Cleveland Marathon 2013: My First-time Sub-3 in Blazing Heat

A short summary of the race:

• Date: Sunday, May 19, 2013. 
• Place: Cleveland, Ohio. 
• Distance: 26.2 miles.
• Time: 2:58:16. Average Pace:  6:48 min/mile. Place: 32 overall (out of 2253), 27 gender (out of 1408), 7 age group (out of 83).
• + First time below 3 hours
• + First time never walked
• + First time negative split
• + Not hilly course
• - Terrible heat
• - Terrible chafing
• - My toughest marathon so far

A long summary of the race weekend you can read below. And should.

The City of Cleveland, a Hermit's Dream

This time my photo-powered narration takes you to a relatively small city of Cleveland, which has 200k people in it, with 2 mln in the metropolitan area. I had a day before and after the marathon to explore Cleveland. In one sentence, it's cool museums, lots of sunshine, green lawns, nice foods, and wide (and shitty) roads.

The road from city A to city B always looks the same in the East.
I saw some cows.

 

A typical Cleveland suburban look.

The marathon expo took place, as usual, in the city's largest exposition center. It looked like a plane hangar. This meant that runners would fly and crash like planes the next day.

Haters say it's ugly.

I say it's big and brown.
This leaves me inconclusive.

Cleveland is known as a pro-liberty place. Equality, liberty, all that. They even installed a huge stamp to remind the citizens (who apparently forgot too quickly). I know no other way to interpret the biggest stamp in the world than as a monument to bureaucracy. 

Yes, it the mirrored. 

No, I wouldn't come up with a mirrored stamp in my first attempt.

Nevertheless, there's still lots of inequality in Cleveland. For example, there's a superior building.

And it stands on Superior street. 

Let me now give you a few looks of Cleveland downtown.

Road work is everywhere.
But given the condition of the roads, I would say do even more work.

Some things.

Inside a not-yet-open plaza.

A construction worker got pissed.

Too much glass.

NASA's Glenn Research Center.
I heard a lot about it last summer.

KeyBank building.

Simple and strong are not exclusive when talking about logos.

The Browns Stadium hosted the start and the finish line for the race.

Even in Cleveland there are boring scenes.

Cleveland hosts the Cleveland Clinic, a top 4 hospital in the US.

...and many other hospitals too.

Overall, it's nice to be sick in Cleveland. On the other hand, it's nice to be healthy in Cleveland: then you can visit all these nice parks and botanical gardens.

A hairy gate?

A very cool place.

A chapel in a cemetery.

Inside a botanical garden.

Outside a botanical garden.

This butterfly was huge.

Much chairs aren't much better.

It's a Totoro tree.

One more cool aspect of Cleveland is the detail of urban design.

A boy is hitting his dad with a stick.
His mom is defending with a shovel.

Are they fencing?

A broken encoding trash bin.
Dump your core dumps here.

The art scene is artsy.

A good visual metaphor for how I felt after the marathon.

"The system has no future for the youth...
The revolution does"

This was a very knowledgeable dude.

Oh yeah, Cleveland is a rock-and-roll capital of some sort. I am completely impartial to this.

Another thing about Cleveland is that all policemen work in pairs (not gay).

Both in downtown...

...and in the suburbs.

One of my good luck charms (in addition to a spicy Indian meal that kept disrupting my GI system since Friday) was a 26.2 bill

At first I didn't see out the opportunity.

Verdict on Cleveland: if there was something professionally valuable for me in Cleveland, I wouldn't mind living there for several years.

Race 

The morning started with a little below 60F and lots of clouds. I hoped for a rain, but it never happened.

The race started near the Browns Stadium, and predictably restroom lines were annoying. Men restrooms in football stadiums are optimized for large quantities of beer, but not for a pre-race pasta dinner. Hope you get what I say here.

Yes I looked goofy.
It's inevitable in a marathon anyway - just a question of time.

Then the whole thing started.

Moments before the start: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC1i8Tljlkc
The start: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpHLIcHexaM
(for some reason embedding doesn't work now)

For the first 12 miles I worked with the fastest pacing group -- 3 hr pace. I felt very easy, and I kept resisting the urge to leave them behind. In the last hour of my race I witnessed the fate of many runners who could not resist this urge, and this fate was not enviable.

Here's our pacing group early in the race. I'm on the right, behind the orange shirt.

The course was very windy, but at some point that started to be a big help in cooling down, rather than a disadvantage. Staying with a group early on offered an additional advantage of wind shielding.

Somewhere mid-race.

At around mile 15 the sun penetrated the cloud defense and started destroying people. At the point when it first came out, I saw a billboard showing 68F. I bet it became over 70 in just a few minutes. After another 20 minutes I started passing people who, as I recalled, started the race near me. There was one guy who declared going for below 2:50, but couldn't keep up given how hot it started to be.

This is the winner finishing it with 2:17, and the sun is already doing its dire job.

Nevertheless, I was able to even slightly bump up the pace. That costed me some pain eventually, but I was able to keep up until the finish line.

During my last mile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAejFDcFc98

Dudes with visors stick together.

Through the last miles one of my strong motivations was this huge muscular dude who ran some 100-200 yards in front of me. I was wondering how can someone his size run this fast (not that I was running very fast, but still). Another motivation was a 16 year old girl who was about to beat me (she didn't succeed, but was injured mid-race).

Having lost a few points, I'm relying on a cone to not fall down.

So here's my lessons learned.

What worked:

• Starting slower: my first 10 miles felt like walking. Going with a pace group and knowing that we'd have to part our ways wasn't as stressful as I expected. With my second half finished in 1:28:43, this makes a 50 sec negative split.
• Superloose shoe lacing: it felt almost like no lacing, but it helped keep my feet and calves loose.
• Lots of nutrition: I drank at every aid station (except one where a wheelchair guys rode between me and the water) + 5 gels.
• A visor: it is less distracting than sunglasses and protects the face from heating up. This affects the perception of the overall temperature a lot. 

What didn't work: 

• Eating Indian food on the race week. Totally a bad idea. 
• Getting enough water. I guess on hot days I should alternate water with gatorade, while I preferred to just pour water on myself and drink gatorade.

I extend my gratitude to:

• Annie, who took her time to support my lame self through the race weekend. 
• Volunteers -- even those who forgot to yell what they have in their hands. 
• A 3:00 group pacer Paul. He did a terrific job explaining the strategy, warning about turns and road holes, and telling stories. He preferred to stop at every aid station, and I was weirded out and sped up until I realized that the whole group is behind me. 
• An old lady who decided that driving along with the runners wasn't a biggie.
• Runner #3421 Eric Norton who worked with me around miles 19-24 and helped me hang on. He did a great job with 2:59:13. 
• The Cleveland Clinic finish line team. They know for what.
• Medal designers. It's easy to make a mess out of garish colors, but they avoided this pitfall.

Cleveland marathon verdict: I liked the race and the city, but no way I'm doing it any soon again, unless global cooling kicks in.

Right now I'm planning my next marathon in Quebec City in August. Let's see if all the details work out.