There’s a running store in
Portland, Oregon call Foot Traffic. They
sponsor an annual event on July 4th called the Flat Marathon. “The Flat” refers to Sauvie Island, which is
a large, relatively flat island in the Columbia River valley.
I’ve done this race five
times. I ran it in 2010, when it was still
a stand-alone event. In 2012, July 4th
fell on a Monday, and Steve Walters organized two small races on the
weekend. If you did all three marathons,
it was called the Firecracker Triple.
Since then, Steve has held
anywhere from two to four races on weekend closest to July 4th, making it
possible to run marathons on anywhere from two to five consecutive days.
I ran the Firecracker Triple in
2012, 2014, and 2015. I also ran the
Firecracker Quadzilla in 2013. Since
then, injuries have kept me away.
Last winter, Steve announced
that this year would be the last Firecracker Triple. I signed up for the Foot Traffic Flat
Marathon last December and was planning to do Steve’s races as well.
In early January, I found out
that the White Nights Marathon in St. Petersburg, Russia had been rescheduled. I was planning to go there with a tour group,
but I wouldn’t fly home until July 1st. To
arrive in Portland in time for the first race of the triple, I would need to
fly to Portland the day after getting back from Russia. The time difference between St. Petersburg and
Portland is 12 hours, so I’d be completely jet-lagged right before starting a
triple.
It seemed unlikely that I would
be able to do both the White Nights Marathon and the Firecracker Triple. As it turns out, I wouldn’t get a chance to
do either. All of these races were
cancelled because of COVID-19.
When they cancelled the Flat Marathon,
Foot Traffic announced that they would be holding a virtual race instead. Anyone who did the virtual race by running 26.2
miles on their own would still receive a T-shirt and this finisher medal. Since I had already registered for the
marathon, I was automatically signed up for the virtual race.
I don’t usually get excited
about virtual races, and I don’t run just for the T-shirts and medals, but I
had other reasons for wanting to do this virtual race.
The Flat Marathon is always
held on July 4th. The course starts and
finishes at a country store called the Pumpkin Patch Market. During the race, you run past farms and
strawberry patches. Post-race food
always includes hot dogs and strawberry shortcake made with strawberries grown
on the island. Even if I couldn’t run on
Sauvie Island, I liked the idea of running a marathon on July 4th and then
eating strawberry shortcake after finishing.
It's been a long time since I
last ran a marathon. For several weeks,
I was running 40-50 miles a week, but I wasn’t doing any long training
runs. At the beginning of June, I
started doing weekly long runs. I
started with 14 miles, and continued with runs of 16, 20, and 23 miles. I was ready for a full 26.2 miles.
According to the rules of the
virtual marathon, you could go out by yourself and run 26.2 miles on any day from
July 3rd to July 15th. I could’ve picked
the day with the most favorable weather, but I really wanted to do my virtual
marathon on July 4th. Unfortunately, that
wasn’t the best day for weather.
Portland is only about 100
miles from the Pacific coast. Even in
July, there’s a limit to how hot it can get.
There have been years when weather for the race got a bit warm, but I
never found the weather for the Flat Marathon to be intolerably hot. I qualified for Boston four times out of five
attempts. The time I didn’t, I was
running with injuries.
Minnesota, by contrast, is
about 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean.
We get some pretty wide temperature swings. As I started looking at long-range forecasts,
I knew I was in for a hot one. We’re in
the middle of a stretch of 90-degree days.
I went to bed early on Friday,
but I only slept for about an hour before waking up. Someone in the neighborhood was shooting off fireworks,
and the noise kept me awake until they were done. By then, I was wide awake and couldn’t get
back to sleep for hours. I only got a
few hours of sleep before I needed to get up.
I got up early to avoid the
worst of the heat, but even in the early morning, the temperature never dropped
below 70. The dew point was in the upper
60s, making it feel more like 79.
My route was a 1.75-mile loop
through my neighborhood. To finish a
marathon, I had to run 15 laps. I filled
a cooler with Gatorade bottles and ice and set it next to my driveway, so I
could stop and drink after every lap.
For training runs, I don’t
usually wear a watch. I do most of my
training at a pace that feels comfortable.
If I’m not doing speed work, I don’t need to know my time. I also don’t worry about measuring the
distance, if it’s a route that I’ve measured before.
