Race Report: 2017 Space Coast Marathon
It is Thanksgiving weekend and that means one thing: the annual running of the Space Coast Marathon in Cocoa, FL. This was my sixth running of this race (the 46th annual edition of the long-running event). It is also the last year of the "Big Bang Series", a five-year journey of medals that paid tribute to the Space Shuttles. Run the race for five years, and you get bonus medals and gear. I started the series so it made sense to see it out to conclusion. It is a race that is notoriously hot and humid. The road surface is also cambered to the point of ridiculousness at certain place. Yet, year after year I return to this place.
Race Week
If you look at last year's report, you will almost see a carbon copy of what I am going to say. Race week started with a head cold that made life miserable for most of the middle of the week. It started on Wednesday with that pre-cold feeling. Thanksgiving day, it turned into full cold, which lasted through Friday (my birthday) and Saturday. I was medicated on Mucinex for most of the week, skipping my final runs leading up to the marathon. Unlike last year, this cold was not as bad and never moved to my chest. This made breathing much easier this year.
Kim and I have stayed at the same hotel for all editions of the race. Kim has only run a few times but we always pick the same hotel off of Route 1. Since Cocoa has very little infrastructure, most of the hotels are either in Cocoa Beach or down the road near Melbourne. I typically stay in Viera, which is halfway. We met with friends for dinner the night before and fell asleep to a Harry Potter marathon on Freeform.
Race Day
The Rock Clock sang at 4:00 am. Yes, I use the Rock Clock app which has various alarms of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson either singing or yelling as an alarm. Time to wake up and get your candy ass out of bed, Jabroni. I know, I am lame but it makes me happy. We tend to leave early so we can get parking at the race. It isn't ideal to wait around but with the half starting at 6am, I wanted to leave Kim enough time should we have to park farther away. Two protein shakes and some SOS hydration fluids later, and I'm at the start line.
Race
The race began and I started out conservative. The goal today was to start slower and progressively get faster as I go along, eventually reaching cruising speed. Time to execute coach's plan. I turned my watch to lap mode, concentration on what I was doing each mile. I didn't care about anything else other than executing the current mile as planned. For those who don't know the course, it is two out-and-back segments, around 6.5 miles each direction. Start north for 6.5, turn around and head back to the start, then go south for 6.5 miles and turn around to the same place. This is one of the reasons I keep coming back to this race: I like the ability to simply run 4 almost measured 10ks.
The race was pretty uneventful for for the first 20 miles. Truly, this race was just on cruise control at the set pace. There was one bathroom stop somewhere around mile 12 but otherwise, just one foot in front of the other. I did have some mental issues throughout. The camber of the road bothers me very much. I'm quite sensitive to the tilt of the road. I spent some time dealing with the aches and pains in the legs from uneven road. But this was all on the fly as I just kept cruising along. I had to just shut down the brain so I didn't think about how much the road sucks.
Around mile 18 or 19, I decided to try to see if I could take things up a notch. I started to try to pick some people off in front of me and ended up chasing down the 3:45 pacer by the turn-around. For whatever reason, around mile 22 I just couldn't get my legs to turn over. I didn't slow down very much (5 or so seconds/mile from what I was doing) but my legs just were not turning over the way they had been for the rest of the race. So, shifting up a gear was not an option. I had the intent of chasing down the 3:40 group but no turbo-chargers were firing at that time. Hang on and survive.
Overall (3:46)
Overall, I ended up at 3:46 with around an 8-minute PB. I realized I was not on target for 3:45 too late, despite being well ahead of the pacer. Nothing to be done, as I didn't have enough real estate to make up the extra minute. It seems many of the pacers were just off the mark today. Unusual for this course, I also had 13.4 miles on the GPS. Typically, this is a pretty true course since it hasn't changed at all and it is just one road. I ran the yellow line the whole time to avoid camber but I guess the satellites weren't aligned.
This was, by far, my best executed marathon. It wasn't exactly the speed I was hoping for but I never walked, nor did I hit my infamous 20-mile wall. I felt smooth the entire time. After the race, I wasn't worse for wear, which leads me to believe I did have a bit left somewhere in me. The race did heat up very quickly, despite starting out in the mid 50s. We were easily into the high 60s and in the sunshine by the mid-point of the race. The high for the day was 78. I didn't feel the heat as much as in previous years, but I can bet it was affecting me on that final 6 miles. Still, it felt good.
