Last October we had Stake Conference in our "new" ward (we've almost been here a year {whoa!} but it still seems new) and one of the counselors got up and spoke at the Saturday session, mentioning that he has just completed a marathon that morning and to please forgive him if he fell asleep mid-talk because marathon's tend to make him sleepy and he forgot he had one scheduled on the same day as stake conference. Everyone chuckled. Later the stake president got up to talk and said he was surprised that someone could forget that they would be having a near death experience but he was grateful that his counselor could be here as planned. I thought, ha, that's funny because marathons are hard! Ha ha.... ha. A little over a month later I signed up for my first half marathon. I figured, hey, I can run 6-7 miles without too much trouble, I'm sure I can double my mileage in four months and run 13.1 miles. It won't take as long as training for a marathon, not to mention the fact that I don't want to run a marathon* , and it'll be a good way to train through the winter even though I was short on training companions and motivation. I signed up for the Canyonlands Half Marathon in Moab with my aunt Janet, and even though she had to back out later, I still remained committed. I ran 11.3 miles about four weeks before the event, and proceeded to hurt my knee. I thought I needed to get new shoes, but I postponed because I didn't have the money for new shoes (a cool $100 for the kind I want/only kind I will buy now makes it hard to justify buying new ones often). I tapered off my training and got my knee looked at by my chiropractor/massage therapist, and got on the road to recovery without buying new shoes. But because of this I never did get around to running 13.1 miles before racing 13.1 miles. I didn't think this would be a problem because hey, most first-timers don't train for the whole race and still do fine. Please note, this was mistake #1.
I didn't look for a hotel for the race until the beginning of January, thinking I will so get a jump on things by booking a hotel two months before the race. Oops, no hotels available. Luckily Janet saved my bacon by thinking ahead and getting a room before she even registered for the race. We'll call this mistake #1.5, because it was corrected. She let me have the room even when she had to drop out, sweetie that she is.
The day before the race came, and I started to look at what I should be eating before the race. Mistake #2.5. I hadn't been eating enough carbs, and I hadn't practiced running with the goo or other supplements you can eat during the race to maintain your energy. I got super nervous. I tried to think of what I could do to correct the mistake, but all the websites and training advice said to not eat anything different that what you have been doing because you can screw up your digestive system and have some digestive problems during the race. So I did nothing. This was mistake #3. I should have eaten a lot more food than I did the day before and the day of the race. But because I was so nervous, I didn't. I could tell I needed to have more reserves during the race. It would have helped me a lot. I also was not practiced in eating/drinking goo. I tried twice to consume some goo during the race and only got half a packet down before my throat (and tongue, those things are gross) revolted. I need to find a better flavor, if it exists, and force myself to eat them at more regular intervals. I tried at mile 6 and mile 10. Yuck yuck yuck. But I desperately needed the fuel, so I risked taking them. I'm glad I didn't have need of a bathroom mid race. A lot of people did, and I saw at least one girl who could not wait until the next port-a-potty and peeled off the side of the road to do her business in the bushes. Gross.
Me boarding the bus, 2.5 hours before the race started. We had to wait at the starting line until 10 am so they could close the highway for us to run on.
All these rookie mistakes aside, the race still would have gone better than it had if there had not been a few unforeseen circumstances. First, and well, the biggest reason really, was the weather. It was warm. That may not seem like a big deal, but if you have been training for four months in temperatures that were always lower that 40 degrees, running in 70 degrees in the sun is HOT. My body was just not well adapted to it, and I was so thirsty. Even stopping at every water station and drinking two cups of water, or one cup of water and one cup of Gatorade was not enough to keep me hydrated. It took a big toll on me. If I had been running in 45 degree weather, I would have coped a lot better. Second weather problem was the wind. It was windy that day. Not just breezy, some light wind, or even some wind that makes you think, oh, that was a bit hard to run through, thank goodness it's over. It was an almost constant, hard wind for the whole race, peaking in strength at mile 10-12.5 The wind was between 30-35 mph, with gusts over 55 mph. Every runner was affected. Coming out of the canyon and into Moab proper was beastly. You went from strong intermittent wind that sometimes felt like it was forcing too much air into your lungs so you felt like you had to either swallow air or stop breathing to be comfortable, to wind that made you have to bend double to keep dirt out of your eyes and mouth and stay upright. I felt like I had weights not only on my legs, but on my arms because it was blowing so hard it was difficult to swing my arms back and forth. It felt like I was running continually uphill in water. Today, the muscles that are the most sore are my quads, shoulders, and neck from hunching while running. It was mentally and physically exhausting to run in that wind. I just felt like I literally could not finish the race. People were stopping to walk all around me, and eventually I had to stop and walk too, several times. Finally a very tall old man passed me, and in my desperation I used him to block the wind for me so I could have some respite. It worked, very well apparently because when I left this man at the next water station, several shorter people directly behind me fell out of line.
