White Rock Marathon 2009

Those of you that read about my wonderful experience – read extreme pain – in the New York marathon are aware that I was also signed up to run the Dallas White Rock marathon exactly 6 weeks later. This was a decision I obviously made prior to New York because not many sane people would do this to themselves.

Surprisingly I recovered well after New York. After a couple days of gingerly descending the stairs in our home, I was able to get a few swims and easy spins on the bike to flush out the lactic acid from my legs. I eased into running a week after the marathon with a couple easy runs. Two weeks later I was back at it with a 52 mile week that included a tough interval session and a twenty mile long run. It appears that the body might not have been ready for that load because two easy runs later I injured a muscle in the lower right calf area. After 4 days off, I learned that the calf was still in rough shape when I had to turn back and cut a planned 6 mile run down to a 3 miler. The calf was given an 8 day hiatus from running, but I was able to keep my fitness up with 6 sessions on the bike. During the taper week leading up to Dallas, I was optimistic that the calf would hold up after a pain free five miler and an easy 3 mile tune-up. Bring on the White Rock!

We headed down to Dallas Friday afternoon and were greeted by great friends at the airport. Friday night included just a bit of liquid carbo loading, some entertaining hibachi tricks, and some healthy laughter. Saturday was a great pre-race day with some good chow, relaxing, a little manual labor, hanging at the race expo, and some delicious pasta.

Sunday’s wakeup call came at 5:00 AM. When I headed down to the kitchen to fuel up, I was greeted by a half asleep Mike Lopez shoveling oatmeal into his mouth. Mike gave a caveman like grunt. Mike would later wake up in time to rock out his first marathon. After some coffee, banana, bagel, water, and perpetuem I was good to go. We headed over to pick up Monty and Julie Hardy – they would be running their first half marathons – and we were off to the race start.

After the usual pre-race routine...

... we headed over to the starting area.

With a single start for the 20,000 marathon, half marathon, and relay runners, the place was a zoo. I quickly lost Mike, Julie and Monty. I have to say this race was night and day from an organizational standpoint when compared to NY. Everyone was grouped according to their estimated finish time/pace with the faster runners in the “A” group and the slowest runners in the “E” group. I was assigned to start in the “C” group even though I entered 3:30 as my estimated finish time. At the start area, I noticed that the 3:30 pace team was lined up at the very front of the “B” group. I worked my way up there seeing that was the group I planned on running with. It turns out that either lots of people went to the wrong starting area, overestimated their pace, or the race organizers really messed up. The first 4 miles were spent weaving around lots of slower runners that started in the “A” group – It had to be literally over 1000 people. Everyone was pretty frustrated with the need to weave for 4 miles.

Not willing to make the same mistake as New York, I planned to stick with the cliff bar 3:30 pace team led by Vince from Cleveland. I actually shared my New York story with Vince and we made a deal – I agreed to stick with him longer than 2 miles and he agreed to not pass me like I was standing still at mile 22. We were off!

Mile 1: 8:14
Mile 2: 8:10
Mile 3: 7:41
Mile 4: 7:44
Mile 5: 7:37
Mile 6: 7:53
Mile 7: 7:43
Mile 8: 7:52

I had been running with Vince for the entire time, and at this point I realized he wasn't the most consistent pacer. I pulled away from Vince a bit and ran with a guy named Tim who was running his 5th White Rock and was hoping for his first sub 3:30. We only ended up about 100 or so yards ahead of the 3:30 group and were running about the same pace as them – we were hoping to be a bit more consistent though.

Mile 9: 7:52
Mile 10: 8:08
Mile 11: 8:19
Mile 12: 7:36
Mile 13: 8:22
Half Marathon: 1:44:03
Mile 14: 8:12
Mile 15: 8:03

15 miles into the race my legs really started to fatigue. Hamstrings and quads started to ache quite a bit.

Mile 16: 8:07
Mile 17: 8:01
Mile 18: 8:03
Mile 19: 7:47

19 miles into the race we completed our loop around White Rock lake and were on our way back to the finish area at the American Airlines center.

Mile 20: 8:10
Mile 21: 8:07

At this point we hit the “Dolly Parton” hills – two short steep hills that follow each other. There is always an unofficial aid station with large men dressed up as Dolly Parton (use your imagination) at these hills. It was the perfect time for a good chuckle. Unfortunately, Tim dropped back here. This was also the point when I was wacked in the shoulder by Vince’s 3:30 balloons – he had made up the 100 yards. I told him I had been waiting for him. Truth was, my legs were really throbbing. I couldn’t convince myself to slow down though. No excuse I thought of - especially the throbbing legs - was good enough.

Mile 22:7:36

Once again Vince proved that he wasn’t the most accurate pacer. Really nice guy, great runner, but he couldn’t hold that even 8 min/mile I was hoping for. I figured I would stick with him and the group anyway (by now there were only about a half dozen in the group, down from well over 20) - just in case I came up with better excuses to slow down.

Mile 23: 7:52
Mile 24: 8:05
Mile 25: 7:44

At this point, I knew I would beat 3:30. I was in quite a bit of pain. I opted to enjoy the last mile as best as I could rather than try to pick it up. In reality, I probably didn’t have much pick-up in me.

Mile 26: 8:32
Last .2: 2:02

Finish time: 3:29:31 – 7:59 minutes per mile
1st Half: 1:44:03
2nd Half: 1:45:28

Finished 390th place out of 4,063 finishers
Finished 351st place out of 2504 male finishers
Finished 49th place out of 376 male 30-34 finishers

PR by 4 minutes and 43 seconds!

Interesting statistic…. Over the last 6 miles, I passed 83 runners and 15 runners passed me.

I was greeted at the finish line by a smiling Sara who ignored the sweat, salt, and stank that only 26.2 miles can create and gave me a big hug. I was hurting pretty badly, dehydrated and cramping – the worst was a 30 second calf cramp during which I couldn’t put my heal on the ground even though I was applying all of my force with two hands pushing down on my knee. Ouch.

Recovery was handled Dallas style with some Tex Mex and Tacate at Mi Cosina and hanging with friends. Congrats to Mike, Monty and Julie on their respective 1st time marathons and half marathons – I look forward to your thorough race reports ;).

Only a little over 8 months to go until the next big event – Timberman 70.3. I foresee some quality time in the pool and on the saddle in my future.