2024 Colorado Marathon
Why This Race?
As I was planning my racing calendar for 2024 in January, I knew that I wanted to do a full open marathon. I hadn’t run a marathon since I completed the Marine Corps Marathon in 2019. I didn’t want to just complete a marathon however, I wanted to run one fast enough to achieve a Boston Qualifying time. I considered a couple of options to give me the best chance of achieving my goal: travel to a race at or close to sea-level or find a fast local race. I settled on entering the Colorado Marathon in Fort Collins.
The Colorado Marathon is considered a fast race because it is net downhill. It starts up in Poudre Canyon at about 6,100 feet elevation and drops around 1,200 feet to finish in Fort Collins city center. There are a few uphill sections, most notably at mile 19, but the gentle downward sloping road that represents the first 15 miles of the race, was beautiful.
The race was scheduled for May 5th, so needed to put together a training plan. I decided that I would do generic triathlon training until the end of February to build up base fitness and in March I would switch to marathon specific training to prepare for the race.
Training For The Race
For the marathon specific training plan, I made the decision to try a different approach to the one I used in my previous marathon races. Those plans always included several long runs over 15-20 miles. Recently, whenever I have done a long run like this I have typically ended up with a niggle or two. I think, as an older athlete, these runs are just a little too tough on my body. If I run this distance on trails, I suffer less, but I wanted to train on roads like those I would experience in the race.
My plan was therefore to run lots of road miles, but to break those miles up into smaller chunks; sometimes running twice a day. I decided my longest individual run would be 10 miles. The following is a summary of my training from March onwards.
March 4 – 10 : Eight runs 47.4 miles (6 miles at tempo pace or faster)
March 11 – 17 : Eight runs 52.3 miles (14 miles at tempo pace or faster)
March 18 – 24 : Seven runs 50.2 miles (11 miles at tempo pace or faster)
March 25 – 31 : Eight runs 47.0 miles (4 miles at tempo pace or faster)
April 1 – 7 : Eight runs 49.5 miles. (15 miles at tempo pace or faster)
April 8 – 14 : Three runs 13.6 miles (6 miles at tempo pace or faster)
April 15 – 21 : Eight runs 63.1 miles (21 miles at tempo pace or faster)
April 22 – 28 Five runs 29.2 miles (9 miles at tempo pace or faster)
Race Week Five runs 14.9 miles (aerobic with strides) + The race
The training went very well until April 8th when I experienced a very slight soleus strain. Rather than run through this, I shut down training for three days, which worked very well as I was then immediately able to get back on track. Overall, I think it was one of my better training cycles for a running race. I was able to rack up very high weekly miles, much higher than I have ever done before. At the same time, I never ran any further than 10 miles in an individual run. My biggest day was 16 miles, when I did a 10 mile run in the morning and a 6 mile run in the evening.
Beautiful Poudre Canyon – Location For The First 14 Miles Of The Race
Pre-Race
Being a point-to-point race, the Colorado Marathon requires athletes to take a bus ride to the starting location. With the race starting at 6.30am, this meant boarding a bus before 5.00am on race morning. Therefore, even though Fort Collins isn’t that far from home, I chose to stay in a hotel for the night before the race. On the day before the race, I visited the small expo to pick up my race bib and then decided to go and drive the course. I wanted to see how steep the downhill Poudre canyon was. I was also heavily carb loading, so that meant eating all day long (lots of rice).
I was glad to see the course before race day, as I was able to see that the road down the canyon was not steep at all (except for one section about a quarter mile long). This gave me confidence that I would not likely destroy my quads early in the race. Back at the hotel, I prepared my race gear and nutrition and went to bed early.
I woke up at around 3.30am. I had my usual pre-race breakfast and coffee and then got dressed in my race gear. I also put on lots of warm over clothes; it would cold up in the canyon before the start. This proved to be a wise choice as I saw many runners shivering while waiting for the race to start. The organizers provide a gear check, so there really was no excuse not to wear something warm ahead of the start
The bus ride to the start took about 45 minutes. I was very dark outside, but soon we arrived at the well-lit start area. I was on one of the first buses, so I was able to take advantage of a short line at the porta-johns! Eventually it started to get light, and the view of the mountains and Poudre River was stunning. This was by far the best starting location for a race that I have ever experienced.
The Race
It was still a little cold as we started the race at 6.30am. Almost 2,000 runners began the slow descent down Poudre Canyon. As I typically do, I started this race at a very controlled effort, so I was pleasantly surprised when my watch buzzed after the first mile and showed a time of 8’10”.
For the next, six miles I kept things under control, only putting out a little more effort. I averaged 7’54”/mile for those six miles. Now that I was roughly halfway down the canyon, I decided it was time to increase my effort and take advantage of the remainder of the downhill miles. The next four miles went by at an average pace of 7’44”/mile, before I hit the first slight uphill section of the race. I continued to push quite hard and went through the halfway point of the race in 1:44:11.
By now, we were leaving the canyon, and the road were turning much flatter and even the odd slight incline up over a few rollers. Spectators are not allowed in the canyon section of the race due to the road being quite narrow with no verges. It was quite a surprise therefore to see such a huge number of people at about mile 17 at a location called Tom’s Place. The crowd gave me a boost as I prepared for the one large hill of the course at mile 19.
Running Along The Poudre River Trail
The climb was about half a mile long and it was where I first saw some runners walking. I pushed up the hill to the aid station at the top, where I took a few seconds to get my heart rate down and to take on more valuable nutrition. I had been taking a gel at every aid station to that point and I think this helped my race a lot.
Once over the top of the hill, there was a small downhill section, which got me quickly back into my rhythm. After that point, the course was basically dead flat. We ran through the small town of LaPorte, where we took a sharp right turn onto the Poudre River Trail. This concrete trail would lead us all the way into town. By now, I could feel my legs starting to fatigue and my pace was slowing gradually as each mile passed. I covered those trail miles at an average pace of 8’32’/mile.
I was encouraged as I ran along besides the river, because now I was regularly passing other runners. I was clear that many had ‘hit the wall’. I had not and with a mile and a half to go, I realized I had a slight change of beating my marathon PR. I gave that last mile and half everything I had. I felt like I was sprinting down the finish straight but when I saw may pace later, I clearly was not!
I crossed the line in 3:35:04, just 45 seconds slower than my PR set in 2017. I was very happy…..
My Second BQ !!
Post Race
I had seen my wife Sarah cheering me on in the finishing chute. We quickly found each other in the finish corral area, and I grabbed a post-race banana and water bottle. It was at this point that she told me that I had won my age group and we later found out that I had done so by almost nine minutes. I was also ecstatic that I had smashed the Boston Qualifying requirement for my age group by just under 15 minutes.
Having won my age group, we decided that we should attend the pots-race award ceremony. This was still 90 minutes away, so we made a quick dash to our hotel, where I showered and changed. Back at the award ceremony, I discovered that this race had been designated as the State Championship race by the Road Runners Club of America.
Imagine my surprise therefore, when it was announced that I was the men’s Colorado State Marathon Champion, in the Senior Masters (Age 60+) category. What a great way to crown what had been a fabulous day.
Colorado State Champion – Senior Masters (Men)