I’ve finally got myself together enough to get my post-race report done (or at least the first part of it). First and foremost, thanks to everyone who posted, emailed and wished me good luck on this race, I really outdid myself and had what I consider a ‘personal win’. Its hard to think that just 4 weeks ago I was out of commission with a back injury, and here I am writing about my best marathon run in over a year… It really is amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it, maybe a saying on a shirt that a girl was wearing at the race on Sunday says it best:

"A person who asks you if you win or lose a marathon, doesn't know what winning really is"

Ok, maybe its not a perfect saying for how I felt, but it sure inspired me when I read it during the race and I think it helped pushed me to make it to the end. My official time turned out to be 4:02:55, so I actually call that a 4:02, not a 4:03 like I first wrote yesterday.

So on with the story..

The trip and the Expo

I headed out on Saturday just after lunch since Philly isn’t a far drive for me. I always seem to forget that city traffic is much worse than anything I see in the smaller city Allentown area in which I live… for anyone not familiar with the Philly area, the worst road I’ve driven down there is the Schuylkill Expressway (I76). After sitting in
normal traffic for 20 minutes, I made it into center city to head to the expo. It was very congested, probably for obvious reasons (the expo), plus the fact that some of the roads around the Convention Center (where the expo was) were closed for the expansion project for the Center. That doesn’t make it fun for out-of-towners…

I managed to get in and out of the expo pretty quick, i’m not one to hang out and find things that I don’t really want or need. I did manage to pick up a Philly Marathon sweatshirt (with the logo on it and all)… its made to be a running sweatshirt, but I won’t use it for one so I don’t stink it up (I paid too much for it). My first shock was the $11.50 I paid to park for 30 minutes while I was in the Expo … OUCH!

So whats worse than paying that much for parking was that I paid another $15 to park at the hotel I was staying at, only to find out that it was 3 blocks from where I just parked… UGH! I understand more why people use mass transit in the city, its really expensive to park. I also found that finding the hotel was a challenge because as i wrote above, some of the roads were closed and my GPS doesn’t seem to get the point… I road around in a circle for 25 minutes (and snapped a few pictures) trying to find it. It was frustrating.

After finally checking in, getting to my room and kicking back … I couldn’t find a turkey club sandwich, so I got a turkey hoagie from a WaWa around the hotel. It really hit the spot … I had packed all my favorite treats (fig newtons, granola bars, bananas, etc) and of course a lot of water…

Race Day

I managed to get a decent night sleep before the race, but I still had to decide whether I was going to walk to the start or drive … either way, I ended up getting up at 4:50am, taking a shower, getting packed up and heading out to find the closest parking I could to the race (yep, I decided to drive). The race guide gave a bunch of places to park near the start, so I decided to work backward. I got to the first parking lot I chose (2 blocks from the start) and paid another $6.50 to park for the day (yep, $33 to park total)… I’m glad I got there early (at 5:30) because by the time I got out of the car at 6am to head to the start, the lot was already full (and traffic was brutal).

I’d never been to a marathon that actually had too many porta-potties at the start.. I was amazed. It was so well laid out overall, it was a real pleasant experience. They had race start updates, letting us know how long until the start, etc. The temperature was just about chilly at around 41 degrees, I say just about because wearing a hat was too warm, but not having it on was slightly cool … I figured that either way, it was comfortable.

The First 10 miles

So finally, they stated it was time to line up and get in your colored corral. I headed off to the green section (which was a faster corral than I should have been in), and figured it was time to fire up the mp3 player. I wrote on Saturday about my struggle with the new mp3 player and I decided to return the one I bought and just rely on the ole’ mp3 player i’d been using … there’s no way it could fail me now. Its been there, run after run after run, even when it would stop working, it always came back ……… until now, it wouldn’t turn on. So here I spent all this time road testing music, building the perfect playlist, in the perfect order, and it was all for naught. Well, it is what it is, so no use fighting it and getting upset over it. I wrapped up the player, took off my headphones, stripped off my top layer (throwaway Walmart sweatshirt) and decided it was time to just do this, with no music.

A few minutes later, our corral was up to start … and off we went.. The crowd support was great, and running through the center of the city was pretty neat. All along Martin Luther King Blvd are the flags of all the nations in the world, its really a neat effect running through them.

My goal for this race was to keep a 9:10-9:20/mile pace, knowing that at around mile 20, I would expect to start fading. The first 6 miles of the race were all flat and fast, through city streets .. but the one drawback was constantly watching for potholes and manhole covers. I managed to maintain my goal pace through the city and wondered if the course really would be ‘fast’ like the guide indicated. About mile 5, I took off the gloves that I had left on because I was warmed up pretty good by that time. All throughout the city, the crowd support was amazing, almost as good as Baltimore…

We hit the first real incline (I struggle to call it a hill) as we headed through the Drexel University area of the course. All I could say is ‘crazy college kids’ … on both sides of the street, there were college kids pounding on pots and pans with spoons. If you think that cowbells are bad… you should have heard this awful sound. Worse yet, on the next corner, it was like being at a college football pep rally .. guys jumping up and down cheering and screaming for the runners. Boy, to be young again..

It was as I got to the top of the first ‘hill’ that I started to notice my left groin/quadricep starting to ache. I knew it wasn’t bad enough to stop, but realized that it wasn’t going away. Of all the aches and pains i’ve suffered through, this was NOT was I was expecting… I just kept going though, I figured it wasn’t going to go away so i just dealt with it.

Around mile 9, I saw something unique… A guy running without his shoes on. Now I had run races with guys who purposely didn’t wear their shoes for the race, but this guy had his shoes and socks in his hands (basically he took them off). I can’t imagine why you would take them off and run barefoot, but more power to those that can. The funniest part was the woman who ran by him and said: “My God man, put your f**kin shoes on!” … it was one of those priceless moments …

Ugh .. I’m out of time for tonight, i’ll finish the report tomorrow … stay tuned …