Brian Johnson (MM8807, HF7287, DA707)
The Blogger occasionally gets out to race
State 16 (and holding)
Marathon or better number 29
7 Bridges Marathon. Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I wasn’t sure what to expect the way that may year had gone.
I broke my wrist in late May, and had multiple setbacks to my run plan. I actually got started 3 weeks ago.
Last week I ran Virtual Boston in 8:44. Today I just wanted to finish.
The start of the race was cool. Loved the DJ. I even met a few Marathon Maniac friends along the way.
The main draw of the course is the 7 bridges. Of course, to get to the bridges there are a lot of hills along the way. That seemed to be the story of the day…hills. lots of hills.
There were 250 (ish) people running the marathon. By about mile 7 the half Marathoners had split off and were doing their own thing while we kept going.
The city has a lot of boardwalks that are very cool. There were long sections of uphill boardwalks. But there were a lot of downhill boardwalks to.
The worst feeling was running over some of the bridges when you could feel them bouncing.
I started the day with a plan. Run 2 min run 1 min walk.
I was talking to one of the pacers who said he was going to be doing 4:30 run/30 second walk for the first 10 miles, the 3:30 run/30 second walk for the next 10, then 2 min 1 one min walk for the last 6 miles.
I decided to use a variant of that. It went well until about mile 17. Then I hit a lot of the uphill heading back into town.
The walking became more frequent.
Having been a run coach at one point in my life, you don’t lose those skills and apply them at the oddest time.
Earlier in the race I had met Amy. In mile 20 we met up again. She was not having a good race day for varying reasons. I spent most of the next 6 miles with her helping her to complete the race.
The race had a 7 hour time limit. She and I were the last 2 (officialish) finishers at 7:01.
With 3 weeks of true training, I finished and was 1:45 faster than a week ago. I had walked a lot, but my running was not there.
It’s now time to rest and then train the correct way for March.
