Quebec City Marathon: 2:55 or Death!

For those too wise to read everything, a brief digest:

• What: SSQ Quebec City Marathon

• When: August 25, 2013

• Where: Levis and Quebec City, Province of Quebec, Canada

• Why: to be discovered

• Result: 2:50:24, 16th overall. First half 01:25:43, second half 1:24:41. 

• Pace: 6:30/mile; 4:03/km.

• Peculiarities: 
• Small race. 
• Late start at 8:30 am. 
• Good organization.
• Plain course, with only one big hill.
• Clear skies, bad heat in the last quarter of the race.
• 2:55 or death!
• Drove 2000+ miles for it in total.
• First time I beat all the women in a marathon.
• Wet sponges is a must-have for all Spring and Summer races!

2:55.
OR.
DEATH.

Now, to the details. What a boring word, details.

Training

This summer was an intense and successful season. Despite the heat, I managed to get more miles in and work on the broken aspects of my running, namely my lactate threshold and marathon paces. I had a good company, too.

My miles per week graph for summer 2013.
The first week -- the 21st week of the year starting on May 20 --
was right after the Cleveland Marathon.
The last week, 34th, included the Quebec City Marathon and ended on August 25.

I had 931 miles and 14 weeks to prepare, of which 1 week was recovery (almost no running) and 3 weeks were taper, so only 10 weeks of legitimate work remaining. I embraced longer (up to 8 miles) tempos and weird progression runs in between my marathon pace and my standard 5-mile tempo pace. I did fewer interval workouts after observing how my intervals improvement is not matched with longer distance improvement.

The Schenley Oval in Pittsburgh: I did lots of my workouts there.

Also this was the first season in a very long while when I did not get sick or injured (small things don't count). I attribute this to that I finally got diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma and used an inhaler for short races, thus preventing my trachea destruction.

Around the Race

I decided to drive from Pittsburgh to Quebec through New York and Montreal to pick up my friends who raced with me, which is 900 miles of nothing but driving. Through the last two years I completely lost my ability to tolerate manual, repetitive labor, so this ride was damaging to my mind. Thankfully my body was chilling out.

Stage 1: driving on an interstate through some woods.

Road trips have two stages: driving and restocking gas & food. Neither is particularly enjoyable. But when you add a time constraint to it (e.g., I had to sleep well, eat well, and make it to the race expo on time), the whole process becomes a classic nightmare of anxiety: any traffic jam can be the reason you don't race simply because you did not pick your race packet up at time. Driving around Manhattan is a separate catastrophe.

Stage 2: getting more gas to drive more on interstates through some woods.

We made it to the race expo in Quebec City downtown a mere half-hour before it closed. It wouldn't have been so late if not for brutal speed limit enforcement in Quebec, including speed cameras and electronic measurement and notification of cops.

Fairmont Le Château Frontenac is the only
architectural prominence at scale in Quebec City.
It was built in late 1800s and used to be a castle, and
recently was turned into a hotel.
The rest of the city is flooded with small cafes.

Quebec sooo much reminded me of Europe that I switched my attention to it and started hating on it, being distracted from the race. Seriously, European cuteness in art, design, and architecture cannot make up for big portions and free refills at restaurants, wide streets, and one single language for everyone to speak. I will write about all this cultural and linguistic confusion later, granted the remote memories of my middle school French helped me figure things out.

Race Itself

The marathon promised to be Cleveland #2, with heat being the decisive factor. Think about it: an August race with an 8:30 start. Thankfully, I had the whole summer to heat-train. Knowing that training shirtless = racing shirtless, I had an option to write something on my chest. I went for "2:55 or death" because it would have been very lame to not run 2:55 after what I suffered through in Cleveland for 2:58.

The artist, Marco, and his creation.
He did well that day -- 2:29.
He could drop a minute by cutting his hair.
But that wouldn't help his personal life,
which he values more than marathons.

The course had a very attractive elevation profile, which somewhat compensated for the weather. The sun was out and working even at 7:30, but once we started, the cool breeze helped very much. The first half of the race was almost completely shaded. It saved many a soul.

80% of the race went on the river bank.

This girl has a couple of good start area pictures: one, two. It was in the middle of nowhere, which probably motivated many runners to go out way too fast. Around mile 4-5 a bunch of people who aimed at 3+ hours passed me, and we were going around 4 min/km, while the 2:55 pace is 4:08/km! Taking the weather into account,
that was too fast a start for many (check out their splits).

For a while I was hoping to blame the fast splits on incorrect measurement (some kilometer marks were pretty inconsistent) and get a 5 min kilometer, but over time I had to accept that it's we who are making a mistake. At some point I took every person passing me as a personal insult, storing the anger and hoping to give it back to them later in the race.

Passing the half mark.
Seeing 1:25 I said to that guy, "this is scary."

And oh did I not give it back to them! I "slaughtered" those 20 people who ran the first half faster than me, effectively moving from the 36th place to 16th. And the reason was, the second half was much much hotter, especially the last 10-15k with no shade whatsoever.

After Cleveland I got really heat-conscious and trained myself to take 3 glasses of fluid at each water stop. I used 1-2 to drink and poured the remainder on myself. That was incredibly helpful to conserve the bodily stored water and temperature in the first 70% of the race.

In the last stretch.

This race should get a lot of credit for their use of wet sponges: they gave out plenty of them in the last 15k, and the best about the sponges was that you could grab and carry it for a mile before using. It's a life-saver under the relentless sun.

The last steps, my tribute to Ryan.

The race ended in a nice (shaded!) park in downtown. It's a good place to be in when you cannot move much.

The half and the full shared a start time and finish line, so
by the moment I arrived, the park was already crowded.

Speaking of my body text, it was a freaking success! The reaction was 95% positive, but some were surprised or shocked. One woman yelled, "this is horrible." Aside from the usual cheering, spectators enjoyed the drama (will I make it under 2:55?). For a while I was running with la femme premiere (the first woman), and definitely stole some of her well-deserved attention. I was a mini-celebrity of the day. It's stupid how I feel good about it.

Also, turned out that wearing a Pittsburgh marathon shirt can get ex-Pittsburghers approach me. I take it Quebec is a popular destination.

It is one of few times when the number of restrooms
is appropriate for the race. Usually it's less than needed.

It is incredible how discipline and intelligence defeats intuition, bravery, and going-by-feeling in marathons. I was both running faster and feeling better than those who presumably decided to power through the last quarter, having banked time in the first half. I ran 6:32/mile pace in the first half, then 6:31 for another 7 miles, and then 6:21 pace for the remainder.

We did it!
The guy in the middle, Slava, ran his first half-marathon @ 1:37.

Here's a good video with my highlights (ugh the form is falling apart):

Verdict: I had a very good season and a race. Next stop - California International Marathon in December!

Update: a strange race stats website MyPace.

Update: LaPress.ca got weirdly in love with me, putting up quite a few of my pics:

At the start.

Midway.

At the end.

After the end.