Okay, I'll give this a try.
For those of you who aren't interested in running or are frightened by the length of my race reports, I'll just sum up briefly by saying "I ran a marathon".
I'm sure you're all interested in what I ended up wearing! I went with tights. I couldn't stomach the thought of wearing shorts when it possibly wouldn't get above freezing during my run. I also wore a short sleeved technical shirt and two long sleeved ones. Also a pair of throw-away gloves (which I didn't wear the whole time, but also didn't throw away), a skullcap sorta warm hat, my sunglasses (on my head, never needed them on my eyes), and a $7 paper throw-away jacket I bought at the expo. Uh, and socks and shoes. For the record, they were my Bunnies Doin' It socks.
It was cold enough, and enough roads were closed, that they delayed the start half an hour. We were fortunate, in that one of our TriZonesers lived a 5 minute walk from the start line at Freescale, and she offered up her house (and its heater, its couches and its REAL BATHROOMS) to all her teammates. So we learned about the delay, and instead of standing in the cold for an extra half hour, or being crammed into the Freescale cafeteria (which is apparently what many other people did), we just spent an extra half hour hangin' out at Annette's house. Then a 5 minute walk to the start line, which is probably less of a walk than people who parked at the race site had. Whee!
Gun went off, 10 minutes later (we started waaay back) we crossed the start line.
I felt pretty bad at first. I've been having shin splints my last few runs, roughly coinciding with the purchase of my new shoes, and those were out in full force (both shins). I knew from last year, though, that my shin splints generally went away once I was warmed up, so I just kept hoping and waiting. Also, my weird thing that's happened since the RunTex 20 Miler came back, which is that my right ankle hurts until I retie my shoes. It's.. bizarre. It's always fine after that.
Laura, Pam, Dena, Janet and I all started together, and nobody knew how anyone else was going to feel or how we'd end up. Everyone but Laura was doing the full marathon, and everyone but Janet was suffering from some sort of recent injury. But we'd done most of our training runs together, so we wanted to at least start the marathon together, come what may.
Our first mile was slow just because of start-line congestion. Also cold. Some places were actually still iced over, and one of my teammates slipped on the way to the startline and torqued her knee a little. Scary stuff. We picked it up a little after that, but then we had our first portapotty stop, complete with long line (fortunately only Pam and Dena had to go, or we would have been there even longer).
Things went pretty well for several miles after that. Around mile 3, I thought "Wow. My shins hurt. My ankle hurts. I woke up at 4am and I'm tired and I'm really cold. How in the WORLD do I plan to do this for 26.2 miles? This is silly."
Even though it was still well below freezing, I took off my throwaway jacket around mile 2.5 and.. threw it away (on the side of the road.. it's funny how littered with clothing the side of the road is after one of these events.. but they pick it all up and give it to charities and whatnot) (actually, we saw several runners shopping from the discarded clothing.. there was some nice stuff in there!), and took off my gloves to tuck them in my fuelbelt. So I warmed up pretty quickly, bodytemp-wise.
Nothing really happened of note (uh, that I can currently recall) for quite some time. We picked up our pace from the first mile, and we all warmed up and I started to feel pretty okay. I had greater hope. 26.2 didn't seem quite as scary as before, and we had a definite landmark (getting Laura through the half) goal.
Around mile 10, Laura's feet started to hurt. This isn't new.. this has been happening to her her last few long runs, and she goes from Fine to OW MUST STOP AND WALK in a matter of seconds. So we did walk-run for a while to stay with her, but unfortunately it just wasn't getting any better. Around this same time, Pam's knee started to hurt. Now, Pam's had shin pain, calf pain, and ankle pain, but knee pain was a new one for her. It wasn't horrible, though, so we continued on.
Around mile 12 we passed Performance Wellness on Shoal Creek, where a whole host of TriZones people were there to cheer us on, and where the building was open such that we could use the (real) bathroom. Laura decided she just wanted to finish, since she was so close, and she continued on to the end while we went inside. Dena had been having problems of her own, in that she was experiencing stomach cramps, so she spent some time in the bathroom. Pam took her ankle-brace off in case it was causing her knee pain. Some chatting with Performance Wellness employees happened. It was.. a lot longer of a break than we wanted or should have taken. But then we hit the road again.
