2:57 and change at CIM…

This is what happens when your legs aren’t ready.

Perhaps my worst race in more than 3 years.  I have never hurt so early in a marathon; at 16 miles I went up a slight incline and realized that my legs were already feeling very shredded.  Oh, no….

The last 6 or so miles were a death march.  Not lying.  Quite a few 8 minute miles (where I told myself that i was just doing one of those “survival jog” cool downs when you really hurt after a long/hard workout), a lot in the 7’s.  You rack up a lot of time when you’re running that slowly!

It wasn’t because I went out too fast and it wasn’t because of conditions (35 mph winds at the start, flooding rains).  I truly believe that my legs just weren’t ready because they haven’t done anything of substance in the last 7-8 weeks.  I have to go back to my training log (need to fill in the gaps, I’ve been neglecting this… which is almost my #1 rule!) to see what the average has been over the last 2 months and 3 months.  I think I’ll be surprised at how low it is.  I’m certain that the last 7 weeks were something like 70-50-NYC week (50?)-97-70-50-CIM week (25 or so).  That is really low for someone who is a strength and mileage runner.  I also noticed that I was definitely not overall strong either (especially noted in my core), which again, is due to the taper/re-taper thing (and totally my fault). I cut out strength 2 weeks before NYC and never really picked it up again afterwards.  I know better than that – I am someone who absolutely relies on that overall strength/lean build to power me through.

I will write much more tomorrow, but wanted to at least post something in case y’all were wondering :).