Running Report from the 2004
Jacksonville Bank
By Jason Smucker
Intro
Charlie, Travis, Laura and I
traveled down to
Our friend Lee Ann also traveled to
The Goals
We had 5 race day goals, and we
accomplished all of them:
Goal 1. To survive.
We had no major issues; just the expected fatigued muscles, chaffing,
blisters, etc. This was a much better
marathon experience for me than the
Goal 2. To enjoy the run.
We did enjoy the beautiful run.
The weather was gorgeous: 38 degrees at the start, 65 degrees
at the finish, and clear blue
The course was great: mostly shady
and best of all, it was entirely flat!!!
It was an out-and-back course that started at a local high school. The course ran almost entirely thru enjoyable
residential areas along the
Goal 3. To finish.
We never really hit a wall in the "traditional" sense of not
having any more gas left in the tank. We
fueled ourselves regularly with Gu and PowerGel feedings. I took mine at miles 5, 10.5, 15.5, 19.5, and
23.5. Additionally, none of us had any
major issues that would cause us to consider stopping. It was just a matter of continuing on.
Goal 4. To finish under 4 hours.
Warning: reading the details of fulfilling this goal may be BORING to
non-runners. …or even to some
runners. :-)
We did have a time goal of 4 hours,
which works out to about a 9:10 pace per mile.
Most of our long training runs were done at an 8:20-9:05 pace (not
counting water and bathroom stops). Our
strategy was to start the race at a 9-plus minute pace for the first 5 miles,
then let our pace quicken to our "normal" "comfortable"
pace of 8:30-8:40, and then see what happened in the last few miles. We hit 5 miles in 44:49, right on pace. 10 miles at 1:27:18. Half (13.1 miles) at 1:55:12. 15 miles at 2:11:45.
At this point I knew that if we
could hit 20 miles within 3 hours we would have a full hour to do the last 6.2
miles. That seemed completely do-able to
me. At about mile 18 I started telling
Charlie and Travis that we had the 4-hour goal all locked up. They rebuked me for using the term
"locked up" since that's how our legs were starting to feel. :-) So
I explained my 20 mile/3 hour check point to them and re-phrased it that we had
4-hours in-the-bag. It was a done deal
as far as I was concerned.
At mile 16 we started taking
walk-breaks at each water stop. We held
our running pace fairly constant as evidenced by our splits for the non-water
stop miles. In fact our fastest mile
split for the whole run was mile 19 (in 8:23 minutes) immediately after one of
the walk-breaks. But we did allow
ourselves 30 to 60 seconds of walking and stretching at each of the last 7
water stops. Our walk-break-miles ranged
from 9:05 to 9:40 pace as we finished the marathon.
We hit mile 20 in 2:56:03, leaving
us 64 minutes to cover the last 6.2 miles.
Even with stiff muscles and walk-breaks, we only needed about 57 of
those minutes. We finished
with an official clock time of 3:53:39 and an official net time of
3:53:07. We could have pushed harder in
the last few miles, but we didn't need to.
We were pumped to finish in less than 4 hours!!!
And Goal 5. To finish together.
At any given point in the later miles, one of the three of us was
feeling better than the others. It
varied as to who was feeling better, but we hung together and encouraged each
other as we ground through the final miles.
Because we had all trained together and run our long runs together, it
was only fitting that we all finish together.
Post Race Recovery
After the race we lounged in the
infield grass watching runners complete the marathon while we celebrated
the accomplishment with well deserved bagels and fruit. The post-shower-lunch consisted of the
traditional post-run-visit to the local Moe's restaurant. Then we went out to
Then we drove into downtown
To end the great day and to
celebrate our anniversary weekend, Travis and Charlie treated Laura and me to a
wonderful dinner at Outback. It was a
very relaxing way to end a great day of exertion, friendship, and fellowship.
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