Big Sur Marathon, 2005
              Tom Davis

It was a great year: good weather, no headwind, reasonable temperatures.  I was trying to run a 4 hour race and did even better: about 3:53.  For the first time ever, I did a bunch of interval workouts in preparation, thanks to one of my running partners, Chris, and that may have been what made the difference.  I also ran the race with a close eye on my heart rate.  The previous year it was hot and I took the big hill way too fast and finished in 4:08, so this year was a 15 minute improvement.

I'd done a bunch of the especially long training runs with another Tom and he and I rode down to the start together on the 4:30 bus.  Unlike last year when it was so warm at the start that everyone was stripped down to their running outfits an hour before the race, this year it was cool enough that most of us waited until the last minute to check in our sweats.

I had a bigger breakfast this year than last in the hotel: a big bowl of cereal and a bran muffin, and about 15 minutes before the starting gun I ate about 6 dates so I started out with more fuel on board than I have previously.  (I had a big dinner the night before, also, but even given that I felt like I was eating like a horse, I couldn't even start on the potatoes on the plate.  And "regular" customers were eating the whole thing.  But I didn't weigh 350 pounds, either.)

Along the course I ate and drank almost everything that was available.  That amounted to 4 Gu's , and water plus Gatorade at every stop except the last one which was at about mile 25.  I always slowed to a walk to drink to make sure I didn't spill any.  Things were well-organized: if there was Gu, it was 50 yards before the water so I could get the Gu down and then use water to wash it all the way down.  The water and Gatorade were in different-colored cups so it was always easy to see what you were getting.

I ran with Tom for the first three or four miles, but I knew he'd be faster than me, and I sort of had in mind running 9 minute miles (which would put me in at slightly under 4 hours).  We were doing about 8:30 miles on average at mile 4, so I slowed down a bit and never saw Tom again until the finish which he managed in about 3:48.

I then met Heidi and Jack, and we ran together until about mile 10 at a pace that was just under 9 minutes per mile.  Then the two mile climb up to Hurricane Point started, and Jack dropped back.  That hill was where I blew it the previous year, arriving on top with a heart rate of 180 that I was never able to get below 160 for the rest of the race.  I ran so slowly that it never got above 155 on the climb, which worked out very well.  Normally, on really long runs I like to keep it below 160 on climbs and at about 135 or 140 on level or downhill.  I think it was a little too fast for Heidi.  She continued to run with me until about mile 16, and in retrospect, she should have dropped behind sooner, since I looked up her finishing time, and for the last ten miles her pace dropped from 9 to about 11 minutes per mile.

For the last mile with her we were down to about a 9:10 pace, so I picked it up to perhaps 8:50 or so since I knew the big hill was past and I was feeling pretty good with "only" ten miles to go.  It was hard to find anyone to run with, since, having fallen behind a bit, I was passing almost everyone.  I did run with a guy from Texas for about a mile, but he dropped off on the first hill.  Then I ran for about four miles with an emergency room doc from Ann Arbor but at mile 22 I could tell we were going faster than he wanted to go so I told him I was going to pick up the pace and he was happy to drop back.

I felt great at mile 22, so at that point I just turned on the jets and ran the final four miles at about an 8:00 or 8:10 pace which was about all I could manage.  My heart rate for those last miles averaged about 165 and went as high as 174, but I knew I could do that for four miles, given how good I felt, and knowing that I'd done similarly awful things with Chris when we'd run intervals on tracks at the end of our long training runs.

My average pace was 8:53 per mile, and I managed to run the race with a "negative split": a faster second half.  All of my best times on long races have had a negative split, so I do much better if I can just keep from going out too fast.