A Tale of Two Times: Post BRM recap

Gathering for the start of the Blue Ridge Marathon

On Saturday, April 22nd I completed my second marathon, the Foot Levelers Blue Ridge Marathon in Roanoke, Virginia. The BRM's claim to fame is that it is America's toughest road race due to 7,430 feet of elevation change over the course of the route. Now that I have completed it, I have to say any descriptions they provide about the hills and elevation change pale in comparison to what the actual experience is. As I noted on social media after completing the run, it was "stupid hard". Prior to the event, I was hopeful that my training had put me in a position to improve on the time from my first marathon. How did I do? Read on to find out.


In my first marathon, the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, Alabama in December 2016, I established my baseline marathon time as 4:21:21. For the BRM, I was training to a time of 4:05 as that would be approximately a 6% improvement. In the course of my training, I did establish a new personal best (I use PB for what I record with my own devices vs PR for official event times) for the half marathon distance that was under 2 hours. So this seemed to have me set up to be on target for the marathon distance even if I did fade some in the second half.

Hanging over that work though was the big unknown - the impact of the elevation change. While waiting in the start corrals, I happened to overhear a couple veterans of the event note that the hills add about 30 minutes to "normal" marathon time.

I think I look surprisingly fresh in this selfie all things considered

To kind of cut to the chase, I ended up finishing the BRM with an official time of 4:31:43. As you can see, that was just a tick over 10 minutes slower than my PR. If I factor in the 30-minute impact of the hills as described by the veterans, I was probably on target to finish in under 4:05 had it been a flat course.  So, although I did not manage to set a PR, I think all things considered I did quite well and my effort was on target with my training. So I consider it a personal win. I think this marathon gave me an official time and a "mountain" time.

As far as the run itself, the first half went quite well. The runs up the mountains went pretty much as expected. The rises were long and steep and slowed me down, but I was prepared for that. The good news was that on the downward portions I was able to go quite fast, although I did have to concentrate on maintaining my balance and taking smaller strides to keep from going sprawling. Looking at my times, knowing I would be slowed down on the uphills, I felt like the average was pretty good and I was on pace for a good strong finish. Alas, even though I did not feel like I was pushing things from a speed/pace standpoint, I was planting the seeds for problems later in the run.

The Roanoke Star - we ran right underneath it.

A view from one of the overlooks on the first mountian we climbed.

We looped around and over ourselves on this little section.

Just shy of 11 miles, we had some rain start up. That did not really bother me. I was pretty wet from sweat already as it was quite humid and with the temps in the 60s it was pretty warm. That all stopped around mile 15 and for that stretch things were relatively flat and I was in a nice groove.

The next section was where things fell apart though. We entered a portion of the course known as Peakwood. I noted some of the volunteers/fans on the course had put up a sign near the beginning that read "Peakwood Conspiracy". Clearly, the conspiracy was that we did not know what was about to hit us. This was a residential section with what were the steepest hills on the course in my opinion. I really think a couple of them were as steep as the climb to the Devil's Courthouse. Between these monster hills and already being tired from the early portion of the race, this four-mile section took a toll on me. I could quite literally feel different leg muscles quivering from the exertion.

This is on the Blue Ridge Parkway. They get special permission to run part of the race on the BRP. Normally when I am on the BRP it is with my MINI friends, so this was definitely something different.

On the way down from the top of Peakwood I was finally passed by the 4:15 pacer. That was just after the mile 20 check-in. At mile 21 my Garmin finally flipped over to a 10:00 min average pace, which dropped me below my PR pace of 9:59. Things only got worse from there as I could not muster up any energy to pick up the pace. Sadly, the 4:30 pacer passed me with about 4/10s of a mile to go.

After the finish, I found myself feeling a bit queasy. For post-race, all they had was oranges, a little bit of peanut butter and tons of pizza. I could not even fathom eating pizza, so I gobbled down an orange, tried a bite of peanut butter, and drank a chocolate milk. After listening to some awards and checking the results, I returned for another orange and did manage to fire down one slice of pizza.

After that, it was time to go get changed and hit the road to head home.

I did check the online results and was finally able to piece together the following. I managed to finish 14th in my age group out of 36 who finished. I was 114 for the men out of 288 who finished, and overall I was 135th out of 421 who posted finish times. It should probably be noted that around 20 minutes after I finished they called the race due to storms moving into the area. The organizers did let those who wanted to keep running in the heavy rain continue and did record their times, but I have no idea how many people ended up not finishing that had started out. Overall, I think it was a pretty good effort on my part for only my second marathon, especially with the elevation change.

As a final note, on the day following I can tell my legs are quite sore - duh. It also appears I have damaged the toenail on my second toe on my right foot. It is very painful and the early signs of "black toe" are already appearing from a sizeable blood blister forming. It will join the fourth toe in that status.

One other item I'll add since I had noted it on G+ - I was trying to decide whether to wear my water belt. Normally I would for anything over about 10-12 miles and certainly for a marathon. However, the BRM had aid stations about every mile. So I decided to just rely on those and carry a couple GU Energy Gels with me. That seemed to work out ok for and I'm glad I didn't have that extra weight. I also thought the Skratch Labs hydration mix was pretty good - nice taste and thin like water, so easy to go down. I may have to buy some at some point and switch off from the Body Armour drink I normally carry with me.

I'll take another day of just resting and the plan is to try a recovery run on Tuesday to start getting things back to normal. I'll fill you in on another future post on what the plans are going forward as I have a new challenge lined up.