Glass City Marathon 2012--Part 2

April 22nd: The morning I had anticipated for nearly four months.  Since the end of December, I had given up a lot of things that I think only Joe could really have noticed.  I cut out tons of alcohol; I rarely had even a drink on a Friday night, on Saturday nights, if I drank at all, it was a short glass of Jack Daniels and some Diet Coke, and I could only think about the joy of enjoying wine with dinner during the week.  I was no fun on week nights, usually getting a bit grumpy if I wasn't asleep by 10:30.  The most difficult sacrifice for me was the time I gave up spending with Joe to instead go for an evening run a few days each week.  It was all worth it, though, especially since Joe was training pretty much simultaneously.

I wanted to get on the road to UT no later than 5:30AM, which, on a normal day, would have as at UT no later than 6:00.  Race start wasn't until 7:00, but the two most direct routes to UT had both been backed up the past  few days due to construction.  I learned at the Fall Classic in November how important it is to arrive early and to take advantage of a lot of that waiting-around time to pee and then get back into line to wait to pee again.  When we were still not out the door at 5:35, my stress intensified.  I didn't want to let that put me into a funk and, as Joe usually needs to remind me in stressful situations, things typically work themselves out just fine, so I told myself to simmer down.  The only traffic we encountered was waiting to park at UT.  Phew.

Joe went off to find himself a bathroom without a line and I waited for Tammy, Alex, and Alyssa.  Once I found them I had spent way too much time not worried about anything, so I started running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to find Joe.  After a solid five minutes of me panicking, I located Joe and all together we found a bathroom with no line.  It really wasn't a challenge--directly up the elevator were a whole bunch of bathrooms, but I guess they had cooties or something because everyone else preferred to wait in lines downstairs.  I still haven't experienced a cootie-outbreak from said bathroom.

From the toilets, it was off to the start line.  It was a cold 39ish degrees, so over my tech tee I wore arm warmers and my super-sweet Toledo Road Runners 25K hoodless sweatshirt.  We worked our way in near the 8:30 pace group.  What a small world it is--at least one of us knew pretty much everyone standing directly around us.  By this point, I don't remember feeling any stress; instead, I felt the same giddiness and excitement that I had until Saturday.  The shotgun sounded, our walk toward the starting line gradually sped up to a jog, the road widened, and we were off.  I immediately separated myself from Joe, Tammy, Alex, and Alyssa--they were running the half and I was on my own for the full, so I didn't want to wear myself out by hanging with them early in the race.  I was feeling great, smiling as we snaked through and out of campus and into Old Orchard.

The spectators in Old Orchard were great and it surprised me to see how many people from the neighborhood were out to support us runners.  Some were playing music, others held signs, and a few rang cow bells.  The first water stop was on Kenwood, which is where I got rid of my super-sweet Toledo Road Runners 25K hoodless sweatshirt.  I was kind of sad to say goodbye to that ugly thing, but I was already warming up a bit.  The race route then took us through Ottawa Hills, which I feel also had awesome crowd support.  I never realized before how hilly Ottawa Hills is--definitely not any challenging inclines, but enough to call it rolling and offer fun terrain for running.

Bad camera angle; not a heel-strike.

I think it was at the next water stop where I shed my arm warmers.  Eventually we were in Wildwood Park, which is where I tried to down my first PowerBar Gel.  Like a dimwit, I had waited until Friday night to try to find my Kona Punch Gels.  Second Sole didn't have them, so I tried Dave's at the expo on Saturday, but they didn't have them either, so I had to settle for Vanilla that the nice young man from Second Sole brought to the expo and hid just for me.  Back to the race, I was able to get down about half to maybe three-quarters of the Vanilla Gel at that water stop.  I did the same thing later in the race--I think around mile 13 or so.  I really don't know if Gels, Sport Beans, Shot Blocks, or Gus help me at all, but I guess it's better to be safe than sorry.  I do know that I felt stronger during the race than I did during my 18-mile long run, during which I think I had about half of a Kona Punch Gel.  I don't really think I can fairly compare the race to my 20-miler, since that consisted of a 7-mile warm-up sans Gel, an hour and a half break, then the Churchill's Half Marathon with, again, about half of one Gel.  I'll need to keep on experimenting.

