I had this race booked for a year to be my 5th of 6 stars. It was also the first marathon I had run in nearly a year after taking a break in the spring to do some shorter races.
The buildup was a bit of a mixed bag. There was a 2 week break for a family holiday in Florida where it was far too hot to run. Also some of the sessions had not quite gone to plan.
Based on this I was not sure what to expect from the race.
After flying into the city on Friday and going to the expo to collect what I needed and then a reasonably chilled out Saturday with a little bit of site seeing I was feeling reasonably good.
The morning of the race called for an early start and the weather was unseasonably cold so I put a number of layers over my race kit that could be discarded closer to the start time.
The start was only a few blocks from my hotel so I took a leisurely walk with the thousands of others that were heading in the same direction.
After a bit of hanging around and a couple of visits to the public conveniences I made my way to the start pens.
My plan had been to get near to the 3 hour pacer and stick with them for at least the first half of the race. In reality the area was far too crowded and I couldn’t get near to them. I decided I would gradually catch them up over the first few kilometres.
As the gun went I got my usual rush of adrenaline and set off a little too fast. After a couple of kilometres I settled into a rhythm of just under 3 hour pace.
I thought this would mean that I would catch the pacer quite quickly. It actually ended up taking me 13 kilometres until I found them. By this point I was around 2 minutes ahead of the pace.
I stayed with the group until just before the halfway stage. When we hit an aid station at about this point I moved slightly ahead of them without meaning to. As I felt good I carried on and moved even further in front.
In the back of my mind I had always thought I was unlikely to do the whole marathon at 3 hour pace and that I would finish slightly over. I had thought that I needed to get to at least the 30km marker before slowing though.
When I did actually get to this point I was still feeling ok from that point I just ticked off each kilometre that I could at the same pace. I got to 35 before I slowed slightly. I then had 1 slow kilometre when I felt that I needed to walk a little through the water station to make sure I got enough fluids in.
As I approached the end I knew it was likely to be tight on the 3 hours.
A few kilometres from the end the 3 hour pace group came back past me. I knew that if I could keep reasonably close I would be ok due to starting behind them. This is what I did and I could still see them with half a mile to go.
Coming into the finishing straight I could see from the big clock it was going to be close. I put my last bit of effort into getting to the finish and just made it by 33 seconds.
Going under 3 hours in a major made me really happy as you always have to run a little further in the races due to the crowds and the turns.
Now with 5 majors under my belt it is time to turn my attention to the final one as I found out a couple of weeks before Chicago that I had a place in Tokyo 2024.
markrepton26.2 