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Race Report Sri Chinmoy Williamstown Marathon
Posted by
Caterpillar
,
04 June 2011
·
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The day before the marathon has become a bit of a ritual, with solace in its familiarity, having done 5 marathons in the past 2 years.
The morning starts with a short slow jog of no more than 5km, and a continuation of the carb loading which began the day before, kicking off with a low fibre sugary breakfast cereal, orange juice, and grazing through lunch with toast and/or bagels with a sugary spread, and plenty of stretching throughout the day.
The running gear comes out after lunch, with the all important bib pinning. Running pace wrist band is printed off after a final check on the weather forecast. I do not rely exclusively on the garmin for race day because it overestimates distance. Lots of thought goes into deciding my planned pace, and is usually something I will have laboured over for weeks prior to race day. What have my threshold, intervals, and marathon pace runs been like? Did I recover completely from jet lag? How effective will the cloud cover keep the sun away? How has my training been compared to that prior to my last marathon? Do I want to run at a conservative pace or try to stretch the envelope?
I haven't run enough marathons to easily predict race time from training times so there is a lot of guesstimating involved. This time around I knew that I was on track for a better time than last time, given the times I was getting in my training; just didn't know exactly by how much.
Dinner is the traditional pasta, and keeping the fluids up. Slept surprisingly sound
compared to previous marathons. Up at around 4.30ish, with breakfast of two coffees with sugar (one of them decaf), and a bagel with honey. No more fluids until the race. Applied the bandaids and bodyglide to the usual places, did a few stretches, and took a quiet drive to Willy, after packing a bag with warm clothes and drink bottles.
Still dark on arrival at Willy, checked out the start and finish areas, handed in my bag around 15 minutes prior to start with a final stop at the boys room after submitting my drinks at the two stations near the start. Started the race with a small bottle of sports drink in hand. Final checking of the shoelaces. Didn't want them to come undone during the race, and didn't want the runners feeling too firm at the start either. Wearing ASICS 2160s with only 10km on the clock. My training log indicated that I run my best with almost brand new runners. A few gentle strides on the soft rubbery track before heading to the starting line.
Excellent conditions for a marathon. Morning low was an overcast 8 degrees, and it didn't climb above 11 degrees by the end of the race. No wind, rain or shine.
A minute's silence for the task ahead was a nice touch and we were off. Quite a few shot out of the gate at sub 4 min/km pace; with over 30 runners ahead of me after a minute. Kept a steady pace from the start with help from the garmin, and the field seem to settle and thin out after a few kilometers. My left runner was feeling a little loose, with a bit of vertical movement in the heel. After 15 minutes I stopped thinking about it, which means that it probably resolved.
For a while, two runners were chatting away only a few metres behind me for a few km, and by the 5-6km mark, an unofficial 3hr bus had formed, with around 7 passengers, with plenty of banter.
This is something very unique about the marathon. For the the first half at least, there'll often be a bit of chatting away and camaraderie on the buses
. You won't see that in shorter races.
Somewhere around the 15km mark, I developed a mild stitch with some shoulder tip pain, and wondered if I should have stuck to toast instead of a bagel for brekkie. Thankfully, it resolved after 10 minutes.
By about the 19km mark, hanging on to the bus became a challenge, so much so that the bus slowly disappeared into the distance as my splits slowly deteriorated over the next 15km to 5min/km. Managed to pick up the pace a little to 4:45min/km from around 36km until the finish, making for an official net time of 3 hours, 11 minutes, 50 seconds, with a 10 minutes positive split. 8 minutes faster than Melbourne Marathon 2010 and around 12 minutes slower than my best ever marathon from 1994 when I did my one and only sub 3hr.
Hobbled slowly after the finish, remembered to get into my warm clothes quickly and caught up with a few other finishers, including some from the 3 hour bus. Only 1, maybe 2 passengers from the 3 hour bus completed the race under 3 hours.
Soaked up a little more of the atmosphere, and watched the presentations. As is usual for Sri Chinmoy events, there was plenty of food to go around and had me some pumpkin soup
, but it was a little too soon after the race for any kind of food, even the soup kind, and my stomach was very disagreeable for around 15 minutes 
Memo to me in the future: wait a good hour after the race before taking in anything of any substance.
