My Jacksonville Marathon Journal

I did the high level recap in my first post about my running the Jacksonville Marathon. That was more the nitty gritty technical details. I wanted to capture more of the whole experience as well though. I’ve been writing notes along the way, and some personal journal entries too. A blog post seemed like a great way for me to capture all of that in one place though. I did take some contemporaneous notes but some of the details are not from those notes. Our memory isn’t as photographic as we think it is, especially with a couple of weeks elapsed. While I am striving for as accurate as possible I admit some of the finer details may be off.

Weeks Before

I don’t want to belabor way too far before the race except to say that November was the hardest push towards that goal. That was a lot of high volume weeks with weights. I had some multi-day DOMS/muscle cramping that my coach had to adjust training around. It was also a month of excessive eating of Halloween candy, holiday treats, and some friends visiting. Which meant that I put on a few pounds of weight, both fat and muscle, over that month and the first two weeks of December. While I was at the highest percent body fat I’ve been at in a year because of that and the slacking off on having my diet dialed in for much of the second half of the year, the couple weeks before the marathon, especially the week before, is not the time to be going into calorie deficit. In fact the three days before the race were carb loading days where I had to eat 640 grams, or 2560 calories, of carbohydrates alone. I have a voracious appetite most of the time. Since I track my food intake daily, even through vacations and holidays, going back to the end of 2010 I can say that there are several days when I’ve consumed north of 5000 calories and think I may have even crossed 6000. But I’ve never had to eat a certain way in excess like this. I have more appreciation for the Hollywood actors that have to bulk up their body fat percentages for a role.

I will admit that the longer training runs were psyching me out before I did them. My coach had been only putting up one week of my training at a time in the app. That was great because it let me focus on the current week alone. But I knew eventually I’d have to get some 16, 18, or 20 mile long runs in during November. Except, we didn’t. My longest long runs topped out at 3 hours, which because of the heat and my naturally slower pace meant the longest training day was just under 15 miles. Because I am running four days a week and there were some other longer(ish) runs I was still getting in the weekly mileage, topping off at 30 miles, but without that much much longer run. That made training psyching me out not as much of a problem but that did leave me with psyching myself out before the big day more.

Day Before Pre-race Jitters

I arrived in Jacksonville in the mid-afternoon on Friday, the day before the race. I had to pick up the race packet at the running shop that was organizing the race, 1st Place Sports. So I had to stop there before getting to the hotel before race pickup ended. The trip there was fine but as I got to the store and then to the hotel after I could feel the jitters coming on more. I brought all my own food with me to make sure I didn’t screw up the carb loading or my stomach the night before the race. I also didn’t plan any social events, nor were there any planned at the hotel even though it was the host hotel. So after settling into my room at around 6 pm it was just me, my prep for the day before, and my carb loading meals. One more giant bowl of homemmade spaghetti with marinara sauce and a few ounces of homemmade sourdough bread followed by a late night snack of another couple ounces of the same bread, some Welch’s fruit snacks, a Clif bar, and a GU Energy Stroopwafel. I sat there cranking through YouTube videos going through the check lists, laid out food and cloth items for the next day, just thinking to myself, “Why am I doing this to myself again? I don’t really need to run this thing tomorrow but I should.”

The excessive eating of of the carb loading days, only getting 5.5 hours of sleep the day before, the travel, and the excessive mental gymnastics I was doing really took a toll because before 9 pm I was crashing hard. That was fine because I needed to be up no later than 5 am to get to the race on time. So it was an early bed time. My watch tracks me as being asleep by 9:33. I woke up a couple of times pretty wide awake throughout and at 4 am on race day I was up completely. My left knee for some reason was feeling creaky for no good reason, except maybe sitting too much from travel and/or some hypochondria thing. But there I was wide awake at 4 am on a not too bad 6.5 hours of sleep.

