The Marathon

Oh, the long awaited post... the marathon itself.

The day before the marathon was spent in almost painful anticipation. We were in Alaska but we weren't supposed to exert ourselves. The city itself was kind of ugly, the walk to the expo was long, and I needed to figure out where a grocery store was and buy sports beverages and food for breakfast before the marathon and recovery after. There was a strategy meeting at 5 followed by a pasta dinner at 7, but a long day stretched out between 8:30 am and 5:00 pm. Slowly it ticked away. Su finally arrived after missing her flight and spending the night in the Seattle airport. We found a little grocery store and combed the aisles for bagels and chocolate milk and gatorade. We bought a foam cooler and lugged it back to the room. It was useful for keeping our milk cold and we knew it would come in handy for the dreaded ice baths. We went to the strategy meeting and the pasta party and choked the almost edible food (I could make better pasta with my eyes closed) and then went back to the hotel room. My plan was to lay out everything I would need, take a hot bath, and go to sleep. The only problem was, I had too many decisions to make: which shoes? which socks? do I bring a fleece or hope that Alaska isn't too cold at 6 am? I also still had to sew all the ribbons onto my jersey. As the night progressed I got more obsessive about the details, filling up my gel flask and my water bottles, pinning my number onto my shirt, practically pacing the room. Finally, there was nothing left to worry about. I took a long hot bath, set my alarm for 5:15 am, and crawled into bed.

When it went off in the morning, I wished I had set it for earlier. Eating took too much time, as did frantically searching for forgotten essentials. I felt panicked and rushed as I ran downstairs for the group photo only to take the elevator up to my room five minutes later to look one last time for... I honestly can't quite remember what. We took photos and piled on the bus only to sit in a parking lot for over an hour. Of course as the start drew near I desperately needed the bathroom, along with every other person in the parking lot. I waited in line for almost half an hour, emergining five minutes before the start. And we were off.

At first you were more walking than running there was so much congestion near the start line. I was eager to break free into some open air so I soon left my friends behind, skirting up the sides to get into open patches. I picked out a girl about my age running about my pace and introduced myself to her. She was from Indiana, and we ran together for the first ten miles. But about one mile in we saw a moose. He??? (I didn't get a good look) was running along side of the road, just on the other side of a fence, right by the highway. Everyone cheered, and I fumbled for my camera, taking a picture that might have a moose lurking in it somewhere but really is just a picture of a fence and trees. Still, with a moose spotted, I was ready to go home. Except, wait, there were still 25.2 more miles to go! Almost immediately after the moose, I managed to drop my fuel belt and had to go backwards dodging runners to collect the belt and my cell phone which had slipped free. I got it back on and caught back up to Indiana though, and we continued on our way.

I liked Indiana's pace, but she didn't slow down quite as much as I wanted to going through water stops. I had totally planned on walking through the stops, but she was anxious to keep moving. Perhaps because of this, and perhaps because of my relatively unbroken in shoes, or perhaps because of the tank trail which started around mile seven or eight and went on for another 9 or 10 miles, my hip started to bother me. It started hurting around mile ten, and by mile thirteen I was walking and crying and worried that I was never going to finish the race. I tried to run 8 minutes and walk 2, but the switching back and forth proved to be the most painful part, so I decided to just try and run for thirty minutes. I told myself that if I could manage that, I would let myself walk for twenty. Luckily that never had to happen, as I started running again, the hip started loosening up, and by the time the thirty minutes were up we were pretty much done with the tank trail. Once I was back on even ground again, everything started feeling much better.

Once I started running again, I started passing people that had passed me in the previous couple of miles. At first, it was other people that had been run-walking like me. But by mile eighteen, I was seeing familiar TNT faces too. Around mile 18, I was adopted by a woman named Suzie. She had been running with a bunch of friends when one of them started feeling really dizzy around mile 9. She had walked her friend to the first aid station and stayed with her until she was whisked off to a hospital. All of her friends had gone on without her, so she had been running by herself. When she found out that it was my first marathon, she made it her mission to talk me through the last six miles. She told me about her other marathons, and her family. She told me different visualization techniques to use to get outside my body so that I could forget the pain. She also told me to run each of the last six miles for somebody I loved. Around mile 22 we caught up to her friends, and a couple miles later I fell back a little. But I kept them in sight the whole rest of the way, and I have a picture with them at the finish line. I'm not sure I would have kept running all of those miles if it hadn't been for Suzie. Some day I want to do that for somebody else. Of course, I'll have to get to the point where I am capable of talking during the last six miles before that is an option.

So did the last six miles hurt? Yes, in a dull achey sort of way... in a this pain has been going on for too long and just needs to stop sort of way... in a I'm just unbelievably tired sort of way. I don't know if I actually hit a wall. I fell apart around mile 13 and that was the hardest part of the race mentally and physically. It was during those earlier miles that I felt searing pain and wondered if I could finish. I don't know whether I was capable of doing math during those last six miles, I know that I had stopped caring about what pace I was going or how long we had been running for. I did still vaguely want to finish under five hours. But when Suzie suggested that a 4:40 was still possible, I could have cared less. I finished in 4 hours and 52 minutes. I even managed to sprint in the last 50 yards.

