Overall: 18685 out of 23126 starters (22629 finishers)
I’ve put this off long enough. Here is my miserable recap of the Boston Marathon.
If I was really honest with myself, I knew this wasn’t going to be a good race for me. Since Disney my training has been spotty at best and the IT band issues in my right leg have only gotten worse. Still I thought (or hoped) that my endurance wouldn’t have dropped too much and I would be able to run through any discomfort from the leg. Well, so much for hoping.
Everything went pretty smoothly prior to the race. It was a little chilly but I brought enough clothes this time. I also did a pretty good job of avoiding long toilet lines. I felt pretty good in the start corrals. My legs were loose and my knee and hip felt fine. This year it took a little over 10 minutes to reach the start line. After that it was pretty slow moving. I did the same as last year and tried to move around the slow runners so I could try to work into a steady pace. I knew that I was going out a little too fast but I did that last year too and everything worked out.
The pack started thinning out a little by the 3 mile marker. When we hit the 5k marker my time was 23. I had to check my watch again because I couldn’t believe that I went out that fast. I tried to back off to a 8-8:10 pace but every time I looked at my watch I was still around 7:40. I hit the 10k mark in 47 minutes, still way too fast. At this point I knew that I was in for a long day. My leg was fine but I was already getting tired. I tried to back off some more but still hit the 15k marker in 1:12:21. By the half way point I was still near 3:30 pace but was nearly out of gas. I knew at this point I would be walking the hills.
Somewhere around 15 my hip starting acting up. I did a little walking prior to the fire station but there was no way I was going to run up the hills. After the first (of 3 Newton Hills) I started running again but the hip was really starting to hurt. Whenever I pushed off I felt a sharp pain. It wasn’t a problem going downhill so I was able to run those parts ok. I ended up running downhills, walk/run flats and walking hills until mile 21 (top of heartbreak). At the point I was totally exhausted and the pain was really getting bad. From there on out I walked everything that wasn’t downhill. I did manage to run the last stretch on Boylston St to the finish line.
This was really a worst case scenario. It was a painful experience to walk through the crowds and be passed by people that started a half hour after I did. I am glad that I stuck it out and finished though. I’ll be back to Boston next year in what will most certainly be a better experience.
