So, race details: Yesterday I ran the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, PA. It was a beautiful day for it, nice and cool (though a bit too cold at the start - 35*). I PRd my half marathon record on the first half of the marathon and felt good, in terms of my muscles, but around mile 10, my IT band started to feel uncomfortable in the form of pulling on my hip. So I basically ended up stopping to stretch it every couple miles for the rest of the race and slowing my pace a bit to hope to get through without serious injury. It continued to feel worse for most of the race but by around mile 22 it was feeling a lot better and by mile 24 I barely noticed it. I think the cause was that the course had a lot of downhill in the first half and it used my muscles differently than I was used to. The top of my thighs, up by my hips were definitely fatigued by the end of the first half and I think I must have been compensating and it affected my IT band more than normal. Meantime, I still came in at 3:25, which Im thrilled with and is a solid 10 min BQ. More importantly, it gave me a really clear sense that I could have done even better than that, if I tried (and didnt have to stop 100 times to stretch my ITB). The race course was gorgeous. I definitely recommend it. Just be sure to train for a lot of downhill... because its definitely different than you expect. The good news is that the few uphills at the end actually felt like a relief to my legs because they were using my muscles differently. They slowed me down because it was uphill and I was taking smaller steps, but felt great for my legs. Ok, now that I dumped all that on you, Im going to go take a nap.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 15:16:26 +0000
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