PDX Marathon Pre-Mortem

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This past training block has been kept together with duct tape. From cross training for almost a month to heal a minor injury, to the medium-hard-effort-turned Death March that was Hood to Coast, to even the timing of the race itself — I didn’t know if we were going to be out of town that weekend! When it turned out that Oct 2 was available, I signed up the Marathon somewhat late in the game. 

Nonetheless, the training has already been baked in and I’ll have to go into the race with my current fitness. 

I feel that I was better conditioned for Eugene, but for Portland I’m going to go into this with a better strategy. 

On the eve of the race, I’ve written a pre-mortem— things that could talk me on race day and what I’m going to do to prevent them. 

let’s get into it:

My expectations

The first thing I’m doing is setting my expectations and goals. I’m gunning for a sub 4 hour marathon so that means I have to really control my pace right from the first mile. Doing bursts of speed and charging up hills felt fun in the moment, but I definitely paid for it on the back half of Eugene. 

This time I have concrete goals with concrete contingency plans. If it’s clear I can’t get sub 4 hours, I’ll know early on and roll to my backup plan. If the backup plan blows up, then I’ll roll to my C plan. No fretting, just keep running.


A) sub 4:00

B) sub 4:15

C) finish strong 


Pacing

I’m basically going to monitor three different metrics:

  1. My Actual pace - I want to keep at around a 9 minute mile the entire way. With maybe 10 seconds faster or slower than 9 minutes at any time during the race.
  2. Maintain a heart rate of less than 150 bpm. That solidly keeps me in zone 3 and well below my VO2 max. This will preserve my (limited) glycogen stores. 
  3. Lastly just my RPE — my rate of perceived exertion. I should be at a 6 or 7 the entire way through, effort wise.
If these metrics start going out of whack, that means I need to start going into damage control mode before I cramp or bonk. If I’m really struggling, I will adjust down to my B goal and keep trucking. 

To keep pace, I’ll be tracking my 5k splits. A 9 minute mile almost exactly gets me to a 5k split of 28 minutes. What that does is keep me from freaking out and trying to drastically change my pace from mile to mile or Km to Km. Instead i can adjust the speed slowly in order to get back down to a 28 minute 5k split. 

Nutrition

My hot take is don’t bother carb loading. For a 4 hour marathon schlub like me, the potential risks of carb loading outweighs the benefits. 


Carb loading is a lot more nuanced than just bingeing on pasta the night before the race. You do it wrong and you risk feeling bloated, your legs feeling heavy, or GI issues during race day. 


It’s far more beneficial to eat normally and simply to avoid any GI distress on race day. 


For the beginner runner, focus more on eliminating failure points rather than try to “hack” a few extra minutes from your time. 


As for water, I’ve calculated that I lose about 16 oz of sweat for every hour I run. Each aid station hands out ~4 oz cups. So I need to hit up basically every one of the 18 stations to ensure I’m properly hydrated. 


I already have Gu Gels so I won’t be getting the sports drink. Too much sugar and not enough water risks GI issues, so Gu combined with a sugary sports drink might upset my stomach.

Weather



10 am to 11 am is going to be when the race will start becoming a struggle bus. The temperature is projected to be 55 degrees at 7:10 am and will rise to the mid 70s and up past 11 am. 

Cooling the body down requires a ton of energy so I need to keep that in mind especially during the early hours. I might feel like a million bucks at 7 am but not so much at 10 am. All the more reason to bank energy and not time. 

If you “borrow” energy to buy time during the first half of the race, your body is going to ask for that energy back during the second half. And it’s going to ask for interest. 


Anyways, that’s how I’m approaching this race. Gonna send it. Gonna smash it. See you guys at the finish.




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