When we got to the split for the half/full, I looked at the sign that pointed two different ways and made my thoughtful look and said "13.1 or 26.2? 13.1 or 26.2? ... Aw, screw it." and followed the Marathon arrow. The volunteer standing at the sign gave me a "You're way less clever than you give yourself credit for, idiot" look. Heehee.
I realized Laura had gone to finish the half marathon with my gloves, which I wasn't convinced I wouldn't need again. Oops.
Pam's knee started feeling worse. And Dena's stomach wasn't doing well at all. I was trying to be cheerleader for our group, and convince everyone this was still fun and we were more (barely) than halfway there, and YAY TEAM! It wasn't working very well. Pam started having to run-walk. We all started out run-walking with her, so we could stay together. Then slowly Dena and Janet pulled ahead, and Pam and I run-walked on.
Pam's husband and parents were out on the course several times (every 5 miles! they rock), and the next time we passed them, Pam got an ace bandage and tried wrapping her knee, but it didn't really help. The walking breaks became more frequent and longer, and Pam was really unhappy. She became fairly internal, stopped talking, and was just generally not pleased to be there. She took aspirin from one medical table, then tylenol from another. The latter seemed to help briefly, but.. only briefly.
Somewhere on North Loop, someone had a blonde lab puppy wrapped in a blanket, and we stopped to pet the puppy and get puppy-kisses, and that helped some. Maybe more than the tylenol. And we caught back up with Dena and Janet briefly, but then they pulled ahead again.
Meanwhile, every time we'd stop to walk, my feet would hurt a little more. They were hurting right in the middle of the foot, and because you spend so much more time putting pressure on that part when you walk, it felt better for me to run than to walk. I tried to ignore it, but it kept getting worse. Finally I told Pam that it was likely that at some point in the near future, I was going to need to just keep running.
This was slightly ironic and sad, because Pam and I both went into this event with a strong suspicion that Pam would need to run faster than me in order to feel good, and would likely leave me behind at some point. And just exactly the opposite is what was coming to pass. And I was having a really tough time coping with the possibility of leaving her, because I knew that being alone when you already felt bad would just make it worse. And because I had already stuck it out with her for many miles, even after the pain started. And because I'd have to pass by her husband and parents without her, and admit I left her behind.
But just before mile 19, that time did come, and when we were walking, I said I really needed to run, because my feet were getting bad. She started out trying to run with me, but then she had to walk, and she gave me her blessing (I "Are you sure?"ed about 80 times) to keep going. So I did. It was hard.
So now I was on my own, late in the marathon.
I entered campus and I swear, it took forever to get to the mile 20 sign. As I got closer to it, I saw Janet and Dena in the distance, so I started using them as my rabbits, and slowly reeled them in. I finally caught up just after the 20, and Dena said "How are you feeling?" and I said "Actually, I'm feeling really great." Dena said, "Great, then you can run with Janet!" Her stomach wasn't any better, and she needed to slow down, so Janet and I took off together. We were both feeling good (if somewhat tired and ready to be done), and kept a good pace for the rest of the time. We walked once for a minute to take a gu, but other than that, we ran the entire last 10k in, and had a nice chat.
Around mile 23, I started to feel a little.. disassociated. A little bit like I was just watching this happen to someone else. But I never formally hit an imaginary wall or anything. I admit, the overpass on Mopac was long and steep and demoralizing, especially knowing that the hills don't end for a while, and that you have to run back after you get all the way out there, but we did it. And on the Back, we got to wave to Dena and Pam, and know they were doing okay.
At the HHH at mile 25, we refused their beer, but I got us a Twizzler and we broke it in half and each took about half a bite before deciding that wasn't such a good idea. And then we were at mile 26.
