Georgia ING Marathon Report

Even though I followed a good training plan from Paul, I had my doubts that I'd be able to qualify for Boston. There were 2 things that worried me about the race; race nutrition and going out too hard.

Nutrition - Each long run I tested my nutrition, and I was always good on the LSD runs, but as soon as I did some miles at race pace, I felt horrible. 4 days before the race I checked out GU Roctane gels, and decided to gamble. I've never used them before, and there were no more chances to test them. Trying something new on race day is a really bad idea, but I felt I had nothing to lose. Everything else wasn't working. The next problem was carrying the gels and endurolytes. Both of my belts turn sideways on me. At the expo I found another belt. If it didn't work, the fallback plan was to carry everything in my hands. I went on a run at 8:45 Saturday night and the belt worked.

Pace - Not only do I go out too fast on races, but I do it in training. To make matters worse, the beginning of this race was loaded with downhills. Each time I went down a hill, I got worried that I'd have to go up it at the end of the race. Plus, my GPS was showing the mile markers well before the course markers. My goal was to stay between 7:10 and 7:15 per mile, but since my GPS was off, I estimated it should say 7:00 to 7:05 to be safe. Plus with all the downhills at the start of the race, if I was a little under 7:00 for the first half, that might be a good thing. I was not trying to "bank" time, but I didn't want to run up hills at 7:00 min/mi for the last 10 miles to reach my goal time.

The first 18 miles were uneventful. At mile 18 I got a small stitch in my side, but it didn't worry me at all. If there was a big nutrition problem, it would of showed up long before. The gels did their job. Anything uncomfortable that came up I could run through.

Mile 22 is when I decided to do some math instead of guessing from the GPS. I crossed the mile marker at 2:37. So, I had 32 min to run 4.2 miles... I couldn't figure what pace I needed. Since I was feeling good, I thought if I just run 7 min miles, I'll be at mile 26 by 3:05. Then I have 5 min to go the last .2 miles. Sounded like a good plan at the time.

Somewhere after the mile 24 marker is the first time I felt like I was no longer holding back. The next mile was mostly downhill, and I did it in 7:29. The mile after that took 7:50. If there was a mile 25 or 26 marker, I didn't see either one. I couldn't see the finish, but I could hear the crowd and the announcer. When he said "these runners are coming in at just under 3 hours and 9 minutes..." I about freaked. If the finish line was 1/4 mile away, I was screwed. I thought about that for about 15 seconds, then turned a corner. The finish line was about 50m away, and the time was just past 3:09.

Motionbased info

Elevation change 3,000 ft
Official time 3:09:18
Overall - 54 of 2105
Male 31-40 - 23rd of 475

Saturday nutrition (stuff i remember)
Ensure, Banana, 3 pancakes from Cracker Barrel, 32oz Gatorade, clif bar, mean bar and snack bar samples at expo (330 cal total), 24 oz milk, spaghetti, minestrone soup and rolls from Spaghetti Factory.

race nutrition:
1 ensure, 8 oz Gatorade, and half banana 60 min before start. 1 ensure 15 min before start, 4 GU Roctane gels (miles 6, 11, 16, 21), Gatorade at first and last station, water at each other station, 8 - 10 Hammer Endurolytes.