I posed for a picture with Suzie and crew and then made it about five more steps before I got whisked away to the first aid tent. Apparently it was somewhat alarming that I couldn't really walk once I stopped running. My hip was spasming, but as soon as I sat down that was more manageable. Taking care of myself after the marathon was one of the hardest parts. Walking hurt so badly and I knew that I needed to eat and drink and sign in at the TNT tent. I spent the next hour and a half hobbling around the finish area talking on the phone to all sorts of people and standing in line for a massage.

I took the bus back to the hotel, took my ice bath, read my book and tried to make it out to the victory party. The problem was, after I took the ice bath I couldn't get warm, until we got to the victory party, where I was burning up. The food wasn't very good, and I couldn't choke much of it down. So we left with a bunch of people and went to a bar where I planned to get more food. Instead I drank a beer, tottered back to the hotel room and fell asleep.


Su and I were extremely gimpy for the next few days, and the pain was significant but we recovered fairly quickly and had a fantastic time in Alaska. This post is already very long, so I won't dwell on the recovery right now. But overall the pain was worth it. The marathon was full of people wearing TNT purple, and the support along the course was amazing. I didn't write my name on my jersey, but all along the course I got cheers of "go Georgia" and "go Peach". There weren't a lot of spectators but they made up for it in spirit. A coach from the Illinois team ran with me for about half a mile and gave me some advice on how to loosen my hip up further around mile 17. He waws so sure that I would finish, that I knew I had to keep going. Running a marathon was both easier and harder than I thought it would be, but I'm glad I did it.... and I'm already signed up to run another one (although this time I won't be fundraising).

Two Right Shoes

I went to Alaska via California, where I spent a week visiting a Jerry (whatever species of animal that might be). During that week I was supposed to taper, but still run. So, a couple of days in, I go to pull out my running shoes. Much to my dismay, I had carefully packed two right shoes. At the beginning of this whole process, I had bought two identical pairs of shoes, so that I would not have to buy new shoes right before the marathon. Before I left for California, I sat on my couch with the right shoes on one side, the left shoes on the other and spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out exactly which two shoes had the most support left in them, and then packed them away. Except, somehow I managed to carefully stow away two right shoes.

So in California, at 8:00 on a Sunday evening, I sat there clutching my two right shoes, calling shoe stores to see if anyone was open, absolutely desperate for a run. And when I say I was desperate for a run, I mean that I was being an absolute total brat because it had been several days since I had a runner's high... or at least that is my excuse. Unfortunately, everyone had closed at 7:00. The next day, on the way to the beach, we went to four different running stores, trying to find one that had my size in the two models that I was considering. I wanted to try the Kayanos too, because I thought the extra padding might be worth the extra $40. Finally, around 2:00 in the afternoon we were standing in a Lady Footlocker (not the type of store I like to buy running shoes from) and I was frantically trying to decide between the Kayanos which my foot seemed to swim in, and the 2110s which hurt until i break them in. At this point I was hungry and beyond crabby and I think Jerry was about to just abandon ship and leave me standing in the mall agonizing over which pair of shoes to run 26.2 miles in. Luckily, I eventually made a decision, we ate food, and life got better. The 2110s won and we proceeded to the beach where we went on a fun but slightly painful run. The next day I went on another run, this one quite painful by the end. I decided to call Su and have her get my left shoes from my apartment and bring them to the marathon in Alaska. That way I could always go back to what I had trained with.

But first, I called Delta to make sure that I could cancel the first half of my ticket and fly the second half. Well, that was strictly not allowed. I could spend $300 to fly the same flight I had already paid $600 for, or I could buy a new flight (on a cheaper airline) and end up with a $600 credit on Delta. I found a third option. I added a flight home to the tail end of my trip and cut off the first leg, so for a grand total of $117 I can get back to Atlanta from Alaska and get up to DC the day after my birthday to celebrate with the rents. I just need to buy a return ticket. So it ended up being no big deal, but after the great shoe disaster of 2006 I was a little concerned.

So I finally get up to Alaska and am faced the night before the race with three pairs of running shoes (Su did not know which one to bring). I try on the old ones, which were a half size smaller than the new ones, and they feel too tight. They make the blister on my left toe feel as though it is going to explode. Then I try on the new ones, they just hurt. Having them on for a few minutes makes my arches ache. I jog back and forth a few times in the hotel room in both pairs (I did not feel the need to try the third pair). Finally in desperation, I try taking the old insoles out and putting them in the new shoes. I did not think it would work because of the size difference, but lo and behold, it did. And it felt comfortable. So I added my new shoes (both a left and a right) to the pile of running clothes I had already laid out, took a long relaxing bath, and went to bed nervously awaiting the next morning.