I will not kid you, when I had to stop and walk I felt like a failure. I had never had to stop and walk in a race before. I had been sorely tempted many times, but I had always been able to preserver and finish the race strong. This time was different because I was in doubt as to whether I would be able to finish the race at all. Mentally I was spent. I was so discouraged. My body hurt, my mile 11 time was 11:34, and I was 9 minutes behind my pace. I decided at the last water station as mile 12 that I would run the whole last mile. I made it, barely. I swear they kept moving the yellow finishing banner the whole time, and I thought my watch had broken because even though the time kept ticking on by, my mileage seemed to stop. But I did cross the finish line. First time ever that I did not sprint, I had nothing left. As a result, about 20 people passed me right at the end. I didn't care. I found Doug waving and smiling and saying "Good job!" after the finish line, and I just started to cry. As I leaned on him for so much needed support to stay standing, I said "That was horrible! I'm never doing this again!" He was concerned, and asked me if I needed anything. Right then I saw another racer walk by with chocolate milk. "I need chocolate milk, and I need to sit down. Now." So I went and got milk and an orange. In the snack line they had bananas, oranges, bread, cheese sticks, cookies, chips, and chocolate. My body felt like it wanted to puke at the sight of food at the time, but even now I have to wonder, who the heck wants to eat chocolate and chips right after a race! Gross! Personally I didn't want to eat anything for about three hours after the race. I shocked my body too badly. After I got food I tried to sit down, I really did, but my legs wouldn't stop moving. Finally Doug asked me if I was going to sit or what, then made me sit down when I told him my predicament. It hurt to sit, oh how it hurt. And then later I had to get up. That was bad.
Me and my much needed chocolate milk.
Anyway, this seems like a really long blog post about me complaining about my self-inflicted pain. And it is, but I'm doing it for a very good reason. Immediately after the race, I swore to Doug that I would never run more than 6 miles ever again. About four hours after the race, I was thinking about what I could have done to make the race go smoother. The next day I was thinking about how long I should recover before I started running again. And today I thought about how I could do better in my next race.....And I've officially decided that racing is like having babies. You go through all that pain, anguish and discomfort and think "Whoa! I don't want to do this again soon/ever again!" And then time passes and you think about doing it again, and then you do it again, and then you remember why you didn't want to do it again in the first place. Racing is like that, at least for me. I went through @#!*% . I cussed like a sailor (at least in my head), prayed over and over again to God to help me get through this, almost gave up, cried, and hated almost every minute of the race after the 8th mile, and yet I'm still considering doing it again! Runners are crazy, and I am one of the craziest.
Trying to sit down.
Almost there!
Oh it hurts. So bad.
For the record, my time according to my watch, which I started as I crossed the starting line and stopped at the finishing line, and I didn't cheat like I wanted to and stopped the watch at every water station I walked through, was 2:06:52. My goal was to finish the race in under two hours, which I obviously didn't do. But I didn't feel too terrible about my time after I heard that the top racers and even the pace racers (people who run with a flag on their back marking the time they are predicted to finish the race, and are usually spot on) were five minutes off their times. So if I had not had the wind to deal with, I would have gotten a lot closer to my goal time. If I had not gotten three side aches and started my period yesterday (Oh, that makes a difference? Yes, yes it does. A big one.) I might have even met my goal time. Oh well, maybe next time.....
This is me about 15 minutes after finishing. I kept telling Doug I didn't want my picture taken, but he said I would want them later. I can't decide if he was right yet.
There were some good parts about the experience that were not associated with the actual running part of the trip. First was that I got to spend a night away from the kids with my husband, which is always awesome because he is so awesome. We got to explore Moab a bit, which was fun. I also had lots of fun in the hours before the race started meeting and talking with the racers. I met a very nice gay couple from New Mexico who were running the race for the third time together. They offered to get coffee with me, but I had to decline. :) I met a girl from Murray UT who had 4 kids and was running the race 1 year after getting in a bike accident and breaking all the bones in her ankle/leg and getting plates and screws put in. I met a girl from Boston who has a goal of running a 1/2 or full marathon in every state in her life. I told her about the Route 66 race my dad runs in October that spans Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri so she could knock out three states in one go. She seemed very interested. I also met two Canadians from Ontario who were my wind blocks at the race start while we waited for the gun to go off. They talked about free surgery in Canada, mooses and how to avoid them, and hockey. I liked them. :) So it wasn't a totally loss, just those 2 pesky hours towards the end of it all.
*Doug doesn't believe me, but I swear it's true. I DO NOT want to run a
marathon. Opinion subject to change at a later date, but not at a soon
later date, at a much much farther away later date.
