Race Information

• Name: Philadelphia Marathon
• Date: November 19, 2023
• Distance: 26.2 miles
• Location: Philadelphia, PA
• Website: https://www.philadelphiamarathon.com
• Time: 5:04

Goals

Goal	Description	Completed?
A	Finish	Yes
B	Finish while running the vast majority of the time	Yes
C	Go under my 5:23 PR	Yes
D	Reach goal: Go under 12 min/mile (about 5:14)	Yes
E	Huge reach goal: go sub-5:00	No
F	Beat at least 1/4 of people in my age group	No

Splits

Mile	Time

Training

This was my third marathon: I ran one about a dozen years ago in 5:23, then Philly last year in 5:25 (frustratingly close to a PR).

Training went better this year. When the plan I was following called for 20-mile runs last year, I could only get to 15-16. But this year, I completed two 20-milers. So my hopes for improvement in the race were high.

Pre-race

My over-excited brain woke me at 3:45 a.m., and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I was really anticipating a great race, since weather conditions were forecast to be perfect (high 30s at the start, mid 50s at the end).

Fortunately, the security check to get into the starting area went much quicker this year; no long line (perhaps because I arrived as the first wave was starting).

One nit to pick with the announcer: he kept saying “And now the next wave is about to begin,” but he usually didn’t identify which wave it was. It would have been helpful for runners in the final corral (like me) to know how many more waves we needed to wait for.

Race

I set off at my typical low-10s pace. I maintained a similar pace for much of last year’s race, but due to chronic stomach issues (IBS), I made precautionary stops at about 12 out of the 13 port-a-potty stations, which led to my 5:25 finish. This year, since my tummy felt pretty good, I chose to bypass a few more, which really helped my time. But I was making my final pre-race potty stop when my wave began, so I ended up crossing the starting line several minutes after almost everyone else was gone. It was easy to pass the very tail-enders, but soon I reached clogged parts of the city streets, where it was hard to weave through traffic.

(Sorry to be toilet-obsessed, but a big failure on the organizers’ part was to have too few potties and to have many of them run out of paper long before the race ended. I spent 10 minutes standing in one line, which knocked me way off pace; I figure 1,000 runners passed while I stood there. And then to find that the paper hadn’t been replenished …)

Early on, it became clear that I’d smash my PR if I didn’t have a serious breakdown. In fact, I caught the 5:00 pace group around the 19-mile mark – sadly, just when I was going to make another pit stop. I didn’t see them again.

However, in my tired-brain condition, I finally realized that I didn’t have to cross before the 5:00 pace group, because I’d started several minutes behind them! So there was still hope of hitting my huge reach goal.

Today was proof of the adage that the halfway point of a marathon comes at 20 miles. The first 10 went wonderfully well, and the next 10 went reasonably well … except that shortly before 20 miles, I started feeling pain with every stride of my left leg. It felt like a hip flexor. I stopped to stretch a few times, which provided little relief. So I spent the last 10K alternating running for a minute or so and then walking for about half a minute, until my hip felt like it could run a bit more.

When I reached the 5K-to-go point, I knew that if I ran at my typical 5K training speed, I’d hit the line right around 5:00. I tried to summon a final long burst, but the hip just wouldn’t cooperate; I had to keep running/walking.

I ended up crossing at about 5:04. That knocked nearly 20 minutes off my PR, which delights me! And I’m not really that bummed about missing a good chance for sub-5:00. Stuff happens.

Post-race

My wife was waiting near the finish to congratulate me, which made a lot of the pain worthwhile. She was wonderfully supportive all through my training and the race, though I don’t think she really understood why I’d subject myself to this process. Afterward, though, she said it was cool that people of all ages and body types could participate in something like this together.

Last year, I finished ahead of about 22% of guys in my age group, so I set a goal to beat 25% of them this year. I figured my time was so much faster that I’d probably succeeded. Just now, though, I looked at the results … and discovered that I’d beaten about 24.7%. The fine weather must have aided everyone else too! And no, I’m not going to round that decimal up to 25. ;-)

I’m pretty sure that’s my last full marathon. The amount of training required is just absurd. Those 20-mile training runs took me half a day! And the hip issue was a reminder that my aging and sometimes fragile body probably isn’t well suited for such extreme amounts of exercise. I’ll keep running shorter workouts and races, and next summer I hope to do some duathlons, as biking is my alternate training activity.

I hope everyone else who ran Philly today enjoyed the weather and a good outcome!

Made with a new race report generator created by /u/herumph.