The good news: I qualified for my 9th and 10th consecutive Boston Marathons. Bad news: 7 weeks of recovery since running a hard Pikes Peak Marathon was not enough recovery time for me. I guess it is true that the older you get the more recovery time you need. Mentally I do not want to admit that recovery rule, as I basically try to ignore age differences between me and younger runners.
My goal was to run with the 3:30 pace group and beat 3:30 for the first time in 4 years. The 3:30 finish requires a pace of 8:00 min per mile. I still think it can be done, but I'm going to have to really focus 6 months of training on that goal. It wasn't too many years ago that I could run a 3:30 marathon almost at will, on any given weekend if I needed to. It looks like that has changed. I ended up finishing 20th place out of 99 men in my age group (60-64).
I actually enjoyed the rain that we had the entire length of the race. The rain kept me cool so there were no heat related issues. I went out with the 3:30 pace group and felt fine for the first two miles, but I did notice the up hill sections at the end of both mile 1 and mile 2. I had ignored those little hills in previous years (plenty of energy), but I noticed them this year. I was still with the 3:30 pace group feeling pretty good at that point.
Mile 1: 8:22. Mile 2: 8:18. The pace group picked it up into mile 3 to make up for the easy start. My mile 3 was 7:59. The pace group had moved out a little bit ahead of me by the end of mile 3. I started to realize I was going to get disappointed today as far as the 3:30 goal was concerned.
Mile 4: 8:10. Mile 5: 8:09. By mile 5 the 3:30 pace group was about 200 meters ahead of me. I started assessing the impact of the Pikes Peak Marathon. A 2nd place there in my age group there was going to take a big toll today.
Mile 6: 8:08. Mile 7: 8:10. Then mile 8, Veyo Hill. This is the beast of this race. Mile 8: 10:49, a very disappointing mile. All of a sudden the legs felt like iron weights. Now I knew this race was going to get really serious. All along I had assumed that a Boston qualifying race was in the books. Now I realized that I was going to have to work for it.
Mile 9 starts just before you crest the Veyo hill so I pushed it up and over the hill and then down the other side. Mile 9: 9:02. Way too slow.
Mile 10 and 11 are the long gentle up hill miles. Mile 10: 8:58. Mile 11: 9:46. By now the mental games were in full force. Recollections of other tough races run through your mind. The good news for having lots of veteran race experience is that you understand those feelings when things get tough, so you have to toughen up. And understanding the course I knew that after mile 12 we were in for lots of downhill running, which is good news.
Mile 12 includes some downhill and at the end more of the gentle uphill so it is a recovery mile and in my condition the uphill section took its toll. Mile 12: 9:14.
Mile 13: 9:00. At the half marathon check point I was at 1 hour 56 minutes, only 4 minutes ahead of the imaginary Boston Qualifier runner. By now I knew who my competition was, the imaginary Boston Qualifier runner. He chased me last November in San Antonio when I took 1st place in my age group and was the only Boston Qualifier out of 23 runners on a very hot day. I disappointed the BQ runner on that day and now in St. George he wanted his revenge. I suspect old BQ runner had not realized just how tough it can be running up the Veyo hill in mile 8 so he must have fallen back, but I knew he would be after me now.
Although I had given up on the 3:30 pace group long ago, now I was encouraged at the thought of most of the remaining 13.1 miles being downhill. Since the BQ runner can't go over 9 minutes a mile I was confident that he wouldn't catch me.
Mile 14: 9:07. Not a lot of downhill but it was a start.
Mile 15: 8:35. The 2nd half of this mile really gets steep downhill. This was the fastest mile of the 2nd half of the race (a blistering 8:35), nothing to write home about, until mile 21.
Mile 16: 9:05. This slow mile time shocked me. Mile 16 has a steep first half and then the 2nd half is still downhill, so I was very disappointed at a 9:05 on this mile. This mile put some thoughts in my head wondering if I was going to muster up the effort to stay ahead of the imaginary BQ runner. I hate that guy, but he does inspire me to push harder.
Mile 17: 8:48. Mile 18: 8:44. Okay, at least I put some more distance between me and the BQ runner.
Mile 19: 9:57. Mile 19 has the hill at the end and it took a toll today. The imaginary BQ guy closed the gap by almost a minute. This was bad.
Mile 20: 10:05. Not enough downhill in this mile. The imaginary BQ guy closed another minute on me. Very bad news. When we drove the course on Friday afternoon we noticed that there was cell phone service at the mile 20 marker, so I called my wife and let her know that I finally made it to the mile 20 marker. This gives her a better idea of when to start looking for me at the finish.
Mile 21: 8:35. So as I moved into the last 6.2 miles my focus was to try to stay as consistent as I could and hold off the imaginary BQ guy. So my mantra for the last 6.2 miles was a repeated "energy to the legs, energy to the legs". My total focus was to drive energy to the legs so I could run steady and stay ahead of that awful imaginary BQ guy. I was really happy with the 8:35 time for mile 21 after such a slow mile 20.
Mile 22: 9:07. Steady, good.
Mile 23: 8:47. Wow, this felt fast (ha, ha). I called Lynn and told her "3 miles to go".
Mile 24: 8:57. Still steady. The mantra was working. I called Lynn, "2 miles to go".
Mile 25: 9:04. Still steady even though the course had flattened out on the streets in town. I called Lynn, "1 mile to go".
Mile 26: 8:58. I caught up with a guy from Dallas and talked with him and decided to run the rest of the race with him as we both had on Texas running shorts (and I had the Texas singlet). We did look good.
Last 0.2 mile: 1:39. About a 8:15 pace which felt like I was flying (wow).
My 3:54:04 time beat the imaginary BQ guy by almost 6 minutes, so that was at least satisfying. Understanding how my legs felt during most of the race and gathering up the mental focus to push the limit of what energy I had was satisfying too. Young energetic explosive runners probably cannot imagine feeling satisfied with a race that only beats a 4 hour finish by 6 minutes, but some day you will. But, give me 6 months to prepare now for Boston and I plan on a much better Boston race than I had in St. George.
The other reason I was hoping for a better time is that the Polymyalgia Rheumatica muscle disorder that has plagued me for 2 and 1/2 years seems to be going away as I am down to 3 mg of prednisone medication a day right now, and with St. George out of the way I am going to reduce the medication down to 2 mg a day and see how it feels. I'm counting on this issue to be gone and not affect me in Boston. This isn't an excuse, but it is a reality. We all have things to deal with, so deal with them and get on with it.
I had my Flip Video camera with me on this race and documented lots of good scenes, like the fires at the start line, and the Veyo Hill, and much of the last mile and through the finish line. This will be a great video to show my Texas friends what the St. George Marathon is like.
Post race the only thing close to an injury is the bottom of the right heel again feels bruised, just like it did after Pikes Peak. I do need to get full recovery on that one. Otherwise I feel fine, just a little stiffness which is expected.
Lynn, Bobby, Madge and I headed for Texas right after the race. We drove to Gallup, New Mexico and stayed there Saturday night, and then drove all day Sunday and got home at 11:00 PM. Nice to be home. To get to St. George for the marathon, Lynn and I left our home near Austin, TX at 4:30 AM Texas time and drove 16 hours to Flagstaff, Arizona and stayed there Thursday night, and then drove about another 5 hours to St. George on Friday morning and got there about 1:00 PM Friday. A long drive, but worth it. Beautiful country in northern Arizona and southern Utah, awesome. | 