On Sunday November 27th I ran/walked my very first marathon. In some ways it was really rewarding and satisfying. In others it was a big disappointment. I’m going to write a bit about, my pre-race preparation (and the year leading up to now). The race itself, and what I’m going to do for next time.

Pre-race Preparation

I was fairly consistent in building miles coming up to the race. Ran a turkey-trot 5k in late November 2015. Then in January fairly consistently ran more and more miles until September. Ran my first 10k in April or so, the Lake Lowel marathon. Then a half in July, with a trail half in early September. At that point I was fairly burnt out and had trouble running the miles as planned. Started marathon training anyway, and for the most part it went well. Had trouble with pretty much all of the longs runs. Bonked early at everything after about 12/14 miles or so. Which ended up being about what happened during the race.

After the 10k I was trying to lose weight but never really succeeded. Unfortunately I actually gained weight, quite a bit of it in fact. I think that was a big part of why I had trouble running the miles. I’ve been trying off and on to do very low carb, high fat dieting and for quite some time it was successful. The issue I had was trying to do that and eat stuff while running. It was one of my biggest failures of the year.

The race itself

I bonked super hard. I went out too fast, was very underprepared and then ran out of energy at the midway point. I’m super disappointed because I also gave up. I could have probably powered through, but didn’t.

Next marathon changes

1. Be at race weight. The heavier I am the more wattage I’m forced to create for a given distance.
2. Build up to the mileage slower, to deal with injuries better.
3. Be ready to run faster. 5 hours of running is much harder than 3 hours.

Goals for next year

I want to make some goals that are attainable and useful for next year. It’s difficult to do more than a few things, so I’m going to explicitly choose only a few things to shoot for.

1. Lose some weight
2. Run for enjoyment
3. Cross-train for enjoyment (bike ride, XC ski, backpack/hike)