Post-Marathon Analysis

I want to take a minute and jot down my feelings, impressions, and analysis of Philly before it all gets fuzzy with time.

As soon as I crossed the finish line and looked up to see that 2 as the first digit, it was like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. That feeling hasn’t gone away. It is just such a huge relief to have that giant goal out of the way. I’m finally able to sleep again, to start planning out next year, to go more than 5 minutes without thinking about the end of the marathon course. And, I don’t know if I can explain this well, but there’s this feeling of legitimacy that comes along with the time — a sense that all those hours and miles I put in were going towards something worthwhile.

I was in agony in the final miles and felt completely destroyed, but as soon as I finished, I felt fine. We ended up walking all over the city that day and I was a little stiff, but not in any real pain. I took Monday off just because Monday is always my rest day, but I was jonesin’ to get out there and run all day long. I did fairly easy 6 mile runs yesterday and today and they both felt great. I’m going to keep it easy throughout the end of the week (it’s going to be 80 degrees down in Miami, so that will help keep me in check) but I think next week is going to be pretty much back to normal.

Going into the race, one of my biggest concerns was my lack of speedwork throughout the training cycle. I only did intervals once and no fartleks or anything like that as I had before previous marathons. Yet, that didn’t seem to be much of an issue. In lieu of the speedwork, I had done a lot of miles at or near marathon pace and focused on always ending runs with at least a couple fast miles. I think that made up for the lack of traditional speed training. Moving forward, I want to do longer stretches of runs at marathon pace — like 10+ miles, especially at the end of some of the long runs. I think that will help to combat the bonk.

This was the first marathon that I ran without following any sort of a training schedule. I really like the flexibility that gave me and think that it allowed me to get as much quality work in as I could in such a shortened time period (because of the knee issues). I definitely want to keep researching different methods, reading different plans, listening to advice, etc., but I doubt I’ll ever go back to following a rigid schedule that someone (including me) has set up beforehand.

The extra miles I put in definitely helped. In fact, if I had to point to one thing as being the difference maker between this spring’s 3:04:31, and this weekend’s 2:57:52, it would be training mileage quantity. Adding in the midweek kinda-long run helped a ton too. When you get yourself used to running at least 12 miles twice a week, it makes the first half of the marathon seem like you’re not even trying yet. It’s funny, I didn’t really agree with the whole higher mileage theory before, but now I’m a firm believer. I plan on increasing my mileage by as much as my body will let me again next year and would like to be around 80-90 miles per week by the end of 2010.

The taper was much different this time around, too. It wasn’t nearly as steep of a drop off as in prior attempts, and I feel like that definitely benefitted me. I think the too soft tapers before made it really hard to stay in control at the beginning of the race because I had so much excess energy. Also, they got my mind into this lazy mode that was tough to break out of when the miles started getting tough and I needed to dig deep.

Hydration and fueling were perfect. I had pasta with shrimp and scallops the night before around 7:00, half a Gatorade at 11:00pm, a Power Bar at 12:30am, and then another at 4:00am with the rest of the Gatorade. I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t have too much on my stomach either. During the race, I grabbed Gatorade almost every station (about every 2.5 miles) and had a Power Bar Gel at miles 10 and 19.

The biggest mistake I made was running miles 6-16 too fast. I seem to have the slowing down at the start down, but once I start to get fatigued, I speed up too much. That has to be a major focus moving forward, especially with the longer distances and more frequent races.

Another mistake (this one relatively minor) was wearing shoes that were too new. They only had 32 miles on them at the start, but had been really comfortable so I thought they would be okay. I have some pretty special looking blisters on my feet now as a result of that decision.

So, I guess, walking away from this, I have to say that I’m really happy with how it went. The late race slowdown bothered me a bunch at first (and is still definitely something I want to improve on) but I feel like I went out there and ran a pretty respectable race. Sure as hell better than last year anyway…