It is only a few days before I leave for the Virginia/Washington D.C. area to run the Marine Corps Marathon. I have started thinking about my race strategies and what I hope to accomplish. The race’s website, though, leaves a bit to be desired.
Their course map is atrocious. It is really neat in terms of how it works, but they do not offer a downloadable PDF that I could print off and study. If they do, then I could not find it.
The elevation map is useful, however:
Looking just at the elevation profile, this just might be my easiest course yet. There is a short climb in the third mile up to not even 250 feet above sea level, with another climb up to about 150 feet from miles 5 through 8. After that, you are looking at what has to be one of the flattest courses that I can imagine up until you finish at the Iwo Jima memorial.
My general game plan is to take it a little conservative for the first few miles. If I run at a 7 minute pace at any point through mile 3, I will not mind at all. I will probably let myself stretch my legs out from there through mile 5, where you drop almost back to sea level. I will probably be around 6 minute pace or a little quicker through here. From 5 through 8, I will aim for 6:25 pace or 6:30 pace. Once I am past there, then I will try to run around 6:15 or better for the rest of the race. At a conservative estimate, that puts me at around 2:45:05. That will serve as my base line that I am going to beat.
I have set up the website here to update as I pass each check point. The Athlete Alert system will let RunToWin.com know where I am and will leave an article here on the site. If you were here earlier this evening, then you may have noticed that I was testing the system.
Good luck! Looks like the finishing hill should be fun;)
How does the Athlete Alert system work?
If you go through to the site, there’s an option for athlete alert where you put the athlete’s name in, and then provide your email address or phone number or pager number. After you confirm that you actually own the number, it will send you a notice as the athlete passes the checkpoint mats.
You can set it for every checkpoint, or just the halfway and finish, or just the finish.
Very cool! The only thing better than flat is down hill!!! Will 2:45 be a PR? Have a great race!!!
My PR right now is 2:51 and change. My goals for this race are similar to the ones at Boston, which technically was a failure (2:53).
Stretch Goal time: 2:37:12 (6:00/mi)
Realistic Goal time: 2:40 (6:07/mi)
Goal pace through 13.1: 1:22:32 (2:45/marathon) (6:18/mi)
Max time before race is considered failure: a PR
I think I’ve hooked up the alert to post to my blog using email filtering and forwarding.. hope it works. Good luck with the run, looks like the weather will cooperate.
Setting it up is pretty easy; just have a secret email address (mine is not at any of my domains that I publicize at this point), that wordpress has the login information for that email address, and that you have some method to automate checking the email.
You can use a cron job or an iframe as the two easiest methods. I missed that step for the New York City marathon, and I used a cron job for the Boston Marathon, so this time I’m using an iframe. It will work as well as the cron job, I think, and won’t involve an email every couple of minutes to my box that needs to get filtered into the trash.