Power walking?

Miles one through fourteen flew by, mostly because I was enjoying myself so much and so happy to finally be running a marathon.  We split from the halfers around mile 10 and it was heading into mile 14 that I was feeling a little bored for the first time.  Of note, through that point I had maintained a solid 8:30 pace--15 seconds faster than what I should have been doing.  No worries.  We were in some lame Sylvania neighborhood in which virtually NO ONE was out to watch the race.  Everywhere traffic was stopped for us, motorists were doing their best at looking impatient.  Some laid on their horns, not in a supportive or fun way, but instead in a, "Fuck you, runners!" way.  In one of the Sylvania neighborhoods, a resident actually pulled out of his driveway in between runners and then honked at some of us to get out of the way.  I shouldn't have been surprised, since it was Sylvania, but it got me a little bit fired up.

Despite my not-so-positive feelings toward Sylvania, I loved running through Olander Park.  There was a water stop and relay exchange right before the lake at mile 16 and the crowd there was phenomenal.  They made me feel like a rock star, some even yelling my name.  The crazy love and enthusiasm for us runners there made me smile the biggest, cheesiest smile.  Also of note: there was almost an incident with a family of geese and a runner on the path around the lake.  Fortunately, no humans were bit and said geese were cooperative.

Right before Alyssa found me--still smiling!

Everything was awesome until mile 18, which is where I noticed that my feet hurt and my pace had slowed to closer to 8:40.  I had never experienced foot pain in a training run, or at least I had never noticed it.  I got over it quickly, though.  Some friends had told me that somewhere between mile 18 and mile 22 I'd either start talking to God or need to go to my "happy place."  Mentally, things were great through mile 22.  However, the bike path heading back toward campus was a little bit of a head game.  It was at the second-to-last water stop that I, for the first time, partially walked through.  I felt that at that point I really needed to make sure I was getting enough water, which I couldn't have done had I run through like at all of the previous stops.  Getting my legs running again was a bit of a challenge, as they felt kinda stiff and beat up at that point.  One of my last few miles was 10:03.  Around that same time, I found myself with the 3:50 pacer.  I asked him if he was good for offering some kind of motivation, to which he responded, "Not now.  I'm just trying to finish."  Should it have been discouraging that a pacer was struggling?  Meh, didn't bother me.  I smiled, chuckled, and carried on.

Intense.  I passed them all.

I crossed mile 25 and shortly thereafter was greeted with clapping and a hearty, "There's my favorite runner!"  It was Alyssa, waiting to run me into the finish.  I like Alyssa a lot, but I had never been happier to see her.  I am never going to forget what a relief it was to have someone there for me to talk and get my mind off of the fact that I had already run further than most people drive their cars in a day.  We walked through the last water stop, where I had to decline a Bud Light, and then began the descent toward the Glass Bowl.  Tammy and Susan were waiting just before mile 26 to join us.  They probably don't believe it, given the sense of humor I had, but I was in a zone.  Had I not been in that zone, having the three of them there with me probably would have brought me to cornball tears.



All the way to the entrance to the Glass Bowl, Alyssa was my personal hype-man, getting the spectators to give it up for me finishing my first marathon.  As we approached the stadium, Alyssa told me that when I hit that turf, I had to give it all I had left, run as fast as possible, and pass everyone I could.  She shoved me toward the turf.  When I crossed the finish, I was doing 5:55.  I got my bad-ass finishers medal, a Mylar blanket, and a hug and kiss from Joe.

Looking strong, I must say!

I ran my first marathon in 3:53:20.

Glass City Marathon 2012--Part 1

Back in December, just before the new year, I registered to run the Glass City Marathon--my first full marathon.  I wasn't completely sure what I was getting myself into, and I don't think I was taking things too seriously initially.  For the first couple of weeks following that, other marathoners here and there asked about my training plan (uh, what?).  I got a wake-up call when a ding-dong in our Saturday morning group asked in her typical ding-dong way, "So, when are you going to start training?"  Since I am used to her asking, uh, not the best questions, my immediate response was chock-full of irritation.  "I am training.  This is training."  After all, we were doing an 8-mile run.  Now and then I'd make that 8-miler into 10 or 12.  But for the few minutes immediately following her question as we ran up the towpath in Side Cut Park, I thought, "When am I going to start training?"

