Marathon 3.0: And in the End ...
It's time to close the book on marathon #3. It was seriously a great weekend. There was a lot of delicious food, fun times with friends and family and what turned out to be a pretty exhausting but successful marathon. Did I reach my goal? Nope. But that's OK because I still set a PR, and I'm happy with the results. We got into Philly on Saturday afternoon, so we went with our good friends and hosts Doris and Adrian over to the Reading Terminal Market for some falafel and fries. The expo was at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which was conveniently across the street, so we laughed at the crowds trying to find a seat in the market and occupied an empty table inside the convention center. Click to Enlarge The expo was pretty much what you'd expect from a race expo, so we didn't spend a whole lot of time there. One note: The goodie bags given to runners at the expo were cool. Marathons always have the best goodies, at least compared with shorter distance races, but these were the best-looking bags I've ever seen. Also, I like that the t-shirt is a functional running shirt. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my Marine Corps Marathon shirt. Click to Enlarge That night, we went Farmicia, a restaurant that specializes in local and organic food. I highly recommend going, especially for their vegetarian tamales. The only disappointment of the night was that the restaurant's only vegan dessert was a banana cupcake. It was a delicious cupcake, but I thought they would have a little more variety. (If you're wondering, I'm not 100% vegan, but my wife is, and I have a strict non-dairy rule the night before a race.) Race day: The weather was gorgeous. We seriously lucked out with such nice weather in late November. It was around 40 degrees when we first set out for the Art Museum, and during the race it rose into the 50s. Approaching the start area, the lines to the porta-potties were manageable, which kind of makes or breaks a race for me. I'm not kidding. I refuse to register for the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run for this very reason. Click to Enlarge The weirdest part about the event was the fact that the marathon and the half marathon took place on the same day, on the same course. This meant that from the starting line to the halfway mark, the course was pretty packed. After hitting mile 13, the crowds disappeared, which made the last (and always toughest) half of the marathon a little lonely - especially since it traveled outside the city and back. The only high energy portion during the latter half of the race was the neighborhood of Manayunk at mile 20, which boosted my spirits a little. But then you turned back to downtown Philly, down the exact same lonely stretch of road you just ran. That wasn't my biggest problem, though. What turned out to be a big stumbling block during the race was actually a combination of ignoring and sticking to my training. In the past, I tended to over-hydrate during long runs, creating the queasy feeling that's probably not far from onset hyponatremia. This time around, I discovered that I was better off limiting water breaks to every 30 minutes (depending on the temperature). But in a race, the first water stop is around mile 2, which unless you're going 15 minutes/mile is not 30 minutes into the race. I will admit that I skipped the first water stop, and I probably didn't drink as much as I should have at the second stop, which was between mile 3 and 4. By mile 13, I had a cramp in my side that was so painful I started to convince myself I had an appendicitis. I was about to find the nearest medical tent and ask if they had pickle juice (Google it), when I came across the next water stop. I downed a lot of Gatorade and I was back in the race. I could start writing things like "If that didn't happen ..." or "If only I had done things differently ...," but that's counter-productive. I've accepted the fact that if I'm ever going to run a sub-four-hour marathon, I will. If I don't, I don't. At Philly, I shaved almost seven minutes off my Marine Corps Marathon time, which is something I'm proud of - especially considering the problems I had during training AND the race! My favorite part of the weekend was brunch with my friends and family, downing an entire plate of blueberry pancakes and talking about people's weird running forms and bloody nipples (not mine, thankfully). It doesn't get better than that. Click to Enlarge |
@thegeekticket: @ProgressCityUSA Why is that not happening right now? @thegeekticket: @ProgressCityUSA If only a park would build an attraction based off the upcoming reboot of Third Man on the Mountain, titled The Third Man. @thegeekticket: @ThemePark It's incredibly dated, and I can sum it up as 15 mins of a woman screaming "Mariner!" over and over followed by some explosions. |
