820th Place? Hey, not bad!

Somewhere around Mile 9 of the race yesterday, an odd and pleasing thought began to form in my mind. I was going to make it. This was not the foregone conclusion you might think: The longest I had run in training was 9.5 miles and that run, three weeks ago, had left me exhausted. Now I polled my body parts and found wide disgruntlement, but none of my constituents seemed actually about to quit.

We still had the Naval Academy Bridge to cross. It had been a formidable uphill slog the first time across, roughly at mile 4. Now, an hour later, it looked impossible. But Team in Training had coaches stationed along the climb for moral support and, presumably, to keep an eye out for folks in real distress. Their messages to me: What a view, huh? (You’re doing great.) Think of the nice breeze up top. (You’re doing great.) Let’s pull over and stretch those calves a minute. (You’re doing great.) This is it, this is the last hump, from here on just pull for the big finish.

They lie, of course. There were another half dozen hills before the finish, and while they were more modest, there was always another one…and another.

Until there wasn’t. Then there was just the finish arch and an enthusiastic crowd still there, still cheering even after hundreds of other runners had finished.

For the statistically curious, here are the facts:
Time: 2 hr, 43m 2 sec. Overall pace, 12:27 per mile. This was 820th out of 1,023 entrants. One hour, 10 minutes behind the winner and roughly 1.25 hours ahead of the last finisher. In the group Men Ages 60-64, I was third out of five.

My final fund-raising total is roughly $2,400, compared to my target of $1,800.
The DC/Maryland group of Team In Training collectively raised more than $265K.

My goal had been a level 12 minute pace, which would have led to a finish time of 2:38:00. I missed that by five minutes. However, by my mid-stream reckoning, I was already five minutes behind my target pace by Mile 8. A chunk of this came at roughly the midpoint, when I paused to take off my shoes, rub my feet, stretch and rub my calves and hamstrings, and generally recharge. That was two or three minutes all by itself. It seems like I did not lose any more time in the last five miles and probably did the last third of the race at a faster average pace than the first two-thirds. It didn’t feel that way while it was happening, it felt like a slog.

Still, if I had managed 12 minute miles, I’d have finished 40 spots higher. (OMG, I’m not thinking of doing this again??)