Marathon Report

 TL;DR: It was awful. I finished.

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My First Marathon: Sunday, December 11

(And many sincere thanks to ENELL for giving me this opportunity)

This is a mix of Facebook status updates and stream of conscious writing, because it's my blog, so there.

5:00 AM Wake and grab gear. Discover that new hydration pack bite valve has no valve. Grab pocket knife and make a hole.

6:00 Race out the door and drive to the train station.

6:07 Dart up the stairs to the platform only just in time to catch the train.

6:45 Arrive at event site.

7:05-8:30 Shimmy and shiver violently in the hecking cold.

7:46 I got to pet a doggo named Connie. Let's do this.

8:03 Was beginning to worry because I had no pre-race poo, but then I remembered I didn't eat dinner last night.

8:37 Begin. I decided to walk the first mile since I was freezing and very literally needed to warm up and didn't want to make the mistake of going out too fast. This was a good decision.

10:16 Hokay, that second 5k was uphill, so you may ooh and ahh at my negative split.

10:30 Goddess bless the spectators offering beer! Or, perhaps: Bacchus bless the beer bringers!

I got to run the first 15K with a friend who was running the half marathon. And then the two courses split. Holy crap: the stark visual contrast of separating from the half runners and immediately turning onto a dead empty street on a gray day with no other participants in sight. Demoralizing much?

At that turn, another marathoner on the course asked me where everyone was and ultimately decided to go with the half runners instead. But within the next mile and for the rest of the race, I slowly caught up to and passed a sparse but steady stream of other participants.

Halfway thoughts:

Who. the. FUCK. designed this bitch-ass hilly course?!
Also, I would really like a moist towel to wipe the salt from my face.
Also, I would really like to take my shirt off because it's getting warm, but my arms will chafe and I cannot handle that for 13 more miles. Maybe I'll take it off later.

I'd had super sexy negative splits on each 5K to that point and completed my first marathon half in 3:04. My best half marathon ever was 3:07. I was tired and decided to walk mile 14 and stop to pee.

I legit think dementors were consulted in designing the back half of the course.

Miles ~15-17: Fierce headwinds off the lake, nearly constantly. I ducked my head to keep from losing my visor and trudged forward. The sun was starting to come out and the air was getting warm (not good).

Miles ~17-20.5: Begin ALL concrete concrete concrete, boring trail with slight incline. The never-ending, never-changing, soul-destroying type of hill. Turn after turn, mile after mile, it just KEPT GOING. Even if you know nothing about running, you can imagine that it isn't SO bad to suck it up and run uphill for a couple minutes. But can you imagine doing it for an hour?

I was MAD AS HELL and let the anger carry me through that stretch, those miles which are often cited by runners as the most mentally challenging part of a marathon course, even without terrain to contend with. I literally stormed up that whole stretch like an angry cartoon with a bone to pick and mean mugging that would put Phelps to shame. Which worked, but I couldn't run any of it.

(Above: Me)

I snapped a selfie at the 18-mile mark. 18 was the longest training run I'd managed before the race. My fingers were swelling and beginning to be uncomfortable. I had no idea how much worse they would get.

I let three photographers in a row over the course of many miles catch how I *really* felt and look forward to seeing those photos.

I was SO glad to finally turn back onto the segment of the course that I recognized since it was an overlapping out and back. It felt like the home stretch.

My heart just sank at seeing the 23-mile marker. When would I EVER finish?

Moments later, my right femur head shouted in sudden pain: "Hey, bitch! ... Wanna do the pimp-walk limp for the next mile?—Cuz you're gonna." (Yes, my joints have conversations with me. Usually it's my saying, "STFU, knee! I don't need you!")

The final two-ish miles just went through a really ugly industrial part of town. Like, come on.

A too-peppy runner told me when I was at the last quarter mile and pointed out the photographer to encourage me to run. I think I ran. My brain sent signals to that effect. The pictures make it look like I sort of tried, anyway.

Finish line (or what was left of it)

When they say there's a 6.5-hour course limit, what they mean is that the elite runners in the first wave—who can finish in 3 or less—get a 6.5-hour time limit.

So when the slower runners, who are made to start 35 minutes LATER, run about (or less than) 6.5, the whole event is packed up and gone when they reach the finish line but for the photographers and a few saintly volunteers with medals and gear check.

Whereas many other marathoners talk about being overcome with emotion and crying when they crossed the finish line, I wandered around the area sobbing because THERE WAS NO GODDAMN WATER ANYWHERE AT THE EVENT SITE FOR FUCKING MARATHON FINISHERS!

THERE WAS NO GODDAMN WATER AT THE FUCKING FINISH OF A FUCKING MARATHON!

Aside from being anti-climatic, that's really fucking fucked up.

No food or medics either.

The course was fucking awful and I would never recommend this event to anyone.

I got my things, cried more, changed clothes, and dragged myself back to the train station for the 35-minute ride back to my car. I decided when I got in my car to stop at the pho place on the way home to order takeout for my lonely post-race meal.

The end.

... sort of.

I really thought I would need to stop running altogether for a good long while after this race, but I have some 10K Pokémon eggs to hatch and am likely to try on Saturday before Sunday's freeze. #gottahatchemall

The Day Before My First Marathon

Saturday, December 10: The Day Before My Marathon

I took myself to a local diner for a brunch of eggs over medium, bacon, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, toast, and apple juice before boarding the DART train to the expo downtown. I stood in line behind ONE person for packet pickup at the race expo and breezed through the whole thing, including stopping to buy GU and to sign the runners’ wall, in fifteen minutes or less.

