It’s been nearly two months since I ran the REVEL Big Bear Marathon on November 9, 2019! Usually after I race I can hardly wait to summarize it and capture the memories in a blog post. This time though, I felt a need to savor the experience and keep it to myself for a while. The race felt surreal the second I finished it.
Going into the race I had the usual A, B and C goals. C was to arrive at the starting line healthy and finish uninjured. Check! B was to beat my 4:28 time from the Death Valley Marathon, which I unknowingly ran while deficient in vitamin D, B12 and iron. Yeah, I definitely did not want a repeat of that. I had the all-clear from my doctor, and check! I managed to break 4:28. My A goal was to break 4 hours. That’s never easy (for most of us anyway) and it gets harder the older I get (I’m 48 now). But check! I did it! And the best part is I even met an A+ goal — I finally negative split a marathon, on my 9th try! Three things helped me run the second half of the race faster than the first: (1) I went out slow at the start and resisted the urge to “bank” time while I had fresh legs. This time I was invested in saving my energy for the final miles, and I didn’t get carried away in the excitement of the race. A lot of people passed me in the first half of the race, and I just stuck to my plan, thinking I would pass them back in the second half (which did not turn out to be true, by the way – Big Bear is a “fast” downhill course and a lot of runners choose to run hard to go for a BQ or PR — so when people passed me I rarely saw them again! Good for them! But I’m glad I stuck to my plan of going out slower than my goal race pace). (2) I wrote out a pace band for myself using the negative split pace band feature for Big Bear from FindMyMarathon. And (3) REVEL Big Bear is a course that is set up perfectly for a negative split. I highly recommend this race. It’s well-organized, it’s a pretty course (until the last few miles) and it’s got a great course profile with some gentle rolling hills in the first half followed by an advantageous elevation decline from mile 9 on. And it’s not so downhill that it kills your quads or calves (if you’ve put in some downhill training and/or done strength training). This course replaced the old REVEL Canyon City (which I liked but it killed my calves) and I like this one better.
I had paid extra to pick up my bib on race day so I didn’t have to drive out to the expo. On race morning my husband got up early and drove me to the bus pickup. I wrote this note on the bus, which is a good thing because I don’t remember it:
2:25 up
2:30 out of bed
2:50 on road
3:40 arrive
3:50 porta potty
4 packet pick-up
4:12 on bus
It was about an hour drive to the staging area on the 38 highway south of Big Bear so I arrived about 45 minutes before the 6 a.m. start. It was cold at that elevation but not uncomfortable. Ideal really – somewhere in the 40s at the start (warming up to the low 80s by the time I finished). There were plenty of porta potties and not a long wait. I went through the line once, bagged my warm throw-away clothes, and got in place between the 3:50 and 4 hour flags. I kept my gloves and hand warmers (genius if I do say so myself). I ended up ditching them around mile 8 (mistake – I should have kept them until the half-marathon point – it was still cold at times until then!)
I had tried out UCAN for fueling during training and used it for the race. I took a scoop before the race and carried another small bottle with me for the first 6 miles or so. It worked great until about mile 11 when I felt the need for a quick boost – whether that was physical and/or mental I don’t know, but I ate a Trader Joe’s fruit strip – 80 calories, easy to carry in the pocket of my running pants, easy to open on the run, and delicious to consume. I drank Powerade at the aid stops. I also took a Clif Shot Energy gel with a small amount of caffeine at mile 18 (hoping not to hit the wall at mile 20, and I didn’t). I ate two more fruit strips as needed toward the end of the race. It all worked out great! Those last 6.2 miles were really hard (both due to racing hard and due to the mild heat) but I stayed strong and focused and kept doing the mental math to stay on pace to come in under 4 hours. On the long straight-away at the end I saw my husband and two youngest girls. The girls ran along the side of the course as I ran down the finish chute. I was so focused on finishing strong that I forgot all about smiling for a finish line photo! So here is a photo from earlier in the race, when I was still smiling!
It was a good thing the girls met me right away at the finish and I could lean on them for support. Crazy how you can go from running faster than 6.5 miles an hour to barely being able to walk. As we all know, the mind is a powerful thing. My mind convinced my body to run across that finishing mat and the second I crossed it, my mind said, “Okay, my work here is done.” And that’s when everything felt surreal.
Mike joined me and the girls and they helped me pick up my results: 3:57:52, for an average pace of 9:04. It wasn’t an overall PR but it was a PR for me in the 45-49 age group, and I am so pleased to have negative split the race. When I try to think of a word to sum up the race for me, the word that comes to mind is “validating.” That finishing time and negative split validated that I had trained hard and raced smart. This wasn’t an easy year for me to stick with a marathon training plan (the college application process for my oldest, and getting her settled in for her first semester, and having her living away from home — all of those put an emotional strain on me that made me extra proud that I didn’t get side-tracked from training). So, after the race I just reveled (ha ha, pun intended) in my personal, positive experience at REVEL Big Bear.
Now the big question in my mind is, do I go for marathon number 10? Marathons are hard (duh) and I don’t take the training or racing lightly. We’ll see!
