Colin Does: A Sub 4-Hour Marathon (and visits Minneapolis)

In 2021 I decided I wanted to try to run a marathon, and signed up for the 2021 Milwaukee Marathon scheduled to take place in late October. I trained through the end of the summer and into fall until the race was canceled in September. Since I had already been training for months and didn’t want it to be for nothing, I decided to finish my training plan and run 26.2 miles by myself out and back on a bike trail near my apartment. It wasn’t the big race experience I hoped for but, Katharine still made it special by hanging streamers on my door while I was running, and even presented me a trophy when I returned. I ended up running it in 4 hrs 36 min.

While the 2021 Milwaukee Marathon was canceled that year, the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon still successfully ran earlier that month, so I figured it would be a more reliable event for the future. The next year I signed up for the 2022 Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon set for early October, with the goal of improving my time to 4 hours or less. I trained through the summer and into fall until one month before the race it was announced that this time the Lakefront Marathon was canceled.

I didn’t want to run another solo marathon so I looked for other events around the same time. Luckily the 2022 Twin Cities Marathon was scheduled for the same day and still had some last minute spots available. I registered for the Twin Cities marathon and found a cheap hotel in Minneapolis to stay at the weekend of the race. The race was on Sunday so Katharine and I decided to make a little weekend trip out of it. We drove out to Minneapolis on Friday after work and then spent Saturday exploring the area. We walked around the Minneapolis Sculpture park, checked out some local shops, and stopped at the event center to pick up my race bib and info packet. That night we ordered Chinese food and I exclusively ate white rice to carb load.

I woke up the morning of the race not feeling particularly confident, but knowing there was nothing left to do but show up and run. Once the starting gun went off and I got moving, I quickly felt better and had to hold myself back from making the classic mistake of starting too fast. While my goal was 4 hours, I had secret hopes of running faster—maybe 3:45 or so. Between that and the instinct to pass people, I ended up pushing the pace a little bit; which was fine at the beginning but became a real problem around mile 19 when I realized I was much more tired than I should have been at that point, and that miles 20-23 were one long uphill stretch. My pace significantly slowed as I climbed the hill. I saw the 3:50 pacer pass me. I knew that meant I was close to missing my time but still had a little margin. I continued with the climb.

Towards the end of the long uphill, I saw the 4 hour pacer catch up to me. I that gave me a momentary boost and I pushed ahead for a mile or so, only to have him catch up to me around mile 25. With just over a mile go, I gave everything I had to stay with the pacer, legitimately worried I wouldn’t be able to meet my goal of 4 hours. Once I was 1/4 mile away from the finish line, I pushed myself as fast as I could (which at that point, was not very fast) and ran through the finish like with 4:02 on the clock. I knew that the official clock started right when the race began and that the individual runner times were based off of when you actually cross the start and finish lines, so I was under 4:02 since I was far enough back in the start crowd to cross the start line later, but I didn’t know by how much. After looking around and eventually finding Katharine, I was able to check my official finish time on my phone and saw 3:58:54. I was relieved to see I had made it under 4 hours!

Here are some photos from the race, and our time exploring Minneapolis: