Kentucky Derby Marathon Race Report

Goal: 3:10. Secondary goal: 3:20.

This training cycle didn't go well. Only 12 weeks, only 55 peak mileage, workouts goals regularly missed. So I wasn't sure what to expect, but I decided to go out at 7:10/mile pace, and we would see what happens. This one time I decided I wouldn't mind crashing.

The race was as lame as it gets. Staggered start, so you don;t know who you are racing against, and self service water stations, where you had to stop and fill your own water bottles. No sports drinks, just water. You start whenever you want (basically). I was assigned a 9am start time, but I made it to the starting area by 8:15, and they told me I could start whenever I was ready. Since the weather forecast was predicting rain, I decided to go early. I crossed the start line at 8:28.

I had two small bottles of Gatorade with me on my belt. I thought I would drink those first, and then pick up water on the way. This plan was fine, except for the added weight and inconvenience of running with a hydration belt, which is probably negligible.

I left the start line, and turned toward the first park turnaround. All excited, and helped with the downhill, I started a bit fast, but I expected it.

Mile 1: 6:49

I turned around in the park, and I moderated my pace, to ease my breathing. Everything felt OK, except that by mile 2, I somehow was 0.2 mile ahead of the mile markers according to my GPS. This discrepancy stayed for the whole race. This is not a huge difference, but it is very suspicious that it happened basically in the first mile. I think there was a misunderstanding between course marking and measurements. I feel like we really run a long course this time. Perhaps they measured the distance of River Rd, and marked the course on the Louisville Loop. The difference would be about right. All the splits below will be GPS splits, and my total distance will be 26.4 miles.

Mile 2: 7:11

Mile 3: 7:09

We went up the bridge, and I made sure I didn't push hard. But you don;t want to slow way down, either.

Mile 4: 7:23

Down the bridge, turn on the street by the river and just continue. Trying to remind myself that this must feel easy.

Mile 5: 6:46

Mile 6: 7:16

This was the first time that we ran on a bike path with all the half-marathoners and this sucked. In normal races, even if you run in a crowd, after the first few miles, you run with people with similar pace. Not here. I had to zig-zag around slower runners, even walkers.

Mile 7: 7:17

Not sure what happened here - maybe straight roads, or less crowds, but somehow I sped up a bit.

Mile 8: 7:06

Mile 9: 7:09

I felt good, my breathing was easy, but for the first time, I had to stop for water. I picked up a bottle from a table. I tried to unscrew the cap, and drink from it - I did manage, but it's not a substitute for a paper cup. Finally I had to stop briefly to load the water to my belt bottle. I must have been pretty fast otherwise, because even with this, my next mile split was

Mile 10: 7:21

Mile 11: 7:08

We were getting close to the far out point of the course. Some mild tingling of tiredness started to get to me. Bad sign.

Mile 12: 7:11

We reached the far out turnaround point here. When I turned, I decided that I must take the miles between here and mile 20 quite easy. I knew that my starting tiredness is very early, and it would bite me bad at the end. But I couldn't avert the disaster.

Mile 13: 7:19

Mile 14: 7:20

I still fell strong, and these miles felt easy. It was just my experience that told me that the trouble was coming.

I stopped for water again, and I wasted about 30 seconds here. I had trouble removing the cap from the bottle, then fumbled around the with my belt bottle and the water bottle. Of course, the people who this mattered was a tiny minority of all runners - for the half-marathon, you can easily carry enough water (or you don't even have to drink very much), and the majority of the marathon runners run-walk, or just run the race casually.

Mile 15:7:41

I focused on easy breathing and thinks were OK, but it was surreal to image that more than 10 miles were left. I felt like I could do 2-3 more, but 10 seemed a lot. I started to compute how fast I would need to run the rest for my B-goal, and that still seemed easy at this point.

Mile 16: 7:11

The next mile was slightly uphill, with bad traffic and some mild headwind.

Mile 17: 7:33

I still reminded myself that I must take it easy until mile 20. I started to feel that regardless, it will be the end for me anyway.

Mile 18: 7:28

Things started to unravel quickly. This was a well predicted wall that I was hitting hard.

Mile 19: 7:48

We went up the bridge again. This wasn't unexpected, and though I wasn't fast, I could still run. In fact I was expecting here a Boston style meltdown, which didn't come.

Mile 20: 8:36

Down the bridge, I felt downright fine.

Mile 21: 7:27

The next part just got to me. It was under the interstate, a really ugly part of the city. All concrete, homeless people and trash all around. Only marathoners did this last loop, and the majority of them were walking. I just focused on keeping running.

Mile 22: 8:02

Mile 23: 8:08

Things started to turn really ugly here. I didn't have enough willpower to get over it. My legs felt jelly, I had trouble breathing, everything is in pain. Full blown bonk set in.

Mile 24: 8:35

Mile 25: 8:51

We had a few small hills for the end. I was so finished. I kept calculating what my time would be if I walked from here. But I didn't.

Mile 26: 9:20

To add insult to injury, I knew I had 0.4 miles left, not 0.2. I summoned my last piece of energy to jog to the finish line.

Last 0.4: 8:21 pace

Total time: 3:20:21.

It seems like this is 19th overall out of the 460 weak field, and 3rd in my age group. I do not deserve any of that.

This was somewhat expected after the weak preparation. It is disappointing that I started out my training with hopes of 3:05, and I couldn't even run 3:10 (or 3:20). Also, my last 3 marathons ended very similarly: crashing and running a 10-minute positive split (actually Boston was even worse).

This gives me strength to continue. Recover and start training for the fall. Let's regain the lost glory. Let's run a strong marathon for a change.