[Race Report] 2024 Indianapolis Monumental Marathon

I ran my third marathon on November 9 in Indianapolis. This race was very important for me because I wanted to qualify for more prestigious races, and I have been training for it since December 2023. In this post I will talk about the training period as well as the race.

Training Data

After my second marathon in November 2023, I took a few weeks off. My plan was to gradually increase the weekly volume, but I think I was impatient and ended up with a knee pain, which forced me to take more time off.

I was able to reach 80 km per week before an 8K race. During my summer internship at Google, I started doing double workouts each day. I traveled from the Bay Area to Chicago and back in the meantime. I also got sick. These disrupted my training. After the internship, I traveled again, this time to Prague, Budapest, Istanbul and Ankara. The travels affected my training even more this time. On top of that, training in Ankara at higher altitude (900 m) made me doubt my performance.

Once I returned to Chicago and settled back to my routine, I was able to train six days a week. Five of those days included double workouts, with speed-focused afternoon sessions on two of them. The remaining day was for the long run. I reached a peak weekly volume of 160 km, and my longest run was 33 km. I tapered for two weeks, reducing my volume from 160 km to 112 km and then down to 36 km in race week. You can find the training table in Markdown format here.

Goal

My primary goal was to run at a pace of 4:05/km and finish in 2:52 to qualify for Boston 2026. If that did not work out, a 2:54 finish would get me into Chicago 2025. If none of them happened, I would be happy with finishing under 3 hours.

Pre-race

In the final week, I loaded up on carbohydrates with pasta and drank plenty of water. On the Sunday before the race, I had a severe pain around my right kidney. I immediately thought it was a kidney stone as I dropped one around seven years ago. The pain occurred again on Wednesday and Friday mornings.

On Friday, I traveled to Indianapolis by bus, and the pain stopped before noon. I was kind of comfortable because the pain came and went on alternating days, which indicated a problem-free race. But still, the thought of a tiny stone ruining 11 months of work was scary as hell (I still could not pass the stone as I am writing this)! Luckily, meeting Cole Hocker (2024 Paris Olympics 1500 m Gold Medalist) helped take my mind off things.

I couldn’t sleep that night, because apparently Indianapolis suburbs are quite loud with sirens from police, ambulances, and fire trucks. I always take such things with a grain of salt, but my watch showed my “body battery” level as 38, which would be around 85 on a normal training day. I woke up at 5 am and ate 4 slices of bread with honey.

Just before the race started at 8 am, l ran 3 km to warm up and took a caffeine-free, 100-calorie energy gel.

Race

My plan was to run the opening four kilometers at 4:30, 4:20, 4:10 and 4:05 pace. However, the 2:55:xx pace group caught up to me after the first kilometer. This stressed me out a little. I was feeling better than I expected, so I decided to settle into a 4:00 pace and maintain the effort.

I kept running alongside some people for a long time, only for them to drop off. I got into the “slipstreams” of other runners and passed them. This is why I like racing!

I carried a flask and four gels with me, planning to take them at 8, 16, 24, and 32 km. All the gels had caffeine, but the first two had 40 mg, and the last two had 100 mg each. However, I ended up taking them at 6, 13 and 20 km. I picked up another gel from the aid station at 25 km and used my last one at 31 km.

After 35 km, my legs started to hurt. Luckily, a kind runner ahead of me didn’t mind that I used him as my mental pacer until the 40 km mark. After 40 km, I started to lose power but managed to cross the line in 02:48:53. This placed me 237/5647 overall, 223/3614 among male runners and 45/580 in the male 25-29 age group.

What’s Next?

This result qualified me for the 2025 Chicago Marathon. I want to run even faster there and then run Boston in 2026.

Published: Nov 12, 2024.
Last edited: Nov 12, 2024.