As brutal as Boston was, Valencia was beautiful from a personal and professional point of view. I’ll add my thoughts on the personal first, then the professional.
I’ve never paced a marathon well – this was my 7th. Too often I go off too fast – this being the case for the last 2, London & Boston – which was in itself some sort of madness as I’d had injuries that totally disrupted my training pre running the races. So the one big, big thing I had in my head for Valencia was to run a negative split – this my A goal, over and above anything else. Which in turn meant I had to dial in my pacing, and I managed to do just that (which the image above pays testimony to) in a way that not even I had envisaged. Unsurprisingly it made the whole race feel so much better.
Taking it back to my last hard workout, 11 days out, averaging 4’02/km over around an hour I was confident I could hold 4’12-4’14 /km for the marathon if not a little faster. With that in mind I used the reverse marathon calculator I have developed. This is based on average pacing times from a whole swathe of marathons a chap on Medium wrote about (here: https://medium.com/running-with-data/perfect-pacing-at-the-london-marathon-95f09db2ac5c but is now locked to non Medium members). I then thought, why not just reverse this pacing chart to give you rough paces to hit over the course of the marathon. In simplistic terms it was found there is around an 8% swing in pace from the start, slowing to the end. By reversing this you get a decent understanding of what to go out at and what you need to hit by the end. It’s also great for training, in terms of building in paces to work at on longer run progressions. Anyway I digress. The point is that I was confident I could run 4’12 and with the progress I had made over the previous 6 weeks was curious if I could hit 2’55 total. With this in mind I planned to run the first half in around 1:29, which I could either kick on from strongly, or hold until the end.
Plan set as the day got closer, I caught a cold and slept awfully for Friday & Saturday night – so waking on Sunday AM I felt OK, but knew that 2:55 was a bridge too far. I also knew that I had to be really, really careful at the start. Being in the 2:50-2:59 pen meant I would have a lot of runners going out far faster than I wanted to run. Prepping myself for this was wise, as I was more than happy to just let the traffic roll past. An aside here – amusingly the side I was starting in set off, was stopped just over the timing mats held for a few seconds until we all just ran. Back to the race – the weather was perfect and I settled in to a nice rhythm that was safe and steady. I had also planned to hit my watch every 5k to look for around 21m40sec then 21m 15sec. First 5km and everything begun to settle down somewhat. I found a nice reasonable pace and this was happy to work at what was around 4’12 pace. I then also got into the habit of using the 4th of the 5km blocks to relax, feeling I had a little bit more time than I needed and this thought was a huge help. Looking back I didn’t slow down, but in the race itself it definitely made it feel easier for those KM’s. The other thing I reminded myself between 10-15km was to run tall & relaxed. Something else that made it feel a lot easier.
The first pinch point came around 24k, running down a road into the early morning sun. It begun to feel tiring and a long, long way to run. I had a gel at this point & some water between 25-26k and this feeling passed. At the time I didn’t fight it, tried to widen my gaze, accepted that I needed to relax and let the road come to me. I suspect the water & gel did the trick and soon enough I felt so much better.
Getting to 30k I had then decided to switch my timing to every 3k (so shorter blocks until the end). This again really helped, as gave me specific points to hit. At this point I was keeping relaxed, trying not to push too much, and beginning to pick other runners off. Going past people feels so much better than being passed. I also found myself in a group running the same pace, until around 38k when I managed to drift off the front and happily push on – or at least not slow down. By 39k on my watch it then became about laps of the track, counting down from 9 to help bring it to a close. The last 200m were awesome, along a bouncy, slightly downhill blue walkway that pulls you in. Then done. I felt choked with emotion at having run as I wanted & hitting a decent time that seemed well beyond me 3-4 weeks ago.
From a professional point of view it was a very good day. 4 other coached runners I work with started. 1 DNF, which was pretty sad for him. However the other 3 all PR’d
One – finally ran his sub 3 (2:57’34) & a Boston Qualifying time
Two – So close to that sub 2’40 sub elite time for London, but still a 5 min PR at 2:41’43
Three – Off the back of barely any running the last month ran a 4 min PR to 3:47.
The most pleasing thing was the way in which they all did this, really sensibly paced runs, avoiding the dreaded huge drop off at the end and being consistent.
Combining my results with there’s made for such a great experience and one I’m very proud of.
