, there isn't a whole lot of gas left in the tank so the extra effort doesn't really change my speed very much.

The finish line does have a small crowd on hand and the announcer gets mighty excited when I come into view, telling everybody that he wishes he could run a sub-3 when he's 51. I take that as a good sign that the guy right ahead of me wasn't. The finish clock hasn't rolled over to 2:58 yet, so I come up with one last surge to scoot under it in 2:57:53. I'm not sure why I care about that, but somehow 2:57 sounds much more "comfortably under" three hours than 2:58 and dropping the seconds off your marathon finish is a time honored tradition.

Shortly after the line I find my late-race antagonist who is actually a 42-year-old on a relay team. He apologizes if he messed up my pace. I thank him for snapping me out of my slump before I started feeling sorry for myself. The next Grand Master (50+) doesn't show up for another six minutes. The Grand Master win was what I was really after, but it spilled over pretty nicely. I also picked up hardware for third in Masters (40+) and 16th overall is a nice slot in a field this size (well, actually 17th, I got chicked by the lead woman). And, of course, having been placed in the elite field on somewhat dubious credentials, I was glad to post a time well under the standard for my age.

The weather has improved somewhat, but it's still cold enough that I'm very happy to take refuge in the VIP tent with its heaters and unlimited supply of food and drink. Most of the East African runners are shaking with hypothermia, so much so that I wonder if perhaps some real medical attention is in order. None of them ran particularly well (if one can say a 2:20 is not running well). Still, they are a generally happy lot and from what I can follow of their conversations (they seem to switch in and out of English mid-sentence or maybe it's some sort of pigeon language), they are taking it all in stride. Perhaps when running is your ticket out of poverty rather than a first-world diversion you learn to look at the upside.

Double dipping on hardware

After about 45 minutes in the tent, I decide it's time to check on Adam. I head back to the car and collect my phone. The online results indicate that he's already finished! I hurry back to the finish area as best I can to congratulate him. He's taller and beefier than I, so it's no surprise that he held up fine in the conditions, but a sub-4 on your first outing is no small thing even in the best of circumstances.
That makes for a happy evening after, but doesn't leave me with much material for witty sarcasm. So rather than invent tragic facts, I'll just skip that part of the race report and close with some thoughts on why this race went so nearly perfect.

First and foremost, the training was spot on. I've used Daniels' as my template for the past few marathons and the correlation between how closely I follow it and how well I run is pretty near 1.00. The guy isn't hailed as a great coach for nothing. In particular (and this is hard for me to accept), I didn't do any over-distance runs. I had a few days where morning and afternoon combined were around 30 miles, but my longest single run after the Spirit of the Osage 50K at the very start of the cycle was 24 miles. Recovery becomes more problematic with each birthday and I'll have to concede that laying off the ultras really helped get all the quality work done. On the other hand, the 18-week cycle covered 1700 miles with several weeks over 100, so reasonably high volume still seems to work for me.

I've generally not done a lot of marathon pace training in the past. It's always struck me as junk miles: too fast to recover quickly but not fast enough to bring about improvements in fitness. This cycle I dutifully ran all the M-pace workouts, including several where I was on the gas for 15-16 miles (of 20-23 miles total). In retrospect, I think I was right that not much physiological improvement came from these, but totally wrong about their value. I've never felt so comfortable sliding into my target pace at the start of a marathon. It felt very natural and relaxed. I knew it would get hard, and it did, but I was never afraid of it. It really felt like just another training run up until 18.

While I remain a proponent of negative splits for sub-marathon races, I've embraced the fact that positive is not only to be expected in marathons and ultras, but actually optimal. Somewhere between 2:00 and 2:30 your stride shortens due to the natural tightness. The elites (real elites, not me) are close enough to the finish at this point that they just push through it, but for anybody running longer than 2:40, it's just a fact of life. In the three fastest marathons I'd run up until this point, my 9-mile times were 60:23, 60:50, and 62:07. The last one is what I would run if I was serious about running negative splits (I was and I did), but the other two were positive splits with a faster overall time. This one was even quicker through 9 (60:03) and, while the last 10K was a bit slow, I think that was more due to the cold rain than the early pace. At any rate, it was my second fastest ever, so the early pace couldn't have been off by much.

Finally, and this may come off as sappy but it is sincere, my family came out in the rain and watched me run by. That matters so much more than most people realize. I travel to most races alone, but in all of the abovementioned three fastest marathons, my family was there. Now, it's four for four.

So there it is: train long, but not too long, train fast, but not too fast, take it out firm but not too firm, and don't lose sight of what really matters. I think just about every book on marathoning gives similar advice. And, on those counts, they're right.