Feeling cold and shivering now, headed back home with car heater on full. Stopped for a bag of ice at the petrol station. I had done a few cold water baths post long runs, but this was going to be my first genuine ice bath. Decided to try to get into cold water without the ice first. My feet couldn't bear it for more than 5 seconds. Wondered if my core temperature was a little low, so had a warmish shower first, before trying again. Better luck the second time around, although the feet were stinging with cold. It got worse after adding the ice, with a helluva lot of groaning and grimacing. Swigging down hot tea
to keep the body temperature up. The ice melted after around 8 minutes, and that was my cue to get out. Legs had a tingling numb feeling for a few minutes, but I was amazed that I could walk without hobbling.
Looking back at the race, with the benefit of hindsight, I went out too fast. Assuming the rule that for every minute you head out too fast in the first half results in a loss of 2 minutes for the second half, then an evenly run race would have resulted in 3h06m. That said, am very happy that I'm heading in the right direction, with an 8 minute improvement compared to my last marathon.
As expected the garmin overestimated the distance covered, reporting 42.78km.
It's now 6 days post race, and I am pleasantly surprised as to how well I'm recovering compared to past races, which is probably related to wearing newish runners on race day, and the ice bath. This bodes well for getting back into serious training in preparation for the Melbourne Marathon, which is 18 weeks away. Given the Pftizinger program has worked well for me thus far, I'm following one of the post marathon recovery plans in his book, and plan to transition back into the 88-113km/wk schedule by weeks 4-5 post race.
Had a look at some of the photos from the race day, and can't help noticing that most of the sub 3 hour runners were thinner looking. That's not to say I'm overweight; but my BMI of around 24 is probably too heavy to achieve a sub 3hr, given the time available for training. I did my very first marathon in 1994 at 60kg, but have been a little heavier than that, around 63-64kg, for nearly two years now. I keep saying I'll do something about it, but it's surprisingly difficult during peak training.
Maybe the notion of getting close to attaining a sub 3 hour will be the extra incentive I need
?
The morning starts with a short slow jog of no more than 5km, and a continuation of the carb loading which began the day before, kicking off with a low fibre sugary breakfast cereal, orange juice, and grazing through lunch with toast and/or bagels with a sugary spread, and plenty of stretching throughout the day.
The running gear comes out after lunch, with the all important bib pinning. Running pace wrist band is printed off after a final check on the weather forecast. I do not rely exclusively on the garmin for race day because it overestimates distance. Lots of thought goes into deciding my planned pace, and is usually something I will have laboured over for weeks prior to race day. What have my threshold, intervals, and marathon pace runs been like? Did I recover completely from jet lag? How effective will the cloud cover keep the sun away? How has my training been compared to that prior to my last marathon? Do I want to run at a conservative pace or try to stretch the envelope?
I haven't run enough marathons to easily predict race time from training times so there is a lot of guesstimating involved. This time around I knew that I was on track for a better time than last time, given the times I was getting in my training; just didn't know exactly by how much.
Dinner is the traditional pasta, and keeping the fluids up. Slept surprisingly sound
compared to previous marathons. Up at around 4.30ish, with breakfast of two coffees with sugar (one of them decaf), and a bagel with honey. No more fluids until the race. Applied the bandaids and bodyglide to the usual places, did a few stretches, and took a quiet drive to Willy, after packing a bag with warm clothes and drink bottles.Still dark on arrival at Willy, checked out the start and finish areas, handed in my bag around 15 minutes prior to start with a final stop at the boys room after submitting my drinks at the two stations near the start. Started the race with a small bottle of sports drink in hand. Final checking of the shoelaces. Didn't want them to come undone during the race, and didn't want the runners feeling too firm at the start either. Wearing ASICS 2160s with only 10km on the clock. My training log indicated that I run my best with almost brand new runners. A few gentle strides on the soft rubbery track before heading to the starting line.
