This was my fourth marathon. Like many, I have aspirations to qualify for and run Boston Marathon someday. I’d like to think I’m making progress – my first marathon was 3:45, my second was 3:33, and my third was a 3:40, a performance I attributed to hot conditions. I had high hopes going into my fourth marathon, but plane wreck is a good descriptor of this race. I’d call it a train wreck, but since I ran around an airport I figured it was more of a plane wreck than a train wreck.
Background
In December 2019 or January 2020, I signed up for the Flying Pig. It would be my second Pig, and fourth marathon. I started training and as the Bockfest 5k came and went (another race by the same group – Pigworks, which I have done every year since it’s inception and it’s part of a Beer Series of races) things were starting to look bad. By March 15, 2020 Ohio closed. I decided that a self-supported marathon was not in the cards, partly in response to my experience training for the Columbus Marathon (it was hot AF during the training and race). I deferred.
With Covid-19 case numbers going down in Ohio in the winter, I decided to use my deferral code on January 15, 2021. I also decided I would not defer again (because that really seems to me to be a douche move unless I encountered a real injury). I DID know that there was a chance to go virtual. After some virtual races in the latter half of 2020, I felt mentally ready and decided to go all in.
On February 4, 2021 I received an email from Pigworks that they submitted a “Return to Flight” plan with the local governments (side note: there are several governments involved, the race goes through two states, three counties, three cities, two villages, and probably a township too, and each has their own government). After praying religiously for two weeks, Pigworks sent out another email that the race would be virtual-only. They also indicated a possibility for a combined Flying Pig/Queen Bee event at the end of October. Incidentally, on the April 30, Pigworks announced that the October races would be in-person.
I started the Hal Higdon Advanced Marathon (I) plan with the race date set for May 2, 2021. I made a few adjustments to bring the race date to April 30, 2021 (a Friday).
Training
After my first three marathons (and complaining here about my quads-of-fire), someone suggested that I do squats and single-leg deadlifts to hopefully ‘fix’ that problem. Since it seems like that person was on to something (I mean, logically the advice is correct since these would strengthen my quads), I added those in following my hard workouts using a kettlebell that can be “adjusted” by adding 5 lb plates. I also added pull-ups into my routine, since I tend to start and stop my runs near a set of pull-up bars. I did put a hold on these during tapering.
The plan includes a mix of easy, long, tempo, pace, hill, and interval runs. I could mostly hit my pace runs, sometimes my tempo runs, and did ok at the intervals. I missed one run during the cycle. One thing that I noticed was that in weeks 7, 10, 13, and 15, there are some medium-long marathon pace runs on the day prior to long runs. These are on top of another day of speedwork that is usually two days before those marathon pace runs.
Race Plan
I tended to do my running in a township park and a subdivision next to it, and had every intent of doing the race there. I had port-o-lets, my car (in case I needed to switch water bottles or the like). I have a friend along the route that told me that I could stash a water bottle on his property.
Two things happened that pulled my initial plan off the rails. The first is that Pigworks was telling people to run from May 1 through June 15 (which I paid only half attention to). The second is that while looking through the Facebook group, I saw someone mention they were running around Lunken Airport. That got the wheels turning since the Lunken Airport/Armleder Park route is longer per-lap and less hilly… and I only have to watch for cars that will likely mostly be moving forward (people backing out of their driveways sometimes suck). A kinda-third thing was that I was supposed to do fieldwork on Friday, but that didn’t materialize thanks to some contractors that can’t ship stuff on time.
I wanted to break my PR (3:33), but given (gestures at everything around) everything going on and the fact that I’m carrying stuff, I’d be happy with sub-3:40. I planned on a Gatorade Gel 15 minutes before and every five miles. Additionally, I planned on carrying Gatorade Endurance Lemon-Lime and drinking around every 2 miles, adjusting for feeling and heat. I found on my last chilly 20 mile run, I went through under 16oz of Gatorade. For this, I was going to run with one bottle of Gatorade and have a bottle of water in my car at the ready that I could pass by at 10.14, 20.28, or 26.07 miles… yes, that’s very precise for measurements from Google Maps Aerials. Oh, and I’m not stopping at 26.07 miles unless I’m dead.
