RANDOM POST-RACE THOUGHTS

Now that I’ve had a few days to ponder my marathon, I’ve come up with a bunch of random thoughts.

Given that I ran fairly even splits and moved up nearly 200 places during the second half of the race, you’d think I’d be over-joyed. While I am pretty happy – especially given my last 2 year of running – I can’t help but think there’s more in the tank. If you think about it, I ran a half in June in 1:26:38. If you double that you get 2:53. For discussions sake I’ll say I ran 3:08 (my time without 2 pee stops). That means I needed 15 minutes – or more than 30 seconds per mile – to run the second half. That’s a lot.

The McMillan calculator says I should slow down 9 minutes, or finish in 3:02. Sure everyone is different, but I’ve never had a lot of speed and I tend to get better the longer the distance. Maybe my times actually behave as a bell shaped curve, where they’re below average at both ends of the spectrum – short races and long races – and above average in that 15K to 25K range. That just popped into my head, so I haven’t given it a lot of thought.

While I always try to run even splits, I wonder if it’d be worthwhile to go out harder and hang on. I mean when I look at other people’s splits, it seems like the majority of people are running the second half 5 minutes slower than the first half. Maybe if I went out in 1:31, I’d still come back in 1:36 and run 3:07. But honestly, that doesn’t sound appealing to me. I guess that’s why I try to be conservative during the first half.

I must say that my quads have never felt so good after a marathon. I have no idea if it’s due to the adidas boost that I was wearing or not. But maybe there’s something to their “energy-returning boost” midsole. In any case, I’m a believer right now. Even though my legs feel great, I still plan on taking at least a full week off from running. I think the recovery is the hardest part of a fall marathon. The weather is absolutely stunning and I’m forcing myself not to run.

While I still love everything about Grandma’s Marathon, I have to mention that TCM is pretty awesome in it’s our right. The course is terrific. I love starting down town, heading by the Walker then along the lakes, the parkway, and the river roads before hitting Summit and coming up on the Cathedral and the Capitol. And I had nearly forgotten how awesome the crowds are along the course – it’s all pretty hard to beat.

I’m sure I’ll have a lot more thoughts on this in the near future, but that’s it for now.