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Posted by danerunsalot on 3/2/2007 on danerunsalot's blog Philadelphia Marathon Recap A Runner's Ramblings: Volume 1; 46th Edition • Close to 15 of my friends live in Philly and I randomly see a law school friend on the race course who I have no idea even lives in the city. Sure, I could have driven to Philly Friday night to spend more time with a college and law school friend but the new James Bond movie opened Friday night and well, I do not miss opening nights of James bond. Even if that means I have to go to the 10:05 show because it was sold out earlier. But Heather (my host for the weekend) being a big James Bond fan herself, was not offended. So an early morning start up to Philly on Saturday had me running into a few friends, including a few fellow Marathon Maniacs, at the expo. Got a nice deal on some new sunglasses, grabbed my bag and tried to relax the rest of the day. A nail biter for Penn State did not help at all, and while I rooted for a meteorite to hit the Horseshoe in Columbus so I would not have to actually root for one of the teams, alas nothing fell from the sky. Hoping that the projected perfect weather, the extra day of rest from last week and intense massages from my man Terrell (who ran the JFK 50 miler himself on Saturday!) would reverse some pain in my legs and just flat-out feeling of weariness lately, I called it a semi-early night. 1st half marathon: 1:29:30 As promised, the weather was perfect for a race. A much larger crowd of runners than I expected was on hand and were chomping at the bit as we crammed it the corrals. “Just Two More minutes to the start of the Philadelphia Marathon!” was shouted on three separate occasions, all more than 2 minutes apart. At least we think that was what was uttered as the PA System sounded like it was the lovechild of a Cold War Ukrainian Sub that had sunk, brought to the surface, shipped to the States, stored in an warehouse like the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones for six decades, dusted off Sunday morning and given a quick spit shine before use and well, something else that really sounds bad and noisy and useless (John Madden perhaps). Honestly, those are the best speakers we can get, Philly? No gun start (I am guessing the musket was clogged with a shred of RedCoat) signified anything as we were alerted to our beginning by the mass suddenly pushing forward. The runner in front of me, Oldy McWrongCorral, refused to budge for the first 3 seconds so I mentioned they were having an Early Bird Special at Sizzler and away we went! Either, I consecutively ran one of the slowest third miles and fastest fourth miles of any marathon I have ever run, or the markers were a little askew. As I haven’t run a 5:19 EVER in a marathon, I am guessing the latter. Crowds lined the streets of inner city Philly and were very enthusiastic as we marched down some street and turned onto another. (Sorry for the vagueness: I only know Broad Street and we were not on that so that is all the details you are getting out of me on that one.) I was more concerned with the fact that, while running some pretty decent splits, I did not have a snap in my step. This was the same snap I had been missing lately. The easy way out and most obvious answer would be to say I am probably just getting tired. And I may very well be. If you think about every marathon I have run this year as half a mile I was presently on mile 23 of the Fiddy2 “marathon”! But the fact remains, I was able to punch out my first sub-3 ever just a few weeks ago and if I was going to break-down and run bad times (not saying what I have run lately is) I would think it would have happened sooner. So all kinds of body assessment was going on in the first few miles as I hoped the lethargy would lift. While I missed her at mile 5 Heather says she was there. She is like 5 feet tall so I will take her word for it. (Side note to Heather: Remember the guy who was wearing the Nike Frees who I said was going to have serious foot problems? Yeah, passed him at mile 5 and I could already tell his orthopedic doc was going to say: “You ran how far in what?!” A nice woman I met in Charlottesville Marathon came up behind me around mile 9 and asked me what I was hoping to run. I relayed the hoped for time and then laid the mattress (a term I just learned: Thank you Tapirs!”) by stating I was already feeling tired and was pretty sure it was not going to happen. I told her to take off and wished her well. While Christine did not get the sub-3 she was hoping for, her 3:03:55 on a course that was not nearly as flat as advertised, was superb indeed. Mile 20: 2:21 At mile 16, I heard a familiar voice on the course. While at this point my mile splits were slipping and I had more or less conceded to not running a sub-3, it was a huge boost to see my college roommate Keith and his daughter in tow standing on the sideline cheering me on. I ran over to him for a second and thought about stopping but I still had the competitive spirit in me spurring me on. So I settled for a quick handshake/high five which rivaled the awkwardness of the Sammy Sosa-Mark McGwire chest bump/handshake/high five/kiss the fingertips and point skyward celebration when the latter broke Maris’ home run record. Now, if Keith had possessed a camera, I would have stopped just to get a picture of him wearing the gift I gave him in college consisting off a blue t-shirt with white