Race Coverage

Glory Requires Alignment...

Wednesday, 10 January 2018 23:10

By Mike Buenting (mikebuenting.wordpress.com)

.....November 12th was the Madison Marathon this was the final race of my 2017 season and I’m glad it’s behind me now! So as every major race ends for me part of my moving on process is to write about the experience and help me process the day, the training, and move on. So that’s why you all get to read my blog post now.

For 10-11 years now, I have run 2-3 marathons per year and when I signed up for Madison marathon 2017 I said this would be my final marathon for one year! So, 2018 will be my first year of no marathon races, I’m going all in for multi-sport and I’m sure run some shorter stuff like a 10 mile or half marathon. I’m really looking forward to the break from the marathon and the work load that goes with training for a marathon. But 2019 I’m sure I’ll be back chasing after that 26.2 mile distance!

Back to Madison marathon, so this is the hardest course I have ever run! I have raced Boston 9 times, New York City, Twin Cities, Chicago, Des Moines, Phoenix AZ, Houston TX lots of races and I would say none of them were this hard! The hills on this course are just relentless and they just keep piling on the hardest of hills late in the race! The hill at mile 22 was just mean, and the finish line is straight up hill so mile 26 was wicked as well! Mix in...

those hills with 34 degrees and clouds and some light winds that picked up during the race and well it was a tough day for me. (my good friend Krisana now she crushed it and ran an amazing race! But she is wicked tough and ran smart and was well trained and focused so proud of her!) As for me mentally I was not into this race. Why I have no idea? I did not really start training for this race until September after my multi-sport season had ended. My focus in 2017 was the World Championships for Duathlon so from April when I ran Boston marathon until September my longest run was maybe 10 miles? And that only happened a couple of times. So unlike years past my mileage was way down and I had to play catch up quickly. I also had the TC 10 mile in the middle of this shorten training cycle that I wanted to perform well at so I respected some taper and prep for that and then geared up again for the marathon. But mentally I just never really got into this race and I don’t know why? I had no real goals for it, no expectations I was just very relaxed and just wanted to run, feel good and make sure I got a BQ for 2019 should I decide to run Boston again in 2019. I also wanted to break 3 hours but was not looking for any kind of PR or glory or wicked fast time like I have run in the past. Again, just wanted to take what the day gave me and be done with it.  READ MORE