As we were about halfway across the bridge, I heard my name being called. I looked up ahead, and saw my family, and it was the best sight in the world. My mom and dad had hooked up with Laura and they were all cheering me in, and then I heard my name from elsewhere and on the other side of the chute was my father-in-law and mother-in-law with my brother-in-law and one of my nieces. They were all cheering me in, and it was just incredible (and you get kinda emotional after 26 miles of running in really cold weather, turns out) (I didn't cry, though! Rare for me.), and I picked up the pace a little. Janet had told me that if I wanted to pick it up, feel free, and that she didn't have it in her to do it. And I didn't really intend to, but I found myself picking up speed, especially when I turned and saw the finish line. There were two people ahead of me, and I ended up passing them both before I crossed the finish line, and finished a marathon!
Then I got one of those crazy silver blanket thingies, got my (unfortunately Large) finisher's shirt, and got my post-race chili. Which.. was unexpected. And then froze my ass off while getting a massage and a slice of pizza and waiting for Matt to come find me at the TriZones tent.
So.. yay! My chip time was 5:35. My original pre-injury goal was 5 hours, and I knew that wasn't going to happen. But my post-injury goal was just to finish, and I'm happy with that. And it's somewhat reassuring to know that my time was slower for having walked so much, and knowing that none of that walking was because of me, but because of other people. That was usually not the case in previous runs. :) So it was nice to be the one feeling good, for a change, even if I still got to walk.
I'm very hobbly now, and I imagine I'll be worse tomorrow. My hamstring is incredibly tight, and was through most of the last 10 miles, and has been for a couple months now. Not sure what's up with that, but maybe my massage tomorrow will help it.
And I actually enjoyed myself. I don't think I really expected to. It didn't even really hit me that I was doing the event I'd been training for for months, THE MARATHON, until maybe mile 4, and it didn't occur to me that I might finish THE MARATHON until I hit the 25 mile marker. Maybe it was the Twizzler that convinced me.
Many, many thanks to everyone who encouraged me these many months and told me I could do it. Thank you, traininglog and ginsnap for being my coaches and moms when I needed them. Thank you, sweetmonster, tripam, Janet and Dena for running with me today. Thank you, mom and dad for braving the cold to come out and cheer me in, and for telling me that you're proud of me. Thank you, xomox for telling me that you knew I could do it, and for being right, and for always being there when I needed you, even when I was crazy. Thank you, jooley_ann for being out in the freezing and cheering, and for noticing that you knew me, 'cause my brain wasn't working at all. Thanks to everyone who wished me luck. Thanks to TriZones (especially those who came out and cheered even though they weren't running today) and to Tracy for getting me ready and getting me to the finish line, even though there were many times I doubted I'd ever see it. And thanks to my body for getting me there, despite my best efforts to injure myself repeatedly and everywhere. (And thanks to Pam's family for not hating me much, even though I abandoned their daughter.)
Check out my crazy splits:
Mile 1: 12:16 (start-line congestion)
Mile 2: 11:31
Mile 3: 17:06 (portapotty stop with lots of line)
Mile 4: 11:17
Mile 5: 11:43
Mile 6: 12:19
Mile 7: 12:05
Mile 8: 11:14
Mile 9: 11:28
Mile 10: 11:21
Mile 11: 11:44
Mile 12: 11:26
Mile 13: 19:54 (Performance Wellness stop)
Mile 14: 11:44
Mile 15: 13:31 (Start of run-walk with Pam)
Mile 16: 16:14
Mile 17: 13:36
Mile 18: 15:01
Mile 19: 14:06
Mile 20: 11:33 (Start of running alone/with Janet)
Mile 21: 12:07
Mile 22: 11:28
Mile 23: 11:40
Mile 24: 12:07 (the awful out'n'back)
Mile 25: 12:13 (ditto)
Mile 26: 11:57
How's THAT for inconsistent?! Kinda cool that I got a few sub-11:30s in there, though. I didn't expect to have that in me today. Or sub-12s after mile 20.
Okay. Enough babbling.
Oh, and I burned 2430 calories. I think I managed to eat twice that today, though. Yay!
Oh, AND.. Pam went on to finish the marathon, even though she had to walk most of the last miles. She's tenacious and stubborn and incredible. And Dena finished, too. We kinda rock.
