Self-supported, solo, slow marathon

A year ago, between March and May 2020,  I was completely off exercise for a couple of months and again took a couple of weeks break in September 2020.  I resumed running short distances at very slow of 7 min Km in September end and slowly built up the distance between October 2020 and April 2021 doing a 30Km+ run every month starting Dec 2020. The goal was to run TMM 2021 at least virtually if not in person. All along I was apprehensive whether my legs would last the distance of the full marathon and how slow I may need to run in order to complete it.  When TMM 2021 ,which was  rescheduled from Feb 28th to May 30th , got postponed indefinitely  I decided to anyway  go ahead and run a solo FM before the end of May. Happy and satisfied that I managed to complete one in 4:44:42 on Saturday, 22nd May - my 53rd run of 42.2Kms or longer. Though one of my slowest FM finishes it was a great feeling to run the distance after a gap of 16 months  - the longest break between 2 marathons since my first in Jan 2003(Beating the 14 months gap between my 1st and the 2nd FM ). My goal was to run the first half in about 2:10 and the second half between 2:20 and 2:45 giving a best case time of under 4:30 or in the worst case stay sub 5 hrs. Though I possibly could have done it 5 minutes faster glad to have landed exactly in the middle of my goal range!! Also happy that from a peak of 59Kgs the weight is now down to around 56Kgs.

Had the usual anxieties in the  the lead up to the run even though it was not a real event. One big factor was to carve out the optimal route with minimal traffic and optimal gradients. The other was the weather. It rained quite a bit on the evening/night of Thursday and Friday and it looked like I might need to push my run to Sunday instead of Saturday. However, late Friday evening it stopped raining and I decided to go ahead. Overnight, I also pretty much decided on my run route.

Woke up at about 4:40 and left home at 5:25 or so. Parked the car in the area betweeen Ramohalli market and Balaji Srinivas temple and started running at 5:37am or so. After a couple of loops on Doddalamara road took my first fuel break after 23Km in about 2:20 at an average pace of 6:07/Km. For the 2nd and 3rd loops I stayed off the main road. It became progressively warmer and challenging to keep pace. By the time I ended the second loop covering a total of 37Km I was at the 4 hr mark and my average pace had dropped to about 6:30 per Km. The last 5Km was a real struggle with the  fastest Km being 7:15 and the 38th Km(when I walked a bit) being 8:10 pace. Overall I ended up doing 42.5Km in an elapsed time of just under 4:45 (include 6 minutes of inactive time for the two fueling breaks) at an average pace of 6:37.

After completing the run 

Though I have run quite a few unofficial marathons in 2008-09 as part of 12 marathons in 12 months this is the first ever solo run of this distance. The previous longest solo(non event) run was about 40K way back in 2002 when I was training for my first ever marathon. 

I thought this was my slowest ever full marathon. However, later realised that following are my FM times slower than 4:40 in descending order:

22/04/2007       Flora London marathon                4:47:56

30/04/2006       New Jersey marathon                    4:47:03

22/05/2021       Solo Ramohalli run                       4:44:42

19/05/2007      Bangalore midnight marathon       4:44:36

28/06/2009      RFL Bellandur run                         4:43

15/01/2006      SCMM                                           4:42:28

19/10/2008      Kaveri Trail Marathon                   4:42:19

Still, nothing to complain about. As barring injuries I should be able to, over a period of time, get the FM time to around 4hrs. Only after I get there can I start thinking about a potential BQ again - even thinking about that right now sounds like castles in the air!!