Grandma's Marathon race day started with them shuttling us via school bus from hotels/dorms/various locations around Duluth to the starting line. I noticed as soon as I got on the bus that my phone battery was already down to 52%, which I cursed myself for and knew would not end well. Fortunately, that would be the worst thing that happened that day.
Though I left the 4:35 group behind, I had a pace bracelet telling me what time I needed to be at at each mile to hit 4:35, which was SUPER helpful. With two miles to go, I knew I had banked somewhere between two and three minutes and would hit my goal as long as I kept within the range of what I'd already been doing. Then someone started playing "All I Do is Win," and a random stranger called out to no one in particular, "YOU'RE DOING IT!!!," and I was like, "I AM doing it!," and I took off. Mile 25 pace was 9:39. Mile 26 was 9:33. After I crossed the finish line, I got the notification on my watch from the Grandma's app that said, "Molly Brost has crossed the finish line at 4:30:54," and I was like, "HOLY CRAP!" I managed to collect my medal and, with my phone now at 7%, shoot off a text to my family telling them my time. Somehow, even after my phone died, I was still getting notifications on my watch, so even though I couldn't respond, I managed to get the gist of where my friends were and find them with only *a little* wandering around cursing myself for not making sure that I had started the day with a properly charged phone.
Some things that helped me reach my goal:
1) Nearly perfect conditions. Temps were in the 50s, the course was nice and flat with some downhills and only really one big uphill. I commented to more than one person, "Part of me wants to retire from marathon running right now, because I will never have this perfect of a race again." A random stranger who struck up with a conversation with me at a water fountain was like, "Oh, wow, what a great thing to be able to say! You're not going to, though, right?" I was like, "Of course not."
2) The Hal Higdon Intermediate 1 training plan, pictured below:
For my previous three marathons I used the Novice 2 plan. The main difference between that one and this one was this one included five weekly runs instead of four, which meant back-to-back runs on the weekends. This sometimes led to things that I never would have considered possible before, such as, say, running the Early Bird 10 Miler one day and then waking up the next morning and doing fifteen miles. I thought to myself multiple times throughout training, "I don't know if I'm actually getting faster, but I can DO MORE than I've ever been able to do before." I didn't follow the plan perfectly, because life happens, but I calculated it and determined that I did 91% of the workouts on the plan. I think it's good to choose a plan that is maybe just A LITTLE too hard, because even if you fall slightly short, you're still going to be doing more than you've done before.
3) Proper portions of Honey Stinger chews. I always struggle with race day/long run nutrition. I was worried because I felt like I'd been really fading on my long runs. Then I looked on the back and saw that the serving size was six Honey Stinger chews. I'd been eating four every four miles. I upped it to six, and I swear to God it made a huge difference.
4) Last, but CERTAINLY not least, awesome running friends! Omaha has a fantastic running community. There are running groups most nights of the week, and through those groups you can meet awesome friends to also do your weekend long runs with 👍. Thanks so much to everyone who did training runs with me, shared the race weekend experience, or offered support from afar!
After the disappointment of last fall's hot AF Chicago Marathon, it was nice to have a race go really well. I feel like this is the first full marathon that I've actually raced and not just tried to survive.
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