Reposting "My Road to a Boston Qualifier" at the 2014 Grandmas Marathon

This is my RACE RECAP that I originally posted on June 23, 2014 after qualifying for the Boston Marathon with a 3:26:21 PR at Grandmas Marathon on June 21, 2014.

My road to a Boston Qualifier -

This past weekend was very exciting when I was able to go to Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, and come home with a Boston Qualifier.

15 months ago I didn’t even know what BQ stood for. 

As many of you know, I took up running in March of 2013 and started being coached by Scott Wietecha at the beginning of June last year.  The initial goal was to train me for my first marathon, the Twin Cities marathon, in October of 2013.  My target was to be able to run a sub-4 hour marathon, which was an aggressive goal when you consider I had just ran my first half marathon in 2:22:57.  I needed to be able to go from a 10:55 half marathon pace to a 9:09 marathon pace in less than 6 months.  With a lot of good training in the heat last summer, I was able to finish the Twin Cities marathon in 3:59:33.

After that first marathon, the thought of being able to qualify for Boston still seemed years away.  Maybe with some hard work, I might have a shot at it in January of 2015 at Houston.  If I couldn’t qualify for the 2016 Boston Marathon with a 3:30 time, then I would get 10 more minutes starting with the 2017 marathon.

10 weeks after the Twin Cities, I was able to knock off over 8 minutes off my marathon time with a 3:51:10 time at Rocket City.  But dropping another 22 minutes, still seemed like a long way off. 

After surviving the Goofy Challenge in January, I now had over 5 months until my next marathon (Grandma’s) and Scott was able to shift some of my training towards track and speed work. 

When I entered 2014, I had the following PR’s:

5K: 25:06

10K: 50:18

Half Marathon: 1:52:49

Marathon: 3:51:10

My body started responding positively to the track and speed workouts.  Coming into February, I had never run a mile under 7:30 pace.

I ran the Hill Yea! 5K on February 8^th and set a PR at 23:16 and had my first ever mile under 7:30.

3 weeks later, Scott paced me on a 5K at Hendersonville High School and I was now down to 21:33, with my first ever sub 7:00 pace run. 

The following week I ran the Tom King half marathon and hit a big PR with a 1:42:05 time, which was a PR by over 10 minutes.  When I fed that time in to the race prediction software, it came up with a marathon time of 3:33:37.  This was the first time that I thought I could actually consider going for a BQ at Grandma’s if I had really good weather.

I continued to work on speed and improved on my 5K time with a 21:17 at the Middle Tennessee Shootout to win my age group.

In April I ran my first 10K of the year at Purity on April 12^th and had over a 5 minute PR with a time of 45:04.  The next week I went to Louisville and knocked off another 3 minutes off my Tom King PR with a 1:38:46 time at the Derby Half.

When I put the BQ time of 3:30 into the race prediction software, I had now beat the 5K, 10K, and half marathon times that the chart was showing for my BQ pace.

I would spend the next two months doing a lot of training at the 7:55-8:00 pace.  This was the BQ pace that my legs would run over and over.  Several long runs would end with 8-10 miles at this pace. 

But there still was the factor of the weather.  It’s amazing how many times the weather forecast changes in the couple weeks leading up to a race.  And the different weather sites can vary quite a bit as well.  Early forecasts had the lows in the 60’s, then upper 40’s, then back to the 50’s.

I left Thursday morning for Minneapolis where I had a rental car to drive to Duluth.  They had to re-route the plane around several storms and at one point they announced they may have to land in Sioux Falls, SD, if the storms didn’t clear in Minneapolis.  No doubt that sent some worries into my mind.  That could mean several hours of delays.  Luckily, all of a sudden they said the storms had cleared and we were given a landing slot.  It was still 2 hours, 45 minutes in the air form Nashville to Minneapolis.

A big sigh of relief as we landed.  They gave us a rental car with Massachusetts plate.  Was that a sign for Boston?

We were able to get up to Duluth and checked in by 2:30 PM.  It was amazing how cold the air felt.  I couldn’t believe somewhere in the continental US could be this cool in the second half of June.  I went out for a 5 mile run around 3:30 in the afternoon. I ran along the Duluth shoreline and it was nice and cool.

Thursday night I went to bed at 8:30 PM and slept 11 hours, before heading out for an easy 3 mile run.  I know it can be troublesome to sleep the night before a marathon, so I made the sure I got the extra sleep on Thursday. 

On Friday, I started the day with some French Toast, had deep dish pizza for lunch, and had the spaghetti dinner at the expo on Friday.  I had to get some carbos in.  I hydrated well with some bottles of Powerade during the day.  I decided to take a Benadryl on Friday night and was in bed by 9 PM.  Surprisingly, I had a really good night of sleep. 

Saturday, I woke up at 4:45 AM and felt really good.  I had 2 Clif bars and a banana for a total of 600 calories.  I ate two granola bars before falling asleep to give me an additional 200 calories.  I needed to ensure the fuel tank was full to carry me through the marathon.  I strapped on my fuel belt that I bought at the expo that had 5 GU’s attached to give me another 500 calories for the race.

