When the Olympic Trials standard for the marathon for women moved from 2:45:00 (6:17/mi.) to 2:37:00 (5:59/mi.), or, from a time that I know I can get to one that I am really not sure I can do, this seemed like a good opportunity to adjust my target marathons from fast, flat(ter) courses to one that I actually really just wanted to do because of where it was: my hometown of Pittsburgh. This was my 12th marathon—I actually wasn’t sure of the exact number for a bit….somewhere along the line after you’ve been running a while, you just lose track!!! Pittsburgh and this hometown feel was a wonderful change from what had been my established biyearly cycle of Grandma’s then CIM, Grandma’s then CIM….for two and a half years with marathons number 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, I was chasing down 6:17/mile, and it was nice to not worry about that and have a no pressure, fun marathon instead.

If you talk to any Pittsburgher, you will find out that we have a few things in common: besides shopping at Giant Eagle, enjoying Primanti’s fries and Pamela’s pancakes, being hard core fans of our city’s teams, and leaving out the “to be” in phrases like “needs to be washed” (I actually didn’t realize this was a thing that only we did until I was probably 25), we just REALLY really love Pittsburgh. So, choosing the Pittsburgh Marathon was a bit of a no brainer for me. I was kind of glad that I didn’t have a time standard hanging over my head, and I was very glad that I would be running 26.2 miles on roads and through neighborhoods that were familiar to me, with friends and family all over the course from different moments in my life. It was great to run a marathon at home. If you take anything away from this blog post, it is that you should consider racing a marathon or goal race in your hometown or at the very least your home state!

rainy pittsburgh marathon — One of several deluges of rain that hit (for me) around the 13-17 mile range of the race!

The Race Itself

Hills on Hills on Hills

While 2:53:50 is certainly not my fastest time nor what I think I am actually capable of, I ran about as fast as I could on that specific day. The rain honestly didn’t phase me too much (see above, it was wild!!), but the hills and overall course elevation were really unlike anything I’ve run before in a marathon. (My friend Louise, who qualified for 2016 Marathon Trials, said this Pittsburgh course is a lot harder than Boston—she is a super experienced marathoner who tells it like it is, and has a good accurate read on courses. She told me this afterwards and it actually made me feel kind of better about the whole race!)

And yes, I know these Pittsburgh roads, but I knew the lay of the land by heart WAY MORE for the first half than the back half, and the back half has to be one of the more challenging back sections of any marathon anywhere (especially in how it is so much hillier than the first, really it feels like a flattish half by comparison up against a rollercoaster half at the back!!). Next year, I am going to be much more ready for the overall elevation gain: my quads were really basically on fire for the ending miles there, so I just smartly ran more conservatively: I knew at that point that I was going to place where I was, so no reason to risk blowing up entirely and not making it to the end!!!

Feeling Not Too Shabby, Lots of Rain, Lots of Family!

One positive thing was that 2:53 here honestly didn’t feel too bad—I’m thinking about the 2:50 that I ran at Grandma’s in 2019 and that race comparatively felt way more awful compared to this one. (I was looking at photos from Grandma’s and afterwards I was in so much pain, my smile is more like a grimace!!) I think that with my marathon experience, even on a not ideal feeling day, I am way better able to gauge the right intensity where I can keep pushing, and to arrive at the end a lot stronger that previous cycles. So, from my marathon experience, I both know 1.) I didn’t quite max my body out that day and that I was fitness-wise capable of more, but ALSO 2.) I know I probably gauged the effort very very smartly and right where I needed it to be to ensure I actually did, in fact, make it to the end! In other words, my marathon experience during this race told me: on a different day, I could have been faster, but on THAT day, I really did an awesome job.

I give a lot of credit to anybody who finished the full in Pittsburgh as there were a lot of DNFs that day—the rain was definitely quite wild as you can see by the photo above here. When I was in approximately miles 13 to 17, we got hit with maybe 4ish separate HUGE deluges of rain, like I basically couldn’t see in front of me for a couple of these, and at one point, I made a right-hand turn onto a street into several inches of water, splish splash! Honestly, I kind of loved the rain in a way—made it feel like I was on a fun possibly ridiculous adventure and distracted me from the fact that I was running up and down hills the whole time and my legs were hurting! One of the wildest parts was when I was running up into Oakland down Forbes and there was just this huge, huge bolt of lightning that came down and was highlighted in the sky, in the space between the buildings, as you looked ahead at where you were to run. For a lot of the rest of the race, the rain was a light drizzle. (The half runners got lucky!! For the first half of our full, I was like “Oh, this rain is so pleasant and refreshing!” and then we got to the back half with the big hills and it was like the whole sky kept opening up!) I also heard from some runners that they even got slightly hailed on!! For as crazy as this weather might seem, I would actually take this any day over anything 60+ with bright blazing sun. Also, anyone who is from Pittsburgh is not at all taken aback by big rain storms, so home advantage for sure there!! I have run in all KINDS of rain in my life! I think any of the West Coast runners at the race were slightly terrified of the forecast!