Pre-Race

While I had plenty of race jitters the night before, the morning of was different. I had the usual needing to get my bearings in a strange place and setup, but that slightly there but completely ignored “Why am I doing this to myself?” narrative was gone. It was race day. I was ready for it! First up was more carbs: some Coca-cola and a big chunk of bread, just like I practiced earlier in the week. It was then time to get to the bus that took us from the host hotel to the high school location of the start and finish of the race. I knew once the race started I would be doing this in shorts and t-shirt since it was going to be in the mid-60s to low-70s. But before then it was going to be around 60 and maybe a little misty. I packed for any condition but I elected to go with a light long sleeve running top over the rest of my race clothes. That wouldn’t really be warm enough but I’d just have to suck it up. The bus was picking us up at 5:30 to get us to the race start an hour early so it was time to head out.

Right away I ended up striking up a conversation with an older couple that was also doing the race, she the half and he the full marathon. We made pleasantries as we made our way to the bus. They sat down in a different area further back, I just took the first row available. I’m not used to the modern school buses which now have seatbelts on them. A lady sat next to me with her two friends. Part of the way there we started chatting it up as well. My introverted self was sort of taking a back seat to a more extroverty variety apparently. We talked about some of our race prep and expectations. She’s run tons of marathons but hadn’t prepared for this one. She was planning on “just taking it easy and doing like 8:30 pace”. I’d kill for an 8:30 marathon pace, but we all have our own races to run from where we were. Her friends sounded like they were not quite as fast as she but they all had made plans for this trip despite not being ready for it so there they were.

It was still pitch black when the bus dropped us off just before 6:00 am. The sprinklers were running on the field grounds of the high school, including on the path we needed to walk to get to the gym. It was already feeling pretty chilly and I didn’t feel like getting wet since the rain/mist had done us a favor and let up a couple hours before. Some people found a path along the one side that wasn’t too bad so I followed along. Race start wasn’t for another hour so what was there to do but walk around the grounds a bit. I checked out the stadium where we were going to finish. The halls of the stadium are full of past high school football and track teams from the high school. Sadly the roll of years didn’t make it to the 20th century. That still only killed fifteen minutes and I was pretty chilly. I decided to head into the gym where they were doing the same day bib pickups. It would at least be warmer in there, and so it was. There were lots of people with the same idea but I was able to snag some wall space. So I sat down and planned on killing time on my phone for 30 minutes or so:

The problem with that plan was cell reception sucked. I was already down to 95% battery even without doing a lot of browsing. So that was out. I decided to just take in the view and watch people being people before the race. I had originally planned to augment the soda and bottle of water I had with breakfast with another bottle of water while I waited but that was the one thing I didn’t remember to bring as I was going out the door. There was no place to buy any either. It wasn’t ideal but it’d be fine. At the same time as the wait went on I felt like I was getting hungry still. I had some extra Stroopwafels with me to go along with the Clif Blok fuel for the race so I decided to down one of those while I waited. Finally with 15 minutes before the race I decided it was time to make my way to the start line, which was on the street right where we were dropped off.

While we were in there they had finished setting up the starting marker lines for the different paces. It’s good form to not be up front if you are going to be dragging butt. This race was a 5K, a half marathon, and a full marathon all rolled into one. I was expecting to probably average 12:00 per mile in the end but decided I’d get into the 11:00 per mile area to start. At that point they were still trying to inflate the starting line inflatable arch, which was interesting to watch as they struggled with the physics of it all. As I sat there taking in the procedure who showed up there but the woman from the elevator ride down. Her husband ran up a bit later saying he had just finished his 2 mile warm up run and was already feeling a bit hot with all the mugginess in the air. I wasn’t feeling warm but I could tell that once we got started I wouldn’t need the long sleeve shirt either. I didn’t want to ditch it and it was too late to do the bag check now. So I ended up tying it around my waist a few minutes before start. The lady and I continued making chit chat about her family, her kids having gone to the same university I did but many years later, our running ethos as we got older, and so on.

