Kentucky Derby Festival Event Report

April 28th was the marathon.  In the few days leading up to the event, the weather was on our minds.  It looked like the high temperature would be awesome, but a looming batch of storms had us worried.  We ended up with a starting temperature of about 55 (12C) and one tiny batch of showers that actually felt good.

The pre-event strategy was to hook up with the Asics 4:45 pace team with a fall back position of letting the 5:00 pace team catch up with me if necessary.  The 4:45 team's strategy was to maintain a pace of about 10:30 a mile and walk through the fluid stations to end up with the proper finish time.

The course begins basically flat until you hit Iroquois Park at about mile 11.  One of the highlights, and where the half-marathon splits from the full, is running through the Churchill Downs grounds, the home of the Kentucky Derby.  After CD, you head toward the Park and the first hilly section.  I've run the park before, but this time we did it in the reverse direction, which I found harder.   I normally build walk breaks into my long runs and this was a perfect place to insert a few.  You exit the park about mile 15/16 and the course flattens again.

This is where I had my first issue.  Not sure if it was a pothole or some other road imperfection but I twisted/torqued my left knee and running after about mile 17 was very difficult.  My mile split times steadily increased after this point.  From 11 minutes to 12 minutes to at times, almost 15 minutes in hilly sections.  I passed a medical tent and had them spray my knee with bio-freeze, which helped for a short time but it was especially difficult trying to go pain free down hills.  Regardless of any issues, I knew I was going to finish and I knew I was going to set a PR.

As the 4:45 team left me, I waited for the 5:00 team to catch me. I held them off as long as I could and then stuck with them for about a mile or two.  They then left me and I was on my own again.  The last bit of the course is extremely hilly until you reach a flat finish.  In this area I caught up with my training partner Ken, who was also struggling a bit.  Finally, on the last few hundred meters, we were caught by the 5:15 pace team and finished with them.  I did manage to run the last bit, including the finish chute, which is always exciting.

Total time was 5:19 as the 5:15 pace team crossed the start line a few minutes after me.  My only prior marathon, as part of Ironman, was 6:12 so a significant improvement in my PR.  I am convinced that a stand alone marathon was much harder than Ironman!  Part of it, is that I ran much more yesterday than during Ironman.

Here were my splits on the day, you can see where the course turned hilly and post knee-twist...


1    10:02.6
2    10:42.6
3    10:41.9
4    11:03.4
5    10:20.5
6    10:57.0
7    10:30.8
8    10:31.5
9    11:04.9
10    10:58.1
11    10:12.6
12    11:31.2
13    11:38.2
14    12:10.0
15    12:47.2
16    11:15.6
17    12:12.1
18    13:22.0
19    13:16.2
20    12:36.1
21    11:31.0
22    13:59.6
23    14:47.0
24    14:59.8
25    14:53.4
26    15:21.1

In the end, it was all worth it though....

Now begins the next Ironman training plan.

Stay tuned...