Marathon 12

Marathon 12 was the 107th running of the Boston Marathon. Very little of the marathon is actually in Boston, it runs from Hopkinton to Boston through 8 different communitities. On race day it was 70 degrees at the start in Hopkinton and 71 in Welleseley, 58 at the finish in Boston. 17567 runners started the race and 17046 finished, meaning that 3 percent dropped out. According to the BAA, 96.9 percent of males finished, 97.3 % of females finished. 51 countries of residence and 71 countries of citizenship were represented. I was one of 299 starters from North Carolina and one of 285 finishers. The winning time was 3% longer than the course record, Rodgers Rop was 5.5% slower than last year. I ran about 8% slower than my marathon PR.

Checkpoints	5k	10k	15k	20k	Half	25k	30k	35k	40k
Checkpoints	0:23:10	0:45:53	1:08:43	1:32:05	1:37:05	1:56:15	2:23:19	2:54:42	3:25:53
Finish			Pace	Projected Time	Official Time	ChipTime	Overall	Gender	Division
Finish			0:08:21		3:42:23	3:38:54	5596	4689	1839

The splits are chip times. They are about on track with what I intended through the half, but then it became clear that it was not a 3:15 day and I podded to the finish. Here is a plot of distance in km vs. time in minutes:

This looks reasonably linear, but the derviative is not as steady. Here is pace in minutes per km as a function of distance:

Rachael and the kids went to Boston with me. We took a train from Raleigh to Alexandria, went out to dinner on the Potomac at the end of King street, took a cab to Union Station and had a sleeper car to Boston. In Boston we stayed at the Charles Hotel off Harvard Square, which was great. We walked along the river to the convention center and back on Sunday and watched DVDs. Monday I left early for the buses to Hopkinton, its a long ride there, it feels good when it takes a while to drive the length of a run.

The crowd in Boston is incredible, especially at Welleseley and for the last couple of miles.

I ran the entire race, after a fashion. It slowly became clear around 16-18 miles that this was not going to be a 3:20 day, and around 20 miles even a 3:30 day seemed out of the question. Heartbreak Hill was no big deal, it was just to hot and too hilly to come in fast. I did run down Bolyston fairly fast, but felt pretty bad at the finish. Lots of people seemed to need wheelchairs, they looked pretty attractive to me too. I staggered back to George Barbastathis's place (George lives a mile or so from the finish), washed up, went to a tapas dinner with George and the family and we caught the train back.

Great fun, we bought plenty of souvenirs, it was incredible to see all the runners along the Charles the day before. For a while, however, I think that triatholons and obscure marathons will satisfy the itch. I wonder how fast to run if Boston is not a concern.