What a race. Glad I qualified and finally got to run it after wanting to do it since 2005.
On the bus(those yellow school ones you always see on TV) at 6am from the Boston Common up to the start at Hopkinton.
The journey takes about an hour so you are warned not to drink much before you hop on the bus in the morning. The Athletes village is on a school oval. Huge marquees surrounded by port a loos. With tables of bananas, water bottles, bagels and coffee. The longest queues were for coffee early as it was cold and windy. And later for the port a loos when they all had too much coffee and nerves.
Camped out on the grass for a couple of hours as I didn't have to go up to the start until 9:10am.
I was in the 1st wave and 2nd corral going off behind the elite men at 10am. So at 9:10am we have to walk up to the start corrals about 1k away. So an easy walk takes about 15 mins with the crowd. Throw the old clothes off before the start. They check your bib numbers so you can't jump corrals.
We had the star spangled banner about 10 mins before the start and then they brought the elite men up just after. 29 Kenyans and Ryan Hall. Ryan Hall came near the front of our corral and was high fiveing the crowd. So they all broke into USA, USA. Great feeling when that happened.
No countdown for the gun and we were off. Only took me about 10 secs to cross the mat and I was basically running fully within 400m of the start. Lucky I was up the front. I was keen on not going to fast at the start as the downhills here can hurt the legs early.
I managed a decent 5k of 20:51 and 10k of 42:02 which was on the pace I wanted.
From then on I found it increasingly tough to stay on the pace as I just felt very tired and had no energy. That is it, the only excuse I'm giving.
The course is tougher than I thought. Lots of uphills and downhills. BTW the hill at about the 28k mark goes up for about 800m which in my opinion was the hardest on the course.
Wellesley College where the girls scream there heads off is as loud as those Youtube videos tell you. They pump you up so much for the next klm which is downhill and flat. I think I was doing sub 4 min ks after that. Had some energy just mis-used on the day.
Struggle into the finish with splits blowing out to 4:50 ks at one stage.
Splits were:
5k-20:51
10k-42:02(21:11)
15k-1:03:53(21:51)
20k-1:26:06(22:13)
21.1k-1:30:46(4:18/ks)
25k-1:48:28(22:22)
30k-2:12:19(23:51)
35k-2:36:16(23:57)
40k-3:00:48(24:32)
42.2k-3:12:08(4:33/ks) Overall 3380 out of 24338 that started.
90:46/101:22.
I must say the crowd was from 2 deep to twenty deep both sides of the road for about 40ks of the race. I can only recall a couple of ks where there was no crowd. They just yell for anyone. I had so many go Sydney's I thought I was in the Olympics. And high fiveing the kids is a must along the course, they give you so much energy. Not that I had any.
Crappy run by me. Not proud of the bad fade I had after 10ks. Love to do the race again and run it better now I know the course. Thanks for everyones support.
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2 comments:
Hey Flakey , great race report mate, sounds as if it's a good race to do - Sorry to see you didn't have the best of races time wise though :(.
Hope to see you back on home ground flying around in the next few weeks.
Enjoy the recovery.
Was tracking you, a couple others and following the Letsrun thread for the up-front race. Didn't know what happened with the slowing splits.
The one I'd like to qualify for and do eventually (if they don't make the BQ standards too hard). Maybe in the 60+ age-group they'll be due for another 20mph tailwind.
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