How to finish

I've learned more about finishing marathons in the last two weeks then in my two years of marathon training. Two weeks ago I worked the last water station at the Madison Marathon followed up by running last week's Minneapolis Marathon. Here's what I know:
At mile 25 there are two types of runners and two types of walkers. Walker #1 - someone who trained, possibly not enough, but they knew that going in and are still happy doing whatever they can to finish. Runner #1 - heading to the home stretch up right and still running. Runner #2 - not quite a run but certainly not a walk, working hard to finish. Walker #2 - pissed off!!

I want to focus on walker #2. They may fall in to a couple sub-categories; wanted to run a PR and couldn't maintain it or had unrealistic expectations of matching their training and their race. These are usually first timers who may never sign up for another race because the experience is awful. This runner spent 12-18 weeks training for this day and because they thought they could run with the 3:50 pace group they ended up walking at mile 15. I find myself to be a running numbers geek. I try and study and learn from all my runs, especially my long runs so I know what I should expect realistically on race day. I had no intention of qualifying for Boston last Sunday because I was never close in any of my training. I was very happy with my performance because I ran smart and was able to spend most of the second half of the race passing people; look for yourself here. I'm not tooting my horn, I'm trying to explain that despite your training efforts you can enjoy a distance race and be excited to sign up for another if you plan your race smart. On the link to my results go to the bottom by the 'graphic results'. It lists how many people I passed and how many passed me. From mile 9.5 of the race until the end I passed 153 runners, during that same time I was passed by 12. My times fell off as the race went on but I built a race plan I felt confident I could execute and did. It was great to hear the people watching the race tell me how strong I looked and how well I was running. That helped me smile and helped keep me going. I can't emphasize enough on the importance of building a race plan that includes: nutrition, hydration and pace. I'll get in to the details on another post and bore you with my running geekiness.

The point is that I'd hate for a first time marathoner/half marathoner/10ker/5ker never want to run another race because they didn't have some help putting together a plan of attack for the race. Races are suppose to be the fun part and the time to enjoy the fruits of all your training, don't leave your race to chance, especially if you're new to distance races. Get some advice, ask me, read about it online, do something to make sure you're not walker #2.