I had a pretty bad headache by the time I got home, and it was a raging migraine by evening. Having a migraine is a pretty fucking horrific and often traumatic experience even in the best of circumstances. The thing(s) about having a migraine the night before your first fucking marathon, however, means:

• Not laying out your race gear in advance
• Not prepping your hydration pack
• Not packing your race bag
• Not eating a single bite of dinner, which is a pretty fucking important pre-race meal
• Probably not keeping down any of the liquids you had instead of dinner
• Urinating extra lots, further fucking up that hydration issue (common migraine symptom)
• Not taking the hot bath you'd planned on
• Not stretching that day
• Not massaging or rolling out any sore muscles
• Kind of just barely figuring out the math on when to set your alarm, leave the house, and catch the right train and not feeling at all confident in those calculations
• Going to bed early (great!) but probably only getting 4 good hours of sleep
• Knowing you're going to wake up feeling shaky and emotionally hungover (and, of course, physically tired) for an event that requires literally every drop of mental fortitude that you have available on a *good* day, an event that you haven't even wanted to do *at all* for some weeks now
• Just being *extra* grouchy, hurty, and whiney when you've been pretty damn grouchy, hurty, sleepy, and whiney for several months already
• And no crying, because convulsions will make your upset stomach worse, and the facial tension will worsen the migraine pain as well

That said, thank you so much, dear friends, for all your support, excitement, and confidence, especially since I'm pretty much all out my own. I don't know how to convey how much it means to me.

At this point, I just want to be DONE with the GD race; and never wanting to do this again could be the only thought that gets me to the finish line.

I'm not looking forward to it AT ALL. I just want to be done running, done hurting, done training, done being tired all the time, done being grouchy, and done talking about my fucking marathon.

Simultaneous conversations with my self:

Is this you or your depression talking?

This really feels like me, tbh.

*Remember being grouchy like this 6 years ago in Korea and only much later recognizing that as pretty severe undiagnosed depression.*

So is this you or your depression talking?

Would I know the difference?

IS there a difference?

My depression IS me.

Ain't nobody got time for this.

Go the fuck to sleep.

A Noteworthy Run

I had a noteworthy 16-mile training run yesterday.

When I got to the lake well before dawn, I used the portapotty, and then discovered I’d locked my key in my car. With my phone. And all my gear. It was still dark, and my car was the only one in this lot . . . except for a cop car at the far end.

I walked over to ask if the officer could call a locksmith for me, and he looked at me solemnly and said, “No.” Then his face lit up and he said he could actually help me because he recently bought a Slim Jim kit since so many people ask if he can help them get into their cars. And he hadn’t gotten to use it yet and was kind of excited to try.

As we went to my car, I wondered if maaaybe I should have pulled off the Black Lives Matter decal, but it was still pretty dark, so it went unnoticed or unmentioned. I was going to offer to get my ID from the trunk to prove it’s my car (there were a few other runners in the area), but he never asked, and I finally got to start my run. Thanks, DPD!

All of this happened, by the way, with a high surge of anxiety that wouldn’t dissipate for at least 5 miles.

I had been SO looking forward to the forecasted low 50s weather, but it ended up in the low 60s instead. I kept wondering “wtf?” as I passed so many people in sweatshirts while I was basically sweating my tits off.

The run itself was wholly unremarkable . . . except that it wasn’t nearly as torturous as I’d expected! My Vibram FiveFingers just weren’t working for me for more than about 10 miles, so my long runs in recent weeks have all been epic suffer-fests. Yesterday I had on a new pair of Asics, and I’d finally figured out how to lace them to give my toes enough space to spread and keep my heels from slipping.

There was an official half marathon happening on the trail that day, and I arrived before it began, had no trouble parking, finished after it ended, and faced no delays on my drive home. What luck!

I also packed myself an icy cold, post-run egg nog in the car. It was awesome: 10/10 recommend. (I’m so clever) I had a 90-minute massage that afternoon and felt pretty good on this morning’s 2.5-mile recovery run. Who’da thunk?

And then I realized the marathon is just over a month away, and holy crap, that’s kinda scary.

Well, I’m already chowing down on chocolate, trying to suppress the election anxiety, so let’s just roll the marathon nerves in there too. I'm sure it will all be fine.

I'm Going to Run a Marathon

I took the plunge and signed up with Team in Training to train for my first marathon, the Dallas Marathon on December 11, 2016. That's 26.2 miles. I don't even like driving that far.

How it works is that I commit to fundraising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and they provide me race training with a coach and a local group.

Honestly, I'm really scared.

Two years ago I completed two half marathons while suffering through IT Band Syndrome, which caused excruciating knee pain that left me crying hard through the last mile or two of the 13.1-mile Honored Hero Run in October 2014.

Though I'll be working with a coach and seeing other runners once a week, I'll ultimately be logging hundreds of long, hot miles this summer and fall all alone. So I need your help:

1. Ask me how training is going.
2. Nicely point out my typos.
3. Remind me to stretch.
4. Donate if you can.

And I'll keep putting in the miles and keep you updated on this journey.