Last weekend I finished the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach (Official result 3:06:08).
During the race I was not able to keep even splits and my speed dropped after mile 19. Of course I get that I should have ran it slower. But I'd like to understand why the performance dropped and how can I improve it in my training.
The conditions were almost perfect - 45-50F with overcast. The only suboptimal element was the headwind. I was targeting 3:00 and the first 19.5 miles went relatively well. I found a group of runners that were keeping 6:45-6:50 pace and drafted after them.
However after the last turn, around mile 19-20 the headwind greatly increased and was quite strong for about 3 miles. At this point I started to feel a lot of pain and the HR started to rise. I almost fell like vomiting and even skipped one gel and one water station. I slowed down to prevent HR from reaching the lactate threshold (which should be around 178-180 BPM, it was measured about a month ago in a lab, here are the results
http://gallery.greedykidz.net/get/1051193/lactate_threshold_test.png
)
So I kept the heart rate around 172-174. At this point the pace was 7:40-7:45. You can see this drop on the Garmin activity
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/727384401
I finished with this pace and the first 30 minutes in the hotel felt really cold and was shaking uncontrollable. Then I was fine and recovery is going great.
I did not hit the wall (I never do and always get enough gels). I was not dehydrated. My legs were relatively fine and were not in horrible pain.
What exactly happened? Did I reach the lactate threshold on the lower HR?
Where should I focus more in my training? Aerobic volume? Threshold runs? Currently I’m doing all kinds of workouts: speedwork, intervals, tempo, long runs. The peak volume was 65 miles/week for 4 weeks and I did most of the long runs with 7:45-7:55 pace.
Thanks upfront!