After a typically restless night's sleep, I woke up at 3am so that I could be out the door by 4am to make sure I would get to the bus pick-up spot to catch the 4:30am bus. (I got there at 4:15.) It was a quick drive up in the standard yellow school bus to the starting point in Central. It was VERY windy and rather cool (probably about 50F). Slowly but surely, the organizers were lighting many fire pits around which groups of people were huddled for warmth. I'm glad that I had m NYC Marathon poncho, as that made it that much easier for me to stay warm up until the time I needed to hand in my gear bag.
The 5,000 runners self-seeded based on the pacers holding up their signs. I was feeling decent, so decided I would give a shot for the 3:00 pace group. Since that group was all the way up front, it meant that there was absolutely no crowd to fight through -- definitely liked that.
After 1 mile, I recognized that breaking 3:00 was not going to happen, and decided to stick with the 3:05 pacer once he caught me. I was able to do that until Mile 7 started.
I had found out at the expo the day before that Mile 7 was the big hill on the course -- 250 feet of incline in less than a mile. The profile didn't look like it was anywhere near that when I had looked at it multiple times beforehand, so I never did hill work of that nature. It did me in. Maybe halfway up that hill, I dropped down to a walk. And before I hit the top of that part of the incline, the 3:10 pacer passed me. (Shit.)
Right as I was hitting the Mile 8 marker, I started back up at a faster pace, despite it still being uphill, though much less steep. The hill kept going until Mile 12. (Ugh.)
By the time I was halfway, it was about 1:39:00 into the race, and the temperature had hit somewhere around 70F. And despite the bragging that they were one of the best organized marathons in the U.S., I thought they did a horrible job with the water stops. Firstly, there wasn't a set method for whether it was Gatorade or water first, and there were multiple times when they were intermixed, so it was tough to get to the right person. What's worse, the stops were VERY brief. Given how many people were running the race, the water stops should have had twice as much space than they used. I missed getting water to douse myself at a couple of spots because of the crowding and not wanting to stop.
Downhill portions were pretty good, but given how badly I did with the uphills and what it did both to my legs and my HR, I wasn't able to take as much advantage on the downhill portions as I had hoped I could.
Then I finally get to Mile 17 -- and needed a pit stop. A 3-minute pit stop, which I almost never need to do, but clearly I wasn't able to get enough out at the motel before I set off for the bus. Grrr...
I kept on doing the math of what my finish time might be. For a while, it looked like I just might be able to crack 3:13, which I had determined was necessary for being able to improve my Age Championship point total. (Turns out that the fastest in the age group was faster than the "platinum" time, so 3:13 wouldn't have been fast enough anyway.) Nope. That slipped away, and it looked like there was a possibility of at least getting a negative split, even in spite of the long pit stop. Nope... not quite.
Finally I crossed the finish line not in the originally desired sub-3:00, but in 3:20:41. While it's a Boston Qualifier time for me, I have a couple of other better BQs which I should be able to use for 2024.
Hmmm... now to consider whether I attempt the mostly downhill course of Tucson in December, since it is another Age Championship qualifying race.
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