Post-Marathon Post Mortem
“Well, that sucked.”
Pretty much sums up my feelings right after we crossed the finish line on Sunday. Quad and knee pain started to kick in heavily around mile 17 or so, forcing me to walk a bit and slowing us down. I’m certainly happy to have that fourth medal but it was a bit frustrating to have a bad day on race day. Jen felt great, though, and we’d decided beforehand to finish together so it was nice that she helped me drag my butt across the line.
Spent the last three days trying to figure it out and there’s really not much to analyze beyond the fact that, as the cliché says, some days you feel great and some days you don’t. Sunday was the latter and it was unfortunate that it happened on race day.
Conversely, I am pretty happy that I gutted it out and finished only 15 minutes slower than my goal of 4:30. There’s some satisfaction in that and in the fact that our training had really gone pretty well with only a few minor speed bumps along the way. Our 20 mile runs were good. Our speed training and tempo runs felt great, for the most part. We overscheduled ourselves in the last six weeks with kid stuff and work things and that impacted our ability to cross train, which may have hurt me. In the end, I took the race I was given and made the most of it.
Random notes:
*Saw some great signs and writing on shirts along the way including: “Chafe today, brag forever.” “I’m running with my daughter,” on a mid-50s man, right next to a 20-something woman with “I’m running with my father.” “Run like someone’s chasing you.” My favorite was on the back of a runner: “Sometime in the future, there will come a day when we will not be able to do this. This is NOT one of those days.”
*Felt weird to start the race all bundled up as we faced temps in the low 30s that never really climbed above the low 40s all day. Stayed in three layers and my running pants through the whole race and was shivering uncontrollably for 15 minutes afterward due to exertion and the cold. After two years of extreme heat, ironic that we’d face chilly temps on race day.
*Mentally, I’m incredibly happy to be done with marathons for a while. Both Jen and I really became burned out this summer and we’re jazzed about throttling it back to half-marathons and cross training. In some sense, I think we’ll be in even better shape with the added cross training and the variety. Adding to that, we’ve signed up for this half marathon in February, providing extra motivation to train hard through the winter and forcing us to take a little vacation to boot.
Pretty much sums up my feelings right after we crossed the finish line on Sunday. Quad and knee pain started to kick in heavily around mile 17 or so, forcing me to walk a bit and slowing us down. I’m certainly happy to have that fourth medal but it was a bit frustrating to have a bad day on race day. Jen felt great, though, and we’d decided beforehand to finish together so it was nice that she helped me drag my butt across the line.
Spent the last three days trying to figure it out and there’s really not much to analyze beyond the fact that, as the cliché says, some days you feel great and some days you don’t. Sunday was the latter and it was unfortunate that it happened on race day.
Conversely, I am pretty happy that I gutted it out and finished only 15 minutes slower than my goal of 4:30. There’s some satisfaction in that and in the fact that our training had really gone pretty well with only a few minor speed bumps along the way. Our 20 mile runs were good. Our speed training and tempo runs felt great, for the most part. We overscheduled ourselves in the last six weeks with kid stuff and work things and that impacted our ability to cross train, which may have hurt me. In the end, I took the race I was given and made the most of it.
Random notes:
*Saw some great signs and writing on shirts along the way including: “Chafe today, brag forever.” “I’m running with my daughter,” on a mid-50s man, right next to a 20-something woman with “I’m running with my father.” “Run like someone’s chasing you.” My favorite was on the back of a runner: “Sometime in the future, there will come a day when we will not be able to do this. This is NOT one of those days.”
*Felt weird to start the race all bundled up as we faced temps in the low 30s that never really climbed above the low 40s all day. Stayed in three layers and my running pants through the whole race and was shivering uncontrollably for 15 minutes afterward due to exertion and the cold. After two years of extreme heat, ironic that we’d face chilly temps on race day.
*Mentally, I’m incredibly happy to be done with marathons for a while. Both Jen and I really became burned out this summer and we’re jazzed about throttling it back to half-marathons and cross training. In some sense, I think we’ll be in even better shape with the added cross training and the variety. Adding to that, we’ve signed up for this half marathon in February, providing extra motivation to train hard through the winter and forcing us to take a little vacation to boot.
posted by W.S. Wuori at 10:19 AM
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