Flying Pig Marathon: The Race

Clear skies and 26 miles do not mix. As it turns out, bad math, over ambitious goals, and sunny skies (by the second-half of the race), really do not mix.

Starting line.

Per last week's post, my goal for the Flying Pig Marathon was 4 hours and 30 minutes (give or take a few minutes). Sounds reasonable until I mention the fact that this would have lowered my personal best time by nearly 20 minutes. Ha!

Even as I write that, it sounds silly. I've never been very good at math.

In order to knock 20 minutes off my personal best time, I would have had to run nearly a minute faster per mile ... for the whole race ... than I had ever run before. Not likely since I had only been training for about 12 weeks.

This goal set me up for a plan that was unrealistic. I thought if I ran the first couple of miles at about 11:00 min/mi, I could gradually increase the pace to reach the overall goal of 10:18 min/mi.

Not factoring into my goal time was the course. Cincinnati has hills. At least more than Milwaukee does. One hill in particular at mile 5 seemed to go on forever. I ran the hills strong but they definitely zapped my energy level. After the endless large hill, there were a series of rolling hills through some nice neighborhoods. The stretch was pretty it did not help my energy reserves.

And then there was the stretch on Route 50. It's been a year and a half since I ran the marathon and I vividly remember a few parts: the big hill at Mile 5, crossing the bridge from Kentucky back into Ohio (made for a great picture of downtown Cincinnati), and Route 50. Route 50 was the straw that zapped my back.

Route 50 is four lanes and we ran in one of the lanes on the southbound side. This stretch of the race was only a mile and half long but it felt like 10 miles. It hardly helped that it occurred at the 18.5 mile mark and, by this point in the race, the sun was high in the sky baking our fair skin. What skin escaped the beat down from above felt the wrath of the concrete as the sun's rays bounced at us from below off the concrete. There was no water along this route. The welcome relief of shade only occurred in the form of the overpass once we turned off the road and went under Rt 50. This lasted less than 10 seconds. I wanted to stop in this shady area, lay down, and let everyone pass me. Alas, I kept running.

By mile 22 I was still on pace for my goal. I was at an overall pace of 10:20 min/mi. Alas, to get to this point I had exhausted myself and still had about 10K left to run. By mile 22 my body had had enough and could run no further. I found myself run-walking the rest of the way home.

Mother nature did not help my race time. The race started with a lot of clouds but the sun made a strong appearance at about mile 10. The course had very little shade. The temperature pushed the upper 70s (and even higher along Route 50). To put his into perspective, during my training sessions in Milwaukee, I ran a total of TWO short runs in weather above 50 degrees and both of these were in the week leading up to the marathon! In short, my body (as well as my mental state) was nowhere near ready to run in "hot" weather.

Although 4:30 was out of the question, I made the best of it and still earned a personal best by a couple of minutes with an official time of 4 hours and 47 minutes and 59 seconds.