Today was an exception. I wore a GPS watch. I not only needed to know my time, but I needed
to measure the distance. Although I’ve
measured this route before, the distance can vary slightly, depending on
whether I’m making an effort to run the tangents.
I usually start really slow and
ease into my pace as I warm up. Today, I
started a little faster than usual. I
didn’t intend to do that. I think I have
a subconscious tendency to go faster when I know I’m being timed. As soon as I realized I was doing that, I
backed off a little.
On training runs, I don’t
usually pay attention to exactly when I finish each mile. I choose a route and decided how many laps I’m
going to run. After that, I only care
how many laps I’ve finished and how many laps I have left. Today, my watch was recording splits after
each mile. One mile into my run, I felt
my watch vibrate, and I looked down. I ran
the first mile in 9:46. That pace struck
me as unsustainable.
Two weeks ago, I did a 23-mile
training run. I ran my first lap
slightly faster than a 10 minutes per mile pace. After that, I slowed down. By the end, I was going slower than 11
minutes per mile. That was a hot day,
but today was going to get just as hot.
Not wanting to blow up, I made a point of slowing down in the next mile.
When I finished my first lap, I
stopped to drink some Gatorade. I ate
breakfast about an hour before I started, and I still felt like I had a full
stomach. I could only drink a few sips.
As I finished drinking, I
glanced at my watch. The distance was
1.75 miles. I checked again after every
lap. It was usually a multiple of
1.75. If not, it was off by only 0.01. It was reassuring to see that the route that
I’ve always recorded as 1.75 was consistently measuring to be 1.75.
My second mile was 10:20. Few the next several miles, my splits bounced
between 10 minutes and 10:30. I wasn’t
too focused on my pace. I was trying to
stay within my comfort zone. I didn’t
have a goal for how fast I wanted to run today.
Mostly, I just wanted to finish.
In the early miles, I ran conservatively, so I wouldn’t blow up in the
heat.
After my second lap, I again
found that I could only drink a few sips of Gatorade. After my third lap, I drank more. After my fourth lap, I finished the
bottle. I had four more bottles in my
cooler. For the rest of my run, I set a
goal of finishing another bottle every three laps.
When I finished my fifth lap, I
was one third done. In those first five
laps, the sun was still below the tree tops.
I noticed the humidity, but it wasn’t that hot yet. Now I was entering the middle laps, and the
sun was getting high enough in the sky that I could feel it. If the early laps were all about the
humidity, the middle laps were all about the warmth of the sun.
My mile splits got more
erratic. On average, I was still going
the same pace, but some miles were as fast as the 9:50s, and other were as slow
as the 10:30s. I was still treating this
like a long training run. At times, my mind
would wander, and I would slow down.
When I paid more attention to my running, I ran faster.
In a real race, I tend to be
focused like a laser on my pace and effort.
Sometimes, friends will wave or shout to me, and I won’t even notice
them. The first time I ran the Boston
Marathon, I didn’t even notice the Wellesley “scream tunnel.” Today, I let myself drift. Sometimes, I was thinking about my effort. Other times, I was looking for wild rabbits
and squirrels.
At the end of my seventh lap, I
forced myself to finish my second bottle of Gatorade. As I began the next lap, I glanced at my
arm. I realized every inch of my body
was covered with sweat.
When I passed the 13-mile mark,
I decided to pay attention to my halfway split.
When I got there, I was on pace to break 4:30, but I fully expected to
slow down in the second half.
As is often the case in real
races, I felt a psychological lift when I knew I was past the halfway mark. The remaining distance was still much more
than what I’ve been doing in most of my training runs, but I didn’t look at it
that way. Instead, I told myself the
remaining distance was less than what I had done so far.
At the end of my tenth lap, I was
two thirds done with a marathon. I had
been checking all my mile times, but I seldom looked at my total time. With five laps to go, my time was 2:58 and
change. Not only was I still on pace to
break 4:30, but I had sped up slightly since the halfway mark.
Now the temperature was rising
rapidly. Up until now, I ran at a pace
that felt comfortable. It occurred to me
that the remaining laps would probably be uncomfortable no matter what pace I
ran. Even though I expected the remaining
laps to be a struggle, I challenged myself to lift my effort enough to keep
running the same pace. I expected each
lap to be more difficult than the one before, but I only had five laps to
go. That seemed manageable.
