Seattle Marathon
Sunday I finally made good on a decade-long goal of completing a marathon. I've registered for a few in the past, but I had an ill-conceived training concept that left me chronically injured. This time around, I followed the Hansons beginner program. I had an outstanding training cycle that made huge improvements on my endurance and pace. More importantly, I made it through without getting injured!
The Seattle Marathon is run every year on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I've done the half a few times and the elevation profile can be intimidating, but this year introduced a new course. The old course would take you south toward Seward Park and then the marathon would go east on I-90 toward Mercer Island and back before going over Capitol Hill. Construction on I-90 to install a light rail system mandated changing the route. This year they didn't go as far south and put most of the course on the Burke-Gilman Trail (a local rails-to-trails project) with a couple of out-and-backs. The change resulted in an elevation profile reduction from 1,468 feet to 1,165 feet.
I set out with a goal to finish in a Boston-qualifying 3:20. I knew this was an aggressive goal, but I had been able to handle the pace during training even in the midst of cumulative fatigue. The first few miles were a touch slow, but I was confident I'd make it up later and didn't want to use too much energy weaving through the field. After a few miles I was up to goal marathon pace and somewhere midway between the 3:15 and 3:25 pacers (alas, there were no 3:20 pacers to use as a guide during this race).
My first challenge in the race was concern about monitoring pacing. I use iSmoothRun on an Apple Watch Series 3 and a Stryd footpod. Although Stryd advertises that it's more accurate than GPS out of the box and requires no calibration, I've found that it consistently measures my runs shorter than I actually ran - something I noted during the Poulsbo Half Marathon in September and verified the following morning on a local track. On shorter runs, it wasn't even noticeable. On my half, it had me 0.35 miles short of what other runners were getting on their watch and 0.45 miles short of a half marathon. Rather than go through a lot of effort adjusting the footpod in the middle of a training cycle, I just kept training at the same pace and adjusted my expected pace during the marathon by 10s. Once I hit the I-5 express lanes, my watch lost GPS and gave me a "GPS signal lost, switching to accelerometer" alert. Wait, does that mean that it didn't connect to the Stryd? Am I looking at distances from the Stryd or the accelerometer in the watch? Soon after I passed the mile 2 marker on the side of a portapotty. The problem was that I should have been at 3 miles. Did they put the wrong sign up or did they drop this portapotty at the wrong spot? The same thing happened at mile 4, but by then GPS had returned. Looking at the data after the race, I'm certain it was using the Stryd for distance the entire time. In the moment, I knew I was close to my goal pace, but wasn't confident how far off it was. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't the end of the world - about a 5 minute difference in the final result. The problem was that I didn't want an inaccurate idea of my present pace to cost me a BQ.
At mile 5, the mile markers started to match reality and we finally reached the Burke-Gilman Trail, which is relatively flat compared to the rest of the course. At this point I was slightly behind where I wanted to be, but slowly catching up. When I hit the first turnaround at mile 11.9, I was on track. I made a mental note when I hit mile 13. No official split, but my pace was sufficient that it would have been a PR prior to this training cycle and I was about right where I wanted to be. Mile 16 put me into unknown territory, as I was now running farther than I ever had in my life and I was doing it at a BQ pace!
My enthusiasm was short-lived. My pace slipped slightly during miles 17 and 18, but I chalked it up to a slight incline. By mile 20 it was clear that I just didn't have the endurance to maintain my goal pace. I spent most of my last 3 miles entirely focused on "keep running". I KNEW if I stopped to walk I'd never start going again. There were a couple of bright spots towards the end of the race. Even exhausted and dealing with the biggest hill in the race (about 200 ft over a mile and a half), I still managed to run the last 4.8 miles at a 8:17 pace. Plus, I was able to get back to sub-8:00 pace for the last quarter mile when the 3:25 pacers passed me up just shy of mile 26. It made me feel a bit better about my finish. In the end, I finished with a 3:24:39 - a mere 5 minutes shy of my (admittedly overoptimistic) goal time.
I didn't make my goal time and the last few miles were painful, but my first marathon was a huge success. Chronic problems with plantar fasciitis had left me with hardly any training at all for the past few years. A year ago, my goal was to lose weight and finish a marathon. It felt good to crush both of those goals!
My right ankle needs to be done too but it hurts less than my repaired ankle so I will keep running until it breaks and then get it fixed. 
I would think it still counts as a race if it is an organized event that has people competing against each other to finish first.