And precise? Yeah, I figured out the measurements (0.42 miles from the starting “loop” to the first intersection, follow all the way around to go straight onto the Armleder Connector (at 4.5), loop through Armleder and make the turn at 8.85 to go along the golf course (all the while keeping myself from yelling “FORE!” at any morning golfers). Go back to start and turn around (at 10.14 miles) but proceed back along the golf course (yell “FORE!” for some extra motivation now!) and make the turn onto the Armleder Connector at 11.43 miles. Return from Armleder at 15.78 miles and proceed straight along the east side of the airport (15.78 miles at the end of the connector). Make the turnaround by the car again at 20.28 miles and proceed back the way I came (staying along the west side of the airport), making the turn towards the golf course at 24.78. Now might be a great time to start yelling “FORE!” at any golfers I see. Make the turn towards the car at 25.63. Based on my calculations that probably aren’t correct, I should be turning around at 26.07 and crossing the invisible Finish Swine nearby.
In the days leading up to the race, dinners consisted of sausage + corn + buttered noodles, pizza, and spaghetti with meatballs. The pizza dinner was out, so after dinner we went down to the airport and Armleder park to scope out the bathroom situation. Two port-o-lets near the ballfields (near where I was parking), one near my entrance to Armleder park, and a second in Armleder park at a main shelter.
About a week prior to the race, I came down with a sinus infection. I was able to keep with the last easy week of tapering pretty well, and it started providing for some pretty epic snot rockets.
Race Day
Before
On the morning of, I did a semi-normal long run morning routine that added a cup of coffee, some toast with peanut butter, and a visit to the bathroom before my drive to the airport. Upon my arrival at the airport, I visited one of those port-o-lets, ‘suited up’, and I was off. I wore a long sleeve shirt, shorts, my hydration vest, gloves, and a headband. I was unconcerned with the coffee since I used to sip a little coffee on my way to runs all the time (back years ago when I worked in Downtown Cincinnati).
Miles 1-6
I started along the west and south around the airport and continued into Arleder Park. I generally felt great until I made it to the intersection of Airport and Wilmer, where I nearly got hit by some fucking moron in a full-size pickup that is clearly compensating for lack of intelligence (and probably another thing). Around two miles in, I switched my watch face to distance-only because I didn’t want to see the pace (it does show the elapsed time in a small font on the face, but I have to look for it). While I felt good, my pace actually was slow compared to the other marathons I ran. I noticed multiple other groups down here doing their virtual races. Splits: 8:42, 8:31, 8:27, 8:31, 8:34, 8:35.
Miles 7-13
I didn’t feel all that bad, and noticed around mile 7 a ‘funny’ feeling in my stomach- and not ‘I’m going to puke’ funny or anything like that, closer to butterflies but not quite. It was a passing feeling. I called an audible, noticing that the temperature was going to be increasing rapidly – instead of returning towards my car via a path going along the north side of the airport, I continued back the way I came along the east and south sides of the airport to end up at my car around halfway. This worked slightly in my favor, as I dropped off my gloves and headband and picked up my hat and sunglasses. Narrator: “he should have grabbed his second water bottle” Splits: 8:27, 8:31, 8:44, 8:47, 8:48, 8:49, 8:51.
Miles 14-20
The wheels started falling off here. I didn’t actually feel bad, but the numbers aren’t lying that my pace was slowing. The heat was beating down by this point, and I had pulled up the sleeves on my shirt. I had continued on the same path as I started – along the west and south side of the airport which still had shade in a few places, and continued into Armleder Park again. Fatigue was starting through the end of this set of miles, but it seemed less-bad than previous. Splits: 9:00, 8:56, 9:03, 8:55, 9:08, 9:11, 9:17.
Miles 20-26.2
I stayed in Armleder Park, which was in full sun because I didn’t want to finish miles away from the car. I figured that I wanted to return to the airport at 23.75 miles. Narrator: “He started the return trip half a mile early”. After passing the 20 mile mark, my quads started to fatigue as bad as possible. This is one thing that felt similar to every other marathon I’ve run, despite me adding some exercises to attempt to reduce it. I did find out that my previous audible to NOT go along the north side of the airport was a good one – there is a short but very steep hill that can best be described as a quad killer, particularly when you’re making the turn to start down that quad killer at 24.4 miles. Throughout this time, I wanted to walk (but refused) and at times did feel a little nauseous. Splits: 9:41, 9:49, 10:12, 1:33, 10:32, 10:17, 1:53 (9:20 pace).
