Marathon choker

Quebec City Marathon

I'm still trying to figure out what happened during my big race. I made a series of mistakes - which one of them caused me to choke up 4 km before the finish line?

The weather was almost ideal for running: cool and cloudy, though there was drizzle and occasional shower along the way too. The first odd thing was the distance marks - the course was marked in the distance remaining to the finish. So, the first sign marking 41 km remaining was actually 1200 m from the start. Used to time my pace on each full kilometer, I had to wreck my brain with all sorts of calculations to figure out if I'm on the pace at all. I'm not a big fan of math, and doing it while running is the last thing I wanted during the marathon. To make it easier, I ran faster to round up the time. That was the first mistake.

The route for the first two thirds went through hilly Levis across the river from the Old Quebec. There were a few exhausting climbs, then we crossed the bridge and headed for the downtown. That last stretch, about 15 km from the end, was a killer. I battled strong headwind and fatigue, there were no distractions which meant all I could think of was how tired I was. In the hindsight I should have slowed down and focused on short goals, but instead I kept pushing on, wanting to be done with it as soon as possible. Finally, around 5 km mark my legs started cramping, my weakened mind gave up and I WALKED (shame, shame on me) for almost a kilometer. A couple of runners passing me shouted encouragement, cheering me on to continue. Amazing how a small mental push can bring you around. I pressed on and finished 76th out of 871 runners in 3h15m20s.

In the cab that took us to the ferry I fought violent cramps in both legs and shook from hypothermia caused by exhaustion. That was easily cured by a couple of aspirins. But the thing aspirins can't cure is the fact that I choked up on route to post a really good finishing time.