Marathon XXVII

 After the uneasy feeling I got from running the Hartford Marathon event last year, it felt more reasonable (or at least more comfortable) to go back to running a marathon by myself.  But I still wanted to try a new course in a new state.

Having run the Hatfield-McCoy Marathon, which took place in both Kentucky and West Virginia, I decided to consider that my Kentucky race and pick a new West Virginia marathon.  I wanted something easily driveable, where Gloria and I could leave home on Saturday morning and stay overnight, then run the course on Sunday morning and still get home at a reasonable hour that night.

I settled on the Morgantown Marathon.  A six-hour drive from home, Morgantown is the home of West Virginia University.  On the plus side, the race course runs through parts of the campus, the downtown, surrounding residential areas, and a portion of a recreational trail.  On the negative side, there are two main four-to-six lane roads on the course, with some major intersections where I might get caught up at traffic lights; and there are dozens of turns, increasing the possibility of inadvertently going off-course.

Training had gone pretty well through the winter.  I have lowered my expectations in recent years, going from trying to get a personal record at every race to trying to get a Boston qualifying time at every race to simply coming in under four hours.  As I get older, not only has the need for speed diminshed, but also my ability for speed.  At 47 now, 18-minute 5Ks and 3:15 marathons are things of the past, and I have finally come to terms with that.

So, my long runs have been in the 8:15 to 8:30 range and I have been enjoying them, for the most part.  I quit speed training for this cycle, opting to use a modified version of Hal Higdon Intermediate 2 training program - no tempo runs, no intervals on the track, no mile repeats.  The only thing resembling speed work is a weekly pace run on Saturdays, ranging from 4 to 11 miles, and a half-marathon race in the middle of the 18-week program.

During the taper of the last two weeks, I used my downtime to study the course and make notes to take with me.  When we arrived in Morgantown, Gloria and I drove the course to check the notes against the real world and make note of landmarks that might be helpful.  While that diminished the element of surprise for the course itself, it helped ensure that I would not suffer the agony of blowing any turns. 

After a wonderful pasta dinner prepared by Gloria in our hotel room (we got one of those extended-stay rooms with a kitchen), I enjoyed a good night's sleep, woke up at 6 a.m., did some stretching, and got to the starting line at the WVU coliseum at around 8:30...