I'm sure you're all interested in what I ended up wearing! I went with tights. I couldn't stomach the thought of wearing shorts when it possibly wouldn't get above freezing during my run. I also wore a short sleeved technical shirt and two long sleeved ones. Also a pair of throw-away gloves (which I didn't wear the whole time, but also didn't throw away), a skullcap sorta warm hat, my sunglasses (on my head, never needed them on my eyes), and a $7 paper throw-away jacket I bought at the expo. Uh, and socks and shoes. For the record, they were my Bunnies Doin' It socks.
It was cold enough, and enough roads were closed, that they delayed the start half an hour. We were fortunate, in that one of our TriZonesers lived a 5 minute walk from the start line at Freescale, and she offered up her house (and its heater, its couches and its REAL BATHROOMS) to all her teammates. So we learned about the delay, and instead of standing in the cold for an extra half hour, or being crammed into the Freescale cafeteria (which is apparently what many other people did), we just spent an extra half hour hangin' out at Annette's house. Then a 5 minute walk to the start line, which is probably less of a walk than people who parked at the race site had. Whee!
Gun went off, 10 minutes later (we started waaay back) we crossed the start line.
I felt pretty bad at first. I've been having shin splints my last few runs, roughly coinciding with the purchase of my new shoes, and those were out in full force (both shins). I knew from last year, though, that my shin splints generally went away once I was warmed up, so I just kept hoping and waiting. Also, my weird thing that's happened since the RunTex 20 Miler came back, which is that my right ankle hurts until I retie my shoes. It's.. bizarre. It's always fine after that.
Laura, Pam, Dena, Janet and I all started together, and nobody knew how anyone else was going to feel or how we'd end up. Everyone but Laura was doing the full marathon, and everyone but Janet was suffering from some sort of recent injury. But we'd done most of our training runs together, so we wanted to at least start the marathon together, come what may.
Our first mile was slow just because of start-line congestion. Also cold. Some places were actually still iced over, and one of my teammates slipped on the way to the startline and torqued her knee a little. Scary stuff. We picked it up a little after that, but then we had our first portapotty stop, complete with long line (fortunately only Pam and Dena had to go, or we would have been there even longer).
Things went pretty well for several miles after that. Around mile 3, I thought "Wow. My shins hurt. My ankle hurts. I woke up at 4am and I'm tired and I'm really cold. How in the WORLD do I plan to do this for 26.2 miles? This is silly."
Even though it was still well below freezing, I took off my throwaway jacket around mile 2.5 and.. threw it away (on the side of the road.. it's funny how littered with clothing the side of the road is after one of these events.. but they pick it all up and give it to charities and whatnot) (actually, we saw several runners shopping from the discarded clothing.. there was some nice stuff in there!), and took off my gloves to tuck them in my fuelbelt. So I warmed up pretty quickly, bodytemp-wise.
Nothing really happened of note (uh, that I can currently recall) for quite some time. We picked up our pace from the first mile, and we all warmed up and I started to feel pretty okay. I had greater hope. 26.2 didn't seem quite as scary as before, and we had a definite landmark (getting Laura through the half) goal.
Around mile 10, Laura's feet started to hurt. This isn't new.. this has been happening to her her last few long runs, and she goes from Fine to OW MUST STOP AND WALK in a matter of seconds. So we did walk-run for a while to stay with her, but unfortunately it just wasn't getting any better. Around this same time, Pam's knee started to hurt. Now, Pam's had shin pain, calf pain, and ankle pain, but knee pain was a new one for her. It wasn't horrible, though, so we continued on.
Around mile 12 we passed Performance Wellness on Shoal Creek, where a whole host of TriZones people were there to cheer us on, and where the building was open such that we could use the (real) bathroom. Laura decided she just wanted to finish, since she was so close, and she continued on to the end while we went inside. Dena had been having problems of her own, in that she was experiencing stomach cramps, so she spent some time in the bathroom. Pam took her ankle-brace off in case it was causing her knee pain. Some chatting with Performance Wellness employees happened. It was.. a lot longer of a break than we wanted or should have taken. But then we hit the road again.