The announcer came on with a minute to go before official start time telling us that the music would die down and they’d have a starting buzz sound to say when it was time to start. As he was saying that the music did not get softer at all despite his asking them over the PA to turn it down. So when 7 am came he did his best to start the race over the music. The first racers care about exact seconds meanwhile it was going to take us a minute or more to get there from the back of the line.

As we walked up to the line the woman and I both wished each other good luck. The banner over top of the arch was falling down and was within slapping range to people going through the left side. They kept yelling over the PA, “DO NOT TOUCH THE BANNER!” but no one was listening. It was making the banner fall even more but people were just too into it I guess, including the woman from the elevator. I was over just a bit too far and was too busy trying to start my watch to bother trying, besides being a bit of a boy scout about stuff like that. But with that, at 7:02 am my race had begun.

The Race

As I wrote in the race recap post , my original plan was to run for 9 minutes and walk for 1 over and over again while keeping my heart rate squarely in “Zone 2”, the peak long distance running zone (a topic I dive into in detail in this Zone 2 post ). For me, during training and based on some of the calibration run data I figured that’d my Zone 2 range was something like between 131 and 147 bpm. During practice long runs I worked to keep my heart rate around 140 bpm for the first hour. Looking down a few minutes in however my heart rate was 150, so just outside that zone. The start of every race you have the rush of getting going, the crowd energy, and your heart racing from just excitement. So that wasn’t too surprising. My pace was a bit faster than I thought it would be at about 10:30 minutes per mile, but only by 30 seconds or so. So I let off the gas just a tad for a few more minutes to see how it responded. For some reason it didn’t change much regardless of whether I was doing 10:30 or 11:00 so I was thinking maybe I’d just go with it.

By the time I got to my first walk break ten minutes in, also the point where I popped my first Clif Blok gummie as I was supposed to ever ten minutes thereafter, I noticed the 4:45 pace Galloway group was with me. I had already passed them a few times in the first few minutes, and vice versa. The Galloway Method is named after Jeff Galloway. He came up with a run/walk method where you take regularly space walk breaks throughout the run. This is supposed to help reduce the stress of distance running. I was sort of doing that with my 9:1 split. They however were doing one minute of running followed by 30 seconds of walking. The group looked to have about 2-3 dozen people in it or so. It’s an informal thing so anyone can join or drop out at will. So it’s hard to say the actual number, but ten minutes in there was a decent sized gaggle. The 4:45 finish time was a few minutes faster than the lower end of my target finishing time of 4:48. That was a time I was thinking would only be achievable under very ideal conditions and probably not even then. But I was basically running the same pace they were and my heart rate was still holding right around 150, maybe even a little under.

The idea of training practice runs is to run the long runs the way you’d run the race. It can be risky to make game time decisions but we do change things up at game time which is why we have a term for that. Is the race way hotter than expected? Are you suffering from a cramp you have to work around. Those would be game time decisions forced upon you. Are you feeling way stronger than you expected to by a certain point, and have the experience to know it isn’t a mirage? That could be another one. It seemed a bit like throwing caution to the wind but I liked the idea of running with the pacing group, especially if they were going to keep passing me every minute or so. My second walk break at 20 minutes in coincided with one of theirs at the same time we were synced up. I decided to throw a bit of caution to the wind by locking into their slightly faster than my original minimum target pace and start doing their run walk intervals instead of the 9:1 ones I trained for.

Initially I was running with my headphones in listening to running podcasts, as I usually do when I run. However I could hear people having conversations around me. I am right on the border of introverted and extroverted but as I said earlier for some reason, perhaps because I was doing this whole thing solo, I was very much in more of an extroverted mode. With other people making some small talk I decided to make some small talk as well. So I took the headphones out and just listened to the conversation around me and engaged in some as well. It was the usual banter like: “Which race are you running?”, “Have you run a marathon before?”, “Where are you from?”, et cetera. In the initial miles when the group was much larger I kept popping my headphones in when it seemed I wasn’t going to be having any more conversations but after 20 minutes or so I decided to just leave them out for a while so as to invite more conversation potential.

