That was a whirlwind trip to Indianapolis for the Indy Monumental Marathon, with barely 24 hours from landing to take off and 26.2 rather difficult miles of running. And I must admit that I’m still trying to reconcile with what happened.
The big story of course was the weather with a massive front moving through the country over the weekend, hitting central Indiana just as we were lining up on Saturday morning. Temps in the 60s (not bad, could be worse could be better), some rain (also not bad, depending), and insane winds steady at 15-20 mph on Friday and Saturday and gusting to 40 at times. That was the story.
My training block could hardly have been better as I ran a dozen weeks in the 65-73 mile range, had five 20 mile plus long runs, and the only glitch was catching a cold three weeks out and it took two and a half weeks for that to clear. This was one of my most solid and consistent marathon build-ups and there is not much I would change other than maybe polorazing a few of those weeks to something like 80-60 rather than 66-73. But really, who knows if that’d make a big difference in overall fitness.
Nevertheless, I felt I that I was in 2:56-2:57 shape going into Indy, and maybe challenge the age group course record of 2:57:07 set in 2018.
The Goal
Sub 3. Not for a Boston qualifier, at my age 3 is well under the standard but to run a sub 3 at age 60+. Sub 3 is something I have been chasing for five years (last one was a 2:58 in spring of 2017), with four attempts: 3:12 at Boston in 2018 (facing wind, rain, and cold), 3:02 Grandma’s last year, and 3:00, Boston last spring. In each of those races I had the fitness to run sub 3, but just didn’t put it together. Well my first Boston was a gargantuan weather shit show and everyone was off their pace by a lot that day. Grandma’s and 2022 Boston were in the would-shoulda-coulda category although I do think I gave both my best effort. Just a small lapse at mile 24-25 cost me that sub 3 last spring.
The goal of of sub 3 also plays into things like longest duration between sub 3 (only 10 or 11 so runners have spanned more than 40 years). At 39.5 years, this would put me in the top 15 of all time. In addition, there is the five decades sub-3 category (5DS3), which is a little more attainable if you started late in the 80s and can hang on to early 2020s. I ran 2:34 in 1983, 2:44 in 1999, 2:54 in 2008, and that 2:58 in 2017.
So yeah, to me this has been a big goal for the past few years.
Travel and Prep
The trip was relatively smooth. Maybe could have flown out Thursday and had all day Friday to relax (my fancy Garmin told me that Friday had been a high stress day); HR in the 100s on my flight as we hit a fair amount of turbulence over Kansas and Missouri as that front was making its way eastward! But again, with a 2:15 flight and only one hour of time change I felt arriving the afternoon before wasn’t too bad.
Got checked in, picked my packet at the expo, and did a short shake out run by the Convention Center. Dinner at 6, just a couple blocks away, and relaxed for a couple hours before turning in at 9:30 Central. Sleep, sometimes an issue before a marathon, wasn’t too bad and my biggest source of anxiety was not the distance or the weather but knowing I would only have an hour between finishing (assuming I was finishing in about 3 hours) before having to check out, and the finish area was 1/2 mile away from the hotel.
Early morning I had breakfast of a bagel, oatmeal (granola bar soaked in hot water), and some caffeine. I listened to some psyche up music, with Eminem’s Lose Yourself, Led Zep’s Battle of Evermore, and Black Keys Lonely Boy as the headliners, followed with a looping version of Depeche Mode’s It’s No Good because I like the beat.
It started raining about 30 minutes before the start and the wind kicked up, just as the forecast predicted.
The Race
I put it all out there and held pretty close to plan. If I could do it again maybe would have stuck with Plan A, which was to run the first half at pace, but controlled so to have plenty of energy for the second half. I thought 6:45+/- was a good pace, but from 13 to 15 or 16 I was thinking about easing up to about 7:00 to see how that goes–all I’d need to do is run 7:00 for the second half and I could finish under 3.
The first half went right according to plan, although I never felt comfortable. It was still very dark over the first couple miles, and with wet pavement, and a thicker crowd of runners than I had anticipated the first 5 miles were like driving through heavy freeway traffic during a wet rush hour. However, my breathing felt fine and if I did pick up pace a bit, I’d drop back some.
Once we got out of the city center and onto straight streets, heading north things opened up a bit, and when the half marathoners split off at about 7, we were more into a line two-three runners wide, not 10 abreast in a big crowd.