Here are my 6 Space Coast Finishes:
Race Week
If you look at last year's report, you will almost see a carbon copy of what I am going to say. Race week started with a head cold that made life miserable for most of the middle of the week. It started on Wednesday with that pre-cold feeling. Thanksgiving day, it turned into full cold, which lasted through Friday (my birthday) and Saturday. I was medicated on Mucinex for most of the week, skipping my final runs leading up to the marathon. Unlike last year, this cold was not as bad and never moved to my chest. This made breathing much easier this year.
Kim and I have stayed at the same hotel for all editions of the race. Kim has only run a few times but we always pick the same hotel off of Route 1. Since Cocoa has very little infrastructure, most of the hotels are either in Cocoa Beach or down the road near Melbourne. I typically stay in Viera, which is halfway. We met with friends for dinner the night before and fell asleep to a Harry Potter marathon on Freeform.
Race Day
The Rock Clock sang at 4:00 am. Yes, I use the Rock Clock app which has various alarms of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson either singing or yelling as an alarm. Time to wake up and get your candy ass out of bed, Jabroni. I know, I am lame but it makes me happy. We tend to leave early so we can get parking at the race. It isn't ideal to wait around but with the half starting at 6am, I wanted to leave Kim enough time should we have to park farther away. Two protein shakes and some SOS hydration fluids later, and I'm at the start line.
Race
The race began and I started out conservative. The goal today was to start slower and progressively get faster as I go along, eventually reaching cruising speed. Time to execute coach's plan. I turned my watch to lap mode, concentration on what I was doing each mile. I didn't care about anything else other than executing the current mile as planned. For those who don't know the course, it is two out-and-back segments, around 6.5 miles each direction. Start north for 6.5, turn around and head back to the start, then go south for 6.5 miles and turn around to the same place. This is one of the reasons I keep coming back to this race: I like the ability to simply run 4 almost measured 10ks.
The race was pretty uneventful for for the first 20 miles. Truly, this race was just on cruise control at the set pace. There was one bathroom stop somewhere around mile 12 but otherwise, just one foot in front of the other. I did have some mental issues throughout. The camber of the road bothers me very much. I'm quite sensitive to the tilt of the road. I spent some time dealing with the aches and pains in the legs from uneven road. But this was all on the fly as I just kept cruising along. I had to just shut down the brain so I didn't think about how much the road sucks.
Around mile 18 or 19, I decided to try to see if I could take things up a notch. I started to try to pick some people off in front of me and ended up chasing down the 3:45 pacer by the turn-around. For whatever reason, around mile 22 I just couldn't get my legs to turn over. I didn't slow down very much (5 or so seconds/mile from what I was doing) but my legs just were not turning over the way they had been for the rest of the race. So, shifting up a gear was not an option. I had the intent of chasing down the 3:40 group but no turbo-chargers were firing at that time. Hang on and survive.
Overall, I ended up at 3:46 with around an 8-minute PB. I realized I was not on target for 3:45 too late, despite being well ahead of the pacer. Nothing to be done, as I didn't have enough real estate to make up the extra minute. It seems many of the pacers were just off the mark today. Unusual for this course, I also had 13.4 miles on the GPS. Typically, this is a pretty true course since it hasn't changed at all and it is just one road. I ran the yellow line the whole time to avoid camber but I guess the satellites weren't aligned.
This was, by far, my best executed marathon. It wasn't exactly the speed I was hoping for but I never walked, nor did I hit my infamous 20-mile wall. I felt smooth the entire time. After the race, I wasn't worse for wear, which leads me to believe I did have a bit left somewhere in me. The race did heat up very quickly, despite starting out in the mid 50s. We were easily into the high 60s and in the sunshine by the mid-point of the race. The high for the day was 78. I didn't feel the heat as much as in previous years, but I can bet it was affecting me on that final 6 miles. Still, it felt good.
Here are my 6 Space Coast Finishes:
- 2011: 4:35
- 2013: 3:54
- 2014: 4:30
- 2015: 4:09
- 2016: 4:34
- 2017: 3:46
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