Our pacer was a shorter young woman who races ultra marathons. She had a little plastic sheet on the post with the giant “4:45” sign that listed the elapsed time she was supposed to hit for each of the mile markers. She was very much enjoying making conversation with the front of the packers. I stayed tucked in more in the middle of the pack to start. Running with us were some more talkative sorts that were engaging with her.

There was the older guy from the Carribean, I’d estimate in his mid-to-late 60s who was talking about some of the other distance events things he did. He ran as a younger man but it was the death of his father that brought him back to running later in life. Going on runs was one of the father/son things they bonded over in his youth. With his father’s passing he felt like it would be a good way to honor his dad by picking up distance running again. He’s been eating up miles ever since.

Then there was the boistrous photo happy Asian guy who was always running next to me when I first joined the group. He was noteworthy to me because I could see and hear how his form was jamming his foot into the ground with a lot of forward force. I kept thinking, “I bet he could see a lot of improvement in efficiency from gait analysis like the kind I did.” But I had yet to complete a marathon well so who the hell was I to be making assessments. He seemed to be breathing pretty heavily for so early in as well so I just thought to myself, “I hope he isn’t gassing himself and can’t finish.” As the initial miles piled in and the pictures in the back of the pack were insufficient he ran ahead a bit so he could get a photo of the entire group for his album. I would have liked a copy of that and of course could have taken one myself but I didn’t. Instead of tucking back in he stayed in the front after the pacer struck up a conversation. “Have you run a marathon before?” “Oh yes!” He said, “This is my 20th…”. “Wow he’s run 20 marathons?” I thought to myself. It was an impressive sentiment to the pacer too who started congratulating him on the accomplishment as well, but he hadn’t finished. “This is my 20th marathon this year.” Now we were genuinely impressed. He continued to tell his story about picking up distance running back in the late 2010s. He’s run over 200 marathons since then. His form may not look great to me and he may be breathing a lot harder than I would think would be wise but I guess after 200 of these things he’d know a lot better than I how to do these things.

As the miles, minutes, and hours kept building I was pretty shocked at how rock steady my heart rate was. It was getting hotter and we were sweating more but still my heart rate was staying between the high 140s and the mid-160s. It was perhaps a little bit higher than I wanted and out of Zone 2 but my breathing was still very easy, especially compared to most of the people around me. They weren’t kidding about the path being mostly shady which I’m sure helped. The way they worked the course we were running through a lot of neighborhood offshoots of a smaller back road type thing. There were many beautiful houses, at the very least they were nice looking homes. There were a couple of larger mansion like homes along those miles but we definiteley weren’t running through the Beverly Hills of Jacksonville or anything.

At the eight mile mark the half marathoners broke off from the marathoners. Some of the earlier people I thought were stronger had already started falling back which had reduced our numbers. It wasn’t until this break when I looked back that I saw we were down to about a dozen people. At this point I still hadn’t put my headphones back in. It seemed we’d be becoming a tighter group anyway so I didn’t want to either. I was sort of just Zenning out on the moment even if I didn’t have another word of conversation anyway. I did get into some more conversations with people around me. Most of us were more casual runner types. The guy I talked to the most had just completed the NYC Marathon a few weeks before. He turns 50 in 2025 and wanted to complete 50 marathons by the time he turned 50. He had ten more to go, or something like that. So even though he was still feeling NYC a bit he was cranking out the miles.

