Madison "Marathon" 2012

Holy crap it's been a very long time since I wrote on this blog I made. I've still been running a ton, more than ever really. Right now I want to write a little bit about my experience at the Madison Marathon two weeks ago.

I spent from March 11th to May 26th training my arse off in order to achieve my goal of finishing the marathon in under three hours. I put in many long runs, including four 20 milers, speedwork once a week, and regular runs of 10 miles. Thanks to Jack Daniels PhD I figured out my VDOT was a nice 54 and planned and ran accordingly. Briefly, a VDOT for me was based on previous race times and told me what pace to run on easy, threshold, repeat, interval, and marathon pace runs. A VDOT of 54 meant I was shooting for a marathon time of 6:56 or something close to that. Lofty goal, but I was up for it.

So I put in my miles, and track workouts. I listened to a few decent audio books (recommend: The Power of Habit), podcasts (Solid Verbal, any college football, Mohr Stories), and a few tunes as well ("new" M83 album, lots of rap). As May 27th approached I was feeling good. Confident. I was going to DO IT!!! This was going to be my fourth Madison Marathon and I knew the course well. My first year I pulled out a 3:25 without knowing what I was doing. Year two was a devastating 87 degrees and I stumbled in at 3:45. But last year I came in with a 3:16. That's certainly not my best marathon time at all, but Madison is a hilly course and while I was in good shape I wasn't really training that hard/eating that well/drinking that little. 3:00 this year was in sight.

Long story short they cancelled the race due to a forecast of 95 degrees. I was crushed I wouldn't be able to test my speed and endurance for 26.2 miles. At least the race directors let us who signed up for the full marathon participate in the half. I decided I was just going to sprint it and see how long I could hold on. Not a great race strategy but it was fun. I probably could've turned in a legitimately impressive time if not for me eating Pizza Hut at 10:30 the night before the race. My gastro system betrayed me but my 1:27 is still good for me. I doubt you can really see the pictures but my wife took some action shots:

 

Another good thing about the weekend was it was full of family. Mom ran the 10k on Saturday night, Dad, Brother, and Sis-in-law ran the half on Sunday. It was fun. I think they all had a good time. Grandparents came on Saturday night too:

And finally, here is a video of my mother's Saturday night 10k experience:

That's all from Madison! Next up is Ragnar Chicago this weekend. We'll see if any content comes out of it. Bye!