Napa Valley Marathon Race Report

I really wasn't sure how much detail to write in this report so being my first one I will keep it relatively short instead of my original plan of writing about the 2 days leading up to the race and how it all went. I will stick the just the race and then after this one I will see what happens. 


On Sunday morning I started out the day feeling pretty good, probably would have been nicer to stay a little closer to the start of the race, but being here in wine country it was an expensive place to find houses to rent so we ended up about 30min away from the start. It was a great house that every room was decorated differently with a variety of different colors. You can see some of the crazy color below!

Family Photo outside the crazy house.

We got to the location of the start in Calistoga

 and luckily the rain decided to stop just as we got there, but really... we signed up for a Cali race in order to have some good weather, instead it was windy cold and a bit wet! We got to the race about 40min early and this gave me enough time to use the restroom and start my warm up, just like my coach said in our weekly phone call, the warm up was not to be too much, just get in a little bit of some jogging and then throw in a few faster stridesat race pace to get the legs firing a bit more. It was not much at all but the goal of the race was to use the first few miles of the marathon as a little bit of a warm up too.

At this race we had the chance to drop off a personal bottle at any aid station that we wanted much like the pros do. So  once I got warmed up wearing about 3 layers of clothes I headed dropped off my aid station bottle and my clothes bag at the buses that would take them to the finish like. I got into the starting line with about 10min left before the start and just tried to relax and stay loose in prep for the run.  

I started really relaxed and smooth and everything felt really easy. I noticed how everyone took off and were passing me like crazy and I was going 7min pace. So I slowed down to 7:20ish and just kept cruising. I went through the first  and second mile at 7:10ish and the third at 7:00 which I felt was perfect and I was holding back a lot. So I let my body ease into the run and dropped into the goal pace around 6:50 and it really felt comfortable, so I was in a good mood. There was a couple hills through the first 6 miles but I still ended up averaging right under 6:50 pace. Then I was still feeling good and was grabbing the Gatorade at each aid station. I could tell I was hydrated because I needed to pee around mile 8 but not bad enough to make a stop or piss myself. The sun came out full force and was a little blinding and it wasn't supposed to come out all do so I didn't have my sunglasses on me which was a mistake and just made those miles uncomfortable to keep my eyes open. 

But  for the next 10 miles I just locked into my pace and held strong around 6:40-6:50 and just relaxed. I grabbed by bottle at mile 14 and kept that with me until mile 21 while sipping on all the nutrition I could. Not once in that run did I ever feel any lack of nutrition, the 20 mile long runs without nutrition and fat adaptation must have been working very well. Mile 20 didn't feel great, just because it was a long uphill section (or at least it felt like it).  At this point in the race is where it was a little mental not knowing if I should try and speed up or just hold pace, I could finally start to feel that fatigue hitting my legs and hips a bit more and 6 miles was still a long ways to go. So I just held steady and didn't change pace. 

The last 3 miles was interesting, we had a downpour of rain four about 2min and then a bunch of hail for another 1min, and then the sun came out (WTF!). I was finally starting to feel the pain in my quad at that point, which required me to really compose myself to make myself hold onto the pace and not slow down. I think in hindsight I could have gone a little bit faster on this portion but I guess I didn't want to risk it too much. It wasn't until the last mile that I pushed a bit harder but really even that push didn't get me to go that much faster, mostly just holding onto the pace still.  

Finished that run off solid with 2:57:31, 27th overall and 4th in AG which is almost an 18min PR! Solid performance knowing I played it smart and probably could have gone a little bit faster. The training showed because when I got to 20 miles, it felt like nothing to me because I had done it so many times. My energy levels never dropped which means I did a good job at fueling and pacing. So a good day in prep for the Ironman!

PR Men Right There!

Let's keep it going into the Ironman training.

Preparing for Napa

After I finished Ironman Coeur d'Alene I was actually a little disappointed in what I had accomplished, mostly in the run really. And that left me with wanting a lot more from myself. So after some discussion with my coach we thought we could implement a good run block into the schedule and aim for an early season marathon. It worked out that my dad is turning 60 in March and decided he wanted to run a nice marathon for his birthday and he selected the Napa Valley Marathon on March 5th 2017. So I decided that this race would be the perfect timing, this gave me about six months of training to get ready for a solid marathon and this would be great prep going into the Ironman training which is the main goal for 2017.

Visit Through China

As this is my first blog post I am not going to outline what I have done for the past 6 months of training. The one thing I will say is that my coach has a theory for Ironman training that if you can complete 20 weeks straight of a 20 mile long run day then when it comes to the Ironman marathon, running the marathon would be no problem. So one day with a 16+ mile long run day I ended up running 20 miles and told my coach I was ready to attempt the 20x20. So we went for it and honestly I nailed it, it wasn't really as hard as I had expected. A few of those ended up on a treadmill due to traveling in China and snow storms. Being able to accomplish the 20x20 is more of a mental victory than physical.

So here I am one week out from my marathon and easily the best prepared I have ever been in my life. But if I didn't tell you I wasn't scared and nervous then I would be lying. Even though I have taken over 10min off my 1/2 marathon time this year and completed plenty of long hard days of training. I am still scared as hell about the pain and suffering that I will be experiencing 7 days from now... But this is why we do it right? To see where we can take our bodies and where our limits really are? Bring it on!