Here's the thing about me: I am not the fastest runner, but I am consistent. Every single road half-marathon I've raced, over the course of eleven years of racing and twenty-six half-marathons, has been run at an average pace somewhere between 8:40 and 9:45 per mile, which has resulted in a best time of 1:53:37 and a worst time of 2:07:55. Times have started to skew a little toward the slower end over the years, but conditions like temperature, whether the course is hilly or flat, etc., have also played a role, and keeping them all that close (with most of them falling between 1:55 and 2:05) is something I'm pretty proud of.
With full marathons, I haven't had as much experience, but I have run five now, with a PR of 4:30:54 at Grandma's in 2022 and a worst time of 4:56:24 at Chicago in 2021, and, guess what? The overall time gap is bigger than with the half since I'm running twice as far, and the overall pace is a bit slower, but the pace difference (within about a minute per mile, around 10:20-11:20 in this case) is about the same. So, when the temperatures started to climb and I started falling off goal pace at Grandma's this year, and when I crossed the finish line at 4:40:24, I was disappointed, first, to not PR, and second, not to at least get sub-4:40. However, by the time I talked to Carrie N. on the phone on my way home from the race the next day, I had put it in the perspective of, "I think I found my range. 4:30:54 is what I can do when conditions are perfect, and 4:56:24 is what I can do when conditions are terrible, and the rest will fall somewhere in between. And the good thing about Chicago sucking so hard is that I can always say, 'At least it wasn't as bad as Chicago!'" I do hope that I have not peaked and that I can still hit a sub-4:30 someday, but prior to Saturday, I had PRed at every full marathon EXCEPT Chicago, and it's probably not realistic to expect that every time. Train for it, go for it, but manage expectations and don't make it the end of the world if it doesn't happen, I think is the lesson.
Also: I was not hating my life this race. At any distance, there have been races where I have gotten MAD, and not in the good, "My competitive spirit is revved up!" kind of way, but in the "I hate everyone and everything!" type of way. At Chicago, for example, I remember crossing the 18-mile mark and thinking, "Eight more miles of this? REALLY?!" At the Lincoln Half this year, which was one of my worst at 2:06:16, I was ready to fling my slick-with-humidity water bottle to the side of the road, and a completely innocuous conversation between a couple of other runners made me think, "Shut UP!" I was straight-up not having a good time. This race was not like that. At mile 20, knowing that I had fallen off pace and not quite having it in me to pick it up, but also not feeling terrible, I thought to myself, fairly calmly, "It's just a 10K left. You can do a 10K." Also, though I did slow down in the second half, I don't feel like I "bonked," as I did in my first two Indianapolis marathons; I feel like I slowed down slightly and naturally as the temperature rose, which I can't say was a strategy, but I think was pretty normal.
Other things from the race weekend as a whole that I will remember:
1) I spent the night in Minneapolis on the way so I could get to the marathon expo early enough to see Olympic marathoner Kara Goucher, who was signing her new book at the expo on Friday. At my hotel in Minneapolis were a bunch of middle-school girls who were in town for a volleyball tournament. I had been told there would be cookies in the lobby at 10 p.m., and since I was still up, I went down to get one. Those middle school girls descended on those cookies like a swarm and had them gone in like thirty seconds. There were more cookies where that came from, it turned out, but it was a pretty funny thing to watch.
2) I got to add to my collection of photos of me with famous lady marathoners, which prior to this included Kathrine Switzer, Deena Kastor, and Shalane Flanagan. This one was the most personally significant, however, because I read Kara Goucher's book on running for women early in my running career and used to constantly talk about what "Olympic marathoner Kara Goucher" had to say about this or that. I managed not to go on and on about that and to just say normal things like "Hi" and "Thank you" as she signed my book and took a picture with me.
3) I got to hang out with my friend Julia at her first full marathon, which she crushed! So glad we got to ride the shuttle together and hang out after the race!
I actually have ZERO races in July and August! But I'm doing the Monument Marathon in Scottsbluff in September and the GOATz 50K in October, so training starts on July 10th. I'm trying a different training plan geared toward the 50K which includes hill repeats, so we'll see how that goes! The plan is to run pretty minimally this week, then take it relatively easy the two weeks after with long-ish runs at 6-8 miles. I think a three-week training break will be about the right amount, because I had like three MONTHS after the fall racing season last year, and while it was nice to not have to follow a training plan when it was so cold, I did feel like I lost some fitness (though I was still doing some running).
Okay! Spring racing season 2023 in the books! Onward and upward!
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