Today was day five of the Savage Seven. For most people, it was the fifth of seven
straight marathons, half marathons, or 50K races. For me, it was the last of four straight marathons. My main reason for doing this series was to
get a quadzilla (four marathons in four days) in Florida. I also had a stretch goal of breaking four
hours in all four marathons. That would
give me a lifetime total of 250 sub4 marathons.
I didn’t know if I could do it, but I’ve been taking it one day at a
time.
I broke four hours in the first three races, so my stretch
goal was within sight. Each day, I have
more soreness in my muscles, and there’s the danger that this will be the day I
run out of gas. Today, I had one big advantage. It’s the last day, so I didn’t need to hold
anything back. I could fight hard for
the sub4, knowing I could rest tomorrow.
More than once during the night, I woke up feeling
thirsty. Normally, I would just go back
to sleep, but last night I got up to get a bottle of water. I drank some each time I woke up.
My usual habit is to avoid drinking too much before a
race. I don’t want to be urgently needing
to pee right before a race, when it takes 20 minutes to get through the
bathroom line. That’s more of a concern
at large races. I’m usually fine if I
drink plenty of fluids during the race.
These races have aid stations every 2.57 miles. I’m not carrying any fluids with me, because
the extra weight slows me down. A small
cup of Gatorade every 2.57 miles isn’t enough when you’re running in warm humid
conditions. I’ve been getting by with
that only because I’m loading up on fluids with breakfast, and we’ve had
passing rain showers during the races.
When I arrived at the race, it was 73 degrees with 100
percent humidity. It’s the fourth straight
day the humidity has been 100 percent in the morning. I’ve never seen that before, but maybe that’s
normal for this area. Each day has been
warmer than the day before. The wildcard
has been rain. The first two days, we
had periods of drizzle or light rain.
Yesterday, we had drizzle for most of the race. Today, there was a chance of a passing
thunderstorm.
I won the previous three marathons, but today we were joined
by Justin Gillette. Justin is way out of
my league, but he’s been working through an injury, so he didn’t know how his
would feel. His plan was to start
running and see how his leg felt. He
didn’t expect to finish the race.
The course was the same as the previous three days. It was a half mile out-and-back, followed by
five laps of a 5.14 mile circuit. The
circuit was a 5K loop with a long out-and-back tacked onto one end. There were aid stations at the start/finish
and at the end of the long out-and-back.
As usual, we started at 6:00 AM, so the first lap was in the dark.
Yesterday, my flashlight was acting flaky. After yesterday’s race, I made sure the
batteries and contacts were dry. Every
time I tested it, it worked fine – until just before today’s race. Then it started acting flaky again. I’d turn it on, and it would go off again.
As I expected, JC included me in his pre-race
announcements. Now everyone knew I was
shooting for my 250th sub4 marathon.
They were all rooting for me, but the pressure was on.
Justin ran with me for the initial out-and-back and the
first full lap. He had a light that
worked. He’s done other races in this
park, so he was familiar with the 5K loop.
I was now familiar with the whole route.
Between the two of us, we had no trouble recognizing all the turns.
On the initial out-and-back, I found the pace to be a little
tiring. Our time for the out-and-back
was 4:22. That’s a little faster than a
four hour pace, but it shouldn’t have felt tiring.
As we ran the first half of the first full lap, I still
found the pace to be tiring. More than
once, I told Justin the pace was too fast for me. When we got to the aid station at the far end
of the out-and-back section, I checked my watch. I fully expected it would be much faster than
the other days. It wasn’t. To be on schedule for a four hour finish, we
needed to reach that aid station in 28 minutes.
We got there in less than 27 minutes.
We were more than a minute fast, but it wasn’t as fast as yesterday. It felt much more tiring today, which was
distressing.
By now, Justin knew he would only be running one lap. He was noticing his leg. He could finish the lap, but didn’t want to
risk a more severe injury by running any farther.
As we got closer to the end of the lap, I realized why I was
so tired. It was the humidity. On Friday, it was also 100 percent humidity,
but it was only 62 degrees. On Saturday,
it was 68 degrees. Today, it was 73
degrees. When the air is warmer, it can
hold more moisture. 100 percent humidity
when it’s 73 degrees is stifling. My
sweat wasn’t evaporating at all, so I was heating up more. That made the pace feel much more tiring.
Now I fully appreciated how much the rain helped me yesterday. It was 70 degrees with 100 percent humidity,
but the constant drizzle kept me cool. I
was really wishing we’d get some rain today.
