PUBLISHED 10/20/2006
Last year Clint Verran came to the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon with a specific goal, to help Deena Kastor in her attempt to run a sub 2:20 marathon. Verran was one of Kastor's escorts during the race. This year, he's running for himself.
"I want to try and run under 2:12," said Verran. "That means I have to run my miles in the 5 to 5:02 range. I have to keep on that pace."
In past marathons Verran's problem has been the six mile stretch between miles 17 and 23. "At Boston I ran the fastest 5K at the end of the race of the entire field," said Verran of his 2:14:12 PR in April's race. But a "bad patch" between 17 and 23 kept him from going even faster.
"At mile 17, it's tough to run fast from there to the finish, to stay on pace" said Verran. "With 5K to go, you can practically see the finish. It's easier, my problem is that six mile stretch before that."
Knowing what the problem is, Verran has developed a strategy that he hopes will get past his problem. "It's really just trying to break the race down," he said. "We run a six mile loop regularly in training, the Stoney Creek loop. So, we run Stoney a lot, and I've been telling myself if I can run that segment fast when I'm fatigued, I should be able to do it in the race. We all have bad patches during the race. We all develop mental tricks to work on those bad patches. Twenty-six miles is too long where one strategy works the whole way.
"This will be my 16th marathon, so nothing can be new. There isn't anything I haven't seen before--at least I hope not. In training, I've just tried to focus on being able to hold my pace when I'm tired for that six-mile segment. The last three miles is right down Michigan Avenue, so it's easy to sort of put your head down and go after it. It's just the segment before that that I have to work on"
On Sunday Verran will find out whether or not his strategy works.
