2015 Los Angeles Marathon - Part 1

"If you don't occasionally fail, you are not setting your goals high enough".

I bonked. Bonked hard. The 2015 Los Angeles Marathon was my first marathon in 4 years. My first since breaking my knee. I had goals for this race. My BHAG: run it in sub 3:45 to qualify for the Boston Marathon. My more realistic goal: run it in sub 4:00. As I struggled to the end, my goal became: Finish. 

It took me a long time to finally decide to run a marathon again. Once decided, it took a long time to actually register for it. Half-marathons are my go-to distance. It's the distance and the race that enjoy and have progressively run stronger and improved my times through my training. I enjoy training for a marathon (I trained with my group last year, but didn't race 26.2). I love my Sunday long runs. I'm not too keen on racing a full.

 Three weeks before the race, I ran my longest distance in this training cycle: 21 miles. It was a great run and I felt prepared and ready for the marathon.

So what happened?

Heat. Heat happened. As race week approached, predicted temperatures for marathon day were creeping towards 90F. I started to get nervous because I had heard horror stories from my running group about last year's race where temps reached 81F at the finish line. 

I can't blame the heat. Lots of runners that day ran strong, albait slower. I received plenty of advice to throw time goals out, race slow, drink plenty of water, pay attention to your body. 

I naively stupidly thought that I could handle the heat, that although it would be uncomfortable I could push through it and meet my time goals. I worked hard to train for the race, I completed all my training runs, I hit the track, I ran in the dark. I didn't want to run the race slow. The reason it took me so long to decide to run a marathon was that I wanted to be able to run it fast {for me}. It might not be pretty, but I could do it. Ha!

I made plenty of other mistakes. 

To be continued in Part 2...