Race Report: Marine Corps Marathon

Location: Arlington, Rosslyn, and Crystal City, VA and Washington, D.C.
Date: 10/27/2013
Time: 7:55 AM
Weather: Start - low 40s, Finish - low 50s

Time: 3:27:17
Overall: 1221/23,380
Division: 172/1628 (25-29)

THE COURSE

It's not exactly easy to describe 26.2 miles through the DC area. There are just too many landmarks to use as points of reference. I'll do my best to sum them up as quick as possible.

The marathon starts in front of Arlington National Cemetery (which comes after getting off at the Pentagon Metro stop and a long walk in the dark) and heads north into Rosslyn. After a quick jog to the west (up the biggest hill on the course) we headed back east and crossed the Potomac into Georgetown. From there the course heads north up Rock Creek Parkway before turning around and heading south, following the same stretch. Once leaving the Parkway, we headed south past the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Memorial, and FDR Memorial. We continued south until we hit Hains Point at the half-way mark, where we turned back to the north. At mile 16 we passed both the MLK Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial again, where we turned back to the east and made the long run from there to the Capitol. From the Capitol we headed back to the west passing in front of the Air and Space and Smithsonian Museums. After "Beating the Bridge" at mile 20 and heading southwest across the Potomac, we looped through Crystal City before one last lonely stretch in front of Arlington National Cemetery again. Finally, at mile 26, you make one last left turn and head up a short steep hill. This stretch is lined with cheering spectators and hundreds of Marines, who made me feel at least, that I couldn't show weakness, even though at that point I could barely walk. After a right turn half-way up that hill you can finally see the finish line and the Iwo Jima Memorial (Marine Corps Memorial).

WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE

Just about everything...

Out of the six marathons I've now done, this definitely had the best course, definitely had the best weather, and likely had the best spectator support (it's been a long time since I ran Chicago, so it's hard to compare).

Course - It's not hard to put together a decent marathon route that is 2/3rds contained in Washington D.C. If you put together a checklist of things you want to see, this course crosses most of them off. Georgetown, all of the Memorials (Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, FDR, MLK, WWII, Marine Corps... I've likely missed a few as well), White House, Capitol, Smithsonian...

Weather - This is never under the control of the race organizers, but late October on the eastern seaboard is typically great marathon weather. (Read that as the temps are cool, but not too cold that you need to layer for everything.)

Spectators - Honestly, there are very few places along the course that the spectators haven't managed to get out to. Most of those are because the cops just wouldn't let them there. Another piece of this that was great was that so much of the course (~10 miles) was contained in the Mall area of D.C., which allowed for friends and family (or in my case wife and family) to see you in multiple places.

WHAT WASN'T SO GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE

Very few things...

The walk from the Pentagon Metro station in the cold and the dark kind of (did) suck...

The line to get into the expo (about half an hour) sucked...

Transportation getting out of Rosslyn on the Metro would have sucked, but we called an audible (called my awesome Aunt and Uncle who were a couple miles away driving to the Metro stop they were going to pick us up at) and were picked up about two blocks from the finish festival.

OVERALL RACE THOUGHTS

This is one of those, "Oh, what could have been" races.

Last August I had a bad case of Plantar Fasciitis pop up in both feet. I manage to heal enough to run Disney this past January, but the pains never fully went away. I managed to do most of my training runs during the lead up to MCM, but I never felt quite right in the weeks leading up to the race. I had ankle pain on any longer run, and still some residual pain in my Plantar Fascia.

My hope going into the race was that I would run about 3:15, which would have been almost a 12 minute PR. I knew that would be difficult, but if everything went well, attainable.

As the race started, I tried to stick with the 3:15 pace group, but lost them (ran away from) after about two miles. The first half of the race was pretty uneventful, other than I ran too fast...

As I hit the 12 mile mark, I knew I was in trouble. My ankle started to throb, and got pretty bad, pretty quickly. I pushed through a bit longer until I hit the half-way point. I crossed there in 1:34:27, which being just under four minutes slower than my half-marathon PR, was way too fast.

At this point, due to my ankle, I had to start walking. (Yes, it becomes quite depressing to go from trying to PR to just worrying about finishing.) At first it was run the next mile and a half, then walk for a couple minutes, but soon it was down to walk for a minute or so, then run the rest of the mile (and repeat to the next mile marker). I'll spare everyone the splits of my running/walking as the miles went by, but they slowly got worse...

Eventually I got back in front of Arlington, where I saw Vanessa and my Uncle Ed one last time, made that left hand turn and ran up to the Iwo Jima Memorial. (The one funny story I'll take away from the race was going up that hill, there were Marines lining the right-hand side of the road. As I went up the hill I gave them all high-fives and thanked them for their service, the only problem was that a Marine giving a high-five to a runner 26.1 miles into a marathon is not a fair fight. I'm pretty sure I was nearly knocked down once or twice.)

Eventually I crossed in 3:27:17, which is only 23 seconds behind my PR. Not bad, but nothing close to what I thought it could be.

Special shout-out to my beautiful wife and my amazing Aunt and Uncle, Katy and Ed Johnson, for getting up early with me, dropping me off at the Metro, running around the Mall to see me as much as possible, and just generally putting up with me.

BLING

The globe in the center of the medal spins!

Vanessa and I after the race (the jacket is awesome)