As we crossed the 13 mile, or half marathon point things were looking and feeling really good! The half marathon split was actually faster than the half marathon I ran back in April. That is a bit of a harder one-for-one comparison since it had more terrain than this one did, but it’s not like I ran it in the Rockies or anything. It was much much colder as well. My average heart rate was slightly lower, at 146 bpm versus 151. But all in all I think that showed how much more tuned up my body was compared to April. That was with a month of recovering from COVID as well, which knocked my performance down a peg for a bit. I really wanted to start cranking the pace up but I decided to stick with it for a little while longer. I was just noticing that compared to most of my fellow runners I wasn’t breathing hard at all. I could carry on a full blown conversation as if we were sitting at lunch. So that was a good sign, for me anyway. One guy that we started passing that joined our pack was really breathing hard. He was a young fellow, mid-20s, that I decided to bring up a bit of conversation. “How’s your race going so far?” I asked. “Not bad, I just haven’t trained for this at all.” Not at all? That’s a tall order but it seems like a constant refrain from people that day. “No. I ran a 5K last month for the first time and thought I should try a marathon next.” This guy was going from a 5K to a marathon in a month? I don’t think my 20 year old body could have done that ever. We caught up with another guy and woman who also joined us for several miles after the half marathon mark. We made some pleasant chit chat but it was a similar story as the woman on the bus earlier this morning: didn’t get the training they wanted in but had signed up for the race so was going to do it anyway.

We switched pacers at the 14 mile mark. I ended up having more conversations with her than the previous one, so was telling her about my plans to think about pushing ahead at some point and hoping I didn’t bonk. I caveated that by saying that’ll probably play out with them passing me towards the end. She laughed and agreed. I still used the intervening miles to test my theory about how much was left in my legs.

First thing I tried was I stopped to grab some pictures of things I saw on the outward leg. The race was pretty much an out and back. There was this bizarre looking tree with a primary branch as thick as the trunk of this very old giant tree. It was also around where I saw a placard for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s family home. I had no idea she had a house down in Florida. I always pictured her writing away and living out her days in New England. By taking some moments to do that I then had to play catch up. Would my legs tolerate running much faster for a bit longer? Indeed they did and then some. About mile 16 I decided to do the other way. I ran ahead to the next aid station and then did slow walk longer until they caught up with me. That went well too. I decided then that if I was still feeling strong at the 20 mile mark then I was going to try to run the last 10K, or 6.2 miles, at a 10 minute mile pace.

Between miles 16 and 20 things weren’t one hundred percente rosy though. My legs were feeling fine. My breathing was great. MY heart rate was staying locked in that some zone almost like clock work but my fueling strategy was starting to falter. The idea was for me to eat one Clif Blok gummie every ten minutes. That was going to coincide with my walking break every ten minutes. It also makes it so that I could keep track of using one sleeve an hour since the sleeve had six gummies. The problem was that I wasn’t feeling that I was getting enough water to keep that up. As I was working my way through the end of the third sleeve the viscous gumminess seemed to linger more. When I would brush the sweat off my face it felt gritty. That meant I was expelling a lot of salt. I was also getting a bit of a dull headache. I didn’t want to throw my electrolytes too far out of balance but I couldn’t get any more water at the aid stations than I already was. I had been taking two at each one instead of one. I really wish I had one of the hydration packs two of the other runners had. At about the 18 mile mark I decided to not eat any more gummies. I was a little ahead of where I was supposed to be anyway. I’d keep trying to get as much water as possible but that was going to be it for the fuel.

As I crossed the 20 mile mark things felt great. It was basically just me, the pacer, and another woman running near the front with a handful of stragglers behind us. I decided to break out just after we crossed that mark, cranking my pace up to 10 minutes per mile. At first things felt really good. When I hit the 21 mile mark I got my pace down to 10:18. That was pretty solid and I felt I had a bit more speed so I kept up trying to incrementally improve. One of the staff photographers managed to catch a picture of me just near the peak of my performance:

Unfortunately things started to fall apart shortly after this. My speed concept was to run just slightly faster but to cut the walk breaks to every two minutes instead of every one minute. By the end of mile 22 despite feeling like I was putting out just as much effort as I did in mile 22 I actually running 30 seconds per mile slower. I was basically at the same pace I was at with the Galloway group! I tried to push forward stronger a bit longer but it wasn’t working so I reverted back to the original run/walk pacing of we were using. That held for a bit but as Mile 24 approached I was instead doing run 30 seconds followed by walking 30 seconds more often than the 60/30 split. Slowly around mile 24, just as I predicted, the Galloway group passed me. I say “group” but it was literally just the pacer and that one woman. I made a self-deprecating joke about the situation and joined them. I held easily with them before I’d just finish it up with them in the end, no big deal.

