Columbia River Gorge Marathon Race Report

Holy Smokes. That was Hard.

The views at the summit of this course were breathtaking. But the course itself took my breath away in a "kick your butt, here's a humble sandwich" kind of way. The hills seemed never-ending and the elevation gain --about 1900 ft-- is no joke. But you get rewarded with a beautiful view of the gorge from Rowena Crest! If you are lucky, then you might also get some views of rainbows on your way back. If you're unlucky, you might get a good old-fashioned rain dump. Last Sunday, I got all of those things and a bag of chips so I don't know what it says about my luck. The bag of chips was delicious, though! They came with my sandwich after the race.

What I didn't get, however, was a shiny new PR. It didn't happen that day, and that's ok. We press forward. Let's break down the training block and this race.

Training: Show Up, Eat Miles

This block was minimalist and stupid simple. In general, I made Sunday morning a long run. During the week I did easy base-building miles, and Fridays were reserved for "quality" workout runs.

I peaked around 80 km per week (50 miles), but most weeks hovered around 60-70 km/week (~40-45 miles)

My “big run” was an 18 miler about 2 weeks after Hood to Coast. I meant to do another long run of 18+ miles, but illness crashed that plan and instead I took a full zero week. Not ideal, but it was better to recover rather than risk prolonging my cold or risk getting injured. The last "big run" I did was about 17 miles, two weeks prior to race day.

As I got closer to race day, I made sure my training got more and more race specific.

Here is an example of my workouts during those "quality" workouts:

6x1 mile repeats around 8 min/mile pace. I'd sandwich this between a 3 mile warmup and a 3 mile cool down during Sunday long runs. I could do more easy laps if i needed to get more volume in.
5-minute threshold repeats with 90-second recoveries, typically on Friday. I would add more repeats if the spirit moved me that day.
Alternating 1 mile repeats either slightly below or above near marathon pace to fine-tune feel. Near the end of the block, I decided on around 8:50-9:00 min/mile as my goal race pace. For comparison, a 9:09 min/mile would get me a 4 hour marathon, so if I could stay under 9 min miles, i could get sub 4 by a comfortable margin.
Random trail runs were mixed in on weekends because they were fun and exercised random stabilizer muscles that didn't get any love on the roads.

The block wasn't perfect, but simple to remember and sustainable. I didn't feel burned out or overwhelmed at any time during the summer when I was training.

Fueling: Going Through my Mad Scientist Era

Let’s talk about some of the realities of long runs. For myself, a "long run" is anything over 10 miles or so. Beyond that, I recommend carrying some kind of fuel just in case you get stranded. For marathon training specifically, this means getting gels. (For ultra marathons, you can get away with eating candy, but that's something we can cover in a different post) If you wanted to train your gut and emulate fueling for a full 26.2 miles, you'd have to train by consuming 3-8 gels for every long run. If a Gu packet is 2 bucks a pop, that means spending ~ 10 dollars every time I do a long run. Some of the higher quality gels (I'm looking at you, Maurten) can be up to 4 dollars a pop. Yowsers. On top of being prohibitively expensive, the waste that comes from all the individual packets seriously bothers me.

So I took to the internet, did a little research, concocted my own gels using pectin, maltodextrin, fructose, and electrolytes -- all of which I could procure locally and at a fraction of the cost of the commercial stuff. I found some reusable baby food pouches that would eliminate the single use packaging problem. I will also make a post about my specific recipe in the future.

My nutrition plan was to take one swig of gel and drink a little water at every aid station (12 total). The idea was that if i used my DIY gels my gut was already familiar with, and take in water at every station, then I would be able to absorb carbs and avoid GI distress.

Race Week Carb-Loading Chaos

I was reading that carb loading can increase performance by 2-3% for long distance races. (https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/carb-loading) That's about the same performance boost you get from carbon plated super shoes! I wanted to dial this in and give this a try.

My theory is that my current "wall" troubles stem from not having enough fuel in my system. So I wanted to give the carb loading a try along with executing my in-race nutrition plan in order to avoid hitting that wall.

I ate what I normally ate -- bagels with cream cheese, Mexican sweet bread, bread with peanut butter, rice with eggs, pizza, ramen, orange chicken. For an extra boost of carbs I also drank a good amount of orange juice.

My sources suggest 10 grams of carbs for every kg of bodyweight I am. So if I were to calculate it out, that would mean a whopping 600 grams of carbs per day for 3 days.

Yeah.... that didn't happen. I was properly stuffed after even 300 grams of carbs (about 6-7 bagels worth) and couldn't imagine eating even more. I gave it my best but I figure it wouldn't help me any if i felt terrible and bloated going into the race.

All the extra orange juice and the massive meals also gave me a bit of acid reflux the night before the race. The plan was to take in even more carbs the morning of, but instead I had a pastry and some oat milk -- something less acidic -- to let my stomach settle a bit. I wanted to get some coffee since caffeine would also improve performance, but I went for tea instead to calm things down.

Breakfast was at 5 am and the race was at 8:30 AM, and I was battling some upset tummy all the way up until around 8 AM. That was 3 hours of pre-race anxiety I didn't need.

Course and Race Recap

The beginning of the course started at a trailhead above Hood River. From there, we ran along the Historic Columbia River Gorge Trail/Highway through Mosier to Rowena Crest. Over the first 13 miles we climbed about 1100 feet. The course treated us with amazing views of the gorge and of vineyards and farms all along the way.

