Waterloo Marathon Race Report

CONGRATS to all Team Tri Life Athletes who raced the Police Half this weekend! Also to Trevor who did his first ever 70.3 in Texas! Lots of best times! A few challenges, and some wonderful lessons learned about execution. We have such an amazing team:) Below is my marathon story along with some other gibberish. Read if you're at all inclined.

Well, I got it done! I am not sure if I looked worse at the finish line, or the next day when I was attempting to walk, wishing that I had a wheel chair! It was hard. Plain and simply put... it was hard. Below is a list of lessons learned, the good, bad, and oh ya... a bit of ugly! The part I didn't include in my little race report was a HUGE thank you to Jill who let me crash at her house for 2 nights! All you can eat sushi, circus school (yes... I jumped off a platform 30ft in the air and swung on a trapeze. I will NEVER do it again... but did it once! I guess I should say that the other women in the group, all a bit older than me and perhaps not as active, did it 2 or 3 times AND hung upside down! I was the weakest in the group by far! It didn't matter though... I jumped!). On Sunday night I got to hang out with the most adorable toddler named Kate! She let me read her a book on animals, and I got to watch a bundle of energy run and dance and sing! (Oh... her parents Craig and Tonya were great too!) On Monday I had an incredible professional development day with Craig Taylor who is coach of the Ontario Regional Triathlon Training Center. Swim workout from 7 - 9, hot tub and core, bike technical session with 3 athletes, lunch and chatting (learning), coffee and more chatting (learning) then an endurance ride with intervals for 2 athletes while we tailed in the car (more learning). An OUTSTANDING day! I got to the plane exhausted but so thrilled with the weekend. New friend, learned a ton, and a story with Kate!

Below are my lessons learned at the Waterloo Marathon...

Execution...

Part of my race plan was to wear my ipod. It was strangely important to me. On the way to the race I realized the battery was half dead. I got a bit panicky (ridiculous I’m sure) and found a volunteer and asked her if she could charge it. It was not a good move. I didn’t see her again. At the start line I was more upset than I should have been, but I had no choice... I had to run without music. So, I started running, thought for a few minutes about how much I was going to hate this, then decided to pull my head out of me ass and just run. It was a minor distraction.

I was cold to start. My hands were freezing. The wind and rain was significant. I thought a lot about what Janice McCaffrey calls those things... distractions that try to throw you off your game. Don’t let them.

At the start line, people took off fast like they always do. I had pace on my watch and calmly said to myself, “let them go”. They’ll come back to you. I used pace on my watch, AND I hit my interval timer at every km marker to see if I was on track. I figured out my watch was reading a few seconds fast / km. That was OK. I knew where I needed to be.

I ended up running with a chiropractor from Waterloo. His Garmin was going “beep” about every 2 seconds! I was missing my ipod bad at this point, but there was nothing I could do about it. In the end, he was my running partner and we did this race together. He was a big part of my success that day.

Jeff, the chiro, wanted to talk. I would give short answers, one word answers, but when he asked a question that needed an explanation I told him “no talking”. He was really good about it. Talking takes energy. In the early parts of the race it feels OK to talk, but that energy should be conserved for later in the race. Trust me... there was no talking in the last 10k. We were surviving.

The wind was there. Plain and simple. There was nothing I could do about it, so I did the best I could to manage the situation. On one long stretch into the wind, I tucked in behind a tall guy who was pacing a buddy to a 3:30. (They didn’t do it.) On this stretch he was bang on km after km and I was with him step for step. That was running smart. I didn’t let the wind get to me because I figured we’d get tail wind to make up for it, and if we could hold 5 or just under min k’s at this point, we were doing great. (It was maybe from 14 – 19km)

We had a tail wind for about 4 – 5k on a gravel road. I thought I’d pick it up with the wind at my back. We did a bit (Jeff and me) but not as much as I expected. I had to really pay attention to how I was feeling. I didn’t have HR at this point, and knew that pushing too hard would have big consequences later on.

When we got back on the pavement the hills were rolling, and every time we came to one I’d say to Jeff... “conserve energy up the hill”. “Make up time going down”. We did that. We ran all hills, but certainly didn’t try to win a hero cookie by getting to the top the fastest! Energy management was now the theme. Legs were getting really tired!

At 32k I was all about positive self talk. Only 10k to go. We can do this. Jeff... we are AWESOME! We continued to click off the 5 min k’s. We were doing the job we needed to do.

At 35k K said to him.... “you are thru the wall, how does it feel”. Jeff said “amazing! I’ve never come thru the wall and felt this good before”! Then the really really bad wind hit.

Environment Canada said 40k an hour gusting to 60k an hour winds. That’s what we had, straight in our face with NOTHING to break it. I had taught Jeff how to work together to break wind earlier in the course. We had a lot of k’s of cross and headwind. It was survival. (At least the rain had stopped by now!) At this point we took pulls at the front, but only about a minute or less at a time. We were getting close to the finish, and Jeff needed a 3:30 to qualify. Come hell or high water we were not going to lose that. This was a HUGE mental struggle. I thought of John Bosma, and the challenges he had to face in upcoming months after his bike crash. He gave me a lot of inspiration at this point. I also thought a lot about how upset I was at Clearwater when my mind gave in to the pain and I walked. I was so disappointed in myself. I did not want to get to the finish line knowing I’d given time away because I wasn’t mentally committed to doing the job I set out to do. So, Jeff and I chugged along and got through it. (You can see on the graph when pace drops. That was the wind.)

