My Jacksonville Marathon 2024 Run Recap

When I wrote down my short and long term running goals back in April I didn’t think I’d realistically be able to knock out my two shorter term goals in the same year: running a half marathon strong and a full marathon strong. I knew I’d get the half done because I had one scheduled for that month but I wasn’t sure if I’d finish it strong. I did finish it strong. Completely a full marathon in 2024 seemed like a bridge too far so I was giving myself to the end of 2025. Talking with my coach towards the end of summer she thought it was totally doable for sometime in December. So here I am two weeks out from running a marathon for the second time in my life. This time I am going to say I ran it pretty strong, albeit not perfectly. Compared to my first marathon it was a huge success and one I’m going to chalk up as being a win. I therefore was able to knock out both of these short term running goals all in the same year!

I’m breaking this write up actually into three posts. This post looks at the raw preparation, performance, lessons learned, and next steps from this race. The next two posts will be about comparing this with my first marathon, 11 years ago yikes!, and a much more thorough journal entry with photos et cetera.

Plan

The plan I worked out with my coach was for me to do a 9-to-1 run walk interval throughout at least the beginning part of the race. That is I would be running for nine minutes and walking for one minute. Based on what the forecast for the race was it looked like I should be able to go as fast as an 11 minute per mile pace. My long runs on the hottest days had pacing that was north of 12:30 minutes per mile though. That made my target completion time range anywhere from 4 hours and 48 minutes and basically 5.5 hours. Therefore any completion time in that range I’d consider a win. The idea was to start off conservative and then every 10K or so, about six miles, do a check to see if I needed to adjust my pacing. That would be judged substantially by heart rate, with the idea of staying in the lower “Zone 2” Aerobic zone to start off and then adjust higher if I had the room for it. The course is completely flat so I didn’t have to worry about adjusting pace to compensate for miles that had a lot of elevation change or anything like that. The weather wasn’t supposed to get dramatically hotter either so I didn’t have to try to beat the heat either.

In terms of fueling we experimented a lot during the long runs. I settled in on carrying enough Clif Bloks sleeves of energy chews to eat one about every ten minutes of the race. There were six per sleeve so that’s five sleeves for five hours. In case I needed something extra or I got flavor fatigue from the Bloks I also carried a couple these Gu Stroopwafel packs as well. For hydration the race was providing aid stations every two miles. I estimated as long as the weather stayed cool I’d be able to get enough hydration just from that. The forecast was just a few degrees hotter than ideal temperature, but still in the low-60s, so that’s the strategy we went with.

Execution

As is usual there is race adrenaline so I did start off a little faster and with a little higher heart rate than I intended. In training runs the earliest miles would always be in the high-130s to low-140s beats per minute (bpm). Instead I was about ten bpm higher off the line. If it stayed there that may not be too bad even if it was maybe a little outside of my core Zone 2. Early in I kept getting passed and then passing the 4:45 Galway Pacing group. This is a run/walk pacing group that is trying to finish the marathon in 4 hours and 45 minutes. Essentially the pacer makes sure they do each mile at the correct pace. They also are responsible for doing the run/walk intervals. For this group they were doing one minute of running for thirty seconds of walking. Because it was a nice group and it seemed we were doing comparable paces I decided to ditch my 9-to-1 minute interval plan and just run with them.

I was able to keep up with the hydration and fueling until about mile 16. As I’ll describe below there were some signs that I really needed to consumer more water to keep upping the electrolytes. It probably would have been better if I had some gummies that weren’t fortified with electrolytes to keep powering through. Even with the regular aid stations and not too bad of weather 80 ounces of water just wasn’t enough, which is one of my potential tactical errors.

The other tactical error came later in the race. I was runnyng very strong throughout the race. As more and more of the Galway group fell back I kept up and felt I had a lot left in the tank. Around mile 14 I did some tests to see if I could maybe run a bit faster. I’d run ahead a bit to the aid station and walk longer until they caught up. There were also some photos of landmarks I wanted to get which I then had to run harder to catch back up to the group for. All that went well. So at mile 20, with “just” a 10K (6.2 miles) left I felt I had enough to try to run the last 6.2 miles at a 10 minute mile pace. It turned out that wasn’t to be. I had a good couple miles but the 23rd mile was a bit brutal. The group, well the one runner left and the pacer, caught up with me at mile 24. I figured I’d just tuck in with them for the rest of the race but I turned out to be too gassed to do even that. I did mostly fast walking for miles 25 and 26 but cranked out a decent amount of running for the last quarter mile to finish the race. The interval paces Therefore looked like:

As I stated at the beginning my target range for pacing was 11:00 to 12:30 per mile. The fact I average 11:04, just above the lower range target was a huge rush for me. The fact I only bonked in the last 2-3 miles was a big win for me. I would have preferred not bonking at all, and I think with some small tweaks I could do that. The fact I was able to keep a sustained pace and heart rate, more on that in a moment, for most of the race is a huge win for me. My final race time was 4:52:36. The race time from 11 years ago under almost identical weather and terrain conditions was 5:05:06. When I wrote aboutmy short and long term running goals I specifically stated that I didn’t expect to “match where I was” by being able to run at the same pace. The fact I ran faster, stronger, and as I document below, with far easier recovery is a huge win for me.

Next Steps

So with a mostly successful marathon now in the books I am ready to tackle another one. I wrote the same thing in the recap from my first marathon back in 2013. In that case it was something I wanted to eventually try again with but through the pain of it all. This time however I’m raring to go for another one since this one went so well, even though not perfectly, and the recovery was so strong. I have to thank my coach for helping me get to where I am. She’s been great at working around my schedule realities and adapting my training as my half century old body started protesting to some of the training we threw at it.

The first next step is finishing the reverse taper she has me in. That’s essentially 2-3 weeks of recovery with very light training. We’ve decided that my musings about trying to run two marathons next year is maybe counter-productive. Instead she has me focusing on continuing to build up my cardiovascular fitness and get faster for the first part of the year and then target another marathon for the end of 2025. Sprinkled throughout that training may be some half marathon events as well. I’d be planning their incorporation and strategies with them but the idea is that they would probably be more like knocking out a long training run at an event versus “racing” one of them and leaving it all on the field.

I’m just beyond stoked I was able to get to where I am even if I didn’t achieve this marathon goal. Having the marathon there is pure bonus.