Philly Marathon

Details

• November 20, 2022
• Entry: Open Registration
• Marathon Number: 5
• Expected Finish Time: 3:05:00 (Ultimate Goal)
• Actual Finish Time: 3:09:28

Overview

I had heard a lot of good things about the Philly Marathon before decided to sign up. It’s on virtually every top ten list of US marathons, it is “flat and fast”, and a ton of people qualify for Boston each year. After finishing my first Boston Marathon in April 2022, I wanted to fully utilize a full 20-week training plan and see what type of improvement I could make during that time. I was greatly inspired by a fellow runner from the Pioneers, who ran a similar time as me in the Boston Marathon (his was in the fall of 2021) and then followed it up by almost qualifying for Boston in his next try at the distance. It gave me a confidence boost that it was possible for a large improvement to be made from one marathon to the next (assuming a legitimate training cycle).

Once I registered for Philly, I got down to business. Having recently wrapped up reading “Run Faster” by Brad Hudson and Matt Fitzgerald I decided to strictly follow the Level 1 marathon training plan included in the back of the book (I HIGHLY recommend this book btw). I followed the training plan meticulously, and felt myself getting stronger, fitter and faster as the weeks rolled on. In early September I was knocked off my feet with Covid, but kept my nose to the grindstone and focused on getting ready for race day. The race itself felt similar to some of the big city majors, but was much less congested during and afterwards. Getting to the starting line proved to be a bit clunky, but overall it worked out. Despite this being my fourth in-person marathon, more lessons were learned.

Lessons Learned

Traveling by train can be quite enjoyable

My wife and I were supposed to travel down together, but our daughter got a lead role in the school play and the performances ended up being on the Friday and Saturday of race weekend. Instead of us driving down on Friday, we changed our plans and I went down solo via train on Saturday morning. Having never traveled on Amtrak I was unsure what to expect… would they have bathrooms? Would there be wifi? Any food?

It turns out the answer to all of those questions was “yes” and I even scored a seat on the cafe car, which had a large table that I shared with a random co-traveler. The wifi connection was free and easy, and it allowed me to work on this very website! The ride took about the same time that it did for my parents to drive down the same distance, but my purchase of the least expensive ticket meant that the train stopped at every single station from Boston to Philly. Apparently there is another train that makes far less stops, travels much quicker, and costs more money.

I picked up the train about 5 minutes from my house, and it dropped me about 1.5 miles from the convention center, which was a very pleasant walk. I debated taking a bus to the expo, but it felt nice to loosen up my legs after the 5+ hours on the train. Another nice perk was that the Christmas Village had opened the day I arrived, so I was able to stroll briefly through there on the way to the convention center.

20 week training plans can work pretty well

As I mentioned before, I had run three in-person marathons (Chicago, New York and Boston) prior to Philly, but had followed 16 week plans and still (very much) had my training wheels on. I had flirted with the idea of paying to have a custom training plan created, but decided to try a generic plan from “Run Faster” to see how that went. The plan was not at all customized for myself, but having just read the book to understand the mindset and thought process of the coaches who wrote the book and the plans, I felt like I was ready.

The wildest thing about the 20 week plan is that it’s five months long. You are probably thinking “obviously, you idiot”, but I assure you… it was not obvious to this idiot. Somehow 20 weeks doesn’t sound as long as five months to me, but it is indeed the same amount of time. It felt a bit crazy, but even though the race wasn’t until the end of November, the first week of my plan started on July 3rd. There were a few marathon training plans to choose from, but I went with the Level 1 option because of my schedule and not wanting to have my life revolve around running. The first week started with 15 total miles, with the highest mileage being in week 18 with 50 miles.

All in all it was very manageable and pushed me out of my comfort zone a number of times. It was very well constructed and thought out, and I was fortunate to never tweak or injure anything along the way. There were a few times that I decided to do longer trail runs (mostly because they are more fun) instead of the scheduled workout, and fortunately it never came back to bite me in the butt. If you’ve already done a few marathons and haven’t yet attempted a 20 week plan, I highly recommend giving it a go.

Getting sick during training doesn’t mean it’s over

You likely read this in my overview, but I got Covid at the beginning of week 11, and it took me out for a full 7 days. The first 3 days I was horizontal on the couch and useless as a human being, and then I was able to slowly emerge from my cocoon, but without much energy at all. I was really bummed out because I had committed myself to do a daily run streak for 2022, and hadn’t missed a single day leading up to that point. It forced me to forfeit that effort, and also had me really concerned about how it would affect the training and conditioning that I had built up over the last 2.5 months. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my training didn’t skip a beat and I was able to hop back into the plan for week 12 and carry it through to the end.

Not all security lines are efficient

A high school teammate of mine has built an incredible company called Strength Running (that I highly recommend you all check out), and as part of his empire, has an excellent podcast featuring some very impressive guests. In episode 270, he interviewed the Philly Race Director Kathleen Titus who did an amazing full preview of the race and what to expect. I listened to it multiple times during my training runs, and it ended up being very helpful in preparing for race day and different aspects of the course. One of the things she mentioned was that runners tended to show up “last minute” to the starting line and in some years they needed to delay the start – and they wouldn’t be doing that in 2022.