I loved seeing my family all over the course: my dad kept popping up in all sorts of random spots, and I have actually no idea how he got from point A to point B so fast! My husband Phillip tried to use one of those motorized scooters to spectate, but they have a max speed AND don’t go over the bridges so he had a crazy workout half running, half scootering to get to where he wanted to be on the course. My brother Dan and his girlfriend Stephanie live in the Strip, so they were right near the end and cheering really loud which was a huge boost. My Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Linda live in Friendship, so they were at miles 14ish and 22ish and I swear I saw them more places than that!

In addition to my own family, I was really impressed with how the people of Pittsburgh came out to cheer. (THANK YOU!!!!) My own husband was having to duck under random awnings at times with the rain, and I passed seriously the best, awesomest (I know that isn’t a real word) cheer section in Homewood, and Shadyside and the Strip were also especially enthusiastic. Thank you, thank you to everyone who cheered for us!!!!

I also have to commend the entire organization of the race, which was so seamless and made the whole process so easy for us runners! Especially since the marathon hadn’t been in person since 2019, how effortlessly everything went on was quite impressive!! Pittsburgh knows how to put on a sporting event, that is FOR SURE. I think it is a sign of how well organized this race was that I already am set on coming back for 2023.

During the last 3 miles or so, I basically just cruised it in and tried to enjoy and soak up the whole experience. I was so happy to finally get to that finish line!!! ALLELUIA.

Things to improve upon:

Sleeping!

One thing that was a little rough before this race was that I really didn’t sleep well the two nights before—probably what saved me a bit was that I slept like a rock overall in the days leading up to the race except for the two days before actually! We unfortunately had to switch hotel rooms two nights before because the guy right next to us was smoking weed and watching the TV on full blast—just not ideal at 3:30am to spend 45 min. switching rooms, though the front desk could not have done a more awesome job helping with this. Then the second night, I was 1.) nervous, but 2.) we also heard partiers running up and down the hall and at one point I heard a really loud “let’s goooooooo!” So, you can fake a good half on no sleep, but a full marathon is a little bit different. I 1000% percent was blocking this out and telling myself that it didn’t matter, but I think I’d have had a lot more overall pep if I had slept better right before the race. Got a plan in place next year for this already, so now I know! (Right now I’m signed up for CIM 2022, but I honestly think I am going to bail and switch to a closer-to-home race, because the hotel situation in CA is already crazy and basically sold out…one year at CIM, I stayed at a hotel that was also hosting a big company Christmas party, and this is also one of the only hotels available right now, so maybe my Pgh. experience has just saved me a repeat of the same for the fall! I also promise I am no “princess and the pea” type sleeper—as my husband will tell you, I am very good at sleeping through A LOT noise, haha!) Anyways, moving on!

Putting GU Roctane in all bottles

Probably because of the rain, I missed my first two bottles, which kind of freaked me out a wee bit. Then the third elite fluid table, I just didn’t see my bottle so who knows where it went, whether the rain or a half runner knocked it down, no idea! This was less disastrous than it might have been because I started with a spare GU in my sports bra (which resulted in my only chafing of the day!) and I got a GU from the first on course GU station which was HUGE, just HUGE. I then became slightly paranoid looking for bottles the rest of the race, and got them all, except I think the last one, which I just didn’t feel I needed at that point so close to the end. I also did grab Nuun Endurance from all on the en route fluid stations which was a massive help.

For this race, I had 7 elite bottles, and I alternated GU Roctane Summit Tea (1, 3, 5, 7) and Ultima (2, 4, 6), but next time I’d do all of the GU drink: when I missed my bottles, I got worried that I would miss the upcoming GU drink ones even more because I wanted to drink more calories, and if all bottles had had GU Roctane in them, I wouldn’t have had to think about this. (I had about 775 cal worth of GU in the 4 bottles, but Ultima is just electrolytes.) I did have a GU gel attached to every single bottle, no matter what drink was in it, and I probably had 5 GUs over the course of the whole race, so in general I did a good job here. Note to future self: slightly water down the GU Roctane Summit Tea and spread over all bottles! (I find it a little easier to chug if it is a little watery, not so dense.)

