Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon: The First Half

Continued from Pre-Race.

From the gun, I took off with my eye on other women in the field.  Remember, my main objective for the race was to compete and place as high as I could.  For the first mile there were many (8-10?) women around, and I settled in.  I generally do well running by feel, so I never worried about heat/humidity adjusting my pace; I just planned to go out at an effort that felt sustainable for 26.2 miles and felt I confident that would be the correct pace. Calculators such as this one, which I looked at in retrospect, advise adding 15-20 seconds/mile at my pace based on the conditions.

Where's Sara?

If someone had asked me what pace we were running at the beginning I'd have estimated 6:40, but turns out my first mile per my Garmin was 6:13 -  the fastest I've ever started a marathon and also not a good idea for anyone not planning to average around 6:00 for the race!  I guess it was just the competition and running on rested legs for the first time in quite awhile, and I suppose I was also wrong to trust my pacing by feel.  At Tobacco Road I went out in 6:50 for the first mile and this really felt the same as that.  Oof.  Usually I believe not looking at my watch during races is a positive thing, but for this one it was probably a mistake.

But, ignorance is bliss so I didn't know what I was doing until after the fact!  I actually felt super confident for the first several miles because I was in the mix with the top women and thought we were starting relatively slow [face palm].  My course pace was 6:21 at the 5k and 6:21 at the 10k, so I was pacing evenly, but I was also pacing like the weather was perfect, which, in case I wasn't clear the first 5 times I mentioned it, was not the case.

We spread out a by miles 3-6, with two women pulling away.  I knew speeding up was going to get me out of marathon effort zone (one wise decision made at least!), so I settled in with a friendly woman and man who were chatting away.  When I first fell in stride with them there were a couple of other women with us, but they fell back before long, putting me and Samantha in third and fourth female positions, with several men in our vicinity.  The race had cyclists with the top 3 men and women, so there was a cyclist riding near Samantha and I.  I picked up my first elite bottle at around mile 4, which I'd filled with UCAN (my bottles near 9, 14, and 20 had nuun and a gel).

Samantha's foot is in this photo,
& her male friend

The miles passed quickly, and at one point I heard Samantha tell her male friend something was bothering her and she felt like she needed to either speed up or slow down, then he asked if she wanted to use the decline to speed up, and they picked it up (the race course was relatively flat and straight, but had some turns and inclines/declines).  I was glad that I'd overheard the conversation, because otherwise it would have been a hit to my confidence when they pulled away.  I think this was around mile 11.  I didn't like seeing the third spot and cyclist move away from me, but I knew I needed to keep my effort steady and not pick up at that point.  There were several men around, so I generally had someone to run with or near.  Samantha would go on to win the race.

I expected the race would have a clock at 13.1, but there was only a timing mat.  I considered looking at my watch at that point, but it was kind of freeing not to know.  In hindsight, I think I also felt better about my race not knowing, because I never thought I was not doing well!  I paced pretty evenly for the first half though, coming through at 1:23:55.  I didn't feel bad but I also didn't feel as fresh as I'd like at halfway.  I didn't feel like I was going to negative split, which was unsurprising given the temperature.  However, I kept gradually reeling in and passing men, so that gave me the illusion I was doing great.

The story continues here...