That Makes Two

I've had the last three days to mull over, review, rehash, breakdown, dissect, and ruminate on the Grand Rapids Marathon and my performance.

Overall?

Pleased as punch.

See, I knew going into this that most likely the goal for GR would be to just finish.  But then after my day in the twin cities I thought that a more directed effort might elicit a finish time that would be more memorable than just finishing.  In layman's terms, a PR.

Really, what the fuck was I thinking?

The conditions couldn't have been better - weather was ideal!  Temperature in the low 40s at the start, sunny and warming throughout the day with a predicted temperature at noon of 55F.  PERFECT.

I was properly fed and hydrated prior to the race.  I had a perfectly dialed in nutrition and hydration plan for during the race.  That plan was executed flawlessly (with a MAJOR assist in that department by T).

My pace plan was sound:  go out easy, aim for a 10:30 average pace so I can take it easier on the "hilly" part (there's one small portion of the course that has some rolling hills in it, no major climbs at all, but some rolling terrain), see what you have at mile 22ish and see if a PR would be within striking distance.  Sounds good huh?

I executed that right up until about mile 19.  Nope I didn't see the wall.  Mentally I felt good, but my legs weren't tired.  Nope.  Not at all.  They were fucking dead.  They hurt.  They didn't cramp.  They were just painful.  Feet were okay.  My quads and hip flexors just decided that many miles in that short of time weren't in their contract.

That resulted in a finish that was less than I'd hoped for that day.  But it isn't always, okay seldom, about the numbers on the clock at the finish of a marathon and it wasn't that day.

I took what I learned at Twin Cities and made some changes for GR and had success with those.  I learned some things at GR that I'll apply to the next time I take on the challenge of 26.2 miles.  So what did I learn?  In no particular order:

• My running volume needs to increase.  About 10-15 miles per week in order to have the type of success (it's not always about time) I want to have at this distance.
• I need longer long runs.  I need to cross that 20 mile barrier and get closer to 22-23 at least once in the training cycle.
• I need to make sure my quality runs (e.g. tempo runs, intervals, etc) are of higher quality.  This goes hand in hand with the need to increase my overall volume.
• I need to be taking better care of myself overall.  I need to be doing more ancillary stuff - overall along with running specific strength and I need to address some deficiencies in some specific areas.
• I need to incorporate solid food later into my long runs and will need time to experiment with that.

Old Man Marathon may have beat me about the head and neck Sunday but I'm not done dancing with him yet.  Well I am done dancing with him in the short term.  As of today I'm not planning on running a marathon again until 2012.  There would be two circumstances that would change that, and those would involve two specific people asking me to run with them (and I seriously doubt either one of them doing so, but it's not impossible.)  That makes 2011 the year of the half marathon and I've got some races circled on the calendar and some goals at that distance and some others.  Details to come on that.

There you have it.  I'm very happy with how things worked out and I did accomplish something Sunday that I'll blog about in a few days.

Oh, one more thing?  Today is Wednesday.  It's the first day that I've walked, just walked, without pain. This has been the sorest I've felt after a marathon.  I'm planning on running tomorrow.