I didn’t want a thunderstorm, but some light rain would help a lot. Today turned out to be the only day with no
rain during the race.
I started to seriously question whether I could break four
hours today. I wasn’t even to the end of
my first lap, and I already felt tired.
I had to do four more laps, and it would only get hotter. Today was my last race of this series, so I
didn’t need to save anything for tomorrow.
I was willing to turn myself inside out to break four hours, but I started
to question whether it would be possible.
With everyone rooting for me, I had to try.
As we were finishing the lap, Justin suggested that I start
pouring water over my head at the aid stations.
I’ve done that before, but I was reluctant, because it always gets my
shoes wet. Realizing Justin was right, I
drank a glass of Gatorade and poured a glass of water over my head.
After the first full lap, I was more than two minutes ahead
of a four hour pace. Justin stopped, and
I ran the remaining laps on my own. Now
I had to pace myself. I wondered how
much I would slow down. I wanted to run
at a four hour pace, but I didn’t actually need to run as fast as the first
lap. I could slow down by at least two
minutes per lap. As it turns out, I
didn’t slow down at all. Pouring water
over my head really helped. I started
the second lap feeling refreshed. The
pace I set on my own was about the same as the pace I ran when Justin was
pacing me. It felt a little tiring at
times, but not as tiring as it did in the first lap.
On the loop part of the course, I didn’t see any other
runners. When I got to the out-and-back
section, I saw several runners who were still coming back from the aid station
on their first lap. A few of them asked
where Justin was, and I had to explain that he stopped so he wouldn’t make an
injury worse.
When I got to the far aid station again, I once again drank
some Gatorade and poured some water over my head. I did that at every aid station for the rest
of the race. I was now another minute
ahead of a four hour pace. I didn’t slow
down at all.
Leaving the aid station, I immediately felt a breeze. Now that I was wet, it really cooled me
off. Unfortunately, I only felt it
briefly. As soon as I turned to enter a
heavily wood section of the course, I couldn’t feel the wind any more.
Yesterday, I tried various forms of self-talk, tweaking the
message on each lap. What I told myself
now was “Manage your effort.” I wanted
to work hard enough to stay on a good pace, but I had to be careful not to blow
up in the heat. At times, I picked up my
effort. At other times, I eased up. I was listening to my body and paying attention
to where there were small hills. That
worked. I was working, but I wasn’t
wearing myself out.
As I got back onto the 5K loop, there was another section
where I briefly felt the wind. I didn’t
feel it often, but when I did, it really helped. The two places where I always felt the wind
were just after the far aid station and just before getting back to the main
aid station.
At the end of two laps, my time was faster than any of the
other days. I was already six minutes
ahead of a four hour pace. I saw the
next lap as the make-or-break lap. If I
was still doing OK after three laps, I could probably tough it out for the last
two. I didn’t need to gain any time on
this lap, but I wanted to preserve that six minute cushion, it case I needed to
start giving it back over the last two laps.
Consciously, I was telling myself to relax and not work as
hard in this lap. I’m not sure what I
was telling myself subconsciously. When
I got to the aid station in the middle of the lap, I fully expected to see that
I had neither gained nor lost time. In
fact, I was still running faster than necessary. Now I was almost seven minutes ahead of
schedule. I was on pace to break 3:47.
I was more than half done, but I would feel much more
confident when I only had two laps to go.
I wanted to get there with a six minute cushion. I could afford to give a minute back and
still feel confident.
In the second half of that lap, I started to feel discomfort
in my right shoe. It was my insole
slipping forward in my shoe. The same
thing happened yesterday. It was a
different pair of shoes and a different pair of insoles, but they were the same
orthotics, and the same style of shoes and insoles. Yesterday I had water in my shoes from the
rain. Today, it was mostly sweat. It was uncomfortable but it wasn’t going to
stop me. If anything, it made me run
faster. The discomfort made me want to
get done.
When I finished that lap, I had a nine minute cushion. It was my fastest three lap split of the
series. Now I was in a good
position. The pace wasn’t wearing me
down as much as I expected, and I could afford to start giving back time. As I left the aid station, my tentative plan
was to just float through the fourth lap and then run hard in the fifth lap.
