Race Report Part 1

Right now I’m hurting. Nothing strange about that, since I ran a marathon yesterday. I’m not sure about my feelings, as there is a mix of disappointment in not reaching my goals, but also an acknowledgement that I’m injured and the trip to the finish line took extraordinary determination. I accept being injured, I know I do, I just don’t WANT to accept it. My calf is swollen and there was some internal bleeding, I will have to heal.

I had a nice easy day prior to the race and was well rested and prepared as I could be. Made it to the start line in plenty of time and was set to go, standing alongside the 3:15 pacers. All my training gave me confidence of going under 3:10 and qualifying for New York. I was in a New York state of mind.

At first, I was relieved that there was no pain in my leg and it was pretty easy to hold my pace around 4:30 min/K. This continued until after the 7K marker and then I noticed that my spilt was drifting out to 4:40. OK, no need to panic. I kept a close eye on my pace and even picked it up, running alongside a guy who I recognised from a previous race. I met Michael during the Brisbane marathon where I passed him on that day. He had run Boston 2 weeks prior, whilst I had a whole 3 weeks since Canberra. We ran together briefly, but it was obvious to me, that I couldn’t keep it going. My splits progressively deteriorated.

The 3:15 pace group sailed past at a rate that I had little chance of hanging on to. I needed to reassess my race plan, with at least 30K to go.