The race as I see it

I will try to make this quick.  It is race day synopsis.  A race weekend synopsis.  Not sure if anyone knows, but I ran a marathon this weekend.  I like to keep stuff like that tight to my chest.  Not discuss it too much.  We runners don't like to talk about doing marathons too much.  Anyway, yes, I did a marathon this weekend.  I had big plans for it.  I did all the training.  Reached some milestones in weight loss, muscle gain, mileage put in, etc.  I was ready.  I even bought compression socks.  I was going to the dance in my Sunday go to meeting clothes.  I was really ready...or so I thought. 

I think one of the things that keeps me grounded at times is the fact that I was an athlete in my younger days.  Played most of the sports.  Ran track.  I was pretty decent, I guess.  When I have bad running days, I think back to my days in high school and college and remind myself that every day can not be your best.  One day you may run a quarterback sneak for a touchdown and the next week you can be flat on your ass needing stitches in your head.  With this distance running stuff, I have mostly seen improvement.  Because I am still kind of new at it.  I space my races out now based on giving myself enough time to train so I can do them well.  I felt really good going into Sunday's marathon.  It knocked me on my ass.

I felt a little tight at the start, but figured things would loosen up rather quickly.  I even paced myself, which is hard for me to do.  I usually just go as my body feels, but I knew that I needed to keep myself at around 9 minute miles to not only get the time I wanted, but to actually finish.  Even though I never loosened up, by mile 9 I was keeping to about an 8:45 pace.  Then, everything really started tightening up.  I know that running isn't really supposed to be comfortable, but just last month I ran a really decent half marathon at a much faster pace and felt way better at the 9 or ten mile mark than a I did on Sunday.  And I still had 16 or 17 miles to go.  The weather was perfect, the music was great, the crowds were awesome, my heel didn't hurt much.  Nothing was hindering me except my legs just would not cooperate.  Around mile 13, I knew I was not going to reach my goal.  I could not pick up the pace.  That was discouraging, but I told myself that I could still get well under last year's time and that would be pretty nice too.  It was around this time that I had to stop to pee.  I never stop to go to the bathroom in a race, but I had to.  In the porta potty, I felt dizzy and wobbly.  I did not feel that way when I was running, just when I stopped.  I was a little concerned but not really.  I told myself to get out there and start running again.  I did not want to die in a porta potty.  If I was gonna die, it would be in front of a crowd where at least people could see my new socks.  The dizziness did not last but the tightness in my legs did.  I found that I had to walk more.  Run a lot, walk some.  I started to realize that if I did not pick it up, I would be lucky to get last year's time.  That was frustrating because you want to pick it up, but sometimes you just can't.  There are so many miles to go that the increased pace would just kill you and you won't even finish.  Or cramp up so badly that you just fall down in the street and roll around until and ambulance gets you.

Here is an aside about runners.  They know pain.  We are all in it.  Fast or slow.  Pr or no pr.  Running a marathon is painful.  I kept thinking that everyone out there was in pain and pushing through it.  It wasn't just me.  I started thinking about the people who really love to run.  Who love long distances and maybe were just having a grand old time.  If I saw any of those people, I wanted to kill them.  The cheering crowds started to annoy me.  I had miles to go before I slept and I thought I would never get to the finish line and I wanted to kill people.  I started trying to joke with the crowd a bit.  After getting a cup of Gatorade at a water stop, I offered it to some people who were cheering.  I'm like, "want some Gatorade?"  They just ignored me.  I saw a woman laying in the street with an EMT attending to her and she was talking about how great she was doing at mile 13.  That her pace was right on and she couldn't figure out what was going on.  That is the thing about runners and when they are near death.  They are still talking about their pace.  Runner's converstaion with God.  God, "Welcome to heaven."  Dead runner, "Thank you, but do you know I was right on pace for a pr.  If I just didn't die things woulda been perfect."  God, "Did you think about your family?"  Dead runner, "Who?  Have you seen my Garmin?"  But we digress.

At mile 20, I knew I would be lucky to finish.  I didn't even want to finish.  That is the funny thing about Facebook, though.  When everyone in the world knows you are doing a marathon, you have to finish or die.  I thought, how am I going to spin this quitting thing into a good story on Facebook?  I noticed how many people were walking.  Cramping up. Crying.  Limping.  All kinds of gear was strewn around.  People throwing off water bottles and shirts and gloves and stuff.  There were some pretty nice things I could have used.  I thought that I hate running.  I hate marathons.  I'm not built for this shit.  5k's are where it is at.  I could train for fast 5k's.  And lifting weights.  That is all hard stuff and I like it.  I hate marathons.  I got mad at my music.  I couldn't turn it down.  I was too tired to turn it down.  Then, I ripped the earbuds out of my ears.  Then the dangling earbuds annoyed me.  Some guy behind me was walking and then he started running again and he simply said, "ouch".  That made me laugh, because that summed everything up really well.  Ouch is right. 

I finally got to the finish line and got some food and limped over to where my friends were.  The finish line and seeing your friends is the great eye opener in all this running crap.  You see the people you trained with.  You hear how they did.  They understand the pain we are all in.  They understand the frustration or joy of the race.  Seeing them and thinking about the process we all go through to get to the finish is line is what keeps me doing this.  I'm not happy with my time, but I'm happy that I finished.  I had nothing left.  I gave it my all and that had to be enough for that day.