Ranking My Marathons

I am now 15 weeks away from running my 15th Marathon.  I wanted to take a look back at my previous marathons and rank them according to how their performance ranked based on my experience at the time of the race.

1. Grandmas Marathon, 06/21/2014, 3:26:21.  It's hard not to rank your fastest marathon as the best performance.  This was just 15 months after running my first mile and my first attempt at a Boston Qualifier and I managed a 25 minute PR for the BQ.  With the average pace 7:53 per mile, it still amazes me that the last 5 miles were my fastest miles with miles 25 and 26 coming in at 7:19 and 7:20.  Will I ever come close to this again?

2. Boston Marathon, 04/25/2015, 3:33:38.  The ultimate goal for any marathoner is to make it to Boston.  Just two years after taking up running, I found myself in Hopkinton and heading to Boston and finishing on Boylston Street.  At the time, I wasn't overly thrilled with this time, but I've never come close to this time again.  So as time goes by, I covet this time more and more.

3. Twin Cities Marathon, 10/06/2013, 3:59:33.  This was my very first marathon, just over 6 months after running my very first mile.  Although it's not my 3rd fastest time, I rank this marathon high because it was my very first marathon.  To run a sub 4 hour marathon on my first try at age 52 was a great accomplishment.

4. Paris Marathon, 04/30/2016, 3:48:11.  Although this marathon had a disappointing finish as it warmed up 70 degrees under sunny skies in Paris, I had run the first 16 miles all within a few seconds of each other and was on pace for 3:35 when the heat started to take its toll.

5. Grandmas Marathon, 06/28/2016, 3:53:15.  This was a very warm day in Duluth, Minnesota, with it nearly 70 degrees at the start and the bank sign showed 76 degrees when I had 4 miles to go.  I fought a good race to keep it going in the second half and not giving up.

6. Rocket City Marathon, 12/14/2013, 3:51:10.  This was my second marathon and it came just 10 weeks after my very first marathon and I was able to knock over 8 minutes off my previous time.

7. Disney World Marathon, 01/12/2014, 3:58:01.  I rank this one higher than some faster performances because it was still less than 12 months since I ran my first mile and I ran this the day after running the Disney World Half Marathon in 1:56:01. Sub 4 full and sub 2 half for the Goofy Challenge on back to back days.

8. Twin Cities Marathon, 10/05/2014, 3:50:03.  I was limping through the Minneapolis Airport two days before the marathon with a sore right femur.  So I didn't run the two days prior and only planned to just run this as a long training run.  I would get a calf strain two days later and was nearing my only extended down time from running before starting up the run streak in January of 2015 that is still going at 891 days.

9. Berlin Marathon, 09/27/2015, 3:49:24. This is my 4th fastest marathon, however, it was the first marathon where I finished and was completely disappointed.  I felt like I was in the best marathon shape and was wanting a shot at the PR, but it became obvious to me early that I was somehow dehydrated.  It was my first international race, and maybe I didn't take care of myself well enough overseas to be properly hydrated and ready to go on race day.

10. Andrew Jackson Marathon, 04/01/2017, 3:59:33.  This marathon was just 22 days prior to the London Marathon, so I wasn't going out there to race it.  This was my first attempt at a run/walk strategy, thinking that I would just finish around 4:15-4:30.  So I decided to run 5 minutes and then walk 1 minute.  But when I passed the half way point just over 1:57 and felt pretty good, I started to realize I had a shot at a sub 4 marathon.  I skipped the very last walk break to get under 4 hours but was surprised I could run a 3:59 marathon with 38 minutes of walking.

11. London Marathon, 04/23/2017, 4:11:48.  Just 22 days after doing an easy run/walk marathon at Jackson, TN, I thought I had a real good shot at getting under 3:50.  I wanted to do a similar run/walk strategy as I did in Jackson, but run faster.  But what I found is that this marathon was so crowded, it was like roller derby if you wanted to try to get between people to pass them. So I was just settling in to run with the crowd and not fight it.

12. Nashville Greenway Marathon, 10/02/2016, 4:22:24.  I had been struggling to get the long runs in training for New York City, so I decided to sign up for a marathon and run the first two miles and then switch between running and walking the last 6.2  I actually did a little better than I expected to, this isn't an easy course.

13. Walt Disney World Marathon, 01/10/2016, 4:02:58.  The reason I rank this one so low was that it was the first time I allowed myself to go over 4 hours in a marathon.  I could have pushed myself to get under 4 hours, but lacked the will power to do it.  That opened up the door for more 4+ hour marathons.

14. New York City Marathon, 11/06/2016, 4:57:28.  This one was my slowest marathon and it was just a very long day.  My right leg was really hurting by the half way point, and I had to start taking walk breaks to rest the leg and did all I could do to just finish this race.