The Race!

The Boston Marathon. The big daddy of marathons, this being the 111th continuous running and a participation of at least 25000.

It was a long day in which their were successes and failures but most of the event proved that it was the yard stick by which other events should be measured.

As I have already written the forecast was grim, and at 5.30am this morning the forecast came true. Constant rain, and driving winds gusting to 50 mph. The bad conditions affected every part of the event and caused the organisers and spectators a lot of headaches. Some could have been avoided with better planning and some were just in the category of "shit happens."

So here is how my day went:
Frank drove me to the train station at 5.30am. The train was 20mins late. I arrived in downtown Boston at 6.50 and struggled against the wind to the Bus pickup location at Boston common. There were four queues each about 500m long to the buses.The wind was howling and the rain constant. Temperature about 3 degrees. The line did not move for an hour. The yellow school buses which were supposed to take us to Hopkinton seemed to be stuck. Then suddenly we were moving and within 15mins we were on the bus.

The buses travelled in convoy to the start at Hopkinton. We left about 7.50. The bus didn't arrive until 9.40am and the start was at 10am. Why so long, we don't know, the driver just said "I am following the bus in front". People who had queued for an hour, and then sat on the draughty bus for an hour were begging the driver to let them out to pee. He refused at first but eventually he had to let people out. Half the bus spilled out into the forest and quickly dropped their dacks, men and women, in the boggy forest. After this we carried on and eventually arrived at the Assembly area in Hopkinton. The ground was a quagmire and there was no shelter available from the wind and rain. Two marquis which had been set up were packed. So I joined the others from my bus and geared down in the rain, the placed our gear bags in the appropriate bus for later pickup.

The time was now 9.50 so I jogged down to my starting area in Corral #5. By this time I was very cold and had been shivering non stop since 6.45. If the weather had been pleasant none of these delays or cold problems would have occurred.

So the race started and I was over the line on 10.02. The course is downhill overall with gentle uphills in the first half of the course. It undulates along through partly urban areas, which would be quite picturesque in better weather. The rain eased off when the race started and we got quite a bit of shelter from the wind in the first half of the course.

I ran along at 4.1 to 4.2 mins a km, this felt like a comfortable pace but as my later performance proved I must have gone out a bit hard. It was cold and from the start i couldn't feel my feet. Also the tights I bought did not protect my legs very well and the were cold too.

With hindsight the biggest problem I had was getting the flu the week before and being confined to bed for three days. That's one of the wild card problems about travelling. I had probably rushed around a bit too much in the weeks leading up to the trip and run myself down. I was theonly one in the family to get it. Another problem was letting myself get cold in the hours before the race. Experienced hands at the race knew what to do, but I was a bit of a novice with these condidtions and got wet and cold early. That took some wind out of my sails.

At about the 30k mark after we had passed the hills we were exposed to the wind. I simply ran out of energy. I had taken a gel at the start, and every 10k as well as several orange segments, and gatorade. I didn't have any particluar injuries but I could feel myself shaking with cold and becoming a bit groggy. The crowd support kept me plodding along, but I had to walk occassionally and and try to rub some feeling back into my muscles. I would say in terms of exhaustion this was worse than the six foot track. I have never had to walk before in a road marathon.

My splits were 3.2k 13m.30s, 4.8k 20.51, 6.4k 26.31, 8k 33.20, 9.6k 40.04, 10k 41.29, 11.2k 46.48, 12.8k 53.48, 14.4k 60m.38s, 15k 62.54, 16k 67.46, 17.6k 75.02, 19.2k 85.19, 21.1k 90.10, 22.7k 96.44, 24.3k 104.18, 25k 148.16, 25.9k 111.35, 27.5k 119.23, 29.1k 127.13, 30k 132.21, 30.7k 135.07, 32.3k 143.33, 33.9k 153.05, 35k 160.00, 35.5k 162.59, 37.1k 173.00, 38.7k 184.27, 40k 193.17, 40.3k 194.46, 42.2k 205.31.

Follow this link for great photos of race http://www.boston.com/sports/marathon/galleries/04_16_07_wellesley