The Las Vegas Marathon in November last year
was meant to have been my last attempt at getting another sub 3 hour marathon before
I get much older. Unfortunately, the weather put paid to that as we encountered
crazy winds on that Sunday evening, and I ended up finishing in 3.28. At the
time, I was done. I’d done 30 marathons by then, had several sub 3’s already
under my belt, and I really didn’t feel like I had anything to prove, in terms
of marathon running, to either myself or anybody else.
But the marathon is a nasty beast – in more
ways than one – and shortly after Vegas, I found myself entering the Phoenix
Marathon which would take place at the end of February.
I didn’t tell anybody that I had entered the
marathon again. I wanted to keep this one private so that I could just run
without the expectation of others, and as soon as I’d done the Across the Years
in December, I had a few easy days with no running before building up my
mileage again in preparation for the marathon.
What I didn’t know when entering the Phoenix
Marathon was that I would be invited to join the Aravaipa Running Racing Team
for 2016 – had I known, I perhaps WOULDN’T have convinced myself to run another
marathon. In all honesty, my love for the marathon and the enjoyment I get from
racing them fizzled out a couple of years ago - I was only going back again
with the intention of aiming for that sub 3 for one final time, despite knowing
that I would find it much harder to maintain that kind of pace compared to when
I was purely focused on road running back in my 30’s. No, my passion for running
these days comes from running on the trails, and it’s thanks to the many trail
races I have done in the past few years both across Europe and in North America
that my love for road running and chasing fast times is no longer there.
And yet I was still excited to know that I
would be running the Phoenix Marathon and with some fantastic training runs
leading up to it where I was hitting my goal race pace, I was feeling extremely
confident of a sub 3.
Race day arrived, and I was up at 3am getting
myself ready for the 45 minute drive down to Mesa
The start was out of town in what seemed to be the
middle of nowhere and it took around 30 minutes to get there as we travelled in
convoy on the provided school buses. We arrived in the pitch black at around
5.30am, and as the dawn started to break it certainly looked like we were just
surrounded by desert with very few houses in the vicinity.
The race started at 6.30 and by then, the sky
became a beautiful red as the sun started to rise in the east. There were a
couple of thousand people registered for the marathon which made for a busy
start line, but I managed to get near to the front and was focused on just
getting to the finish line in under 3 hours.
Phoenix Marathon is actually a downhill course
with a net elevation loss of around 1000 ft although there is one good, long climb
just after 4 miles that lasts for a good mile or so. Other than that, the first
couple of miles are noticeably downhill along with a couple of other sections,
whilst the remainder of the course appears flat. Under normal circumstances, it
would be considered a fast, PB course but many people start off far too fast in
those early miles, and then suffer later on with tired legs from hitting the
downhills at a quicker pace than planned.
I was very well aware of this and was being
extremely good in controlling my pace. I’d given myself target times for each 5
mile split and was pretty much on target with my pace up until 15 miles. It was
at that stage that I looked ahead and all I could see right in to the distance was
a long, straight road. This lasted for a couple more miles – no turns, no
obvious ups or downs, and I was starting to get bored with the monotony of
running that same road. By 18 miles, as we turned a corner and saw yet another
long, straight stretch of road ahead of us, I realised that I was getting
extremely bored, I was starting to lose my focus, and that my pace had started
to slow. My motivation for running wasn’t there, and with that sub 3 goal
slowly slipping away yet again, I very nearly quit. But I was there on my own –
there was no Andy today, so I HAD to get to the finish line otherwise I’d be
unable to get home. I persevered, but every step I took felt like a chore. I
was so frustrated as physically I felt strong – sure, my glutes had tightened a
little and I’d been suffering with a stitch for a short time, but otherwise
there was absolutely no reason why I couldn’t continue to run strong – it really
was a mental block.
I then started to walk. Tons of people passed
by me and I really didn’t care. I wanted to stop but knew I couldn’t and then
it dawned on me – why don’t I just damage the timing chip so that I don’t get
an official time? I can still finish, but my time would not go down in the personal
history books, and it could be one of those races that never really happened.
For the next few miles, I ripped at my number,
I peeled off all the foam, I put pinholes through the chip, I tore off sections
of it, and I crumpled it as much as possible, convinced that it would do the
job – after all, don’t they say, “do not bend” and “do not remove the foam”? As
I approached the timing mat at 20 miles, I skirted around it rather than going
over it, saying to a bemused police officer that I didn’t want a time so please
don’t make me run over it!
That last 6km of the marathon was horrendous –
I’ve never know 6km go so slowly! I was walking quite a lot now – couldn’t be
arsed to run, but desperate to get to the finish. Every time I walked, hundreds
of people would overtake me, but when I started to run again, I gained on them
and ended up putting a huge gap between us once I’d gone past. The worst thing
about it all was that these people were pushing so hard to get that Boston
Qualifier, and here was I, not putting in any real effort whatsoever, and I
felt awful watching what the others were going through.
Finally we had just a mile to go, and I decided
that I was going to run the whole way in now – why prolong the boredom
unnecessarily? Barely out of breath, and literally just jogging in to the closing
stages, I was greeted by hundreds of people cheering and yelling, “Good job!
You qualified!” Crossing the finish line, I did hear the timing mat beep so
clearly my dramatic attempts to avoid an official time being recorded were
wasted. I haven’t looked at the official time – I’ll let everybody else do that
– but I was extremely disappointed and frustrated at yet another marathon
attempt having gone wrong. What made it worse was all the joy at the finish –
all those lovely people – spectators, volunteers, other runners –
congratulating me on an “awesome performance” and I could “now go to Boston
I know that this is an extremely negative
account of my experience at the Phoenix Marathon, but this is in no way a
reflection of the event itself. It’s very well organised, it is a great course
and it’s actually pretty scenic and well supported. I would have no hesitation in recommending it to others :-) The problem today comes
from a change in my mindset when it comes to racing and running these days. I’m
no longer a road runner, I’m no longer one of those runners that dabbles in a
bit of everything – I really am an ultra runner, a trail runner – and that’s
where my heart lies and where I want to succeed. As I said to a friend recently,
when you can run 100 miles in 16 hours 53 mins – a pace that is only 1 minute
per kilometre slower than what I did at the marathon today – then you really do
know where your strengths lie.
I’m not the sort of person to dwell on things
so I know that today won’t put me on a downer for too long. I have much to look
forward to over the coming months with some great trail races planned, the next
one being the Crown King Scramble 50k in April. See, I’m already looking
forward :-D
Happy trails and happy running everybody :-D
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| Marathon Finisher Medal and a Mutilated Bib Which did absolutely nothing to erase my result! |
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