Long story short, I ran the slowest marathon I have ever run despite being in the best shape I have ever been in. I am not sure exactly why it happened, but I need to see a doctor to find out what is wrong. Long story not so short. I got up in the morning, ate a small breakfast and hopped on the bus to the start line at 5:30am. I chatted with people in the high school gymnasium for a while, and went out to warm up at about 6:40. Warmed up with Michael Wardian for about a mile and a half. I noticed that my HR was abnormally high (average HR of 146 during the warm-up). I thought that it must be wrong, but when I checked manually I found out that it wasn't. I hoped that the issue would resolve itself within the first couple miles of the marathon. The race started and despite running at an effort that should have given me a HR of about 170, my HR was at 180. In retrospect I also think that my HR was maxed out at 180, despite the fact that normally my HR max is 186-188. I still held out hope that my HR would go down to normal levels, but it never did. I hit 2 miles in 10:35, and from a muscular effort things felt very easy, but with the high HR I decided to slow down some to see if the HR would get under control. A 5:25 mile led to a HR of 177-178, followed by miles of 5:37 and 5:34 with a HR around 175. Miles 6-8 had some uphill in them, and I was able to get my HR down into the low 170's (although there were still some spikes up into the 180 range on occasion). Mile splits were 5:50, 5:53, 5:49. Miles 9 and 10 flattened out (net downhill) and I had splits of 5:38 and 5:42. The HR monitor stopped working correctly around this point of the race (I was taking HR manually to verify that it was/wasn't working). In general up to this point my HR was about 10 bpm higher than the effort indicated. From here on out I began to have problems keeping my HR at normal levels consistently, as it would sometimes stay in the 170's (I should be able to run an entire marathon with the HR between 170-173), but at other times it would drop and I would have trouble even holding a HR over 160. Throughout the rest of the race I would just check my HR manually on occasion to see where it was at as the HR monitor was not picking up the HR properly. In general it was reading higher than what I was measuring manually (high 180's), but on occasion it was reading low (120's-130's). Mile 11 was a 5:56, followed by a 5:54 and a 5:54 to hit 13 miles in 1:13:47. HR was more normal in these miles, as it was around 160 when I tested it during mile 11. Mile 14 was a 6:16, followed by a 6:10, a 6:04, and a 6:19 (1:38:36 for 17 miles). My HR jumped back up again in these miles into the 170's. From a muscular standpoint I never really felt like I was working hard, yet I still was never able to really push myself. At times it really felt like I was just running a long moderately paced tempo run, yet when another runner flew by me during mile 16 there was nothing I could do to respond (he was running at about 5:30 pace when he passed me and finished in 2:30). I stopped watching my splits very closely after this point until I hit mile 23, so I either didn't even see them, or I don't remember them because it was unimportant to me. From mile 17-23 I was dodging a lot of the half marathon runners on a bike path as they started the half marathon late (originally I thought that they would be mostly off of the bike path by the time I got there). The hills through here were also bigger than I had anticipated. I made it to the 23 mile marker at 2:18:01 (6:34 average pace from 17-23) and proceeded to head up the giant hill that marks the beginning of the end about a minute later. I ran mile 24 in 7:28 (Wardian ran this mile in 6:30 and finished in 2:22:37, and he didn't blow up) followed by a 2 mile downhill to the finish. I ended up with a time of 2:40:22, which is officially my slowest marathon ever. During the last couple miles I took my HR a couple times, and it was in the low 160's while I was running about 6:50 pace downhill. My HR is normally about 20 bpm slower at those speeds. So, overall this race was a major bummer. My goal in coming here was to shoot for an OTQ time, and it feels like my attempt to do so ended before it even started. I don't know what was wrong, but whatever it was it can't be good. I plan on getting my heart checked out soon, and I want to get some blood work done as well. I hope that whatever is wrong can get fixed easily, and if it can't, hopefully I can at least find out what is wrong so that I don't drop dead at 30 from heart failure. More than anything I don't think I am so upset about my performance as I am mad at my stupid heart for not cooperating with me. I am also peeved that I do not know what is wrong. If I knew what was wrong I would do something to fix it and I would move forward. My ignorance annoys me.
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