The Road to Boston

I ran my first marathon in 2006 in 3 hours, 55 minutes, 44 seconds, and just about died. I could not walk straight for about a week, and while painful, I vowed to get faster. I would train harder, smarter, and keep improving. Even with this in mind however, I did not think I would ever be able to get fast enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I figured the only way I would ever be able to qualify would be to get older, when Boston qualifying standards get slightly slower, making qualifying seem more feasible. I improved to a 3:33 and then a 3:28 in the next two marathons, but still thought it would be extremely tough to run the qualifying time for my age group of 3 hours, 10 minutes, 59 seconds.

Everyone I ran with on a regular basis had told me the California International Marathon was one of the best races in the country to use for a Boston qualifier. The race starts in Folsom at an elevation of 365 feet and finishes at the steps of the State Capital in Sacramento, an elevation of 26 feet. 26.2 miles of fast net downhill running. If I were to find a course where it would be possible for me to run this fast, it would have to be CIM. I signed up to run the race in 2008, still not knowing if I was ready to make a run at the qualifying time for my age group of 3 hours, 10 minutes, 59 seconds or faster. I knew it was not going to happen in 2008 weeks before the race started, but had planned to use the race as a dry-run to run as fast as I could, preview the course, and develop a plan for returning in 2009 for my BQ attempt. I ran the 2008 race in 3:17:39, which was an 11 minute PR for me over my prior marathon best time, run only 7 months earlier. I was training more, and training better, so I knew if I stepped it up in 2009 that I would have a shot. By the time race day rolled around, I thought I was in shape to not only break 3:10, but to hopefully run an average mile pace of 7:05 en route to a 3:05-ish finishing time.

For the second year in a row, I was able to spend the night before the race at friends house in Folsom, about 10 minutes from the start line. I went to bed early enough, but unfortunately Annmarie started getting a little cough a few hours earlier, and I heard her hacking in our room most of the night. Not that I would have gotten much sleep anyways, but I think I maybe got 3-4 hours sleep max, never being able to fully relax and fall back asleep with her coughing throughout the night.

My alarm went off at 4:45, and I relaxed while eating my Nature’s Path Optimum cereal and reading a little bit. Angela got up and dropped me off at the shuttles to the start line at 6am. A year earlier it was cold, but this year was damn near Canada cold. 29 degrees at the start of the race…and may have been a few degrees colder when I was dropped off. After catching a quick shuttle to the start line, I ran into John Henry, did a short 5 minute warm-up, and then took care of final pre-race preparations, namely a last minute pit stop and then dropping my sweats off in the sweat truck. The hour passed quickly, and I ran into a few more friends and colleagues on the start line before the gun sounded and we were off running into the early morning darkness.

Being close to the start line was a plus, as I crossed in about 15 seconds and was off moving into the first mile quickly and easily. I felt as relaxed as I have ever been before the start of a race…none of the usual pre-race jitters this time. As with the first mile of many long races, I was trying not to get sucked into running too fast. I looked at my watch several times and caught myself running 6:30-6:40 pace pretty easily, but knew that was too much, and backed off whenever I caught it. I passed the first mile in 7:09, just slightly slower than my goal pace, which was perfect, and about the range I kept for awhile. After the first downhill mile, the next 4-5 miles consisted of gentle rolling hills, never climbing more than a minute before going into a decent of about the same length. That made keeping an even pace a little tricky, as the downhills would push me into a fast 6:30 pace, while the uphills would slow me down to 7:15 or so. This ended up netting out fine, as I kept in the 7:02-7:09 range pretty consistently. I ran most of this portion with Liz, one of my Tamalpa buddies who was also shooting to break 3:10. I was running slightly faster than her, but then by the next mile marker she always caught back up to me. We paced each other and chatted through the first 10 miles or so, which made the miles fly by pretty quickly. There were some climbs in miles 8-10 which slowed us down a little, but eventually I rolled through the half way marker in 1:33:33. I had wanted to do this half in 1:33:00, but 33 seconds off that pace was not too bad considering the headwind had started getting progressively stronger for the past half hour.

Shortly after the half-way marker, I stopped for about 15 seconds to refill my water bottle. I was feeling pretty good at this point, and had put in a couple faster than goal-pace splits, until just after mile 14 I turned the corner into a much sharper headwind that was just brutal. I tried to find packs of runners to bunch up behind to help break the wind (no pun intended), and it seemed like we took turns sharing the lead for the next few miles as we slogged through it. I would settle into the back of the pack for awhile, and then move up as I felt the pace was too slow, lead for a few minutes, then the same group would pull ahead and bunch up again. This was a good strategy, as I think I saved a little energy and it helped me take my mind off the 25+ MPH headwinds. By mile 17 we had turned the corner again and were not running directly into it anymore, but not having to run directly into it made it seem like the wind had broken altogether (that just keeps getting funnier, doesn’t it?. This was a huge moral victory since I was worried that I’d be running into it for the rest of the race. Thankfully, I only had 2 slower miles running into that wind, and not drastically slower than it could have been, running 7:22 and 7:13.

By mile 19, I had passed almost all of the pack runners I had been running with. As I crossed Watt Ave, it seemed like the overall race pack had thinned out significantly. Then it occurred to me this was the point in the race where most people start dying, and while my left calf was starting to lock up on me a little, and I was pretty tired, I felt like I was far from dying. This is actually the point where I start hitting the wall, but I thought that if I could run hard through these next few miles, the pain would pass and then I’d be close enough to the end that I could just pull it in hard. So between that and the realization that there were only about 6 miles left to go, I felt recharged and started hitting some good splits…7:04, 7:02 mixed in with a few slightly slower splits.

Around the 24.5 marker, I saw John up ahead of me and knew I would be catching him soon. I told him going into the race that I had planned on catching him right around the 25 mile mark and blowing by him, but when I did, that he had better go with me. He has a tendency to go out way too fast and then fade toward the end of the marathon, but will absolutely destroy me in most distances shorter. As I rolled up beside him, he looks like he’s in a real bad place. I try to shout at him, but no words came out…I was working as hard as I could at this point and the words just did not process. So I pointed and made a “follow-me” gesture, which I think looked pretty ugly because he just gave me a look like “WTF dude”? I didn’t slow as I passed, and kept cranking as hard as I could. Too hard actually. About 15 seconds after I passed him I looked down at my watch and caught myself pulling 5:50 pace! With a mile and a half left, I pulled myself together and split the mile at 6:52, my fastest of the race thus far.

The last mile involved just counting the blocks and leaving it all on the course. The final left turn is at 8th street, so I started the countdown early and just took out one block at a time. 16th, 15th, 14th. Turning that corner at 8th street felt pretty damn good, and knowing the end was now in sight, I took the opportunity to pick off a few more runners in the final stretch. I crossed the finish line in 3:06:42, well ahead of the 3:10:59 cutoff for Boston. In running my splits through my head, I realized that I had negative split the course…1:33:33 the first half, 1:33:09 the second half, and ran the last mile in 6:43, my best of the day.

All said, this was probably the best race I’ve ever run. I thought I might have been able to do a 3:05, but I met my goal of making it to Boston and put up a 11 minute PR in the process, so I really can’t ask for much more than that. Plus, I figure we all lost at least a minute or two due to the headwind, but I definitely left it all out on the course. Since Boston 2010 is already full, I have a nice long break until April 18, 2011, the 115th running of the Boston Marathon.