The problem was even with the social energy of running with them I just couldn’t keep up that pace with them any longer. My legs were just too gassed. I let them leave me in the dust and I returned to my much longer run walk intervals. About 24.5 miles in is where I was doing more walking than running. My pace for miles 25 and 26 dropped to 13:52 and 14:14, respectively. That’s certainly faster than my fastest fast walking. But it wasn’t a lot of running. I was kicking myself for making that push the way I did. Could I have finished strong if I just stuck with them the whole time or would I have hit the wall anyway? Would I have been able to avoid this zone if I brought fuel without electrolytes or if I had more water? All these variables were crossing my mind to distract me from the fact I still had a couple more miles to go. As I rounded out the end of the 26th mile I had more energy to start running more frequently, more like the previous part of the race. It wasn’t even crowd energy since they had us running in through the training fields. It was only the last 0.1 miles or so that were on the track in the stadium where the crowd energy was apparent. Perhaps it was my brain realizing the finish was literally in sight.

I ran the entirety of the half lap of the track and the lead up to the stadium, finishing the race with a pace just slower than my lowest target of 11:09 and an official finish time of 4:52:36.

Post Race Celebration and Initial Recovery

First order of business after crossing the finish line for me was to get more water, lots of water. Thankfully they were handing out bottles of water along with medals as we crossed. Next up was to get some real food. There was a table where they were handing out snacks, fruit, and stew. I really wanted some stew but they long ago ran out. A banana and packet of peanut butter crackers would do more than just fine. With medal, water, and food in hand I made my way to the soccer net/football goal posts to have something to balance myself against as I did some post run stretching. I saw many people laying down on the ground and crashing out that way. My legs were feeling pretty tight so I was afraid if I got down on the ground getting back up on my own could be a challenge. Besides it’s a good idea to keep walking after a distance run anyway. I wolfed down the bottle of water and banana before starting my stretches. It was just in time for me to give a congratulations to one of the late comers to the Galloway Group that ultimately made it across the line several minutes after me. I then did my usual Peloton post-run guided stretching while nibbling away at the crackers. The one bottle of water wasn’t cutting it so after walking around a bit more I searched out for another bottle. As the race was winding down in 45 minutes or so provisions in general were starting to get more scarce but I was able to score one more. This one I sipped on more as I made my way to catch the bus back.

It didn’t occur to me that the bus dropped us off on a road that had been blocked off for the race in the morning. So there was a good chance that isn’t where we were going to be picked up. I slowly hobbled my way over to where the bus dropped us off. Sure enough it was now a busy road with all the curb space taken up with parked cars. Obviously the bus was picking us up somewhere on the school campus grounds then. Looking around I thought I saw the top of a bus in an area to the right of the gym. So slowly, even slower than before, I hobbled my way that way too. Even with the stretching, eating, more water, and not letting myself stop moving my legs were getting more and more uncooperative. Thankfully I had located the bus, confirmed by the same nice driver we had that morning waiting for us to board. I got ready to do a step up and my legs were really starting to have some problems with that concept. I therefore grabbed the grab bar for the stairs to help steady myself as I put substantial effort into scaling the couple of steps of the bus. That’s a preview to how things would be in very old age. The bus was only one quarter full so I just found the first row and sat down.

