• Not planning hard also counts for something sometimes •
[3 MIN READ]
My expectations weren’t high for last week’s marathon in Wilmington DE. Why should they have been? I had the all the distance work I needed, but only modest speed work. I guessed that I might be lucky to break 4:10.
We two neighborhood rudder bunnies took off together. We had done a few long runs together but had never raced together. I was prepared to execute my standard race strategy and Mark was game to stick with me.
My race strategy uses rhythmic breathing to define the level of exertion. Standard racing reasoning is never to try something new on the day of a race, but what fun is that? The major change this time was to go another degree of exertion even easier than usual over the first quarter of the race by not breathing any harder than 4:3, i.e., inhaling in 4 steps and exhaling in 3 steps. Since a standard long run for me is 3:3, this more relaxed effort would be exceedingly casual, but hopefully it would leave me with just enough more energy for the end of the race.
We started off at the very back of the pack, which made it very easy to maintain a relaxed pace. (For a small marathon like this one, we were still only 2 minutes behind the gun.) We ran the first mile at 11:00 min/mile. By mile 6, the end of the 1st quarter, we were moving slightly below 10:00 min/mile. With the 10K racers gone, I switched the 2nd quarter breathing rhythm to 3:3. We were averaging a little below 9:00 min/mile. The 1st half of the race was around the rolling neighborhoods of Wilmington, all of it a breeze relative to our usual Jenkintown-area runs. The temperature hovered between 50° and 60°F under cloudy skies; pretty near perfect.
Over the 3rd quarter, after saying goodbye to the half-marathoners, I increased my breathing rhythm to 3:2 and dropped our pace down to a little above 8:30 min/mile. All the body parts were continuing to work well. Mark said goodbye at mile 17 as I maxed my pace to nearly 8:00 over mile 19. I chose to follow my body’s dictates and pointedly ignored the elapsed time on my phone (no watch!).
Over the final quarter of the marathon, I moved from a breathing rhythm of 2:2 to 2:1 and finally to 1:1 in mile 25. I couldn’t tell how fast I was actually pacing and it was no longer time to care. With my effort feeling right for the end a marathon—closing in on whupped—I managed to erase the 5-minute half-marathon deficit. Chip time: 3:59:56.86. My first sub-4:00 marathon in 4 years. Mark came in 5 minutes behind me, knocking 20 minutes off his NY marathon time 5 months earlier.
Fact: I ran the 2nd half 10 minutes faster than the first. THAT was a negative split. Bonus: No runner passed me the entire race that I didn’t almost immediately pass myself. Take away: Sometimes, even when you don’t prepare for it, you can have near perfection by sheer fortune. Next marathon: Philadelphia, 11’23’U. What can happen with a little extra speed work? We shall see.
-CtCloser (Calvinthe), #negativesplitorpositivesplat #dothedue
FINE PRINT ¶Likeness used with permission. ¶Text and photos (unless otherwise stated): Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-posted: (1) Facebook JRC Growlers Group Run (2025’04’09’W Run Message), (2) GGR email list, (3) Cerebruns by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Cerebrun only with added caption.
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