Excellent conditions for a marathon. Morning low was an overcast 8 degrees, and it didn't climb above 11 degrees by the end of the race. No wind, rain or shine.
A minute's silence for the task ahead was a nice touch and we were off. Quite a few shot out of the gate at sub 4 min/km pace; with over 30 runners ahead of me after a minute. Kept a steady pace from the start with help from the garmin, and the field seem to settle and thin out after a few kilometers. My left runner was feeling a little loose, with a bit of vertical movement in the heel. After 15 minutes I stopped thinking about it, which means that it probably resolved.
For a while, two runners were chatting away only a few metres behind me for a few km, and by the 5-6km mark, an unofficial 3hr bus had formed, with around 7 passengers, with plenty of banter.
This is something very unique about the marathon. For the the first half at least, there'll often be a bit of chatting away and camaraderie on the buses
. You won't see that in shorter races. Somewhere around the 15km mark, I developed a mild stitch with some shoulder tip pain, and wondered if I should have stuck to toast instead of a bagel for brekkie. Thankfully, it resolved after 10 minutes.
By about the 19km mark, hanging on to the bus became a challenge, so much so that the bus slowly disappeared into the distance as my splits slowly deteriorated over the next 15km to 5min/km. Managed to pick up the pace a little to 4:45min/km from around 36km until the finish, making for an official net time of 3 hours, 11 minutes, 50 seconds, with a 10 minutes positive split. 8 minutes faster than Melbourne Marathon 2010 and around 12 minutes slower than my best ever marathon from 1994 when I did my one and only sub 3hr.
Hobbled slowly after the finish, remembered to get into my warm clothes quickly and caught up with a few other finishers, including some from the 3 hour bus. Only 1, maybe 2 passengers from the 3 hour bus completed the race under 3 hours.
Soaked up a little more of the atmosphere, and watched the presentations. As is usual for Sri Chinmoy events, there was plenty of food to go around and had me some pumpkin soup
, but it was a little too soon after the race for any kind of food, even the soup kind, and my stomach was very disagreeable for around 15 minutes Memo to me in the future: wait a good hour after the race before taking in anything of any substance.
Feeling cold and shivering now, headed back home with car heater on full. Stopped for a bag of ice at the petrol station. I had done a few cold water baths post long runs, but this was going to be my first genuine ice bath. Decided to try to get into cold water without the ice first. My feet couldn't bear it for more than 5 seconds. Wondered if my core temperature was a little low, so had a warmish shower first, before trying again. Better luck the second time around, although the feet were stinging with cold. It got worse after adding the ice, with a helluva lot of groaning and grimacing. Swigging down hot tea
to keep the body temperature up. The ice melted after around 8 minutes, and that was my cue to get out. Legs had a tingling numb feeling for a few minutes, but I was amazed that I could walk without hobbling.Looking back at the race, with the benefit of hindsight, I went out too fast. Assuming the rule that for every minute you head out too fast in the first half results in a loss of 2 minutes for the second half, then an evenly run race would have resulted in 3h06m. That said, am very happy that I'm heading in the right direction, with an 8 minute improvement compared to my last marathon.
As expected the garmin overestimated the distance covered, reporting 42.78km.
It's now 6 days post race, and I am pleasantly surprised as to how well I'm recovering compared to past races, which is probably related to wearing newish runners on race day, and the ice bath. This bodes well for getting back into serious training in preparation for the Melbourne Marathon, which is 18 weeks away. Given the Pftizinger program has worked well for me thus far, I'm following one of the post marathon recovery plans in his book, and plan to transition back into the 88-113km/wk schedule by weeks 4-5 post race.
Had a look at some of the photos from the race day, and can't help noticing that most of the sub 3 hour runners were thinner looking. That's not to say I'm overweight; but my BMI of around 24 is probably too heavy to achieve a sub 3hr, given the time available for training. I did my very first marathon in 1994 at 60kg, but have been a little heavier than that, around 63-64kg, for nearly two years now. I keep saying I'll do something about it, but it's surprisingly difficult during peak training.
Maybe the notion of getting close to attaining a sub 3 hour will be the extra incentive I need
?