I purposely paced by "vibes" -- consistent effort: letting gravity do some of the work on the descents, and climbing patiently on the ascents. I stopped at every aid station, took a swig of gel, drank a little water and kept going. The pace was going to be all over the place since I knew I'd be stopping for at least a minute or two at each aid station, but I figure it was worth it in order to avoid the wall.

13.1 Mile Split: 1:55. Perfect. Sub-4 was alive and well. I had run past Rowena Crest and started picking up speed since now I was potentially looking at 1100 feet of downhill. I put in the work on the uphill so now its time to coast back down 1100 feet to the finish line. Things were good, a rainbow had come out and I felt like I had it in the bag.

Beginning around mile 16, signs of trouble started up. I felt some twitches in my calves. I immediately stepped to the side and stretched the calves for about a minute, then I made the effort to pull my toes up toward my shin (dorsiflex my ankles) just so my calves can get just a little bit more extension in between strides. I continued stopping for water and gels at every aid station.

By mile 18 or so I started feeling twitches in my quads. I stepped over to a fence in order to give my quads a stretch but in doing so my hamstrings started cramping. Oof.

There was a local hill climb from miles 18–21. It was a 300-foot rise and enough to force me to shuffle along with several walk breaks. From there I decided to take in more gels, regardless of where I was in relation to an aid station. I believe I was at mile 18 or 19 by the time I hit 3 hours, so my conditions and the pace wouldn't have allowed me to realistically hit sub 4 hours. I had to do some math in my head and recalculate a new goal. I first settled on 4:20, but as I was still walking, I adjusted that goal further to 4:30.

At mile 21, the gels had finally absorbed into my system. My pace stabilized around 11–12 minutes per mile. If I was at ~3:30 currently and I had approximately 5 miles to go, then 4:30 was a very realistic goal.

Once I passed the last aid station at mile 23.5, I could see Hood River glinting below, and that gave me a renewed motivation to finish. Everything was still ginger --tingly, cautious-- but I found a way to get my body to work without my legs threatening to cramp.

Right around mile 25, I sniffed out the finish line, and I emptied the tank. I think my body knew too and the threats to cramp faded away. There was always the chance that I'd step wrong, my leg would betray me and seize, and I'd fall over at the finishing chute, but it was a chance I was going to take. I kicked as hard as I could, eyes narrowing on the finish. Like turning down the radio when you're driving on a busy street in order to "see better", my hearing dulled and my focus sharpened at the finish.

My Final Time: 4:28:53.

I gave the course everything I had that day, and the course gave me back this finishing time with a side of humble pie. I found my wife, hugged her, and cried. Not out of defeat - but out of release. This was the most pain I’d felt in a long time, and it was beautiful. It was chosen pain. An honest pain. A pain that carved space for gratitude and clarity. The feeling of pain and soreness that can only be earned through weeks of training, early morning runs and finally through a 26 mile test of fitness. Ultimately, that feeling is worth much more than a time on a clock.

Lessons Learned

Nutrition timing matters
My plan was sound, but my discipline lagged. The original plan was a swig every 20 minutes. I wanted to time my nutrition with my water intake, but the problem was I didn't carry water with me and relied on the aid stations. But the stations weren't evenly spaced, some were about a mile apart, while others were almost 3 miles apart. So I skipped nutrition during some stretches when I should have just taken some gels anyways.

There are more aid stations at bigger races so this normally isn't an issue. But for smaller races (there was maybe 300 marathon runners total), my plan is to bring my hydration vest so I can control for this variable. If I run out of water, I can ask the aid stations to refill my flasks.
Making my easy runs easy.... but not TOO easy
I think I found my lower bound of “too easy.” For road running, 14 min/mile might be too easy -- it's not enough stimulus for adaptation. And I'm leaving some miles on the table if I have a time constraint I need to work with. I’ll aim for 12 min/miles at the slowest to keep my mechanics sharp.
Making my harder efforts truly hard
Conversely, I need to push my hard runs harder. As form and muscles break down from fatigue, maintaining marathon pace for the last hour might be the equivalent to an all out 10k effort. This is problematic since I'm allergic to speed work. I think I'm moving in the right direction with 1 mile repeats and 5 minute threshold repeats, but I need to incorporate longer 40+ minute tempo efforts in order to train specifically for that last hour of a marathon. It's almost an entirely different race!
Perspective and the exploration of the "Pain Cave"
Stress and pain are pieces of information, nothing more, nothing less. Without processing this information, it can easily be interpreted as danger and panic ensues. But does that always have to be the case? I often think about ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter, how her mind navigates tough moments:
"The pain cave is where I go when it physically feels like I can't take another step. It's a visual I have of this space in my brain that I go to with a chisel, and I just go to work on making it bigger, which helps to stay mentally tough in those difficult moments - and makes my capacity for suffering bigger,
"Your brain is so powerful. Figuring out how to use both my body and my brain keeps me signing up for these really tough challenges because I want to keep testing myself."
(source: https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/67945344 )
Her words resonate because pain isn't a reason to panic. Its information I'm feeding to my brain and I get to decide how to interpret it.
Of course there is pain in the form of *discomfort* and there is pain in the form of *potential injury* and the wisdom is in knowing the difference. But I agree with Dauwalter that our ability to experience the discomfort is far greater than we think. Like Dauwalter, this race is motivating me to return to that pain cave, dig deeper. Eventually, I will bust through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man, coming out stronger and more resilient on the other side. OOOH YEAH

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