California International Marathon 2012
I have never felt as satisfied with a performance in a run as I have today, when the final result was not what I wanted.
I had discussed in the previous post about how the weather was a big variable. The weather turned out to be the bogeyman today.
While I am saving up a detailed write-up for my book as well as avoiding some effort since I have to leave for India in about 36 hours, here is a brief update on my race.
While I had started my Garmin and was ready by start time, it locked up just before the actual start and I couldn't get it to locating satellites till about mile 5 and couldn't be bothered.
Head winds+heavy rains lashed the CIM course like nobody's business for the first 2 hours or so and then eased off to light showers and some gusts by the time I reached mile 19. The hostile weather knocked me so much that I had sore quads by mile 9 itself. While I was hoping they would ease off by mile 15 when the course became less rolling, they eventually led to a mild hamstring strain on my right and weirdly enough strained my right achilles tendon also!
Since I didn't have the exact time required to go under 3:10 when I hit the 20 mile mark in 2:20:48, I ran based on pure clock time and used mile splits to stay as much below as 8:00 min/mile as I could. However the race clock seemed to be a minute ahead of mine and that eventually hurt me.
Also when I hit the 24 mile mark with 18 min to go for 2.2 mile, I was too scared that I would pull one of the 3 things strained above (esp. seeing the no of people clutching sore calves, hamstrings and quads in the last 6 miles) that I ran quite conservatively. When I turned to the finish with about 100m to go or so, which is when the clock, kept on the ground (WTF!) came into sight, it was already past 3:10 or so. I ran and crossed in 3:10:17 although the official clock time shows 3:10:23 with chip time as 3:10:08.
There was no way I could have made 3:09:59 which based on BQs for the 2013 race should have gotten me in. I was just in too much pain to pull anything and hence scared to push any more.
When I finished I didn't know my actual chip time - with the Garmin snafu mentioned earlier as well as usual not running tangents.
When I got to the hotel, there was some short-lived excitement with 2 friends as well as my bro telling me that I was at 3:09:56 as per the race's unoffical results, but then that had changed by the time I checked to reflect the 3:10+ time.
I am happy that I ran this time in such weather which means that I should be able to run significantly under this in better weather and on a flatter course than CIM, which has some rolling sections.
Berlin 2013, here I come.
Apologies to all those who have mailed/called/tweeted/messaged on FB asking for an update on the race. Will talk to you all by turn soon. Till then, bear with me.
Thanks to Arun and Anil for a memorable trip to Sacramento. Thanks to all those who have supported my effort in various ways incl. the lady who warmed my filter coffee at 4 am at the Hilton Arden West and then told me her daughter runs too. I wish her daughter a PB too. God bless your goodness.
So ist das Leben
I had discussed in the previous post about how the weather was a big variable. The weather turned out to be the bogeyman today.
While I am saving up a detailed write-up for my book as well as avoiding some effort since I have to leave for India in about 36 hours, here is a brief update on my race.
While I had started my Garmin and was ready by start time, it locked up just before the actual start and I couldn't get it to locating satellites till about mile 5 and couldn't be bothered.
Head winds+heavy rains lashed the CIM course like nobody's business for the first 2 hours or so and then eased off to light showers and some gusts by the time I reached mile 19. The hostile weather knocked me so much that I had sore quads by mile 9 itself. While I was hoping they would ease off by mile 15 when the course became less rolling, they eventually led to a mild hamstring strain on my right and weirdly enough strained my right achilles tendon also!
Since I didn't have the exact time required to go under 3:10 when I hit the 20 mile mark in 2:20:48, I ran based on pure clock time and used mile splits to stay as much below as 8:00 min/mile as I could. However the race clock seemed to be a minute ahead of mine and that eventually hurt me.
Also when I hit the 24 mile mark with 18 min to go for 2.2 mile, I was too scared that I would pull one of the 3 things strained above (esp. seeing the no of people clutching sore calves, hamstrings and quads in the last 6 miles) that I ran quite conservatively. When I turned to the finish with about 100m to go or so, which is when the clock, kept on the ground (WTF!) came into sight, it was already past 3:10 or so. I ran and crossed in 3:10:17 although the official clock time shows 3:10:23 with chip time as 3:10:08.
There was no way I could have made 3:09:59 which based on BQs for the 2013 race should have gotten me in. I was just in too much pain to pull anything and hence scared to push any more.
When I finished I didn't know my actual chip time - with the Garmin snafu mentioned earlier as well as usual not running tangents.
When I got to the hotel, there was some short-lived excitement with 2 friends as well as my bro telling me that I was at 3:09:56 as per the race's unoffical results, but then that had changed by the time I checked to reflect the 3:10+ time.
I am happy that I ran this time in such weather which means that I should be able to run significantly under this in better weather and on a flatter course than CIM, which has some rolling sections.
Berlin 2013, here I come.
Apologies to all those who have mailed/called/tweeted/messaged on FB asking for an update on the race. Will talk to you all by turn soon. Till then, bear with me.
Thanks to Arun and Anil for a memorable trip to Sacramento. Thanks to all those who have supported my effort in various ways incl. the lady who warmed my filter coffee at 4 am at the Hilton Arden West and then told me her daughter runs too. I wish her daughter a PB too. God bless your goodness.
So ist das Leben
Update: For all those who wanted to get a sense of how windy/rainy CIM 2012 was check out the pics at http://bit.ly/RmXoLL HT Anil
Labels: Mission Boston, Running
posted by D at
12/02/2012 07:55:00 PM
3 Comments:
So, the BQ is elusive yet again. So many twists and turns to your story! I am sure you'll sail through in Berlin.
Super run! Almost there... Don't make the same mistake I made of not keeping up a regular routine - so back at where I was 2 years ago :( we all learn. Good luck for Berlin... sure we'll meet before that.
Thank you, Athreya.
We shall meet and talk :)
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