I went downstairs at the Holiday Inn at 5:30 AM to get ready for the 5:45 AM bus to the start line, for the 7:45 race time.  I really nice bus showed up and several of us went to that bus, but we discovered that bus was for the “elites” and we were shown the city buses for us non-elites.

It was pretty cool outside, around 50, but it was raining a little in Duluth.  It was around a 25 mile bus ride to Two Harbors where the race was to start.  Having overdressed for so many runs this past winter, I finally was going to run with just a shirt and singlet and a pair of thin gloves to keep my hands warm.  I wore my gear check clothes (sweat pants/sweat shirt) on the bus so I would be warm when I reached Two Harbors.

When the bus arrived at the starting point, it actually felt really nice out.  The rain had stopped, the winds had died down, maybe some patches of fog.

I waited until about 30 minutes before race time to take the sweats/sweatshirt and then I handed in my gear bag.  Remembering how nice that garbage bag kept me warm before the Disney marathon, I had brought a garbage bag from home and kept that on until it was close to race time.

I went into the corral and went to line up at the 3:25 pace area.  I figured this would be a good pace area to start so I wouldn’t have to pass as many slow runners.  I took my first GU around 15 minutes before the start, as planned.

The race started about 5 minutes late, but finally I was off and running.  For the first half of the race, I knew to stay close to the 8:00 pace, at least within 5 seconds either side.

I would change the GPS watch so it would be on my lap pace.  I would adjust my pace to make sure I was staying somewhere near 8:00, preferably just under. 

I hit the first mile at 7:56.  I was in the range I needed to be.  At the start of the second mile, all of a sudden my shins were sore, both of them.  I’ve had this happen before on the cold runs where you aren’t properly warmed up and going straight to a fast pace.  I knew to just push on and forget about them.  I knew it would go away in a mile or two and by midway through the 3^rd mile, the shins were fine.

I had anticipated the first split was at the 10K mark and I wanted to make sure I didn’t get too far under 8:00 that early on, so I was making sure I wasn’t dipping much below 8:00, and right at 8:00 or so was fine.  I was also making sure I took a GU nearing the 5 mile mark. My plan was GU at 5, 10, 15, 20 miles.

I finally hit the 10K mark at 49:24 and I was pleased with that.

With the GPS on the lap pace, I was taking each mile one at a time.  Each mile was just as important as the other miles.  I had to stay focused and on pace.  I was concentrating on my breathing and taking nice strides, and keeping good running posture.  The runners were pretty well spread out by now so I was able to take good tangents.  When I saw slight curves ahead, I tried to get the best tangent to the curve.

I was also making sure I didn’t lose any pace going through the water stops.  I would notice people running slightly ahead of me would all of a sudden be behind me after the water stop.  I may have splashed a few cups of water on the volunteers in my attempt to grab them without losing pace, but you have to do what you have to do.  I felt I didn’t lose any time on the water stops.  I would grab a cup about every 2 miles and drink just a small part of it and keep moving.

I wanted to make a mental note of my time when I was approaching the 13.1 mile split.  I looked down and it showed 1:44:10 (officially was 1:44:12).  With the same pace in the second half, that would equate to 3:28:20.  So I was still right on target for a BQ.

After the halfway point, I started pacing more towards 7:55 rather than 7:55-8:00ish.  It was still feeling pretty cool outside, so temperatures warming were not a factor at this point.

At around the 19 mile mark, all of a sudden I felt that first feeling in my stomach that I might get when I’m starting to be tired or feel a bit sick.  But I had to push on. I only had 1 GU and wanted to wait for mile 20 to be finished.

I took the GU at mile 20 and all of a sudden I felt re-energized.  Wasn’t sure if it was the GU or the fact that the first 20 miles are out of the way and now I have the toughest 10K left in a marathon and I was also now getting to the section where there were more fans cheering, which helps.

I had watched the preview online of the course and was anticipating lemon drop hill on mile 22.  When I finally was approaching it, I sped up to attack it. I didn’t want to lose any pace on the hill.  It wasn’t terribly steep, but if you keep the same effort, you would lose some pace.

When I got to the top of that hill, I kept the same effort that I used to get up the hill.  Now I was running around a 7:40 pace in miles 23 and 24.  Even though I knew I had the BQ at this time, I was remembering the last words of advice that Scott gave me.  He said if you get to the point you are certain you have the BQ, don’t enjoy the moment and press on, every second counts. 

The adrenaline starting lower the pace more on miles 25 & 26, which were around 7:20.  It was nice to see my wife cheering me on with about ¾ miles to go.  I just kept pushing, keep breathing, do not stop to enjoy any of this and I was able to give a good sub 7:00 pace that final .2 miles to the finish line for a 3:26:21 finish.

I almost always get sick after races, including half marathons, but I was feeling good.  Not even close to feeling sick.  All I could say out loud is that “I’m going to Boston!”.

I took a rest day on Sunday to end a 121 consecutive day run streak that included 1021.8 miles (8.4/day).

Until the next marathon.

Alan Watts