Baltimore Marathon - RunMarathon

As I said, I didn't have very high expectations for this race going in due to being sick. I ran the first mile fairly slow, as I had to dodge A LOT of slower runners and run / walkers. I hate when people refuse to self seed correctly. There's a few hills early on, but I was feeling good so rant them at a good pace. When I got to the early down hills I tried to push the pace a little. I knew I was going to have trouble holding a sustained pace for the entire race, but wanted to see what I could do. At about the 10 mile mark, I met up with the 3:20 pace group. I didn't think I could finish that quickly, but ran with them for about 5 miles. Once the real hills started, they started to pull away from me which I was OK with. I held a sub 8:00/mile pace until mile 17. I felt "OK" until about mile 19, when my left hamstring strarted cramping up badly. The uphills stop around mile 22.5, so I kept telling myself "If you can just make it to there..." Unfortunately, the cramps kept coming and I had to keep taking walk breaks, and a few stretch breaks. I still had outside hopes of a PR, and then later a sub 3:30. Unfortnately, I ended up missing both of those goals. Oh well, not too bad for having been sick.

Back of the pace some in the first half, knowing I was going to blow up eventually.

As soon as I finished, I went into a 3 min long coughing fit. A neighbor finished the relay right as I did, and asked if I was OK. I think my reply as "not really." I grabbed my medal, a mylar blanket, and some water. The food line was waaay too long, so I went to my meeting place and met our friends Mom who was watching LJ. B and our friend finished about 10 to 15 min later. I wanted to watch their finish, but the legs were just cramping too bad too move. We hung out for a while, met a former co-worker who we hadn't seen for a while, and generally just chilled. After a few beers, we eventually drove home.


Getting sick. The hills didn't help, but I had been training for that.


Overall, I felt the organization and logistics of this race was a lot worse this year. I've done this race six times, and this was the worst. At the start line, the pace groups were way to bunched up, and there was a lot of pushing and shoving to try to get into the starting corrall. I eventually had to kick down a temp barrier just to get on the course after the gun went off. After the race, the food lines were ridiculously long. I grabbed some water, beer tickets, and then said forget the food. My cramping legs just couldn't wait in the line. To me, a marathoner not being able to grab some food is unacceptable. I do LOVE that they give free beer at the finish.