Virtual London Marathon (VLM) — Oct 4 2020
Penning down my race thoughts from finishing my 11th marathon — also 1st virtual (hopefully last race). I was fairly eager to see where I have progressed after almost a year of more structured training, and also attracted by the fact that I can get a London Marathon medal/finisher shirt (i have balloted 3 times unsuccessfully). Thus, signing up for the Virtual London Marathon was quite a no-brainer for someone who aspires to finish the 6 Abbott World Marathon Majors someday (Berlin, Chicago, Boston, New York, Tokyo, London)
Anyhow, despite the major upset surrounding Kipchoge yesterday, this post focuses on a hobby jogger’s own perspective of this virtual race
1.Consistency is key
Definitely learnt this as one of the first lessons after I started getting more serious in this sport since Dec 2019. Putting in the miles is really just the first step to getting better performance. Other than the short blips of injury (May-July), I’ve been able to put in mostly 50k weeks. Whilst this is not quite the volume i’d likely need to be achieve my eventual #sub3 goals, this is definitely a significant step-up from where I used to be (without any consistent training). For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been able to hold ~65k weeks, and the ideal would be to get to ~80k weeks towards end of year so that I can ramp up to ~100k weeks in the months leading up to my next race (hopefully Wanjinshi in New Taipei City in March 2021!)
No cramps and never felt stronger in finishing a marathon before this.
2. The marathon is a test of endurance (durh!)
Although some would say I’ve done some pretty decent times in the Full Marathon (Chicago 2015: 3.44, New Orleans 2017: 3.45, Berlin 2019: 3.52, KL 2018: 3.59), I have always been prone to power up way too quickly in the first half of the race, and find myself “dying” in the second half of the race. I’ve always had to “stop” for a short while -whilst drinking some water to stretch, and I’ve had a track record of always recording positive splits for the second half of the marathon.
Thanks to Justin’s almost metronomic pacing in the first half today, we kept to a conservative 5.30/km pace, and I was conscious not to let myself go faster (always looking down at my watch and telling myself & the others to slow down if we go faster than 5.20). I think it definitely paid off — because I had plenty left in the tank — we finished 42nd KM at 4.07/km! [even faster than a sub 3 Marathon Pace(MP)] (this could be potentially inspired by Sara Hall’s kick at the very end of the elite women’s race😅)
Main splits:
10k — 55.06
21k — 1.55.31
30k — 2.44.42
42k — 3.49.04
(Back 21k — 1.52.42)
3. Nutrition requires practice!
Thus far, my Long Run (LRs) have mostly been in the realm of 1.45–2h, which based on my usual 5min/km pace would get me to 21 to 24km per session comfortably. Such sessions typically don’t require me to do any gels — if any at all usually water or diluted isotonic like Pocari at around 8–10km intervals is sufficient to keep me going.
Now fast forward into my VLM, I hadn’t practiced any gel-eating since my last marathon in Berlin a year ago. To be conservative, I consumed 3 gels before we even hit the 21km mark. At around 25km, I could already feel my stomach stirring from this unfamiliar object and I had to make a conscious decision not to continue eating gels, for fear of needing to stop to use the toilet. Definitely in my next training cycle, as I tackle more of the 25–32km LRs, I would need to try out a better gel consumption strategy. (& also at some point use Maurtens if I wanna try them on actual race day).
P.S. Wide-mouth bottles like my Nalgene was definitely not a good bottle to bring on a marathon. I was jamming my mouth entirely on the wide mouth to try and not spill my drink all over myself (not to mention slowing down slightly to make sure the water could go down -.-)
4. Equipment
As an owner of pair of the Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next%, I can attest to the tremendous effect it has on running performance, particularly on a distance like the marathon when every ounce of energy matters, especially at the closing distances. Since this wasn’t a real race, I wanted to save the miles for my Next%, and elected to use another of my trainers — Nike Zoom Fly 3, which is significantly heavier, but still boasts a carbon fiber plate (one of the most in-things these days with running shoes for economy). First time I took it out for such a long run, as I typically use this for my interval workouts, but I enjoyed the support yet slight reactiveness it gave me throughout the run.
I also managed to get my hands on the latest 2020 NN Team Aeroswift singlet (released just 2 weeks ago). It was quite an effort to get this (since Nike doesn’t allow forwarding services), but I must say that the Aeroswift material really kept the weight of the singlet manageable. Though the singlet was wet from my perspiration, I never once felt the weight bearing down on me, which I definitely would have felt on other normal singlets. So so important when we’re running in a hot and humid environment like Singapore, so I’d definitely wear this again for future races!
Parting words for VLM 2020 Attempt
As I recall vividly from Justin’s sub-3 blogpost about his voyage at Ottawa Marathon 2019, I remember the earlier part was mostly “Am I feeling good? Yes, I’m feeling good”. Thankfully, my marathon attempt yesterday didn’t take a spiral down south, and I truly felt good the entire time.
Of course, this post shouldn’t end without some proper acknowledgement of the people who made this attempt possible:
