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Published: April 4th 2011
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I took part in the Santiago Marathon today. It was something I had looked into doing even before coming to Chile. A little over a month ago I made the smart choice to run the half marathon, not the full. I had a good time today. I was satisfied with my result despite having several setbacks to overcome.
Where to start? Since spring break, which was over two weeks ago, I have barely run at all. I did not run once in the eleven days while I was in the south of Chile. Upon returning to Santiago I ran only once or twice before getting sick. I started feeling symptoms last Sunday. My sickness got progressively worse throughout the week. On Thursday/Friday I started to feel a little better. Although I am not sick now, I am not entirely better. I still had a stuffed up nose today, which proved annoying during the race.
This sickness was incredibly bad timing. In a previous entry I had made it my goal to place inside the top 20 of the half marathon. Going into the race today my goal was to finish. Even with this mediocre goal I had doubts in my mind whether or not I could do it. Here is a list of reasons why I doubted myself:
■I had not trained properly. Even when I was running in Chile it was never satisfactory for a half marathon. My longest run here prior to the 13.1 mile race was twelve miles.
■ I was still getting over a sickness, with the main symptom being a fairly nasty cough. Not good news if you plan to run hard for an hour and a half.
■ I went to a barbeque at a friend’s apartment on Friday night and was out until three in the morning. This left me exhausted on Saturday. I knew it was two nights before, but I was not sure how/if this would affect me.
■ I am rarely around scales. I got the chance to weigh myself yesterday and saw to my despair that I was 183 pounds. That is almost ten pounds over my normal weight and fifteen pounds above my racing weight.
■ I played two soccer games on Thursday. I wore my vibram five finger shoes for the first game. Five minutes in I hurt my knee, but kept playing. That game was on grass. Afterwards I rushed across town to play futbolito. This is soccer played on an outdoor basketball court with medium sized goals. It is very fast paced and was a killer on my already sore knee.
Because of all these reasons I went into the race with little to no expectations. I told myself to not start out fast. I wanted to run no faster than 6:30 for the first mile. I know that 13.1 miles is a long way to make up time and an even longer way to fade off and die. Unfortunately, as usual I got a little too caught up in the excitement, and due to adrenaline I started faster than I wanted to, but did not realize my mistake. Mile one was 6:12, followed by 6:06, 6:04, 6:04. I had wanted to wait until at least 3k to start to make a move. If I was running under six minute pace that was probably to fast.
Minus having to clear my nose multiple times and having a slight discomfort in my chest all was going well. Until about mile eight. At this point I really have to talk myself through the race step by step. I had been averaging about 6:07 per mile, something that I had no idea I was capable due to my situation. Shoot, if I could keep this pace up I would run under 1:20:00.
But somewhere around the middle to latter stages of the race I started to fade. Many of the people who I had passed started to pass me back. The course was going uphill at this point. I could not see the slope, but in looking at the course grade map before and afterwards I understood why I was laboring. Then with 5k to go I got my act together. I had been running alone. I fixed my sights on the runners ahead of me and started to reel them in.
It took me a long time of staring at the back of the eventual 2nd overall woman to see her come back to me. Her coach was next to her on a bike the whole time. After maybe ten minutes or so I caught her and kept on going. Next up I pulled up on some other Chilean. This was inside the last 2k. For some dumb reason the 10k race, which had a different route than the half marathon started 15 minutes later. The two races finished down the same home stretch. This meant that for the last 2k I was running alongside thousands of slow 10k runners.
Despite the crowd I could see the final member of my running team out ahead of me. I had been behind most of my teammates at the start. Throughout the race I picked off every single one, expect this guy. I know from practice that I should have destroyed everyone on my team. But I also knew that today I was clearly not at my best. However, I felt pressure to beat them because I had proven to do so at practice. I never want to be the guy who is good in practice, but cannot deliver in races.
It took me a few more minutes to pull even with him. I caught him with just over 1k to go. Instead of settling I stepped on the gas. I did not work hard to catch up with him only to lose in a kick off. I blazed home the remaining stretch, passing two more runners down the runway shoot that lead to the finish. I could see the overhead clock from far out. Although I did not have a time goal when I saw 1:21:xx I badly wanted to make sure I was under 1:22:00. It was going to be close.
I crossed the line at 1:21:54, a time that later got officially confirmed as 1:21:48. This is not an amazing time, and in the past I would have been capable of much more, but for today I am quite happy with the result. It showed that even when everything is going wrong I can still show up and run 6:14 per mile* for 13.1 miles. Not terrible. I know many people who can do better, but I will take it. To all of my friends and teammates here in Chile that is smoking. To me it is not, but it is acceptable. I am just glad I did not drop out.
Although I did not reach my old goal of top 20, I did manage to finish 51st out of 6267 runners.
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*6:11 per according to my gps watch, but since I did not run the most direct path I actually covered 13.23 miles instead of 13.1 miles
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