Women's wear

What's up with clothing sizes? Why have they gotten so huge? After the marathon yesterday, Erin and I were feeling inspired and went shopping for more gear. At Filene's Basement, which is where I tend to shop for gear because I refuse to pay $70 to $150 for a pair of workout pants, everything was huge, regardless of the actual size. I ended up with this pair of women's size small tights! Size small??? I'm not a big guy, but that means basically every woman I know is below small? How fat has the U.S. gotten?

Anyway, I got a new pair of tights for $19, so I'm a happy camper. And congrats to Speedy Gonzales' sub-3 and beating Lance yesterday, Ny Flygirl's first marathon sub-4, Sempre Libera's first marathon, Sister Smile's BQ by the skin of her ass and Skylight for being the super volunteer! Also congrats to everyone else who ran! Great job.

Here's a shot from MCM. This is from Georgetown, early, well before I looked like death in sneakers.

Sunday: Pulaski O&B via Humboldt, easy 4.4 miles in 32:24 (7:22/mile). So, basically, I think what's going on is that I ran the second half of MCM so slowly that I'm not getting hit with the wipeout I'd expected. Certainly mentally that's the case, as I totally think of MCM as just a bad long run.

Validation

There were certain parts of the trip to D.C. that worked out very well in spite of the marathon. It is only a race after all, and there's much more to life than a race. However, any marathon -- and especially a goal marathon -- becomes so much of a part of life that it has the power to distort or provide clarity to the remainder. In my case, I think the result was, to steal from the Asics ads in the New York City subways, clarity of vision.

First, the time in D.C. led to one conclusion. The city has no soul. I know almost no one who lives in the District who's really happy to be there. The number of people I knew there who hate their jobs, are going through a divorce, or are just suffering from depression is staggering. The perception I had leaving D.C. this time was much the same as last December, "Thank god I got out." However, being in a city I love, doing a job I enjoy, living a life I'm very happy brought the near suffocating melancholy I felt in Washington while living there much more clearly into focus and totally validated my return to New York.

My other story is from during the race. As I was leaving Haines Point, walking up the ramp onto the 14th Street bridge past mile 20, in a 30mph headwind, the thought kept running through my head, "I've put Erin through a lot these last few months, and I'm not even going to come close." She'd been fantastically supportive but, and I don't think she'd disagree, a little jealous of my time. And here I wasn't even going to be able to give it a good effort near the end. As I ran through Crystal City, an out and back part of the course, I saw her near the side line, waving. I knew the course would come back by and, as I'd been unwillingly Gallowalking for several miles, I thought, "I have to run past that spot. I have to just run past that spot." I gave it a mighty effort, but about 30 yards away, my legs quit and I was, dejectedly, walking again. At this point, I wanted nothing more than to sit down. I walked up to Erin, gave her a hug through near-tears and she said what needed to be said, "Are you hurt? Then go finish it." Back at the hotel, she'd stocked breads, bars and Gatorade, because obviously I'd need it and, after lunch, she decided I needed "retail therapy" to make me feel better. (I got really great Euro shoes!)

Clarity of vision.

Thanks for all of your kind comments and good luck to those running NYC tomorrow. I'm still on the fence on next steps, even whether to give it another shot this year at all, but am considering Jacksonville or Houston. As far as recovery goes, well, let me say that today's run felt as easy as the pace did during the first part of my marathon, except my quads are still a bit fatigued, so you be the judge . . .

Brooklyn Bridge Loop: 9.3 miles in 65:43 (7:04/mile).

Introspection

Today's weather is somewhat like my mood. It's dreary, rainy, cloudy and there was a patch of hail as I ran over the Williamsburg Bridge. On the other hand, days like this always give hope that a lot more hail and ice will fall and school will be canceled.

So, while I'm still bummed about last Sunday's results, I have zero doubt that I can run a 3:10 or even a sub-3 with more slightly more training and a lot better strategy. For the former goal, I've decided the MCM timing chip is staying on my shoes until I reach it. Hell, I may carry that chip in the Boston Marathon when I go, just an "I've overcome" sort of gesture. Some people have a chip on their shoulders, I have one on my shoes.

As for the marathon, I'm not really going to write about the interior of the race. I think the results largely speak for themselves. This data from the MCM site gives the tale of a guy slamming the wall, hard:

• Miles 1-10: 8.4 mph
• Miles 10-13.1: 8.1 mph (consciously slowing starting around mile 9 to try to avoid . . .)
  
• Miles 13.1-20: 6.8 mph ( . . . this . . .)
  
• Miles 20-26.2: 5.5 mph (. . . and this.)
  

