From Mountains to Marathon

While it feels like forever ago, it was only 9 months ago that I traveled ~170 miles with 65,000+ feet of vert to attain the overall FKT in the New Hampshire 48 high peaks. I carried that fitness through as much as I possibly could: 5 days of racing in Scotland, and ~24 hours of racing in Bishop for USARA National Champs. Then I took a bit of a break to enjoy fall in Vermont, get my Wilderness First Responder Cert. By November timeframe I was itching to get back to….something. I have a “bucket list” of athletic goals that I return to when I need some inspiration (actually I SHOULD write it down but instead it’s just thoughts filed away in the back of my brain!) and one of those is to run a sub-3 marathon.

Some may remember the last time I brought up this goal. January 2021, naively thinking events would be going on as scheduled despite the ongoing global pandemic, and training for the Myrtle Beach Marathon. This dream died before it went too far — the event was ultimately cancelled, but I was not running regardless as I had the first stress fracture of my career. A deep dive into my health revealed very some low iron and vitamin D levels and I spent the spring fixing that, only to fall deep into the pitfalls of lyme disease later that Summer. 2021 was a rough one! 

So there was a bit of trepidation bringing this goal up again, but also a lot of excitement. And thinking about it in November meant that I could have ample time to put in a good build, and see if we could get my slow moving mountain legs turning over faster on some pavement. I eyed up the B&A Trail Marathon as the goal race. This race runs past my parent’s house, the home I grew up in, at mile 1 and I grew up watching this race happen! Fairly flat, it seemed like as good a place as any to go for it. Plus, it makes a good location for a Biscay Coaching crew to run, and I could count on being able to dupe some of my Baltimore running friends into the party as well. 

Ultimately the race didn’t go as hoped. I ended up running through the half in 1:29:20ish and shortly thereafter fell off pace, eventually coming in with a 3:06. After literally nailing every. single. training run I had in the 4 months of build, it was a tough pill to swallow. I didn’t have time to dwell on it too much post race as we had a really fun brunch and had some good races on the team to celebrate (thanks mom and dad for hosting!), but in the days since I have made sure to give some thought as to what happened. 

So….what happened? Here are some things I thought about as I reflected on the race and chatted with coach Hillary so she has all the information needed as we tweak training and make adjustments for future projects:

*I was overall very healthy through the build. I did get a terrible stomach flu coming back from January camp and while I thought I was on my death bed for about 6 hours, I bounced back very quickly. Otherwise, from my Oura Ring data to my Inside Tracker bloodwork, to most importantly just how I felt: I felt good. My worst physical ailments through the build were a very tight glute/hip after 26 hours in the car going to/from the Winter Wildcat, and a wrist I injured from snow shoveling. But nothing that took me out of even one run!

*Like I said, I nailed the training runs. And I felt confident about the miles I logged. I was certainly running faster than I ever had and was throwing down workout after workout that was stronger than what I saw going into my 3:04 in 2015. I hit the Yasso 800s (by the skin of my teeth but I did!) And a very scary 4x 3 mile workout went very well in a long run. I felt ready. 

*But one of the cruel lessons of sport is that nailing the training doesn’t automatically mean you get the dream race day experience! As the race unfolded, I felt like one of the things that was glaring to me was that I was good at training, but I wasn’t used to racing. I’ve never been a particularly fast runner and all my fastest running races I have quite literally raced my way into them. These are aggressive paces for me, and my body has to learn it. The training does a bit for sure, but there is something about the physiological race experience that has always helped me level up. I had chosen not to have races in the build here because at the heart of things, this was an “offseason project” which means my investment in it is consciously a little lower than other stuff. I knew that was my choice and I was hoping that nailing the training would be enough!

*I trained through a New England winter. While it wasn’t tremendously cold or snowy through a lot of this, it was cold and it was snowy still, and adjustments had to be made. My body also thrives in really cold weather, so even having race day temps in the 50s was a big jump. I had done some sauna training to try to mitigate things just in case, but it’s hard to say how much that is a shock to the system to run hard in warmer temps without being acclimated.

*Strength is definitely something I’m doing in the full rotation of workouts these days, but as things do in the offseason, it was easy to just do what I liked vs. what I needed for this. I was reinforcing myself too by training well. I think that given all the time I have spent mountain running in recent years, my body just needs a constant level of strength work - with weights, year-round. I had neglected a lot of the weight work I would typically do. And as I started to taper, I noticed that I didn’t have the same feelings muscularly that I wanted in terms of strength, coming out of this build. It was a little unnerving but there wasn’t much I could do at that point, so it was filed away. After the race, given how sore my quads were on the flat course, I think this definitely confirms that I had lacked a bit of what I needed in this department to uphold 26 miles of fast running!

*Tapering has never been my strong suit. I have always raced well off of high volume. My body when it’s fresh just isn’t very crisp. Given that I’m no longer a spring chicken, we’ve had to make some concessions on this a bit and I think we are still experimenting with what is the best approach given my body’s physiology. Work in progress.

Overall, there is no glaring “a-ha!” item about what went awry in this. Sport is a fickle thing and it’s not always easy to pinpoint a root cause. What works for some doesn’t work for everyone. That’s why I’m always grateful to have a my longtime relationship with Coach Hillary who has known me since the start of my pursuit of elite sport. We don’t expect miracles and we know that great things come from the trial of miles. This race was just adding to those trials and put more experiences in my racing tool belt. I knew this was a lofty goal and so often those aren’t achieved after one attempt!

So, will I try again? Not this year. I have a full season of Adventure Racing and Swim-Run on tap as I get ready for the big one: One Water. I’ll follow that up with USARA Adventure Racing National Championships, and then Bubba’s Backyard. Then a little trip to Kona to cheer on our Biscay Coaching athletes, and I’m sure while I’m there I’ll figure out what is after that ;)