I left my Airbnb on Arch Street and walked the 1.5 miles to the start, getting there at about 6:30am (30 minutes before the start). In the previous races I’ve done, I was able to walk up and get through security in about 1-2 minutes, predominantly by walking through a metal detector. For some reason in Philly, they had 2 or 3 security guards hand wanding EVERY. SINGLE. RUNNER. Not surprisingly, this process slowed everything to a crawl, and left us standing in lines for 30+ minutes, just to get through the security. As a result, I had to sprint to the start line and throw my sweatshirt (that I had planned to leave at the bag check) into the piles of clothes to donate so that I could make it to my corral in time. I had roughly 60 seconds to “warm up” in the human sardine can and then we were off. When the gun went off, there must have been hundreds of people still waiting to get through the security. Can’t say I was impressed, and the whole situation seemed like it could be solved by renting a few metal detectors… maybe I’m wrong.

Sometimes the pacers disappear

My original corral was based on my 3:44 finish time in Boston, but I had my eyes set on a BQ (Boston Qualifying time) which would be a 39+ minute improvement. At the expo, it was very quick and easy to change corrals and be put up in the front where they were to have pacers starting with 3 hour finish times and then one for every 10 minutes afterwards. After the craziness with the security and getting to the starting line, I spotted the 3 hour pacer (they hold a small sign above them while running the full distance… wildly impressive). I made sure I was able to see them, and then right away the starting gun went off. Almost immediately I lost sight of the pacer, and never saw them again…

I really wanted to run with a pace group, because I had a few longer training runs where my watch went haywire at the beginning and had my pace fluctuating drastically for each of the first four miles. It totally threw me off and made it very difficult to get into a groove for the rest of the run. My plan was that if I could just hang with the 3 hour pacer as long as possible, I had a good chance of getting my goal of 3:05 or better. Fortunately my watch didn’t sabotage me and I was able to get into a comfortable rhythm at my goal pace early on.

You don’t know how the day will end up until after mile 20

With this not being my first go at this distance, I knew from experience that after running for a few hours, a lot has the potential to go sideways. There had been a few 20+ mile training days that ended roughly, so it was going to be hard to tell exactly how the run would go until after mile 20. I was feeling really good and strong, taking my Maurten gels every 6km (which is kind of a pain in the ass to manage), only missing one of the recommended six gels. Additionally, I also carried my own water again in my Naked running band, which helped me avoid the chaos of most of the water stations.

At mile 17, we turned onto Kelly Drive to complete the final out and back of the course – which was really cool because I got to see the top finisher and all the elite runners on their way to the finish. I was still feeling great, but there was a pretty brutal headwind the whole way out to Manayunk for the (hairpin) turn-around at mile 20. I was starting to feel the hurt, but was doing my best to grind it out for the last 10k. From my unscientific mind, I figured that because we had a headwind for the miles heading north, that we would have a tailwind all the way back to the finish. I was sadly mistaken, and the wind kept coming at me on the way back.

At mile 22 I quickly stopped at the water station to refill my bottle (and take a 10 second breather) and hopped back onto Kelly Drive for the last kick to the finish line. I chugged along for another 2 miles, but then my legs started to stiffen a bit, and I tried stopping briefly to stretch them out. I kept moving, but quickly felt my BQ slipping away… many of the runners I had been hanging with started to gap me and I knew I was in a bit of trouble. In the last mile, I had to stop again – this time feeling pretty light-headed and even dry heaved a bit. I felt like I was crawling for the last mile, but ended up crossing the finish in under 3:10, a PR of about 35 minutes.

2 years of consistent marathon training pays off

It was a bitter sweet finish for sure. Given that I was on track to get a BQ for about 23 miles, it was hard not to be disappointed that it fell apart at the end. On the other side, I had a massive PR on a day that started in a less than ideal way, and gave me even more belief that a qualifying time was very attainable. When I first began this marathon journey, my coach said that it takes your body about two years to get used to marathon training. That blew my mind and felt like an incredibly long time. Two years later, I can say that it feels pretty darn accurate, and my legs, toes, feet, knees, etc. are faring much better than they did even a year ago. If I look at my very first crack at the marathon distance and then compare it to Philly, I’ve been able to take about 90 minutes off my time in two years and put me into legitimate territory for that illusive BQ. I doubt that I’ll ever had another 30+ minute PR again, so now it’s time to really start to fine tune the training, nutrition and recovery to shave off some more minutes and (hopefully) get under 3 hours.

I need to enjoy cities I travel to more

My travel plans were adjusted late in the game for this trip, and it made me realize that I don’t want to miss out on opportunities to explore the cities I race in again. Philadelphia is such a cool city, and I was there for less than 24 hours. Back in high school I had wanted to go to college in Philly, and Allen Iverson was my favorite athlete growing up. We had visited the city a few times but I hadn’t been there in almost two decades, and really wished I had at least a day to explore more and get to know the city as an adult. I’m not going to waste another opportunity like that in the future.