Mowhak-Hudson River Marathon 2024 race report: I blew up on mile 20 and missed the goal

There was a lot of effort and dedication preparing for this race. I was learning from the previous years of training and planned around long runs at race pace. I have seen these workouts as the foundation that enabled me to run Baystate in 2022 at 3:56 hr and was progressively increasing the mileage. The peak of training according to my Garmin watch was on April 27 when I ran 18 miles of rolling hills at a pace of 8:21 min/mi. Since that moment, training took a back seat, with a combination of vacation, getting busy at work and warmer weather that at times made it hard to train.

Everything started to look daunting three weeks before race day. I felt overly tired and could not run more than 3 miles when I was in a business trip in Toronto. I decided to stop training and try to recover.

Three weeks before the race

During a busy time at work, I was not doing much training and was feeling tired in general. I did not sleep well during these days and therefore not recover much. I had a little apprehension but thought that I had trained hard the months before and was going to have a great race.

Two weeks before the race

I was trying to check the weather forecast while preparing all the race logistics and reviewing mentally the race step by step through the day including the points where I was going to see my family. Did the last 6 mile run at a fast pace and started to feel better.

One week before the race

Constantly checking the weather forecast started to see the prediction with heavy rain and weather on the high 30s and low 40s began to have doubts about how the day was going to be and if I was going to be able to race. I was mostly worried about hypothermia as I remember a year in the Boston marathon with a similar weather that was very hard, and many dropped out. I decided to go ahead with the plan but was not very well rested the few days before the race. I also could not sleep well.

The day before the race

It should be a day of complete relaxation and rest the legs, ideally having very few steps on the day and recharging the body battery. It was a very active day. Even as we spent 3.5 hours in the car driving to Albany, when 6 pm arrive I was feeling very tired and went to the hotel. I made all the preparations for the morning and went to bed but despite of being tired could not sleep well. It was difficult to decide on what I was going to wear during the race and decided to have the long sleeve wool jersey and a rain jacket.

The morning of the race

Was not feeling completely rested but was excited to go to the race. It was raining but not very heavy. At the start of the race, I had the silly thought of running with an umbrella. I was ready to start and joined the 3:45 hr race pace group.

I had some trepidation on what was about to come on the race and was surprised to see most of the runners on shorts and short sleeve kits not worrying much about the weather. There were some that had black plastic trash bags as ponchos. That was what I should have done!

The start of the race

The group was tightly packed but there were not many runners on the race and was possible to start at my pace. I wanted to do 8:30 min/mi and was OK for the first mile but then rain stopped, and I started sweating with the rain jacket on. I wanted to take it off, but it was not until mile 4 that I managed to do so and wrap it on my waist. I was enjoying the day and felt the goal was within reach as I was keeping with the pace group and started to recognize some of the runners and the stories they were telling. A women ran a qualifying time for Boston last year but missed by 10 seconds the cutoff added time. She did not seem flustered about it and was not planning to run a qualifying time that day.

The middle of the race

At mile 14 I was able to peel off the jacket, the drenching wet jersey and dry with a towel and get my short sleeve jersey. It took me probably 45 seconds, but the worst was that I lost the pace group and did not try to sprint to catch them for fears of draining the battery. I tried to find other runners that dropped from the group, but it was hard and started to feel some pain on my legs and knees. I started to drop on my average time about 10 seconds per mile and began to worry as I knew the big downhill was coming up and that would add more strain to my quads.

Mile 20, a big cramp on my left hamstring

The early sweaty miles took salts that I was not replenishing and overlooked to take enough salts during the race. After the big downhill and trying to pick up the pace with much difficulty a got a massive cramp suddenly. I had to stop and try to massage the muscle but besides the physical pain, I hit an emotional wall with frustration and despair. I thought for few minutes to drop out and have my family picking my up there but kept walking trying to re-start a shuffle and then a jog, but the cramp kept coming back. Finally, decided to walk to the finish line and take this day as a workout.

The finish line and postrace

It took me 90 minutes to reach the finish line with a final time of 4:17 hr and a sense of failure. During the last 6 miles I was reflecting on what went wrong on the race as all the pace groups passed me. The reflections took me few weeks back, feeling over trained, not sleeping well, skipping core training, worrying too much about the weather and race mistakes on the clothing and salts.

As soon as I got home started to look for other opportunities to race and found the dates in January could work for Carlsbad with rolling hills or Houston with a flat course. I decided Houston and while it is a large race with more than 30,000 runners, the low elevation gain should make it less challenging, especially on the last 10 miles.

The learnings

Focus on improving sleep to be able to recover from key workouts, use the mileage on this marathon as training for the next one and take note of nutrition including salts on planning for the next one. I also realize that reading the CGM every mile is a good tool to understand my blood glucose level but sometimes I wish had less stuff to do and running without my phone and less things to deal (towels).