My First Marathon: Pittsburgh 2012

Summary

To not hold your attention for too long, I finished my first marathon in 3:11:13. The goal was to break 3 hours. Having started a half with 1:27:53, I got sudden cramps/spasms in my feet and was unable to continue running at any acceptable pace. I blame my running shoes and inadequate feet training and look forward to future marathons.

Preparation

I ran about ~941 miles since mid-January to prepare to this marathon. That comes down to 100-120 hours of pure running. The weekly mileages (not including the race itself) are shown on a graph below.

My weekly mileages. A datapoint here is a pair (a week, miles I ran this week).

Closer to the marathon, everything went sort of great: I tapered and didn't get any extra weight in that period, as I would do in my track-and-field times.

Expo

There was an exposition devoted to the marathon. Gosh! That was runner's paradise. It's a miracle that I didn't spend all my money there because they had all sorts of stuff. The main idea of the expo was that people would show up to collect their race packages and buy lots of useless stuff. AFAIK, this is a very successful idea :)

Expo: people collecting their bags/shirts.

Expo: the stuff to spend money on.

Expo: people spending money.

The race day: morning

I got up at 5am, and literally springed out of the bed.

My race day essentials.
I didn't think up anything better than just printing my name on my bib.

Me in the race day's morning. Almost fully equipped.

The marathon started and finished in Downtown. It was fabulous in the early morning, but I should skip on poetic stuff here.

The race day: course

The course is medium-hilly, with one big several miles-long climb and occasional hills.

The maraton elevation chart. X-axis is miles; Y-axis is elevation in feet.
Miles 8-14 are mad.

On the map, Pittsburgh Marathon looks like a giant fish.

The weather was great at the start, around 15C, but for the second half it felt more like 25-30C under direct sunlight.

The race day: first half

The first half went pretty good for me. Even though, according to a popular opinion, I went in too fast, it felt really good for me. 6:30ish/mile pace was fine. I passed a lot of people (who returned this favor in the second half) and felt really great.

Thanks to Paulo who came to support me at the half-marathon mark.

The race day: second half

In the second half, two things happened:

• My feet started to cramp (or, spasm) at mile 15-17. What the hell that was, I do not know. Probably, my running shoes were too aggressive and made me run on my toes. Or feet training was not sufficient for my running style. In other words, lungs - ok, heart - ok, thighs - kinda ok, feet - completely devastated.
• The sun came out and heat increased. It wasn't pleasant at all. Several hours after the run, my thermostat shows 35C in the shade. The heat generally destabilized the situation.

So I realized that it would be nice just to finish the distance, chilled out and started eating oranges, offered at some aid stations. To fight the heat, I'd just pour water from offered classes on me. I stopped approximately once a mile to make sure my calves don't get too sore because of misbehaving feet.

A couple of photos from the second half is already available, thanks to Sven.

Me overusing my left foot.

Overusing the same foot again.

The race day: spectators

There were like 50000 spectators in this race. They sang, played music, shouted slogans, and just generally supported runners. I didn't honestly expect so much support.

They had cool banners as well. In addition to usual names and encouragements, there were really nice phrases. Too bad I didn't remember that much. "Not everyone will drive 26.2 miles today" was one example. Hopefully, I'll recall more.

I was surprised by how many people read my tag and used my name while encouraging. That was awesome, thanks everyone!

The race day: the result

I was #138 among 3101 male marathon runners. There were 2174 women in the marathon as well. Other 20000 people ran half-marathon and marathon relays.

My results. Pretty bad if you ask me.

I got two major things after finishing: a medal and a poster. A medal is little compensation for my today's failure, so the poster (that was intended to be a sunscreen) will remind me that I still need to run a marathon faster than 3 hours.

That's what every Pittsburgh Marathon'12 finisher gets.

A poster. I couldn't even attach it to a wall correctly.

I congratulate all the runners and spectators of this awesome event!

Check out more pictures.

Future work

I registered to run a Mojave Narrows Half-Marathon on June 30 this year (report). I also plan to run a marathon the next Fall.