Bob Mann: 2016 Maine Marathon

Sun Oct 2, 2016

On Sun Oct 2 2016, I ran the Maine Marathon in Portland ME. This was my first marathon since I set a new Personal Worst in Hawaii in June. That race was on a warm sunny day, and the conditions weren't going to be nearly as brutal in Maine in early October. However, my training was as bad as ever for a marathon. Entering a marathon undertrained has been a theme for me for at least the last couple years. But I think I was taking it to a new low this time. I took some time off from running after Hawaii because I was sick and tired of the hot weather. I ran a total of 38.5 miles in July, which included two local 5ks that I do every year. I got back on track a little in August, when I logged 110.9 miles. But I took another step back in September, with only 70.8 miles. And my longest run during this stretch was only 16.2 miles.

I had been kept busy during the Summer and early Fall with helping to coach Jillian's travel softball team. There were practices or games multiple days per week, which prevented me from running right after work, like I am accustomed to. There were also some Saturday games, which disrupted my normal long run schedule. But hey, I'm not complaining. I love working with the softball team, and wouldn't miss it for anything. And if I was really dedicated to the training, I could run the miles after practice or very early in the morning before work. Apparently I've chosen not to do that, and thus I ended up with a horribly low level of training miles.

Anyway, such a low level of training made runs like that 16-miler quite a struggle, so I knew that attempting 26.2 miles would be quite unpleasant. But so be it; my progress towards 50 states must go on. I drove up to Maine on Saturday, pausing to visit both my parents in Connecticut and my friend Dan in Massachusetts. I spent a bit of time on Saturday afternoon at a couple sports bars around downtown Portland watching college football and drinking beer, which is another thing that probably wasn't going to help my performance on Sunday.

Thankfully, the weather on Sunday was basically ideal for running a marathon. It was overcast and the temps were in the low 50s. The only thing remotely annoying was that there was a persistent light mist in the air, leftover from a couple days of steady rain in the area. Running in a little rain is fine for a while, but after a few hours it gets a little annoying.

The course started at the University of Southern Maine in downtown Portland, and quickly ran its way north of town, down a quiet country road. The road stayed fairly close to the coastline, but unfortunately the ocean was not visible for most of the time, as there were homes between the road and the shore. Nonetheless, it was a rather scenic course. The course was mostly an out-and-back, with some slight differences each way. The middle portion included some rolling hills, which would certainly slow me down some more. Taking all things into account, I figured that I would be a bit faster than I was in Hawaii, but maybe not by much.

As the race started, I immediately fell in with a fellow 50-Stater. I like wearing my 50-Stater shirt because it becomes an instant conversation piece among other 50-Staters. Unfortunately, this runner was moving a little faster than I would have preferred. We covered the first mile in 9:02 and the second mile in 8:59. Finally after chatting for about those 18 minutes, I excused myself and decided to slow down a little bit. I covered the next three miles in 9:18, 9:09, and 9:21, and then finally slowed down some more into the 9:40 range. Considering that I would inevitably run out of energy, I probably should have conserved a little and been going at this pace all along, but so be it. If nothing else, I banked a little bit of time.

Mile 10 included a fairly long uphill stretch, so I used this as an excuse to take my first walk break. I know I didn't need to walk this soon, but since I knew I would need to walk plenty eventually, I might as well conserve some energy here on the uphill. Mile 10 was completed in 10:18, and it was the first of many miles over a 10 minute pace. I had decided that I would walk any remaining uphill. There would be plenty of them, but I knew I'd need to walk plenty of times.

The next walking spot occurred in Mile 12, which led to the next mile over 10 minutes. I crossed the halfway point at about 2:06:40, which was very much in line with my first half times in all my 2016 marathons. As always, I knew the second half would be much slower. By Mile 15, I was already feeling rather spent, and I wasn't going to have another mile in under 10 minutes, although Mile 18 (10:05) came close. That mile occurred right after Mile 17 (11:50), which included a large hill, and thus a long time spent walking. By Mile 19, I was gassed. The terrain had become flatter again, but I wasn't done with the walking. I struggled thru the last seven miles, logging all but one in more than 12 minutes (Mile 23 was 11:40). Over the last few miles, I was lucky if I could avoid walking for as much as a quarter of a mile.

The last half of this race was not pleasant, due entirely to my own lack of training. Nonetheless, I was able to finish, which is all that really matters. My final time was 4:40:48, which is clearly not a good performance. But I avoided a new PW, since it was about 5 minutes faster than Hawaii. I guess that's something. Most importantly, my 36th state was now in the books.

As I said earlier, it was a rather attractive course. There were some beautiful homes along the road, many of whose residents were in their front yards cheering on the runners. There wasn't a ton of crowd support, but there were frequent enough small patches of people to keep it from getting too desolate. I had been hoping that a marathon in Maine in October would highlight the best of "Fall in New England" colors on the trees, but apparently it was a little too early for that. The leaves on a few trees had begun to change colors, but for the most part, it was just a lot of green. That's not bad, by any means, but this same course would probably be full of amazing colors a couple weeks later.

For most of the Summer, my intention was to run this race and then run the Marshall University Marathon in Huntington, West Virginia five weeks later. That race will be a reunion for the 50 State club. I hadn't registered for that race yet because I wanted to see how this one went. And based my struggles in Maine, I feel it would not be wise to run again so soon. Simply based on my years of built-up training base, I'm sure I could complete the distance, similar to how I completed this race. But this race wasn't pleasant, and I don't want another unpleasant race so soon. I don't have time to build my training back up before then, so I have decided to postpone my next race until 2017. I don't yet know what that will be, but I'll figure something out. And with softball season winding down and colder weather inevitably on the way, I should have no excuse not to train better for the next few months. With proper training, I'd love to some day complete a marathon in under 4 hours again. But it's been a while since that happened. I'm older now, and have a lot of other ways that I'd like to spend time with my family, so I'm not confident that I will be able to make that sort of commitment. At this point, I'd just like to make it so that I can feel good and enjoy the next marathon, however fast or slow it may be.

And now the photos. Click any image to enlarge.