I understand being devastated and sorry it did not turn out like you planned, now you know what does not work. I hear everyone saying you went out to fast and not enough MPW, which I agree to a point, but your quads started locking up in the second half tells me you were cramping and thus the walking. Cut yourself some slack and rack it up to a learning session. Couple of things I would change to have a better outcome
1) Nutrition, I would not take any gels until nearly and hour to keep the tummy happy, plus you don't need anything until then, and make sure you take water with the gel every 20-30 minutes thereafter, you were smart to train with gels!
2) salt tabs, not sure what the gels had, but with the cramping you were done, you probably needed salt tabs
3) quads cramping might be more than salt tabs and if there was any downhill, and training on the TM, without significant downhill force to adapt to that, cramping would occur since you are overworking your quads and had no training for that. The first time I ran the Colorado Marathon and it had a lot of downhill, I ran it without training for downhills, I could feel it come from mile 10 on, and it became a walkfest. Train for the course!
4) long runs to get used to the pounding as others have said need to be outdoors, higher intensity shorter runs with incline like 2 to 3 percent as one noted are great.
"Don't mistake activity for achievement"
-John Wooden
1) Nutrition, I would not take any gels until nearly and hour to keep the tummy happy, plus you don't need anything until then, and make sure you take water with the gel every 20-30 minutes thereafter, you were smart to train with gels!
2) salt tabs, not sure what the gels had, but with the cramping you were done, you probably needed salt tabs
3) quads cramping might be more than salt tabs and if there was any downhill, and training on the TM, without significant downhill force to adapt to that, cramping would occur since you are overworking your quads and had no training for that. The first time I ran the Colorado Marathon and it had a lot of downhill, I ran it without training for downhills, I could feel it come from mile 10 on, and it became a walkfest. Train for the course!
4) long runs to get used to the pounding as others have said need to be outdoors, higher intensity shorter runs with incline like 2 to 3 percent as one noted are great.
"Don't mistake activity for achievement"
-John Wooden