Lest you accuse me of being overly ambitious, I believed my goals were sound before this race and I still believe they are achievable. I do, however, think a number of strategic mistakes were made during and before this race and I'm going to commit them to public scrutiny so (hopefully) I won't repeat them. My goals were set to be challenging. By Mile 5 I'd handicapped myself enough to make them nigh impossible. In chrono order, the mistakes are:

1. Thinking that I'd be able to buy a bagel in D.C. on Sunday morning. I don't know why I thought this. D.C. has no residents to buy bagels. I lived there. I "knew" that anyone that actually wanted breakfast would drive to Herndon and go to Waffle House. I couldn't even find coffee. And no matter what the weight-loss people say, the 300 calories in two Gus and a bottle of Powerade is NOT the same as the 300 calories in a bagel with peanut butter. Oddly enough, my last bomb race also involved not having my ideal breakfast . . . (Erin's decided that we're packing Frosted Mini Wheats for every race I go to from now on.)
   
2. Metro: MCM ran shuttles from automobile parking. Although they "encouraged" everyone to ride Metro. If you did, and you had baggage, then you had about a 1.5 mile walk as a warmup.
3. Clothing: I wore a singlet and gloves. This only became a problem after the wind started howling on Haines Point. It was frickin' cold. My race was already over then, but it would have been nice not to have frozen.
4. Port-a-Potty: This was actually no knock on MCM. Bathrooms were plentiful and with short lines. My mistake was that while going number 2, the invocation started. That's right folks. I shat during the invocation. I think my results are largely attributable to this unfortunate timing because God hates me.
5. Oh, Muse help me sing of the misleading elevation chart. For a reminder, the elevation chart shows a 100 ft climb over two miles at the beginning and then nothing through the end. The climb is more than 100ft and much shorter than 2 miles in length. It was more like two Harlem Hills in a row. Looking at the chart, I thought we were running some of the rolling hills along the parkway, which I've run before and were fine. I wasn't prepared for this behemoth. Nor was I prepared for the immediate and somewhat steep downhill that stretched for several miles immediately following the climb (which, incidentally, is why the elevation chart only showed a 100 ft climb). This totally trashed both my quads (which are just now recovering) and my pacing, which leads to . . .
6. Pacing: I went through the first mile in 7:15. Was at 15:00 at mile 2 (partway up the hill) and then lost track through G'town. I learned from another runner in RockCreek Park that we'd been doing around 6:50. I was doing about 7:05s through RockCreek, which would have been OK if I'd not had the 6:50s through G'town. C'est la vie. With the wind, I probably wouldn't have BQ'd anyway, but with better pacing I probably could have finished around 3:15-3:20.
7. Hydration: This was a problem that I corrected (finally). The MCM water stations came only every second mile, which would have been fine if the cups weren't half full. By the third station I was taking 2-3 cups of water and Powerade on the way through and combining them. I'm glad for this in race adjustment because others were, well . . .
   
8. Goals: The initial goals were fine. Given the breakfast thing, that by Mile 10 I knew I'd screwed up the pacing and that the wind really started to pick up about mile 11 on the Mall, I'd have been well served to at that point dialed it back to shoot for 3:20 rather than continuing to push for 3:10. An adjustment then would probably have gotten me across the line in a P.R., at least. I didn't do it and was rewarded by being passed by Dean Karnazes, the schmuck.
   

I'm sure there were more mistakes. These were the one's that I've come up with over the past few days. Most of them, fortunately, are planning mistakes that can be dealt with easy enough. The others are in-race decisions. Hopefully, I'll get better at those before I get too old to try for sub-3.

More to come . . .

Tuesday: Pulaski O&B: 4.15 miles in 32:18 (7:47/mile)
Thursday: WB O&B:4.8 miles in 37:55 (7:54/mile) -- The city's moved the pedestrian walkway entrance from the north to the south side, so the route's a little shorter.

Say what?

This race was a total bomb . . . as in a 39 minute positive split bomb! This just ticks me off, because I'm in much better shape than a 3:43 marathon. On the one hand, it sucks. (I was actually joking with the eventual women's 40-45 winner before the race how awful a 3:30 would be! That's irony folks.) On the other hand, I missed all of my goals in such a spectacularly grotesque fashion that it doesn't sting as bad as, say, a 3:11 would have. I mean, I had basically 75 minutes during the race after it became impossible for me to reach 3:10 to resign myself to the result, while I was blasting (HA!) through 11:00+ minute miles. I'm MOST annoyed though, in being passed by one Dean Karnazes just before the final mile. One thing was clear, Sunday was not my day.

Haven't decided what I'm doing next, whether it's another race in 6 weeks or so or phasing down until the spring. At the moment I'm leaning toward the former, mostly because of righteous (I think) fury. However, what happens at the office tomorrow and how well I recover over the next week will to a large extent be outcome determinative. In any event, this race has certainly been a learning experience, but all of these topics are really their own posts.

Stay tuned . . .