Amazon.com Widgets
Subscribe by Email  |  Subscribe Subscribe
Because when you're out on the course, all that's there is your internal monolog

My First Marathon: Toronto Goodlife Marathon May 6

Posted on May 11, 2012 under Pre/Post Race | 3 Comments

Last Sunday was the event of the popping of my marathon cherry.  Yup, it was my 1st 26.2, my first 43.666… km, my 1st 4 hour run and without any specific marathon training, and just coming off IM NOLA, I felt I did pretty darned well.  My (unofficial time – by my Garmin) 4:08:13.  No course record, but a good baseline for things to come.  I didn’t even really view it as a race, just a training run.  No specific taper, no carb loading, nothing really special leading up: just got up Sunday morning for a 4hr training run, with support and a LOT of other people 😉

The weather forecast for the day was perfect: not too hot, not too cool, partly cloudy, no wind, no rain.  How awesome is that!  The forecast high was 15C, so I went with long sleeve technical shirt, tights and a technical baseball cap.  I started the day in a garbage bag and wearing disposable ($5/doz) cotton gloves.  As the day progressed, I’d find that I was over dressed – short sleeves and shorts (or at least lighter leggings) would have been better choices.  I didn’t overheat, but could have been a bit cooler in the last 10k of the run.

The Goodlife Marathon is about 50% downhill, 40% flat and 10% climb.  It’s a fast course and until the 25-30k mark I thought I may actually finish in about 3:30.. but then I was also entering unknown territory and that soon became apparent.  I had been maintaining a sub 5min/km pace but sometime around 2:30-3:00 into the run fatigue caught up with me.  My pace dropped closer to 6 min/km pace and I started to talk walk breaks (not long ones, but they were there).  I figured I had nothing to prove and there was no point killing myself in a distance training run, so I took it easy.  Fuelled and hydrated and just kept going.

Was absolutely a fun day.  My body was tired for a day or 2 but generally sprung back pretty quickly with no long-term adverse affects. Now that I have my 4hr marathon baseline, I have something to improve on.  I’d like to get my single-sport marathon time down to 3-3.5 hrs.  I know that with the swim and bike in the full Iron’ that pace will drop, but I’d like to do my IM marathon in sub-4.

Fun times!

Enhanced by Zemanta

Related Posts

3 Comments

  1. by Blake Winton, on May 11 2012 @ 1:58 pm

     

    I wish I had known you were running! I was a bike marshal on Spadina between Lonsdale and St. Clair… (I kept telling people “It’s all downhill from here”. They never believed me, though. 😉

  2. by Rick, on May 11 2012 @ 2:02 pm

     

    I think I remember you. I laughed 😉

  3. by vicky, on May 12 2012 @ 8:04 am

     

    Good for you Rick!! It’s a lot of fun to run down Yonge Street. Last year, the last few KM’ were UPHILL on University. (it ended at Queens Park) Im delighted they changed the route this year. I only ran the half (well, more like shuffled) but I was happy to have been able to complete the course.
    Cheers.

Comment RSS