When we got to the split for the half/full, I looked at the sign that pointed two different ways and made my thoughtful look and said "13.1 or 26.2? 13.1 or 26.2? ... Aw, screw it." and followed the Marathon arrow. The volunteer standing at the sign gave me a "You're way less clever than you give yourself credit for, idiot" look. Heehee.
I realized Laura had gone to finish the half marathon with my gloves, which I wasn't convinced I wouldn't need again. Oops.
Pam's knee started feeling worse. And Dena's stomach wasn't doing well at all. I was trying to be cheerleader for our group, and convince everyone this was still fun and we were more (barely) than halfway there, and YAY TEAM! It wasn't working very well. Pam started having to run-walk. We all started out run-walking with her, so we could stay together. Then slowly Dena and Janet pulled ahead, and Pam and I run-walked on.
Pam's husband and parents were out on the course several times (every 5 miles! they rock), and the next time we passed them, Pam got an ace bandage and tried wrapping her knee, but it didn't really help. The walking breaks became more frequent and longer, and Pam was really unhappy. She became fairly internal, stopped talking, and was just generally not pleased to be there. She took aspirin from one medical table, then tylenol from another. The latter seemed to help briefly, but.. only briefly.
Somewhere on North Loop, someone had a blonde lab puppy wrapped in a blanket, and we stopped to pet the puppy and get puppy-kisses, and that helped some. Maybe more than the tylenol. And we caught back up with Dena and Janet briefly, but then they pulled ahead again.
Meanwhile, every time we'd stop to walk, my feet would hurt a little more. They were hurting right in the middle of the foot, and because you spend so much more time putting pressure on that part when you walk, it felt better for me to run than to walk. I tried to ignore it, but it kept getting worse. Finally I told Pam that it was likely that at some point in the near future, I was going to need to just keep running.
This was slightly ironic and sad, because Pam and I both went into this event with a strong suspicion that Pam would need to run faster than me in order to feel good, and would likely leave me behind at some point. And just exactly the opposite is what was coming to pass. And I was having a really tough time coping with the possibility of leaving her, because I knew that being alone when you already felt bad would just make it worse. And because I had already stuck it out with her for many miles, even after the pain started. And because I'd have to pass by her husband and parents without her, and admit I left her behind.
But just before mile 19, that time did come, and when we were walking, I said I really needed to run, because my feet were getting bad. She started out trying to run with me, but then she had to walk, and she gave me her blessing (I "Are you sure?"ed about 80 times) to keep going. So I did. It was hard.
So now I was on my own, late in the marathon.
I entered campus and I swear, it took forever to get to the mile 20 sign. As I got closer to it, I saw Janet and Dena in the distance, so I started using them as my rabbits, and slowly reeled them in. I finally caught up just after the 20, and Dena said "How are you feeling?" and I said "Actually, I'm feeling really great." Dena said, "Great, then you can run with Janet!" Her stomach wasn't any better, and she needed to slow down, so Janet and I took off together. We were both feeling good (if somewhat tired and ready to be done), and kept a good pace for the rest of the time. We walked once for a minute to take a gu, but other than that, we ran the entire last 10k in, and had a nice chat.
Around mile 23, I started to feel a little.. disassociated. A little bit like I was just watching this happen to someone else. But I never formally hit an imaginary wall or anything. I admit, the overpass on Mopac was long and steep and demoralizing, especially knowing that the hills don't end for a while, and that you have to run back after you get all the way out there, but we did it. And on the Back, we got to wave to Dena and Pam, and know they were doing okay.
At the HHH at mile 25, we refused their beer, but I got us a Twizzler and we broke it in half and each took about half a bite before deciding that wasn't such a good idea. And then we were at mile 26.
