Race Report: 2011 Modesto Marathon
March 20, 2011 (Modesto, CA)
It was a dark, rainy, cold and windy race day...at the beginning of all my races I get nervous because you never know what will happen during the race. But my confidence was high due to the great results of my training runs leading up to the marathon. Thus I set my marathon finish time goal to under 4 hours.
As my friend, Ron Fernandez, and I walked to the starting line we saw hundreds of runners lined up already. As we made our way to the back of the line we saw the pace groups holding up their signs. These pace groups are great in that they help you pace correctly to finish in the time that they have shown on their signs. So if you want to finish in 4 hours then just follow the 4 hour pace group...easy enough!
The gun went off and we started the race. At the beginning I was feeling great and was running below my marathon goal pace of 9mins/mile just to warm up. For the first few miles I was just trying to run around the slower paced runners. During that time I also saw and passed by some of the slower pace groups like the 4:30 marathoners. I was also chatting with some of the other runners and asked them why they were running and what their goals were. Doing this helped keep my mind off of the run and also off of the challenging weather.
Around mile 9 or 10, I noticed a pace group in front of me and found out that it was the 3:50 pace group. I thought to myself, "...this is great! I can just keep up with this group and I'll hit my goal with time to spare!...". Thus I kept with them and felt great doing it. I was going at an 8:30min/mile pace instead of 9min/mile pace but I felt great doing it so I continued on. As the excitement built up in me, I noticed I was coming up on the half-marathon 13.1 mile mark and I was close to beating my half-marathon PR. So stupid me, not thinking about the consequences, went for it! Excitingly I beat my half-marathon PR by 1 minute (1:50). On top of that!...I actually caught up with the 3:45 marathon pace group! Just imagining myself crossing the finish line at 3:45 gave me such a rush! I used that rush to help me keep up with the 3:45 pace group. Unfortunately that rush ran out and fatigue started sitting in...and then I got my first leg cramp at mile 17.
As you can probably guess, after the cramp, I had to slow down my pace. I was able to keep running at a slower pace until about 17.5 miles and then I took my first walk break. I stretched out my legs a bit and then tried to continue running. Unfortunately there was no turning back the cramping that I was feeling in my legs, mostly from my quads. Along with that, I saw my goal of finishing under 4 hours pass me by. The last 6 miles were the loooooongest eeeeverrrrr. I felt it took me forever to finish the last few miles because I could only walk/jog. My leg muscles were not letting me run anymore. When I tried to run, they would start to cramp up again. It was brutal physically and mentally.
In the end I completed the marathon at 4:19. As I looked at the data later I took time splits between the first 13.1 miles of my marathon and the second 13.1 miles. My average pace for the 1st split was 8:27 min/mile! As for my 2nd split...ugh..my average pace was 11:16 min/mile. Big difference!
So what did I learn?...My pacing sucked! I had a target pace at the beginning but I didn't follow it because "I felt good at the time". Next marathon, I will stick to my target pace....(hopefully)...
