It's hard to believe that its been almost a week now since I ran my longest combined weekend race miles ever. All soreness is now gone as are the arctic like temperatures that were in Orlando both race days.
My race training was not the best that I've had, well it was more like the worst marathon training that I've followed since my first marathon. With that said, I went into both races not trying to set a personal best but rather to have fun, cope with the weather conditions, and complete both events.
For the 1/2 marathon on Saturday, I wanted to run either a 1:51 or 1:54 time or anything under 2 hours but nothing faster than an 8:30 pace in order to keep me able to complete Sunday's marathon. Based on the email alerts I received from 4 points on the course, my pace was as even a pace as I can run. Here are the splits that I received:
5k 27:03 Predicted 1:54:07
10k 53:55 Predicted 1:53:44
15k 1:20:54 Predicted 1:53:47
Finish 1:54:22 net time 8:43 pace
Earlier in the week, I looked up the pace times that I needed in order to finish at 1:51 or 1:54 so I had a 8:30 or 8:45 pace in my mind during the race. As my pace got down to an 8:33 I realized about the 1/2 way mark of the race that I was not taking into account the fact that I wasn't running the tangents on the course and therefore my times would be off. I just decided to keep things above 8:30 and see how the race went.
Running in 37 degree weather and rain in Madison, MS last month helped prepare me for Saturday's race. I didn't even realize that I was wet Saturday until the race was over. The rain mixed with sleet and snow that we got Saturday morning was never really heavy but there was enough to have me wet (along with my own sweat I'm sure).
I waffled quite a bit when deciding on what gear to pack for race day. When the weather forecast was still calling for lows in the 30s and potential rain, I was going to wear compression socks and 1/4 tights with a short sleeve technical shirt. When 20s were thrown into the mix, I opted for full length tights and a long sleeve technical shirt. A skull cap was part of the plan either way. Standing in line at the expo Friday morning with northerners, I decided to run Saturday's race sans tights and just running shorts. That worked out fine; I opted to include the tights for Sunday's longer run.
My post race recovery plan Saturday included me doing a load of laundry with all of the race gear that I wore in Saturday's race in order to weat the same gear Sunday. $5 in laundry costs beat the $30 plus that the airlines are charging for checked bags these days. I also wore an active pair of running shoes as travel/walking shoes this trip as packing 2 pairs of size 13 shoes would not have left much room for anything else in my carryon bag. That part of the plan worked out great as well as I had fresh shoes to run in Sunday.
While I had 2 specific goal times for Saturday's run, in the back of my mind I just wanted to finish Sunday's run faster than what I ran my first marathon in at Disney 10 years ago. Rounding up, I had a goal of finishing in under 5 hours. That goal was 1 1/2 hours slower than my Boston qualifying goal times that I had at Chicago and Houston for my last 2 marathons. Sunday morning started with temperatures in the 20s, a few degrees colder than Saturdays lows. However, while Saturday was rainy and overcast the entire morning, Sunday was clear and the sun helped warm the course post sunrise.
Kodak provided disposable cameras as part of our race goody bag this year. I didn't run with one for the 1/2 Saturday but did for the full. In fact, I stopped and took over 20 pictures along the course Sunday morning. Hopefully they all came out; I'll have them to post early next week. I managed to complete the marathon in 4:55..... 5 minutes to spare in my 5 hour goal. I also managed to avoid using any gel products during the marathon as they have been know to give my GI issues. I used some Clif shot blocks at the 1/2 way point of the race and also chomped on some frozen chocolate that was handed out at mile 23 of the race.
All in all it was a great race weekend. I had fun running 2 events even in weather conditions that were not quite ideal. Running Disney for my final marathon was a nice way to bookend my decade of running marathons with Disney as my first in 2000 and my last in 2010. I look forward to getting back to training and knocking out more states with 1/2 marathons later this year.
Oh yeah, here are my marathon splits as well. You can see that most characters and therefore pic stops occurred after the 10 mile mark:
5 mile 49:23 Predicted 4:18:57
10 mile 1:36:29 Predicted 4:12:58
13.1 mile 2:14:49 Predicted 4:29:38
20 mile 3:34:20 Predicted 4:40:58
Finish 4:55:29 net time 11:16 pace
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