As we were about halfway across the bridge, I heard my name being called. I looked up ahead, and saw my family, and it was the best sight in the world. My mom and dad had hooked up with Laura and they were all cheering me in, and then I heard my name from elsewhere and on the other side of the chute was my father-in-law and mother-in-law with my brother-in-law and one of my nieces. They were all cheering me in, and it was just incredible (and you get kinda emotional after 26 miles of running in really cold weather, turns out) (I didn't cry, though! Rare for me.), and I picked up the pace a little. Janet had told me that if I wanted to pick it up, feel free, and that she didn't have it in her to do it. And I didn't really intend to, but I found myself picking up speed, especially when I turned and saw the finish line. There were two people ahead of me, and I ended up passing them both before I crossed the finish line, and finished a marathon!
Then I got one of those crazy silver blanket thingies, got my (unfortunately Large) finisher's shirt, and got my post-race chili. Which.. was unexpected. And then froze my ass off while getting a massage and a slice of pizza and waiting for Matt to come find me at the TriZones tent.
So.. yay! My chip time was 5:35. My original pre-injury goal was 5 hours, and I knew that wasn't going to happen. But my post-injury goal was just to finish, and I'm happy with that. And it's somewhat reassuring to know that my time was slower for having walked so much, and knowing that none of that walking was because of me, but because of other people. That was usually not the case in previous runs. :) So it was nice to be the one feeling good, for a change, even if I still got to walk.
I'm very hobbly now, and I imagine I'll be worse tomorrow. My hamstring is incredibly tight, and was through most of the last 10 miles, and has been for a couple months now. Not sure what's up with that, but maybe my massage tomorrow will help it.
And I actually enjoyed myself. I don't think I really expected to. It didn't even really hit me that I was doing the event I'd been training for for months, THE MARATHON, until maybe mile 4, and it didn't occur to me that I might finish THE MARATHON until I hit the 25 mile marker. Maybe it was the Twizzler that convinced me.
Many, many thanks to everyone who encouraged me these many months and told me I could do it. Thank you, traininglog and ginsnap for being my coaches and moms when I needed them. Thank you, sweetmonster, tripam, Janet and Dena for running with me today. Thank you, mom and dad for braving the cold to come out and cheer me in, and for telling me that you're proud of me. Thank you, xomox for telling me that you knew I could do it, and for being right, and for always being there when I needed you, even when I was crazy. Thank you, jooley_ann for being out in the freezing and cheering, and for noticing that you knew me, 'cause my brain wasn't working at all. Thanks to everyone who wished me luck. Thanks to TriZones (especially those who came out and cheered even though they weren't running today) and to Tracy for getting me ready and getting me to the finish line, even though there were many times I doubted I'd ever see it. And thanks to my body for getting me there, despite my best efforts to injure myself repeatedly and everywhere. (And thanks to Pam's family for not hating me much, even though I abandoned their daughter.)
Check out my crazy splits:
Mile 1: 12:16 (start-line congestion)
Mile 2: 11:31
Mile 3: 17:06 (portapotty stop with lots of line)
Mile 4: 11:17
Mile 5: 11:43
Mile 6: 12:19
Mile 7: 12:05
Mile 8: 11:14
Mile 9: 11:28
Mile 10: 11:21
Mile 11: 11:44
Mile 12: 11:26
Mile 13: 19:54 (Performance Wellness stop)
Mile 14: 11:44
Mile 15: 13:31 (Start of run-walk with Pam)
Mile 16: 16:14
Mile 17: 13:36
Mile 18: 15:01
Mile 19: 14:06
Mile 20: 11:33 (Start of running alone/with Janet)
Mile 21: 12:07
Mile 22: 11:28
Mile 23: 11:40
Mile 24: 12:07 (the awful out'n'back)
Mile 25: 12:13 (ditto)
Mile 26: 11:57
How's THAT for inconsistent?! Kinda cool that I got a few sub-11:30s in there, though. I didn't expect to have that in me today. Or sub-12s after mile 20.
Okay. Enough babbling.
Oh, and I burned 2430 calories. I think I managed to eat twice that today, though. Yay!
Oh, AND.. Pam went on to finish the marathon, even though she had to walk most of the last miles. She's tenacious and stubborn and incredible. And Dena finished, too. We kinda rock.