CJ Albertson gave a valiant effort at the Boston Marathon on Monday.
He finished 12th overall in the men’s race with his time of 2:10.33 in cool and rainy conditions. Albertson, who holds the world record in the 50k, stayed with the lead pack for a good portion of the race. He believes that he wasn’t generating enough power towards the back half of the race to keep up with the leaders.
“I mean, I felt like the first half when I was with the pack, my mindset was pretty good,” he said. “Even though I was running relatively fast for me with the leaders, I thought I was staying pretty calm. And I was checking my heart rate, which I don’t even know if it’s 100% accurate wrist heart rate, but, but it kind of just gives me a cue to like, calm down and relax everything and just try to keep that steady and not get too excited. So when it gets up over 172 or something, I just take some deep breaths and relax, and then kind of fix my stride and then I felt like I was doing good. And then yeah, once I kind of got dropped a little bit and got rainy and pulled, I don’t know, it was just hard to get, like power into the ground. My cadence felt the same, I just was going a lot slower. So yeah, probably wasn’t getting good power. You kind of just break down a little bit.
I didn’t necessarily feel bad, I just wasn’t getting that pop. And part of that, I don’t know, maybe I need to do more like running in the colder in the rain. Because in training, I always go pretty slow in the rain, even though I don’t feel like I’m going slow.”
With the Boston Marathon behind him, the talented runner has his eyes set towards another big marathon, and that’s the 2024 Olympic Marathon Trials that’s set to take place in Orlando next February. He’s eager to hopefully put himself in position to make the Olympic team that will head to Paris next summer.
“Yeah, I mean I’m definitely excited,” he said “I think racing for a top three position is really challenging. Even though I’ve done a lot of races, like, being in that setting, where you know, it’s probably won’t be out crazy fast. And so I have to like, learn how to navigate the second half of a race and wind it up and cut it down and out kick people. Last Olympic trials, I picked people off to get seventh, but those are people that are falling off, it’s way different. Really, really accelerating to be top three. And so that’s something I’ve never really done before or been super successful at. But it’s absolutely necessary to do to be top three in a race like that. So I’m excited. But also trying to figure out how I can race like that and, and make the team.”
“I went to Trader Joe’s and got all the different Trader Joe’s granola,” he said. “Because normally I just have straight oats, because I don’t need the vegetable oil that coats the oats and the granola, even though it tastes better than sugar, but yes, I got a bunch of granola.”