Not Having Run a Marathon in a While…

Having not run a marathon in more than 2 years was also a wee bit of a shock to the legs, even if my experience helped me deal with that a whole lot better. I do remember looking ahead at a mile marker, and with the weather I initially thought it said “19” but as I got closer, I saw the “9” was actually a “7” and I definitely thought a few swearwords and something to the effect of “I HAVE 9 MORE MILES TO RUN, Jesus, help me!” Truly, the marathon distance is a whole different animal from anything else shorter that we run.

In sum, I think I will do a lot better next year simply knowing what I am getting into in terms of the lay of the land, actually sleeping ahead of the race, and just being in a more established marathon training mode. And given all of the things that I might have done better, I am still really happy with how I handled the entire race with what I had in the tank on that course! I stayed tough and don’t think I could have done too much better on that specific day.

My Training Overall This Spring

After running the Kiawah Island Half in December, I told a couple weeks of downtime (the week after Kiawah, I ran 3 days for 21 miles—one run was 10 miles only because I was overenthusiastic about catching up with my friend Ali!—and then the following week I ran 3 times for a total of 13 miles). I think these two weeks of true chill running were key to my very good spring season.

Beginning in January, here is my weekly mileage with my Saturday and Sunday mileage (rounded to the nearest mile) in parentheses:

Dec. 27: 22.25 (8, 6)

Jan. 3: 29.78 (8, 6)

Jan. 10: 36.05 (11, 5)

Jan. 17: 31.13 (10, —)

Jan. 24: 20.87 (3, 9)

Jan. 31: 36.98 (10, 8)

Feb. 7: 41.63 (8 including a 5k race, 14)

Feb. 14: 47.87 (17.14 including a half race, 11)

Feb. 21: 42.85 (7 including 5k race used very much as workout, 15)

Feb. 28: 48.03 (18, 8)

March 7: 44.85 (8, 11)

March 14: 40.34 (2, 17 including a half marathon race with 1:18:31 PR)

March 21: 45.62 (13 including the hilly Cville 10 Miler, 11)

March 28: 50.35 (10 including a hilly 10k race with my second fastest road 10k ever of 36:21, 22.58 for my 3 hour time on feet run)

April 4: 34.62 (11, 5)

April 11: 41.82 (8 including my second fastest road 5k ever of 17:13, 14)

April 18: 27.47 (—, 5)

April 25 (race week): 10.76 total miles leading up to the race

I guess one notable thing about all of this is: my mileage really wasn’t that high but I still did very well! This was a bit less overall mileage than my other buildups, but I did try to focus more on long runs. You might also notice that I only have 4 runs here over 16 miles, so you might even say I could do a few more of those in a future buildup too!

I think one thing that I have gotten better at is stacking some of the weekend efforts: so, over the pandemic years here, I’ve gotten a lot better at doing longer runs back to back on Saturday AND Sunday, which previously would have been very hard for me, but at the same time, I was really chilling on my easy days. Typically I took both Tuesday and Thursday off from running (Mon. and Thurs. is my ideal, but I taught an in-person running class on Mondays so it made sense to just run that day to be more efficient).

Overall, I think this was a very good first marathon buildup for not having run one in a few years—especially because I think I hadn’t run more than 17 miles since early 2020 or something like that!!! Other positives this season were: PRing in the half by a minute with my 1:18:31 (I think I can definitely be in the lower 1:17:xx on a flatter course too!), running a hilly 36:21 10k (which beat my old CR on that course by :30!), and running a 17:13 5k two weeks before the marathon (I honestly held back a wee bit at the end because I had the marathon in mind too!). This is a positive jumping off spot for future seasons which I am already planning!

One other thing that I have to comment upon is that I very much enjoyed peaking for early May rather than trying to take my marathon season into June. My main job is my small business here, but I am so used to the semester schedule and I still teach part-time at UVa, so I 100% preferred mapping this spring training season onto the semester. The years that I did Grandma’s in mid/later June, it always felt so weird to keep doing marathon-specific training into May and June here in Virginia: it was hard to totally readjust my daily and weekly training schedule once the school obligations were done and my schedule opened up and nobody is here! I greatly prefer my more scheduled training routine that has to happen when the semester is in session, and I know I have to run X miles during this time window before a class, etc. etc. A second factor here was that the humidity and weather down here in Charlottesville gets downright nasty and gross starting the middle of May or so, and this always kind of wiped me out when I tried to do long runs through those months! Similarly to how I like a late fall, just-before-Christmas goal race, I cannot stress enough how much better this was to train for a peak in early May, at least for me personally!!!

Summary:

I had a great time running a marathon in my home of Pittsburgh! Will be back for more!!!

Pittsburgh Marathon 2022 Race Report!