I travel down to Philly about five times a year. My brother and his family just bought a home fifteen minutes on foot for city centre and it's a terribly convenient train ride from Penn to 30th street station. My pre-race tradition of eating a large chocolate dessert the night before was born exactly a year ago before the '07 distance run at Naked Chocolate, a boutique chocolate shop on Walnut btw. 13th and 14th. This is typically where we meet after I hit up the expo.
After a yarge piece of smooth chocolate fudge cake we walked back to chez Dennis. Please note the all inclusive 'we' - Zoey Jane is now mobile! Liz still insists that no child of hers is going to be an athlete but I'm forever going to be a source of insurrection. Perhaps a little pair of baby Nikes is in the works? For dinner we travel to the Belgian Cafe and enjoy frites and a chicken aplenty. Since this wasn't exactly an 'A' race for me, I enjoyed a couple of fermented beverages with my sandwich. Apparently Philly is rapidly becoming a hot bed of Belgian styled ales, so when in Rome right? After dinner my brother and I joined his neighbor on the roof deck and enjoyed a round of barleywines. A terrific view of downtown Philly. Bed around 10:30...zzz
Race Day-
Let it be known now that Zoey has a new favorite toy. My 3 year old cell phone. So as I'm putting on my race gear, pinning my bib and chowing some oat-meal she manages to call Coach Aw (at 6:45 am) 3 times. Coach Aw has been away in upstate NY at a 3 day music festival so when she calls me back, thinking that I've broken my legs or something, neither of us are the most coherent. After reassuring her that I'm only going to be aiming for a 1:30 (about a 40 sec/mile step up over last week in preparation for the Marathon) I lock my phone and give it back to the inconsolable niece.
There are so many things to love about this race. It has quite possibly the best weather, ever. 55 degrees, sunny and just a hint of wind. It also kicks off at the steps of the art museum (a la Rocky) and has about 40k spectators all cheering and going wild. A hugely energetic atmosphere that gets all the runners pumped. The first few miles are in downtown, past the Liberty Bell, City Hall and another 10k spectators.
First Mile - 6:25... oops. I had checked the math when I got up and a 1:30 half equates to roughly 6:52, so I was going way too hot. Some math at the second mile showed 6:30, a little better. By mile 4 I was still averaging just a pinch over 6:30 but since I felt fine I just kept it up. It's a really fast course and going any slower would have felt like I was walking. I also noticed around mile 3 that in my confusion with Coach Aw in the morning I had left my new-fangled timing band-thingie on the kitchen table. No office score for me. No big loss however, I wasn't in this to win.
It became apparent around mile 8 that I need new shoes, my turn around was getting a little jaunty, un-cushioned. But I actually started speeding up after the Falls Bridge turn around and pulled consistent 6:15 miles from 10 to the finish. I had just read an article in the latest Runner's World about how the mind controls your fatigue level by extrapolating all these variables like body temp, weather temp, the distance to your goal and a few others. Long story short it really emphasized just how much the pain is 'all in your head'. Using that as a yardstick your mind 'creates' a level of fatigue, but it's still all in your mind. I know this is all a cliche but just thinking about this on my run helped me really push through and finish strong. Time on the clock at my finish was 1:24:56, not too bad considering how little I had prepared mentally for the race. I attribute it all to the chocolate.
Coach Aw returns from her 10 day vacation/conference/festival this afternoon, just in time for my taper week. Awesome.
Coming Up: East Hamptons Marathon 9/27/08
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