I took a lot of advice, most of which led to Hal Higdon.  It was recommended that I follow his Intermediate 1 marathon training plan.  Coincidentally, I was getting more than enough miles on weekdays, but I had technically already missed a couple of longer long runs.  I just jumped right into where I should have been had I actually given the entire training plan 18 weeks.  Quickly, things began falling into place.  I made a couple of mistakes on the way up to maximum mileage, like running 11+ miles in the middle of the week just because I was feeling it.  Instead of real speed work, I made my Thursday night run into a run-like-hell 3-miler.  I only ran 15.5 miles on a day on which I should have run 17.  I even completely missed my second 20-miler, I think because I was sick, and final 12-miler because of a road trip and poor planning.  Online, I read blogs of other runners who resented that they made such mistakes in their training and that it led in all cases to inevitable disappointing marathon finishes.  Still, none of that discouraged me.

All of that got me to the morning of April 21st pretty much bursting with excitement.  I got out of bed and did my final training run--2 miles.  I felt fresh and so ready for 26.2 the next day.  The day went on, Joe went golfing in the afternoon, and I was left to my own devices at home, of course staying off of my feet.  Pretty much as soon as Joe left the house, I flipped the switch from excitement into freak-out mode.  I had a freaking swarm of butterflies in my stomach.  I couldn't attach the feeling to any single problem or worry.  I wasn't concerned about not reaching my goal time.  I didn't think I'd be a DNF.  The possibility of injury never crossed my mind.  I was just nervous.

We went out for pizza with Tammy, Alex, and Alyssa (all of whom would be running the half with Joe).  Throughout dinner I felt nauseous; the feeling subsided temporarily when Joe and I had a killer draw in Keno.  I was starving, so I inhaled a couple of slices of pizza and breadsticks.  I tried for a final slice of pizza, but hit the wall and suddenly craved french fries.  I destroyed a basket of those in what had to be record time.  Hmm, all of this talk of hitting walls and record time...and it's only dinner the night before the race. :)

Joe and I got home around 9:00.  We attached our bibs and laid out all of our gear for the next morning.  I attached some athletic tape with my name written in Sharpie to my shirt.  We got into bed and I shared my woes with Joe.  I told him I was going to end up with an ulcer, given how worried I was.  He laughed at me, which made me feel good inside, we turned off the TV, he fell asleep, and I just lay there, wide awake.  By 11:20 I still wasn't asleep, so I popped a Zolpidem.  Good night.

At 4:50AM I woke up to go pee.  The alarm went off for Joe at 5:01 and our day was underway.  In 2 hours, I'd be starting my first ever 26.2-mile race.

The last month of training

I've been absent from blogging for over a month!  For those who are curious: I fell off of my training plan during the NCAA tournament back in March.  I hadn't planned on needing to adjust my life because, as an Ohio Bobcat, I'm not used to seeing my alma mater's team go deep into the postseason.  They made it to the Sweet Sixteen, so Joe and I couldn't pass up the chance to see them in St. Louis.  While there, I should have done a 12-mile run.  Instead, I did about 7.5 of hills--whodathunk a big city close to the plains would be so rolling?

Everything gets blurry after that.  I had already done all of the long runs, including a 20-miler that was 7.1 "warm-up" miles followed by a half-marathon, which was a PR by about 30 seconds.  I was really proud of that, especially given the unseasonably warm temperatures on race day.  But after the NCAA tournament,  I came down with a nasty cold, cut short my second 20-miler, slacked on mileage in general, and became kinda lethargic.  I may have trained too hard too early, putting in a number of consecutive 45+ mile-weeks.  Whatever I did wrong, I never let it get me down.  I spent the past two weeks incredibly excited to finally run the Glass City Marathon--my first full marathon.  Once I have some race photos, I'll share my entire story of the day before up through crossing that finish line.

Until then, here's a brief summary: It was freaking awesome.