FINISHED!!!!! Vancouver Marathon Race Report

Yesterday I ran my second Marathon, The Vancouver Marathon. I didn't go in with hugely high expectations for this race as I had mostly been using at as a training race. My biggest goal for this race was to finish and finish better than my first Marathon almost 1.5yrs ago. With saying this I still hoped to have a pretty good time, but would be happy as long as I went under 4 hrs.

The day started off early at 4am. I awoke, had some Nature's Path Pumpikin Raisin Crunch(best cereal ever) some soy milk and of course some coffee. Cleaned out the system and got into my running gear. Almost forgot my timing chip as it had been thrown off of my bed when I was preparing, but luckily remembered. I was out the door by 5 and headed to pick up Ward, Parmi and Balbir. Balbir is 56 and was aiming to qualify for Boston in his first marathon. Once I had gathered the troops we headed down to the race site.

While waiting to use the toilets, Ward and I met a nice lady who like us chose the wrong lineup, and had the same philosophy for choosing the line. The one with the most dudes in it. Normally a solid strategy, but this morning it wasn't the case.

We then headed to the start line and I was feeling great. The strategy of Ward, Parmi and myself was to run together. Slow for the first 3 miles to warmup, and then pick it up a little and then hopefully be able to maintain or speedup in the latter parts of the race, for a negative split.

The first 15 Miles were great, we were all feeling good, we were having fun with the crowd and joking quite a bit. At about the 15 mile point though we all started to quiet down a bit, but stuck together unitl about the 19 mile mark, which on a slight uphill, Parmi and Ward pulled away. I was still feeling good but didn't want to expend too much energy on the uphill. When I got to the top of the hill(20mile marker) I was starting to feel the previous 20 miles. I continued on, but had to walk a little bit more than I had been and slowly could see Ward and Parmi pulling farther away from me.

By mile 23 the other two were long gone and I was doing everything I could to try and run under 6 min/km. I had averaged up to 20 miles 5:27/km but that average was slowly getting longer and longer. I finally hit the 1 Mile to go marker and said I will run my hardest from this point, and I did. But I still couldn't get below that 6:00min/km mark. With about 1 KM to go I knew I was going to be over 4hrs but continued to push as hard as I could and I knew I had given my best effort for the day, for the harder I pushed I didn't get any faster.

At last I crossed the finish line. At this point I had two choices stop and fall on my face, or continue running and slow down a bit, from my already slow pace. I decided on option 2 as I figured it would hurt least. Parmi and Ward were their waiting and both ran faster an had good days.

Although, the day wasn't exactly as I had hoped it was a 20 min PB. And I learned a couple of things as well. Running with friends is way more fun than on your own. If I want to run a faster Marathon, I am going to have to put a lot more miles on the legs, specifically more Long Slower runs over 35KM. I will also need to incorporate some speedwork. And another observation, no matter what you do in training, race day is always going to be different.

The rest of the day was great, had breakfast with everyone, ice bathed, stretched, foam rolled and relaxed. And then enjoyed a few brews and then to bed for a nice 11hr sleep. The longest I have had in a long time. Today I am feeling great, a little sore but have been out for a bit of spin and will enjoy this week as a recovery week, before going into the final build for my first A race of the year. The next couple of weeks I will be focusing on my bike.

Oh yeah, Balbir qualified with a 3:45:20 and will be off to Boston next April. Hopefully I will be able to join him.