Overall time: 3:58:47.
Aftermath
As soon as I got back to my car (after a short walk), I started into that second bottle of water, finishing most of it before driving back home. When I got home, I drank a glass of chocolate milk, had another glass of water, got a shower, got another glass of water with some leftover pizza for lunch, another glass of water, half a small glass of beer (I homebrew, and this was from a keg, no beer was wasted), at dinner I had a half glass of wine (with a little bit of steak and potatoes and corn), and a full bottle of a nice strong bourbon barrel aged doppelbock. Even after all that, my ‘pee score’, which took 8 hours to test, indicated that I was pretty dehydrated into the evening.
I certainly feel more sore than after both Glass City and Columbus – in fact, I remember being able to walk down stairs forward 2-3 days after Columbus and at 2 days after this one, my quads are still pretty sore.
Data Exploration
I looked at some comparisons among the four marathons. The first 20 miles of this marathon was 10-15 minutes slower than all my prior marathons. The last 10k was 10 minutes slower than my fastest, and two minutes slower than my prior-slowest. Looking at my 20-mile training runs shows me a few things too…
| 20 Mile Runs | FP 2018 | GCM 2019 | Cols 2019 | FPVM 2021 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20m #1 | 2:57:22 | 3:03:55 | 3:08:00 | 3:07:00 |
| 20m #2 | 2:57:58 | 2:57:30 | 3:01:27 | 3:11:37 |
| 20m #3 | N/A | 2:56:19 | 2:58:18 | 3:09:36 |
| Plan | Higdon I-1 | Pfitz 18/55 | Pfitz 18/55 | Higdon A-1 |
Obviously, my 20 mile runs were slower. I mostly blame that slowness on having some longer M pace runs prior to those 20 mile runs. Looking at my GCM and Columbus training logs, I saw that very few long runs were preceded by a double-digit run… in fact, NONE of the runs preceding a 20 mile run in my training log were longer than 5 miles. Conversely, the three runs on the day prior to the 20 mile runs were 10 miles, and 2 * 10 @ M pace (12 miles factoring in warm-up and cool-down).
Another interesting thing is that for GCM, I ran the most during training: 768 miles. Columbus was a close second with 760 miles.
| FP 2018 | GCM 2019 | Cols 2019 | FPVM 2021 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max Week | 47 | 58 | 54 | 62 |
| Total Miles | 615.5 | 768.3 | 760.5 | 741.6 |
Looking at the plans themselves, it’s not a shock that the Pfitz plans were more mileage than the intermediate plan used for FP 2018. FPVM was a different beast – it had around 20 fewer miles, but a longer maximum week.
So looking at all this, the plan hurt. I can’t say it’s a bad plan, but perhaps my implementation of it… maybe I was running too hard for the M pace sessions and allowing the 20 mile runs to be ruined because of it. I think my next marathon will use the Pfitz 18/55 plan.
Aside from the plan, dehydration definitely hurt the race. I went into it hoping the temperature would stay down and it didn’t, and I didn’t adjust correctly. Had I been running an in-person marathon, I likely would have been taking in fluids every mile, not sticking with every-other-mile as I did.
My quads hurt me, which is irritating since I was trying to work against that. The single-leg deadlifts and squats should have helped alleviate this.
My weight may have played a role in this, but I don’t think I was significantly heavier than I was for Columbus, and less than 10 pounds heavier than I was for Glass City.
Next Time
I’m about to spend the rest of the year training for a few half marathons – at a minimum I want to run the Flying Pig Half Marathon on Halloween. I don’t know if I’m going to do a second or a third and which it might be among the Honor Run Half and the Hungry Turkey Half. I’m also hoping that Pigworks will convert the Hudepohl 14k to an in-person race.
I also don’t think I can significantly improve without actual weight training. And by “actual weight training”, I’m not talking about squats with a 30 pound adjustable kettle bell, I’m talking about 200+ pounds on a bar. I still remember by high-school highest squat weight, which was 310 lbs. I also want to do some on a bench press, and definitely continue pull-ups. The problem is space and ceiling height. I am not going to sacrifice parking in my garage for this, and my basement has a low (7.5 feet) ceiling. I’d have to “evict” my kids from the basement, but they have enough of the house so I’m okay with that.