The Toronto Marathon is held on the first Sunday of May each spring (6th May 2018). This course is one of my favourite marathons because it holds sentimental value for me. It is my adoptive home town race, it was where I did my very first marathon, and it was also the course where I earned my Boston Qualifier for the 2017 Boston Marathon. My hopes were to earn another Boston Qualifying spot with this run.
I left the condo early (6am) to make the shuttle bus run from the Hilton hotel up to Mel Lastman Square. I was worried what the atmosphere would be like at the starting point this year due to recent tragic events, but the mood was the usual pre-race jitters rather than fear of anything else (at least that’s what I felt). The memorials were still in place, but did not overshadow the enduring marathon spirit that so many athletes brought to the Square on race day.
As we lined up at the starting line, the announcer asked for a moment of silence for the victims, we paid our respects, and then it was off to the races. I felt really good for the first half of the race. I was holding my race pace of a sub 5min/km (4:56/km). I saw my friend Maxime waiting for me at our usual spot at Yonge and Rosedale Valley Road, and I ran past her with a blazing high five. I felt good going down Rosedale Valley Road and the Bayview Ave Extension, but I started to struggle a little by the time I reached the 25km mark just past Fort York in the downtown core.
I usually start to struggle around the 30-33km mark of a marathon, but for some reason I’m not 100% sure of, I boarded the pain train early this year. Every step on the Martin Goodman Trail was a gut wrenching effort on this run, and my pace had slowed to a 5:26/km at the 35km mark. I began to worry that I might not make the cut off for Boston at this rate. After hitting the 35km marker, the course brings us back east along Lakeshore Blvd for the final 7km stretch, and it never fails that the headwind smacks you in the face when you’re the most fatigued.
I was running alongside another two women and we decided to try to draft behind two taller male runners just in front of us. Running in a pack helps to converse energy and is a strategy used by many runners. It helped for a few km but I struggled to keep up with the pack and found myself running alone for the last 2 km at a slower pace of 5:40. At this point, it was pure mental grit that kept me going, I dug deep and hung in there to cross the finishing line with a time of 3:40:45.
Initially, I was disappointed with this run. My current age group is 35-39 and the BQ cut off is 3:40. I missed it by 45seconds!!! Damn it. But then once I settled down and thought about race dates on the calendar I realized it might not be a lost cause for me after all. The next Boston Marathon that I would be applying for will be on April 15th, 2019, and I will actually be in the 40-44 age group by that date, and that age group has a cut-off time of 3:45. The nice thing about getting older is that you get 5 more minutes to get the job done! Considering this, I actually made my BQ with 4min 15sec to spare. Woohoo!! I won’t know for sure if I’ll be going to next years Boston Marathon due to the competitive entry system but I think I have a decent shot when the application process occurs in September.
So what went wrong with my race plan? Why was I over 6 minutes slower this year than when I did this course previously? I’ve wracked my brain trying to think of what went wrong. As a run coach, I am very self-critical. I felt well prepared. I increased my mileage, my peak training run as 35km instead of 32.5km. I had a great performance at the High Park Spring run off where I placed 3rd in my age group, I felt I had enough speed. I was physically healthy, foam rolled and massaged out pre-marathon.
What I found myself coming back to were the mental aspects. I was definitely dealing with more stress this spring that I hadn’t dealt with previously. My fifteen year old cat had to be put down a few weeks before the marathon and I was still coping with that loss. In addition, I was also going through some workplace stressors that were proving quite difficult to resolve. Most of my friends encouraged me to just channel that raw emotion into my run, but I’m not sure if it was the kind of emotion that would serve as rocket fuel. It felt more like dead weight that piled on me and slowed me down. In the end, I’m not sure why I was 6 minutes slower. Stress? Age? Complacency? I can’t say for sure, just speculation.
In the end, I like to take away a positive from every event. And any day you finish a marathon is still a good day, a fantastic day in fact. As critical as I am, I have to remind myself that I still ran a fast marathon at 3:40:45 and out performed most of the women in my age group (14th place AG). I should be proud of that. Congratulations to everybody who finished the Toronto Marathon!
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