We turned a corner to get a much needed break from the crazy wind, and what was right in front of us? A mountain! At least, that’s what it looked like! Again... save energy Jeff. Run it easy but run it.

We got to the top of the hill, I was ahead and he gradually caught me again. At the 40k mark I was hurting SO bad. I didn’t expect it to be this painful... it actually surprised me how much it hurt. The last aid station came and went... no fuel now, we are too close. I felt like I was running sideways. I didn’t look at pace, I didn’t look at time, I didn’t look at HR. I just f#$king ran! It’s all I could do. I was counting down minutes. At 40k I had 12 min to hurt. At 41k I had under 6 min to hurt. I can do this. Come on Angie. Keep your legs moving. You want this... you said a 3:30 was a given. RUN!

I came around the corner, and Jill, who I had stayed with for the past 2 nights was there cheering me to the finish. She had a hood on, and I was a bit delirious and was not sure who she was for a minute. I figured it out. No smiles or waves of recognition at this point. Just f$#king run. Jeff had a bit in the tank and ran ahead. His time was 5 seconds better than mine... but it didn’t matter! WE DID IT! He qualified for Boston, and I got that “given 3:30”! Never again in my life will I say anything is a given. I raced this well, I executed well, I got the time, but the pain I felt was epic. Nothing “given” about this race.

A few things about how I raced...

I didn’t look at my total time during the race except at 10k. I had a bet with Susan from Vancouver (Jill’s sister) that I would be at 50 min at 10k! She thought I’d start to fast. I was at 49:25. We haven’t decided who won the bet yet. I had a plan to run 5 min k/s or JUST under. I did that right from the start. It took patience to watch ALL those runners leave me. (Well, there was only 167 in the race, but it looked like everyone of them was in front of me for the opening km’s.!) I executed this by taking one km at a time. I didn’t even do much math. Often I’ll look at my time at a km marker and calculate a finish time based on my pace. I didn’t do that here. I knew, when I hit my interval timer, that it needed to read 4:55 to 5:00. It did, for most km’s. We lost into the wind, but we’d been steady enough to that point that we had a bit of time in the bank.

At 21k, Jeff told me we were at 1:44. That meant we were on track. I looked on my watch after the race, and we hit 21k at 1:44:12. That is about 1:44:50 for 21.1k, or close. I finished in3:29:40, so it was almost a bang on equal split. Considering the strongest wind and the hills in the second half, I don’t think I could have paced this better.

Pacing and patience is EVERYTHING in a marathon! A BIG lesson I knew... but proved the importance of at this race!

The pace charts had me with a much faster finish. The pace charts apparently hadn’t talked to my legs. They didn’t have it in them to match any pace chart predictions on this day. I could not have gone 1 second faster. I did walk at 3 aid stations for about 5 seconds to make sure I got liquid in. That was it. I don’t think that was a bad choice though. I needed the fluid.

Only read this next statement if you want to... it’s a bit gross! I was running in full on rain. I had to pee, and didn’t see any point in stopping at a porta potty. I peed on the run. The rain was hard and it didn’t really matter at this point if my shoes got more wet! I’m glad I decided to do that... if I hadn’t I would not have broken 3:30J My shoes have since been washed!

My HR was lower on this race than it is when I did 70.3. At Clearwater, I raced at 162bpm for the bike and run. That was my average for over 4 hours. In the marathon, my HR was 5 – 7 beats lower which surprised me. I thought it would be the same. It wasn’t and it’s a good thing I didn’t push it up there. I would have been done if I’d ran over 160. I think a longer run focused training block could possibly get me to a point where I could carry a higher HR in a marathon. Maybe not though... I guess I’ll see if I do another one!

This race was funny. I expected a 5 min km to feel good at the start. I expect to feel like I had to slow down Nelly! I’d have to force pace back, not fight to hold a 5 min k. On this day, a 5 min k felt hard almost from the start. I had lots of “don’t feel good” moments, which I didn’t expect. At the 21k mark I was 10 min slower than my stand alone half time. That should have felt good... but it didn’t. It was something about the day that made it hard, and I’m not sure I’ll every know what that was.

In the end though, I worked through the mental demons of not feeling good. I worked through the weather challenges of wind, cold, and rain, and I worked through a beeping garmin and a sore ankle. The “distractions” were there to throw me off my game, and somehow I didn’t let them.

Sorry this is so long. Writing it has been a good exercise for me in that I actually feel better about my race now that I’ve written down how the day went. I was having a hard time understanding why I wasn’t over the moon excited! I’m not jumping for joy... mostly because my legs hurt too much, but I’m feeling a bit more at peace with the accomplishment.

Thanks for reading if you made it this long.