Sitting down legit felt good but after that horrible performance on the stairs I was afraid I’d have problems getting back up when we got back to the hotel. That was for later though. In the mean time I took a funny sticking my tongue out selfie just to catch my moment of relief, joy, and exhaustion. It was then I noticed how big and flaky the salt crystals on my cheek had gotten during the run. As I described it to my coach, it was like fine fleur de sel salt. The effect was even more pronounced by the time I got back to the hotel room and the sweat had mostly finished drying:

Between the waiting for the appointed departure time, having to drop people off at a parking lot where racers could stash their cars, and the trip between all the stops it was a good half hour of me sitting there on the bus. The longer we sat the more concerned I was about my legs being totally seized up. I could also tell I and the rest of the runnners had a pig pen farm animal aura about us. I couldn’t wait to get cleaned up and start the real recovery. Finally back at the hotel I slowly tried standing up. My legs were initially much more uncooperative but within a few steps they felt just as creaky, for better or worse, as they did on the last walk to the bus. The steps down were slightly easier than the steps up, which is a bit backwards for me. Then the long slow walk to the room across the large lobby and hallway began. An older portly couple in front of me that just checked in turned around half way there offering to step aside so I could speed past. I assured them, “Don’t worry you aren’t limiting my speed at all.” I kept hobbling down the hallway to the elevator then room. This was, I feared, going to be as painful as the last marathon recovery was.

End of Day One

First order of business was getting freshened up and more fuel. I had another big piece of sourdough bread and a Coca-cola as I got out of my running clothes. My anti-chaffing plan worked better than the times I practiced it in some areas but much worse than it ever had in others, as evidence by a bit of blood on the shirt. Mental note for next time. I took a nice long hot shower to totally relax and clean up. I was then trying to determine the attire for the afternoon. I had dinner at 5:30 pm with a friend that lives in town so I had a few hours to kill. Before that though I wanted to concentrate on recovery. I thought I’d be doing a sweatpants, sweatshirt thing, but even with the room cranked down to an unusually cold for me, 72 F, I was still feeling like I was running hot. So I just laid out in shorts and a t-shirt on the couch with my legs elevated slightly. That’s supposed to encourage recovery. I could tell my heart was racing faster than normal. Certain muscles seemed like they wanted to start seizing up for no reason, especially in my feet and calves, but they never did. I would actively work against that by shifting positions slightly. I did nod off briefly but not as much as I expected. After 20 minutes or so I stay laid out but stopped trying to nod off. I instead just browsed the internet on my phone a bit to see if I would get tired. After a while I got up to get some more water, getting a bit of a head rush. Obviously my heart rate variability was taking a hit from the heavy work too.

Now that I was up and about again I decided to walk around the room to see how my legs felt. They were still tight but nothing like they were before. The hotel had a pool with a hot tub which I decided to avail myself of. At this point the walk to the elevator was far easier than the walk before had been. The pool was mostly empty except for this older couple that was also enjoying the hot tub. He was the fastest finisher for his age group, 75 and up. They both had quite a life of stories and were fun to talk to. Towards the end mother and daughter pair showed up. The daughter won the under 18 age group in the marathon, which was her first. We all talked about training, racing, the issues of getting older and the like. As I started feeling like I was overheating I decided to head back up to the room and try to get a real nap before dinner.

I kept hydrating more along the way, including with some complementary decaf coffee in the lobby to take up to the room. I managed to zonk out a bit more that time but still waking up with plenty of time to catch the hotel manager happy hour, one free drink in the bar, before my friend and her husband picked me up for dinner. Upon waking up I was completely shocked how good my legs felt. It was almost too good to be true. Whereas after my first marathon I had full blown, what I term, rigor mortis for a couple of days. I literally couldn’t walk up or down stairs properly the day of or after the marathon. I would sort of vault my way down with the railings and waddle my way up with even less finesse than I had tackling the bus stairs just after the race. But walking around the room my legs felt less tired and sore than after some of my training runs in November. Thinking this must be wishful thinking I made my way out of the room to the stairwell to try the ultimate test of actually walking up a flight of stairs. For sure my legs still had fatigue and a little soreness but it was nothing that was limiting my range of motion or my ability complete a flight of stairs with the speed and agility of a normal person. Holy shit!