Running a marathon is at least
as much psychological as it is physical.
At this point in my run, I made the mental transition from training mode
to race mode. I was ready to push myself
to run harder.
I was already halfway through
my 18th mile. That mile took 10:13, but
then I began consistently running mile times in the 9:50s. It took more effort, but I was getting it
done.
As I began my 13th lap, I
caught myself starting at a slower pace.
I had a momentary lapse in concentration. That’s the sort of thing that happens when
you get hot. Heat doesn’t just affect
you physically. It can also affect you
mentally.
I wanted to immediately pick up
my pace, but the beginning of my route is slightly uphill. I waited until I crested the hill. Then I used a gradual downhill section to get
back into my previous pace. When the road
leveled out, I picked up my effort to keep up the same pace. Evidently, I overcompensated. That mile was 9:17, which was my fastest so
far.
In my next mile, I slowed to
9:54, but I was still keeping my splits under 10 minutes. If I kept that up, I would easily break 4:30.
I’m not very good at visualizing,
but I tried to imagine where I would be if I was actually running on Sauvie
Island. The first half of that course
includes a long out-and-back along the western side of the island. After that, you turn onto a road that cuts
across the middle of the island. When
you reach the east side, you turn onto a road that brings you back to Pumpkin Patch
Market. If I remember right, the 23-mile
mark is pretty close to where you make that last major turn.
I could picture where I would be
on that course, but trying to visualize the rest of that course wasn’t
helpful. The last few miles zigzag past
a lot of open farmland. Eventually, you
can see a cluster of trees in the distance.
The finish is somewhere in the middle of that cluster of trees.
I’ve always found those last
few miles to be difficult. They seem to
go on forever. I decided to go back to paying
attention to the route I was running today.
I had slight less than two laps to go.
As I finished my 14th lap, I
glanced at my watch. My time so far was
4:06 and change. I was easily going to
break 4:30. I was crushing it. As I began my last lap, I started to wonder
if I could break 4:22. That’s an average
pace of 10 minutes per mile. It occurred
to me that my current pace wasn’t quite fast enough, but if I poured it on in my
last lap, it was definitely possible. I
was hoping to average 9:00 per mile the rest of the way.
By now, I was beginning a
downhill stretch. That’s where I began
my push. At 25 miles, I checked my
split. That mile was 9:28, but I didn’t
begin my push until the last quarter mile.
I fought hard through the next mile.
With about a quarter mile to go
in that lap, I felt my watch vibrate. I
was already at 26 miles. What was my split? Did I break nine minutes? It was 7:54!
I had more left in the tank than I realized.
As I neared the end of the lap,
I started paying attention to the distance.
I didn’t actually need to run all the way to my driveway. I planned to stop my watch when it read 26.22
miles. Most people would probably stop
it at 26.2, but a marathon isn’t exactly 26.2 miles. It’s slightly longer.
GPS isn’t as accurate as most
people think it is. It’s not accurate
enough to measure a marathon course. It’s
all I had, though, so it’s what I used.
When it read 26.22 miles, I stopped it and walked the short distance
back to my driveway. My time was
4:20:29. That’s slower than I usually
run a marathon, but I’m happy with it. I
ran negative splits by nine minutes, despite rising temperatures.
After finishing, I checked the
weather app on my phone to see how hot it got.
It was now 85 degrees, with a “feels like” temperature of 96.
I also looked up the weather
conditions in Portland. It might not be
a fair comparison, because it was still two hours earlier in Portland, but the
temperature there was only 59 degrees.
If circumstances were different, I would’ve much preferred to run this
marathon in Portland.
When you run the race on Sauvie
Island, your race bib has tear-off tickets for strawberry shortcake and a hot
dog. On Friday, I baked a pan of
shortcake and mashed some strawberries.
After finishing my virtual marathon, I celebrated with homemade strawberry
shortcake.
As soon as I finished, Deb went
up to Dairy Queen and brought back hot dogs and sundaes. In addition to the strawberry shortcake, I also
got to have my post-race hot dog.
This was basically a glorified
training run, but it started to feel more like a race in the late miles. I’ve really missed that feeling of pushing hard
in the late miles of a race. Having this
one under my belt will also give me more confidence when I run my next marathon.
Race Statistics
Distance: 26.22 miles
Time: 4:20:29
Average Pace: 9:56
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