Pouring water over my head really helped, but it was
short-lived. I wouldn’t even get a mile
into the next lap before I would start feeling hot again. Meanwhile, I started having trouble with the
insole in my left shoe. The one in my
right shoe had moved into a position where it was no longer causing discomfort. The one in my left shoe felt
uncomfortable. Instead of floating through
that lap, I picked up my effort again.
At the halfway point of that lap, I once again had my
fastest split of the series. I had 7.71
miles to go and more than 80 minutes to do it.
I could afford to slow down by more than a minute per mile. Still, I wanted to carry that into the last
lap. Yesterday, I started my last lap
with 57 minutes to run the last 5.14 miles.
I wanted to be in that position again.
As I began the trip back from the aid station, I told myself, “Don’t
slack off, but don’t blow up.”
That seemed to work.
When I finished that lap, I once again had more than 57 minutes to run
the last 5.14 miles. Now a sub four hour
finish was in the bag.
As I started running my last lap, I saw a few runners coming
back toward me. You don’t normally have
two-way traffic on the 5K loop. These
were half marathoners who were completing the out-and-back that they needed to
do after their second full lap. As I
passed them, I congratulated them, because I knew they were finishing. They congratulated me, because they knew I
was having another strong race.
I also saw runners coming back when I got to the
out-and-back section. The last runner I
saw before the aid station was “Cowboy Jeff.”
He looked at his watch and said, “I hope you’re on your last lap.” I confirmed I was, and I was on a solid pace.
At the start of that lap, I was planning to take the first
half easy and then finish strong in the second half. It didn’t turn out that way. The encouragement from the other runners kept
me motivated. At the aid station, I once
again had my fastest split of the series.
I had just over 35 minutes to run the last half lap. I usually ran it in 22 minutes.
It occurred to me that with a strong enough finish, I could
have my fastest time of the series. If I
did that, I would also have negative splits for the day. I wanted to pour it on, but I felt a bit
sluggish as I left the aid station. I
still needed to manage my effort.
It wasn’t until I got back onto the 5K loop that I had the
confidence to speed up. Now I only had
1.6 miles to go. I wouldn’t blow up in
the last 1.6 miles, so I sped up as much as I could and still sustain the pace
for 1.6 miles.
I started looking for the permanent mile markers painted on
the pavement. When I got to the 2.0
marker, I knew I had 1.2 miles to go. I
wasn’t confident I could go any faster and sustain it for 1.2 miles. At the 2.5 marker, I only had 0.7 miles to
go. I still couldn’t go any faster
without running out of gas before the finish.
Finally, I reached the white circle that marks the
turnaround of the initial out-and-back.
From there, it’s a quarter mile to the finish. It was slightly uphill from there to the last
turn, but I still accelerated. I saw
someone waiting for me at the turn. I
initially assumed it was JC. When I got
closer, I saw it was Justin. He came
back to cheer me in.
I was still going uphill, but he reminded me it would soon
be downhill to the finish. I sped up so
much that I put myself into oxygen debt.
I was gasping for air before reaching the finish. I kept up my effort all the way to the line. Then I kept going past the aid station. In front of me, I saw a picnic table. I went straight to it and sat down. It took me several minutes to catch my breath
before I could stand again.
My finish time was 3:46:54. I was slightly disappointed,
because I didn’t beat my time from Friday.
I was seven seconds slower. Even
though the pace felt too tiring in my first lap, I went on to run even splits.
I broke 3:50 in all four races, which was well beyond my
expectations. A year ago, I couldn’t run
that fast in one race, even with ideal weather conditions. That’s how much I’ve improved in the last
year.
I wanted to get something to drink, but first I had to make
a bathroom stop. Then I returned to the
aid station to get my medal and have some post-race snacks.
By now, JC was there, and he gave me a can of coconut
juice. That really hit the spot. I didn’t need to be in any hurry to leave, so
I spent the next 90 minutes talking with Justin and the other runners.
I didn’t get back to the hotel until two hours after
finishing the race. That’s OK. I didn’t need to take an ice bath today. I still had one more slice of cinnamon bread
and at least three pints of chocolate milk.
I had those in lieu of lunch.
I’ll eat a real meal later in the day.
Originally, this series was all about getting my sixth
quadzilla state. I did that, but I did
much more. I got four more sub4 marathon
finishes, and I won all four races. I’m
ready for a rest day.
Race Statistics
Distance: 26.2 miles
Time: 3:46:54
Average Pace: 8:39
Lifetime Marathons/Ultras:
398
Sub 4 Hour Marathons:
250
Quadzilla States:
6
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