Chica: Portland Marathon Race Report

Short Version - Finished in 5:42, 30 minutes slower than Seattle last year - hamstrings started cramping at mile 8 but didn't slow down too much until I pulled one at mile 20ish and had to walk most of the last 5K.

Long Version - I wasn't trying to PR at Portland, was just using it as a long training run for Seattle in November. For various reasons my training wasn't very good - my longest long run was 3 1/2 hours, so additional motivation to take it easy.

Saturday night met up with a bunch of people from the forum for dinner @ Pastini's - yum! Hopefully someone got pictures of that!I was staying at my aunt's house just outside of Portland - it was handy because it was really close to the train, so we just took that everywhere. Saturday night she apparently decided to go out and not tell us, leaving us sitting in the car in her driveway until 10 PM... I wasn't very pleased with that!

Sunday morning I woke up and was glad that it stopped raining by the time we got on the train to downtown. We (and a bunch of other runners) got on the wrong train, but luckily made it downtown with plenty of time to spare. I met up with Brad (LuvPre) and his friend who luckily were nice enough to let us use their hotel bathroom instead of the porta potties!It was still dark when we started, but got light pretty quickly.

Here are my splits from the race:
10 Km:
1:14:27 Pace: 11:59
8.9 Mi:
1:47:11 Pace: 12:03
Half:
2:39:38 Pace: 12:11
17.5 Mi:
3:35:02 Pace: 12:18
20 Mi:
4:07:42 Pace: 12:24
21.1 Mi:
4:22:56 Pace: 12:28

26.2 Mi:

5:42:23 Pace: 13:04

My only real goal was to get under 6 hours, so I was fine with that... The first 8 miles went pretty smoothly, and then on the industrial out and back section my hamstrings started cramping up pretty badly. Needless to say, I was a little worried and wondering how I'd run 18 more miles if I was already cramping. Not sure why it happened, either, I didn't go out toooo fast and I was plenty hydrated. The weather was perfect, cool and overcast, so it definitely wasn't that.

I managed to push on and stay close to pace (despite taking walk breaks for two minutes out of every mile) until around mile 20, where I took a bad step and my right hamstring just completely locked up (thus the 15 min mile 20!).

I managed to shuffle to mile 22/23, and then ended up having to walk most of the last 5K. I think that last 3 miles was the hardest thing I've ever done, but I managed to walk/shuffle/drag myself to the finish line.

I'm a little disappointed with the way the last few miles went, but given the cramping and the not-as-good training I was glad to be able to run strongly until that point and then to be able to finish. Now it's time to rest up this week, get my hammy all healed up, and get back out on the roads to get ready for Seattle on Nov. 29!