runmotozo: Osaka Marathon, "Making a rainbow together" 少し物足りない感じ

Osaka marathon is done and disgusted/dusted. I managed to break 3 and 1/2 hours but probably missed a Boston marathon qualifying time. It was awesome to run with Nanbanners and the support from Makiko/Keren was wonderful.

大阪マラソンを無事に完走したけど、少し物足りない感じ。３：２５目標出来なくて、いいわけは寝坊と最後の伸び坂。

Nanban tally:

David Abbott: 2:54
Steve 3:03
Mark 3:10
David Motozo: 3:29
Faith 3:33
Daniele 3:48
Yuko 3:56

The race itself was bittersweet. It never really goes the way you want it to go. I felt I did everything I could to get close to my goal...except for one thing...I slept through my alarm clock and the wake-up call from Meg....oops.

I was supposed to meet my comrades at the baggage area at 7 am. I woke up at 7:10. Hmmm, that's funny, the sun is shining through my window and it is supposed to be 5:30 am. Holy sheet! No time for breakfast, out the door in 7 minutes, a sprint to the train station, wolf down a rice ball on the train, arrived at 8 am on the dot, which was the baggage cut off. Than another frantic jog to find a toilet before the 8:40 am line-up cut-off. Made it with a few minutes to spare. Insert sigh of relief here...

I found Mark in A-block. We shivered for 20 minutes, contrasting the big differences in triathlon versus marathon starts. The weather was actually pretty fine, just a bit cold at the start waiting for the festivities to begin.

The gun shot send us off at 9 am sharp. My strategy was to run 4:50 pace for the first 25k or so, than pick up the pace if I still had the fuel in the tank. I figured this would get me comfortably under 3 hours, 25 minutes, good enough for Boston qualification. The first 10k was easy as it should be. Only 1 problem....

I had to go pee pee after 5k, so was searching for a close toilet from 5-10k. Found it at 10k and lost about 1 minute marking my territory. That put me back to 49:30 after 10k. A lot of work to do to get back on pace. I tried to slowly raise the speed....

The crowd support and Makiko/Keren helped. Big thumbs up.

I was slowly making progress, came in at the halfway point around 1:43. However, the 3:30 pace group caught up to me at around the halfway point. How could this be? I thought I was 2-3 minutes ahead of 3:30 marathon pace. I took my second gel (200 calories) at 21k and grit my teeth. I had some good splits from 21-34k, averaging about 4:47 pace. I took my 3rd and last gel at 30k.

At 34k, I prepared myself mentally for the final 8k, which I knew would be tough. I had done 35k as my longest real training run, excluding the 50k birthday run at a very slow pace. I knew my legs were going to tighten up around 35k. It was just a question of how much...

We hit a big hill at 36k. That did it. I had seen it in the guide book but it looked more daunting with tired legs. My speed slowed to what felt like a crawl. Like walking up stairs when you are winded.

Finally made it to the top, but the damage was done. 5:18 pace on that 37k split. The next downhill I got under 5 minute pace but that proved to be the last fast one. My legs were seizing up. It was a big struggle just to maintain 5:15 pace for the last excruciating 3k. I managed to get under 3:30 by a smidgen, listening to the 3:30 pacer countdown as I ran hard for the line (the pace group must have started before me).