Saturday morning.
I couldn’t sleep! I woke up at 2:30am and laid in bed, tossing and turning until 3:30 when, 20 minutes before my alarm was to go off, I decided to get up. Coffee, oatmeal, Maurten 160. Put on my race kit and sweats and made sure I had my hotel key, Nuun prime, and 2 caffeine Maurten gels for the race.
I jogged to the location of the shuttle bus and waited to board along with the other runners. A super nice lady from Minnesota sat next to me and we chatted the whole drive to the start before bidding each other farewell and good luck.
I warmed up and tried to observe what the elites were doing,
i.e. if they were heading into the start corral. Unfortunately, I did not pay good
enough attention to this, heading in only minutes before the gun was to go off
and when it was packed. I started about a minute and 45 seconds behind the
first wave, which could well have led to shortness of breath and a mild panic
attack. For a split second I debated scrapping the race completely, feeling somewhat
helpless jogging across the start line in a field packed to the gills. I
quickly cast these thoughts aside and veered to the right, running on grass and
around what I would later find out to be just shy of 850 people.
The right side of the road was open after about 800m and I
was still able to hit right on my 5:45 pace target for the first mile.
The field was strung out after 2ish miles. Passing person
after person I was hitting conservative splits like I planned. Taking in water
at 3 or 4 water stops and taking 2 gels I never lost energy during the race, only
gained momentum. I passed 4 females, 2 of which had male pacers. I passed the 5th
and last female in front of me at the end of mile 9, right before lemon drop
hill. I would later learn, straight from the man who named it, that the hill was
coined after a restaurant that was demolished when the highway expanded.
None of the females tried to stay with me, although their
male pacers one-stepped them for a bit before settling back. I charged up and
down lemon drop hill, got a little ahead of myself with a 5:24 mile then
settled back to 5:30ish on account of my burning quads and a gasping sensation
in my chest and lungs. Hit one mile split of 5:36 when we turned into the headwind,
which was luckily a barely noticeable cross wind during the race. I flew down
the last stretch thinking how my dad was somewhere here, watching me.
I ran as fast as I could and was so surprised to see I ran 1:14:2x according to my watch. I almost thought somehow it was a glitch, but that seemed even less probable than the time. After all, didn’t I tell myself in March that on a good day—a flat non-windy perfect weather course day—I could hold 5:40 pace? I had been telling myself that for weeks, despite the disappointing 1:16:09 I ran at Valley O.NE, which was 5:48-9 per mile.
I had persevered despite a rocky start! I was ecstatic! Why
did people on the finish line crew keep telling me we didn’t know if I had won?
There was no doubt in my mind I had won that race. I’m not sure when they
figured it out, but it took them much longer than I. My quads were shot. I received
a finisher medal. I saw my dad! He was so happy for me, telling me he knew what
colors I was wearing and knew it was me winning the race! I collected myself,
talked to reporters who said I ran 1:14:23, but they still weren’t certain if I
won… I tried to jog, legs said hell no, walked back to the hotel to shower and
eat some food before heading back to watch the marathon.
This race felt like such a huge breakthrough for me. I feel
like the shorter stuff came more natural to me, but running this fast in a
longer event, learning how to be patient, keeping up the grinding training
schedule, seemed to be slow in payoff but well worth the wait and so
satisfying!
I took a couple days off and now am beginning a very short
speed block and will run a 5k before another short break and marathon training.
I plan to run Chicago Marathon on October 10th!
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