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| My Maine Objective: Get this done and eat lobster rolls! |
The
Maine Marathon in Portland, ME was a great race in 2014 when I attempted it as the 2nd day of a double weekend marathon (
2:56 in NH on Sat and
3:03 in ME on Sun) and the only state redo to date in which I returned to the same race. I really wanted that double sub-3 weekend in 2014 but that's a tough feat! I'm over it... call it my only DNF.
It's been 3 weeks since successfully redoing
Wyoming. Over the years, I've found a 3-4 week recovery time to be ideal even if the thought of this race in the hours after WY didn't seem like a good idea... and as such, wasn't booked. This is marathon number 6 for the year, on the downslope of a bell curve with 2016 & 2017 being the peak at 9 a piece. It is nice to approach the finish with a lighter schedule.
Also, we're here for the beer. Some of the
Libertyville Running Club was tagging along this weekend. Ted and I arrived in Portland Friday afternoon and did some damage at
Oxbow Brewing. They moved to downtown Portland from their old location in a garage by Allagash Brewing; their success is not surprising, it's good beer. Good thing we had Saturday to recover!
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| This is Ted carb-loading at Oxbow Brewing |
Of course, after a shakeout run the next morning along the Eastern Promenade to
The Holy Donut, one of my favorite donut shops in the country, we found ourselves at
Mash Tun, a craft beer bar, where Charles and Andrew joined us. We kept it fairly low-key the day before the race with the expo, pasta takeout back at the Airbnb, then bed.
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| Shaking down the steam engine |
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| The Holy Donut |
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| A good night sleep is important! |
There are two things about east coast running that I've come to love: they start their races later and they've got a lot of fast runners. There are many sub-3 runners at this marathon of about 750 finishers and my plan was to run with Ted to a 2:58, what would be his first sub-3-hour marathon.
We started at 7:45am with the 1:30 half marathon pacer since there is no 3:00 marathon pacer and ran the first 3 miles at 6:43/mile each. Consistent! It's a pretty out-and-back course with some rolling hills, the hardest being miles 9-11 then their return at miles 16-18. I was losing Ted at the halfway point and as much as I wanted to stick with him, I knew I'd be cutting it close. I lost my watches at this point. No need to panic, right?
For the past year, I've had a
Fitbit Ionic. I really like its interface and app more than Garmin but Garmin reigns supreme for GPS watches. Hence the two watches in this pic, neither of which were working for most of this race. My 6-year old Garmin Forerunner 620 died at mile 8 and the Fitbit didn't get a signal from about that point on. Here I am, running naked again!
I did some mental math every mile marker to make sure I would be under 3 hours. The headwind on the return added to the difficulty. At mile 24, I was comfortable knowing that 7:30/miles would bring me into a
2:58:18 finish, 22nd overall and 1st place in the 40-44 age group. Who's smiling about that, me?
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| Mile 26, sub-3-hour state marathon #47 |
Once the fellas finished, it was time to celebrate. After showers, we drove up to
Maine Beer Company for one of my favorite anti-NEIPA breweries; clean and simple beers, I love it! After that, we stopped into
Allagash Brewing Company for some free flights, maybe because we were all wearing the marathon shirt? They had a food truck serving lobster rolls which almost mirrored the all-you-can-eat lobster brunch I hit up after the 2014 marathon at
Harraseeket Inn near Maine Beer Company.
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| Maine Beer Company decisions... |
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| Matching shirts, northeast fall foliage |
After a brief stop at
Bissell Brothers Brewing, we parked the car at our Airbnb then continued into the night with
Liquid Riot Bottling Co. and
Tomaso's Canteen, the dive bar across the street from our place... we probably didn't need that stop.
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| LRC Bros. at Bissell Bros. |
3 more sub-3-hour state marathons to go! When I think back to my 3rd sub-3-hour state in 2010 at the
Napa Valley Marathon, I never could have imagined I would be here. I'm grateful I've got friends that have tagged along for many of these races making the experience unique and more memorable.
Oh right, the lobster rolls were first-rate! I had 4 this weekend. See ya in 2020 to wrap up this 50 sub-3-hour state marathon goal!
