Just after I blew away my PR at Hartford, I developed a strange ankle injury. This injury was difficult to treat, and I probably stayed off of it a little too long. I had run a total of 43 miles from Oct 15th to November 30th, with about half of that in the last week of November. I noticed that my ankle felt better the more that I used it, so I jumped right back into my training plan, and ran an 18 miler the first weekend back. I was able to mirror the training that I did for Hartford almost exactly, and worked out for 31 consecutive days without any issues besides soreness.
Coming into the new year I had completed several pace runs (13-15mi) at 6:19-6:30 pace, and I felt confident that I had done all I could to get back in shape. My soreness faded, and as I entered the taper, I started to feel great. I decided that I was going to stick with my original plan, and try to run a little faster in the first half of Disney, than I did in Hartford.
The night before the race, I went to bed around 8pm for the 3am wake up. I had just got to sleep when a moron from a local Italian restaurant shoved a menu in between the door and door frame. It startled me, and it took a few seconds for me to figure out what happened (it made a loud SHHHH noise). I saw the menu sticking out of the door and went back to sleep. About an hour later, someone else decided to pull said menu out of my door, creating the same loud SHHHH noise, waking me up again. At this point it was nearly 11pm, and I was now wide awake. I laid there for another hour before I decided to pick up my phone and play some games to get my mind off everything. The last time I looked at the clock, it was around 1:40am... alarm went off at 2:55am.
From this point on, I followed my plan exactly. Ate everything when I was supposed to, drank only a little on the way to the start, and used the facilities. I didn't feel too bad for only a couple hours of sleep, and I figured since I slept good the night before, I'd be fine.
Once we got to the corrals, it was clear that there were more people than previous years. It might have been because of the relay, I'm not sure. It took us a long time to shuffle to the starting line, and my corral was a good quarter mile away from the entrance. There were too many people, so I hopped the fence and ran along the side of the corrals to get to my spot with about 10 minutes to spare. I cut my way through the crowd, and walked right past Patrick P. without even seeing him. He followed me, and we wished each other good luck once I stopped moving.
The temps at the start were warmer than I expected, and the last time I checked, it was 56F with 93% humidity. Humidity was supposed to rise up to 98% in the next few hours, and there was a pretty good amount of fog in the air. No wind though. I decided to use the first 5 miles to evaluate my heart rate, and adjust the pace if necessary.
The race started on time, unlike the previous couple years, and I was able to get moving pretty quickly. I passed a few hundred people in the first mile and settled into a relaxed 6:35 pace. There were several others running this pace around me, so I used them to navigate the course in the dark areas. The fog was condensing on my sunglasses, making it difficult to see.
I hit the 5 mile split in just under 33 minutes, feeling alright. My heart rate was behaving, and I wasn't sweating that bad, so I maintained pace. Throughout several sections of the course, I noticed either the smell of diesel exhaust or sewage from their treatment plant. This year, it looked like they opened up parts of the course to some bus and car traffic, and the stagnant air wasn't helping with that.
I passed the 10 mile marker in 1:05:47. I got a little amped up as I entered Magic Kingdom, since the crowd cheered loudly for me as I rounded the corner (nobody else around me at that point). I ran through the castle and looked for the trumpeters that Debra S. has told me about each year we've run it. It was too dark for me to see them if they were there.
As I exited the park, I noticed that my quads were starting to get a little tired. I decided to switch up my stride a bit, relax, and took it down a notch, hitting a 6:40 pace through the half. At this point, I had just finished my 24oz bottle of fluids, and taken in two packs of sport beans (my usual). I started feeling a little queasy, but maintained my intake plan... it turned out that eating/drinking more made that feeling go away a bit.
At mile 16, it was apparent that I may need to take a pit stop. As I approached a section of port-o-lets, I remained indecisive if I wanted to stop. It wasn't that bad, and I could keep going. I took one more look at my garmin's avg pace screen, noticed that my avg pace was now over what I needed to hit my PR, and decided to stop with the PR attempt. I wasn't feeling well, and my legs still weren't peppy, so I actually turned around to back track to the port-o-let. Spent what seemed like an hour in there (only a little over a minute) and I was on my way again.
I attempted to pick the pace back up to 6:25 or so to make up some time, but I kept feeling like I was going to hurl, so I had to back off. It wasn't until around mile 19 when the nausea went away. I tried to pick it up again, but my legs wouldn't respond. Every time I thought I was going to hit a 6:30, I hit closer to 6:50. My heart rate was low, my energy was good, and I wasn't dehydrated for a change! My legs just didn't want it.
By mile 25, I was walking through the fluid stations. I watched the 3rd and 4th place females that I had passed before my bathroom break get farther ahead of me. They were so close to each other now, and I had wondered who was going to get there first. This section of the course is very curvy. I quickly lost sight of them, and started getting angry with the course. This is the first time that I was mostly coherent at this point in the course, and I had never really noticed how bad this section was. The turns just sapped what little will I had left.
Coming into the finish, I heard one woman yell "Nice tennis shoes!". All I could think was "What?". I had been running solo for the last 4 miles or so, so I knew the comment was directed at me. As I rounded the corner to the finish I could see two people in front of me who were having a very bad day. I was catching them, but they were too far ahead. I ran it in around 7:00 pace.
I finished in 2:56:41, 55th place overall, and 16th in my age group. This is the best I have placed at Disney, and the fastest I have ran this course. I'm not unhappy with this performance by any means. I feel like I did what I could with what I had that day. Having run 10 marathons now, I've found that something goes wrong in every one of them. You just have to deal with it :)
Thanks go out to Patrick P. for hanging out with me while I watched for the finish of Debra S.'s 5th marathon!
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