Grandma's Boy marathon?

jason flogel, who finished 15th, had a 6 minute p.r. in the hot conditions. i wonder if any other "elite" runner was able to improve in this manner at this race... im guessing not.

It was so nasty out there. Around 16 miles in I was in about 80th place. I got passed by maybe 5 or 6 people those last 10 miles, and I don't recall really passing anyone, and I ended up 51st over all. The road side was littered with DNF's. You know it can't be a good race when you get sunburned during it.

The worst part was waking up Sunday morning and feeling the 50 degree air and seeing all the clouds. We missed great weather by 24 hours.

Stolen Bikes Ride Faster wrote:

It was so nasty out there. Around 16 miles in I was in about 80th place. I got passed by maybe 5 or 6 people those last 10 miles, and I don't recall really passing anyone, and I ended up 51st over all. The road side was littered with DNF's. You know it can't be a good race when you get sunburned during it.

The worst part was waking up Sunday morning and feeling the 50 degree air and seeing all the clouds. We missed great weather by 24 hours.

I ran a few miles along the course on Sunday and you are right about that one. We would have had a nice tailwind also. It started downpouring but I think that was probably after the elites would have finished (I slept in on Sunday). There was plenty of cloud-cover (non on Saturday) and it was cool. Go figure.

biked the course on Sunday morning, up to the start and back. It truly would have been awesome for running.

So what happened to crazy Jason's boy toy Rik Ceulemans??

I went out conservatively (5:52) and kept that pace for 16 miles. I was cruising and passed 50 people between mile 1 and 20. I too got a stomach cramp around mile 16 but never really felt bad until mile 20. Some clown on the side of the road was cooking hamburgers around mile 21 and the smell made me want to throw up. I ended up fading bad and ran 2:42:30..stopping a few times to drink water, dry heave and sponge up. It was my first marathon and it was a sucky first!

I don't think anyone ran too well. There were about 40 people going after the B Standard and only 4 or so made it.

Sipping coffee in Two Harbors on Sunday morning, I cursed the weather!

I'm pretty sure I saw that friend of Jason's with the nike swoosh on the back of his head drop out of the race around mile 9 or 10.

Does the heat lead to more stomach problems?....or is it that you tend to try to drink more fluids because of the heat and that is what does the stomach in?

treadmill wrote:

I'm pretty sure I saw that friend of Jason's with the nike swoosh on the back of his head drop out of the race around mile 9 or 10.

Does the heat lead to more stomach problems?....or is it that you tend to try to drink more fluids because of the heat and that is what does the stomach in?

I saw that guy too, I passed him very early.

treadmill wrote:

Does the heat lead to more stomach problems?....or is it that you tend to try to drink more fluids because of the heat and that is what does the stomach in?

Some from column A and some from column B. Even if proper fluid/electrolyte balance is maintained, the combination of heat and strong running can divert blood flow away from the digestive system, triggering an unsettled, nauseous state. When gastric emptying is that slow, thirst isn't fully quenched, so the tendency is to gulp extra fluids, which can often make the problem worse. Finding the proper balance of water and electrolytes, taking the right volume and temperature of fluid at each stage of the race, and keeping the body as cool as possible by regularly dousing with cool water (especially over the top of the head) can reduce nausea during hot weather races. As usual, it's better to experiment during training runs if possible instead of waiting until race day to try something out for the first time.

xZude wrote:

So what happened to crazy Jason's boy toy Rik Ceulemans??

He led the first two (I saw the splits in the paper) and I heard he dropped out around 5 or so. He was one of the few that dropped out before me.

JT has balls. I like balls. Big, round hairy balls. Way to go buddy! Poetry in motion.

Someone joked that they should just schedule the race for "third weekend in June" and pick Saturday or Sunday based on the weather forecast. Of course, even that's notoriously fickle in Duluth - Sat. was supposed to be a low of 60 going up to high 70s, but it was way hotter than that.

And yeah, it sucked that Sunday would have brought winning times in the low teens, probably a CR in the half (Chad J. probably would have run 61-low) and a bunch more OTQs.

Nice run by Nick Rogers, in Boston he said he'd basically retired. He ran smart, was back in 20th place at halfway and ran down a bunch of guys in the last 10K.

1:10/2:44

I just wasted enough time to run a marathon while scanning lots of the results to see who ran the most even splits (alright, I admit I've got problems) and I spotted some memorable positive splits.

Here's a doozy: 1:10:42/2:57:54

In this one, the pace between halfway and 20 miles (listed as 2:11:34) was 8:50 per mile, with the last 6+ miles to the finish done at 7:27 pace, indicating either a prolonged stop (vomiting/diarrhea/muscle cramps/medical assistance?) or lots of walking/jogging until the last few miles.

But the winner is: 1:51:25 halfway / 3:08:37 at 20M / 6:06:25 at finish - so it was close to 3 hours for the last 6+ miles. Wonder what the story is there. Stepped off the course to buy a soft drink at a convenience store and got caught up in a holdup-turned-hostage-situation perhaps? Abducted and probed by space aliens? Who knows?

Now for a few suspicious ones:

2:12:06 half / 3:35:36 finish (no split for 20 miles)

2:08:14/3:44:09 (no 20M split)

2:06:38/3:44:10 (no 20M split)

The chip times were fairly close to the gun times, so it doesn't look like they got to the starting line late. Plus they all somehow missed the mat at 20 miles. Hmmm. There's no subway near this race, is there?

And with a chip time of 5:15:14 and a gun time of 5:15:14 (assuming those are accurate, which they probably aren't), somebody's lining up a wee bit too close to the front.

It's a point-to-point course and pretty damn hard to pull a Jurena unless you hop in a car somewhere along the course.

Catch the sag wagon/drop-out bus to the finish and hop back in? As I recall there are some pretty sparse areas just before the finishing stretch where it would be quite easy to hop in.

I mean, I paid for that finisher's medal dammit!

"jason flogel, who finished 15th, had a 6 minute p.r. in the hot conditions. i wonder if any other "elite" runner was able to improve in this manner at this race... im guessing not".

Your guess would be wrong then. The Wagner guy who finished 7th in 2:21:23 ran something like a 10 minute PR.

Just add in that the one time I DNFed a marathon the bus dropped me at the finish to collect my sweats and I even had to duck under the ropes in the finish area to give them my damn chip. It would have been almost as easy to cross the line and collect my medal and shirt and so on, if I was that sort of person.

Chet Again wrote:

Catch the sag wagon/drop-out bus to the finish and hop back in? As I recall there are some pretty sparse areas just before the finishing stretch where it would be quite easy to hop in.

I mean, I paid for that finisher's medal dammit!

It wouldn't be that hard. I took the sag from around the 14 to the finish and even after waiting for what seems like forever I was still there in time to see the women's winner.

JimG wrote:

Of course, even that's notoriously fickle in Duluth - Sat. was supposed to be a low of 60 going up to high 70s, but it was way hotter than that.

.

And, yet, the official high for Duluth on Saturday was . . . 79! It was not in the upper 80's as I have seen and heard.