lettering (come on, I went to PSU. You expect any other colors?!) that said: “Dane’s My Roommate”. I am not making that up. But alas. The thoughts of a sub-3 disappeared soon thereafter as, in spite of the long slow downhill we were running, apart from one 6:30 mile right after seeing Keith, I could not take advantage of the downhills I love so much. The super nice rear end of some woman all in hunter orange who I had been using as motivation for close to half the race, slowly but surely pulled away from me and was replaced with the hairy back of some guy who may have been George “The Animal” Steele. (Guys aged 30-40 just laughed. Women have no idea who the heck I am talking about.) I also saw another runner friend from online for the first time as he went blazing back from the turn around in Manayunk. We exchanged a much simpler medium-five. His chip time seems to be messed up so I hope he did not get injured in the final miles. Mile 25: After the 20-mile turn around I knew that not only was a sub-3 dead but a 3:10 was going to be hard to get as well. The crowd was really supportive and ample through this little trendy section of Philly and I heard, surprisingly for the first time, Eye of the Tiger. In spite of the debacles of the recent Rocky saga, there really are few, if any, better songs to pump a person up. There is no doubt my mile split picked up solely because they were blaring that bad boy to be heard about a quarter mile in either direction. People began to pass me by the dozens here. I simply did not have the juice. My legs felt like I was running in sand. I had all but decided that a Boston Qualifying time would be all nice and what not, but given the troubles with my legs recently, it was worth far more to just settle down into a comfortable time, finish up the race and prep for the remaining 157 plus miles of racing in 2006. A funny thought is that when I do dial it back like this, I always think that I am immediately going to feel great. Then I remember I am still moving along at a decent clip and only stopping is going to feel “great.” Nevertheless, I would run fast on the surges of energy that surfaced here and there and tried to keep my mind off my own pain. As this out and back section of the course allowed us to see many of the runner 4, 5 and 6 miles behind us, I began shouting and cheering for everyone else. A few high fives here and there and encouragement from me made me feel better even if it did nothing for the other runners. I saw my gorgeous friend Lisa pumping out yet another marathon, a few people shouted out “Go Fiddy2!” like they knew what they were talking about and some older chap dressed all in a tux from about 1947 went chugging by in the opposite direction. Luckily for me Keith had stuck around hoping to catch me again and sure enough not only did he do that, he allowed himself just enough time to see his other daughter’s soccer game! (They lost 5-1. but for some reason the other team was allowed to use players outside of the allowed age range. Keith and I are going to bust some heads.) A little trip along the Boathouse Row (very cool and very much a reminder that I am definitely of a different wealth-bracket than Chaz and Muffy) prepped me for the final surge. Finish: Seeing Keith made me determined to go for a 3:10 anyway. I picked it up and was surprised how much I had still in my tank. I guess “loafing” for 10 miles does that to you. But it was going to be EXTREMELY close. It also does not help that the last half- mile is up a hill. Thanks! Passing dozens of people I heard one girl yell to a guy in front of me: “You go!! I do not care what it takes but get that 3:10!” I passed him and the next thing I know he was at my side. I glanced sideways after looking at my watch and he let out between breaths: “We going to get it?” I sort of laughed while looking at the hill and said: “Nope. But let’s fail spectacularly together.” Sorry to have no storybook ending on this one but I ran through in a 3:11:13 with him right at my heels. What I am praying for is that he started 13 seconds further back in the pack than I did and got that Boston Qualifying time. I did not have the presence of mine to ask for his name or even look at his bib number so I can check but as far as I am concerned (and the story I will tell my kids in 20 years) he ran a 3:10:59. Not unhappy with my time (hey I have not run a 3:11 this year so that knocks that time off of the goal clock) I am left wondering if I have run the last sub-3 of the year. As I have said often, I am not an elite runner. I am good. And I sure as hell have no previous experience of running 52 marathons in a year to draw from to figure out if I have hit the wall. I do know that my legs do not ache nearly as much as usual after the race and even though I have (another) short week of rest coming up before my next marathon, I will miss my mom’s thanksgiving dinner (while so good that it is almost worth the 11 hour round trip just to get back the day before the race) which will save me about 5 extra pounds of turkey and stuffing in my belly. The North Central Railway Trail Marathon looms on the horizon this Saturday. Stay tuned for the exciting scintillating recap to follow. Please donate at www.fiddy2.org to benefit L’Arche Mobile. Seriously. Your mom will love you more if you do. | |
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Philadelphia Marathon Recap |
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