It would rain intermittently, but that served as cooling effect so was mostly fine with that. I did notice that the trees and branches were not bending substantially from the wind, and the short headwind sections we had in the early miles didn’t feel bad, so maintained some hope that this would hold on our 90 or so minute return to downtown.
My pace was fairly consistent and I was keeping my heart rate below 145, so that first half could not have gone better as I came through 13.1 in 1:28:23, 6:44 per mile. I had been running with a group of about a dozen runners for several miles and we turned back south at about 13.6 miles. And this is where I had to make a decision, to stick with Plan A and back off the pace a little to conserve some energy for the finish, or stay with the group and draft as much as possible.
I stuck with the latter. It did not make a lot of sense to back down, because I would be losing some ground at 7:00 pace but for the most part would also be bucking the wind on my own as the group pulled away and other people would pass and gap me. So I went with the pack. I don’t know if this was a fatefully wrong decision or not. Our pace only slowed slightly into the wind (which wasn’t all that bad yet), running 6:45-6:50. However, looking at my heart rate data after the race, even though I was drafting most of the time (80% at least) my heart rate was now into the 150s, which is getting into threshold effort. I knew I was breathing harder and hoped this would be sustainable. We hit some decent rollers in the 17-19 mile range but I got through those just fine.
The roughest patch so far was mile 20 which was on a bike path more or less directly into the headwind, and I found myself in no man’s land for a bit. But tucked in with some other runners, holding a 7:00 pace and not feeling too bad as we turned to east for several miles.
From mile 20-23 I really though I’d hang on and be well under 3. Was running right at 7:00 pace and was at a projected 2:58, and it seemed like my energy level and stride were holding just fine. I took a final Maurten gel at 35K, just 30 minutes to go!
I think I was feeling it by then as our pack had dissipated, as some runners pulled away, some others were catching me, but I was passing people as well. Holding on.
At 23.5 we turned south on Meridian Boulevard, and I only needed to cover 2.7 miles in 20 minutes. I didn’t do the pacing math, but figured I could hold whatever it took. Within just a couple blocks, however, I knew I was in trouble. The wind was just horrible (20-25 mph sustained with higher gusts) and I just could not move through it. I tried focusing on stoplights ahead to keep focus, and a times tried to latch onto passing runners, but anyone passing seemed to be heading for the barn at 6:30-7:00 pace and I could no longer do that. So no drafting, and with that wind my pace slowed to 7:50s.
The most disheartening moment of the day was when the sub 3 pace group, a peleton of 50 runners, went by with maybe a mile and a half to go. I tried to hang, but they also were moving too fast and I didn’t even make it a city block in their slipstream. At that point I knew I wasn’t going to break 3.
All I could do was to keep running and not give in to walking. I had no kick or energy at the end. I felt defeated as I crossed in 3:01:16. Walked maybe 50 meters before I started uncontrollably dry heaving for a minute or two, so I laid down on the wet pavement until the guy from the banana table helped me up and sent me on my way toward the gear pick up tent. I just talked to one person, a guy whom I had run with from about 9 to 22 miles before he pulled away. Other than that I was just in my own silent disappointment and slight nausea. Marathons, we do these for fun?
I did make it back, slowly, to my hotel and got to my room by 11:40 with barely enough time to shower and get dressed before the noon check out time.
Aftermath
I don’t know, that was rough. I do think I really put it out there but the weather did me no favors. Of course there were other runners, who I had been with through 22 miles, finishing 2-3 minutes ahead but I just think that stretch just hit me as my reserves were on E. Under less extreme conditions for the finish of a marathon I think I could have hit 7:20 and held on.
A couple things I could have done differently would be to stick to plan A and slide back a little until I got picked up by the sub 3 pace group, they were probably no more than 30-40 seconds back on the return. I could have drafted more when the going got really tough. I also could have programed my watch to bleep when I got into the mid 150s so I’d know I was redlining or about to. It was at 159-160 on miles 20-22, that’s getting toward 5K level of cardiac output. But at the same time, marathons are also about keeping momentum, and I did not want to lose the good flow I had from mile 5 to mile 23.
So who knows? It’s over and I have to move on. Maybe someday I’ll pat myself on the back and tell myself that even though I came up short it was still a heroic effort on a very challenging weather day.
I’m not there yet.
Looking forward to eight or nine months of non-marathon training.
rrunnin234 