I wrote this the day after the Fargo Marathon, but it took until now (end of July) to post it. I am preserving my immediate post-Marathon thoughts as they were then, although time has lessened some of the sting of this marathon performance. I am still wondering if this marathon is evidence that I am getting old, and I have passed my “peak.” Unlike 2024, I am getting back into running better, but while I haven’t had the same injury cycle as last year, I feel like I have to do a lot more recovery to stay healthy. Is this a consequence of getting faster? Or older? Or both?
From June 1, 2025: The 2025 Fargo Marathon was yesterday. I finished, which is always a win – but starting at mile 11, I started to doubt if I could finish, which is quite abnormal for me. Usually I start a run, and it’s hard, but then I keep running and around mile 4, I start to feel good. But yesterday, I never really recovered. I had build that was far too long, because the race I’d originally planned on filled up before I could register, so I felt like I had peaked long before race day. As a result, it was the race I thought I was going to have, so perhaps my expectations were realistic.
Race morning, I woke up around 4:45, although I didn’t sleep great – I was nervous about traffic getting to the start of the race, which I really needn’t have been. M took me to the start, and he got me to about a half mile from the start, and I hopped out to do a warm up as I ran to the start area. There are fires in Canada, so the air quality here is terrible. The sun looked cool, red, but as a result of the smoke, I was breathing heavy from the start. My warmup felt fine; I did a mile and then some strides. My strides were peppy, so good that I thought, “I might have this!”
I headed for the porta-potty lines at around 6:42. They were long and slow moving, and I found myself getting stressed and frustrated by people in the line ahead of me who were not running the race making the line so long. However, I made it in, and as I was pushing to the start, they started singing the national anthem. They had said there would an elite corral, but that corral did not exist – nevertheless, I made it to start in time. I ate a gel, as planned, but there were no trash cans on the sides of the starting corral, so I awkwardly hung onto my empty gel packet.
Before we started, the girl next to me – who ended up winning, gave me knuckles and said good luck. And then we were off. I took the first mile fast – I wanted to see what I could do – but I could tell my starting pace wasn’t sustainable. I slowed down a little bit, but even then and throughout the race, that pace never felt good. The course heads north and then it heads back into the city. When it starts to head back, it merged with the half marathon course. Unfortunately, the half marathon starts after the marathon but not enough later, so the marathon front runners join the half marathon runners toward the back of the pack, so the faster marathoners were running with the 9 to 10 minute mile half marathon runners. I was still okay – not great – but okay. I had my first gel at mile 6, and then I had a gel every five miles after that. With the gel right before I started, that level of fueling felt appropriate, but in retrospect, I’m not sure it was. This was the most I’ve fueled during a race, ever – but I never got a bump from the fueling like I might normally get.
For the rest of the race, I was never as fast as my first mile, but through mile 11 I was feeling fine. It still just felt hard – harder than it should have – but I was doing okay. M met me with a bottle at mile 11, and it was perfect timing – I was already almost through my bottle and out of gels.
Mile 11 is when the course started to get hard. Up until now, the course had been very flat but suddenly we had steep ascents and descents around the river. My hamstrings started to hurt, like in a soreness sort of way, not an injury sort of way – and they hurt the entire rest of the marathon (and for a week after). I suppose it was also hot, although I never really felt hot. But my top was completely soaked with sweat by the end of the marathon, and I had salt tracks down my legs.
After seeing M with the bottles around mile 11, the course went sharply downhill and then uphill and then down and up as it went through the park by the YMCA and across the bridge into Moorhead and around the Concordia and msum campuses. The turns on the Concordia campuses, especially, were super tight, and that didn’t help my hamstring situation. I also very much wanted to change shoes very early into the race. Part of the reason was that, in addition to the hamstring soreness, my toes were hitting the front of my shoes in each descent, and I could tell some toenails were fixing to be goners.
Once we headed back across the bridge again, we went into the neighborhoods, and I saw M again for another bottle and gels. The neighborhoods in Fargo were flatter again with fewer turns, but it felt windy heading north back to the finish/start area – and I was just hurting. Bad. I kept taking gels even when I tried to negotiate myself out of it around mile 21: “I’m not going that fast, do I really need to eat?” Ha. Old habits die hard. Of course, yes, I always need to eat.
I did, and I kept pushing. There were times, starting at mile 11, where I’d stub my left foot – and I’d think “focus Laura.” I also had moments later in the race where I felt like my legs were going to give out, which was weird and has never happened before in a marathon (or any run or race). Most of the marathon, I wanted to stop so bad. I did slow down in the second half – quite a bit actually – running over 7:30’s for the last nine or so miles. Although it wasn’t too much slower until miles 23, 24, and 25, when my pace was over 7:40. I didn’t think I was going to make it to the finish line, but I knew I had to, so I kept going.
It felt windy all the way to the finish, but that could have been because it was the end of a marathon and not actual windiness. Turning toward the finish, I tried to push even harder. I found I could speed up but not by much. Mile 26 was a 7:36, and I ran as hard as I could for the last .2, which was a 7:05. Bodies are weird.
After I got to the finish, I made myself keep moving. I realized I was sweaty and so thirsty, so I drank the full bottle water from the finish “celebration.” Note: this was a lackluster finish line and a lackluster race. We need a local organizing company again.
In retrospect, while I didn’t think so at the time, I’m not sure that the heat hadn’t gotten to me and impacted my race. I was soaking wet post-race, and I had huge salt stains on my shins. I drank three bottles, mostly, which is more than usual but probably wasn’t enough hydration.
But the weirdest thing, still, is that I just don’t understand what was going on with my legs. Why was I sore starting at mile 11? Was it really just the Alphafly’s?
I’m not pleased with the race – not at all. It helped me to feel better about the race to check the results and find out that I was first master’s athlete and tenth woman overall, but I felt like I should have had a much stronger race. I was and am super disappointed in how things went. But I also think lots of people fell apart in this race, and, as I said at the beginning, I saw this struggle coming. My half earlier in the year was not what I thought it should be either – although my first half in the marathon today was faster than that half marathon earlier this year. I peaked in fitness earlier in the year and pushed this marathon block too far out. Wobegon would have been a better race, but it filled up, and this was my next best option.
I’m glad I did it, and I am proud of my finish – it was hard fought. I said going into the race that this was my last competitive marathon, and I think that is still where my head and heart is. I’m headed back to ultras.
ultrarungal 