I got dressed up for dinner and made my way down to the happy hour. The nice older couple from the hot tub were at the bar so we continued our conversation from earlier. I noshed on some pretzels and chips as well before my friends arrived. They took me, and a big group of their friends, to a steak house where I had a nice piece of fish and some veggies washed down with a glass of wine and a lot of water. Getting up after sitting dow for 90 minutes was a bit like getting off the bus earlier but within a relatively short time my legs were back to the same state they were in before dinner.

It had been a thoroughly exhausting day that started at 4 am so it wasn’t long before I was fast asleep way earlier than usual again.

First Day (and Weeks) of Recovery

I definitely had some weird dreams and a couple of awake periods through the night but when 4:45 rolled around the next morning I had had a full nights sleep. What were my legs and body going to feel like today? Getting up and walking around they were even more limber than they were the day before. Again, I had training weeks where I had far more DOMS and muscle problems than this! The real proof would be how I did during me prescribed 30 minute walking workout on the treadmill. I made my way down to the gym and started off the machine at a slower than normal pace before eventually getting it down to a normal 17 minute per mile faster walk. Once I started getting the speed up I could definitely tell there was residual muscle soreness and wonkiness I’d have to work out but it wasn’t horrible. My couple of days of fully seized up legs and a week of soreness didn’t appear like they were going to unfold this time. My coach was going to have me do some easy recovery promoting weeks after the race regardless but for me this was a great development.

After how much I bit it during my first marathon and the more painful recovery my brain had a bit of aversion to the whole concept. It’s sort of like how when you get sick on some food your brain decides it has a revulsion to it. It was the same sort of thing. Even though my conscious mind was looking forward to the concept of running a marathon the pain and struggles of the first one really built up some flight response about the whole concept when push moment of actually doing it approached. This easy recovery though was putting all of that into the background.

The biggest problem I had for the first day, and even the second, is I couldn’t quench my thirst. I could just drink and drink but I was always feeling thirsty. The hunger cues were pretty much fine. My resting heart rate locked back down pretty fast as did my heart rate variability. They took a beating on marathon day itself but were back to normal the next day and stayed that way for the rest of the month.

The training plan for recovery, a reverse taper, was extremely light: no weight workouts, a lot of yoga/stretching, 30 minute walks the first week, and then a mix of short easy runs and walks the second. While day-to-day my legs felt fine the obviousness of the need for more recovery time showed up int he workouts. Yoga stretches that would be easy for me could create the short out of the blue cramp somewhere during a pose. Changing the form and doing some dynamic stretching would work it out. But it’s clear from that that the muscles needed some TLC. During my first runs I felt some pain in my left and right foot near the end of the first half of the run. Some walking breaks and a bit more of the run and all that would work out as well. By two weeks out the easy run felt fine but the heart rate was still a bit more elevated for the same pace. All of that is coming into a fully recovered state however.

Looking Forward

I already had my consultation with my coach about what we want to try to do for 2025. I know I probably have some false sense of security now since I was so pleased with the performance and recovery, even with that couple miles of bonk. I can’t get too big for my britches though. This was a flat marathon in nearly ideal weather conditions, minus the high humidity. A marathon is still a hard feat and I’m not sure it is possible to ever make it feel as easy as 10Ks and half marathons feel to me now. Maybe after some more years of training it could be I don’t want to set myself up for failure by getting too ambitious with my next race selection. My coach already has a great next marathon in mind that takes place 11 months from now. That’ll give us plenty of time to work on continuing to get faster and approach my theoretical marathon pace, according to aerobic threshold benchmarks, of 9:30. Who knows maybe that could be exceeded as well. I plan on taking it one step at a time and just enjoying the journey and not worry too much about the contrived goals we’ll continue to setup.