The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Good: I've wanted to do this race for a long time -- I volunteered for it several times when my dad was doing it, and it's one of New Hampshire's classic races. I had a relatively injury-free training season for it, and most of the logistical factors went well (pre-race food intake, blisters, etc.). I feel like I should be able to be strong for my next 3 races: the Applefest half in 1 week, the Baystate full in 3 weeks, and the Stone Cat 50 in 6 weeks.
The Bad: My official finishing time is really, really bad -- way worse than I'd thought possible going into this, and mostly attributable to hitting the wall and not fighting through it. My time was 3:36:38, which is 20 minutes below my P.R. and at least 30 minutes below what I thought I could run. I did the first 13 miles in 1:28:30, so my race basically deteriorated significantly. My right shoulder was hurting a lot from carrying my energy drink, mainly since I haven't done actual upper body exercise in about 8 months.
The Ugly: I "ran" the last 3.2 miles in 46 minutes. This essentially means that I hit the wall, started walking, sat down a little bit, walked some more, and then limped to the finish(the police along the course kept checking that I was OK). Why did I do this? I basically gave up as soon as I thought that I wasn't going to qualify for Boston. It feels like a character failure on one level, and I still don't really know what to think.
I do wish that I'd done a few more long runs where I actually hit the wall -- I was so assiduous about getting calories in and staying at a slow pace that I only really bonked once. I'm going to be trying to get some climbing/pushups in to build up my shoulders a little, rethinking my fueling approach, rejiggering my race plans for Baystate, and trying to keep my legs flexible and feeling fast.
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