The triumph that wasn't...
This was a really hard race for me. It was really hard to run, and it is still really hard to think about.
After the Koln marathon I took a few weeks easy and then began training for the Celebration Marathon, January 26 in Celebration, FL. This had been on my calendar since July, and it was my target race. I tried to think of the training leading up to Koln as one training cycle, and the second cycle was going through the Pfitzinger 12/55 training plan leading up to Celebration. I did the Pfitz plan as though I were aiming for a 3:40 full, although I told myself I'd be happy if I came in under 3:50.
I did a lot of the Pfitz runs, especially in the first half of the plan, with my HRM on so I could make sure I was doing easy days easy and hard days hard. I did notice that there were very few long runs at race pace, which made me uneasy.
A major gap in my training is that I didn't run 55 miles during that 55-mile week. That week fell over Christmas/New Years, and I was in New York, with my family, with ice and a warm fire in the fireplace, and while I got my long runs in and a few of the others, I failed to get myself out for all of the long runs. That might've been to the detriment of my race overall, but I was still glowing from the 15-miler at 8:12 pace I'd pulled off in December and thought I could get away with it. Maybe I could have- I think my problems on race day went deeper than just a few skimped weeks of training.
In late November I raced the Space Coast half (new PR! 1:44:05!) and by the end of it was having trouble feeling my right foot. I found a fantastic LMT at the finish who I started seeing regularly, and that definitely helped me get through the rest of the training and feel muscularly balanced symmetric.
I had a solid taper going into the Celebration race, which I hadn't gotten before Austin, and all in all, I thought I was in really great shape going into the marathon. I got great sleep two nights before (terrible sleep the night before, unfortunately), I had a home-cooked dinner, and Travis and I spent the night in Celebration so when I woke up race morning I had everything laid out and I was only a mile from the starting line.
My A goal going in was 3:40. My B goal was 3:45 and my C goal was "sub 3:50". I suppose if pressed I would've said my D goal was "beat my previous time (3:58)" but I didn't really think I'd end up near it.
Travis drove me (and two random ladies who also blanched at the sight of the line for the shuttle bus) to the starting line, and I got ready for my morning. I had my fuel belt with Endurolytes in it, I had Gu's pinned to the belt and in my pocket, I had his iPod shuffle loaded with Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! episodes I'd "saved up", and a bottle of water to sip before I started. For the first time before a marathon I did a legit warm up- 4 minutes of easy running, then some time stretching, then another 4-5 minutes of running ending near race pace. I noticed during the warm-up that my right Achilles was hurting, which made me a little nervous.
I found the 3:40 pacer in the start corral and did the "right thing"- asked him what his race plan was. He said he'd run between 8:22-8:24 miles the whole time, very steady, slow a little at water stops. That sounded good. My plan was to tuck in with the pace group for the first half and, as my Pfitz book said, try to not to think or work any more than necessary.
After the second mile, I checked my watch and saw that we were running about an 8:00 pace. I looked around for a while and then spoke up, and he said "oh, is that too fast? I'll slow down". I was trying really hard to just let him think and just relax, but I never really felt relaxed. I checked my splits every time we crossed a mile marker and we were consistently 30, then closer to 60 seconds ahead. Looking back, I should have left the pace group and run at my race pace. I never really relaxed or settled in, I felt like I was working too hard, and my Garmin after the fact shows that the slowest mile in my first half was 8:19. Mile 2 was sub-8:00. So lesson learned the hard way- I'm not going to trust pacers even if they tell me their plan. I'm going to run my race, and my planned pace, and if it happens to match theirs then I'll stick with them.
I waved to Travis in front of our hotel around mile 4. I tried to take my first Gu then too, and my oh-so-clever safety pin plan backfired in a mighty way- I tore open a Gu, but couldn't extract if from where I'd tucked it, so it leaked all over me and I ended up licking Gu off my fingers and then having to wash off at the next water stop. That didn't faze me as much as it could have, because I knew I had other Gu in my pocket and would just take those rather than trying to deal with the weird sticky booby trap I'd laid for myself.
Part of the course was on a series of wooden boardwalks. These were beautiful and would've been fun to run through in a smaller crowd- in a tight pack, especially when trying to stick with the pacer, it was incredibly stressful and I dreaded it every time we got on one.
So I crossed the timing mat for the half around 1:49 on my watch. The half times weren't reported in the results so I'm not positive, but I know it was closer to 1:49, maybe even 1:48. I think I was a little bit ahead of the pacer at that point because I didn't stop at a lot of the early water stops. I want to say "and then my wheels came off", except I never felt like my wheels were on. I'd been pushing the pace that whole time-more than I'd planned, because I hadn't been looking too hard at my watch, and I felt like there was no way I could hang on. I stopped and walked a little bit then, and watched the pace group disappear. I knew Travis was going to be around mile 17, because the course was a double loop and he'd said he'd be in the same spot. At that point, my whole goal was "just get to Travis". I felt awful, and I hated the fact that I felt like that at that stage in the race. My Achilles was hurting with every step, the pace group was gone, and I knew I'd used up way more than I should have in the first half, which was made worse by the fact that my "plan" had been to settle in and not try hard in the first half.
I made it to Travis. Like we'd planned, he was at the ready with a Clif bar, some Gus, and asked "Do you want me to take your fuel belt?". Like we had not planned, I desparately replied "I need you to walk with me!!!!!" and after a second of staring at me he said "Okay! Let me get my backpack!" so I ran on while he shoved stuff back into his bag and caught up with me, at which point I started walking again and telling him how awful I felt, how much my Achilles hurt, and how I wasn't having any fun. I made him tell me several times that my time didn't matter, I should just keep going. I did eat some of the Clif Bar he had (I learned something from my long runs!) and relieved him of the other Gu's so I could continue avoiding my sticky trap. The 3:45 pace group ran past us and I said "I'm going to try to catch them." and took off again.
I managed to slowly catch back up to the 3:45 group, but couldn't hang with them for long. At mile 18, I think, I stopped to walk and I lost them for good. At Mile 20, I remember looking at my watch and thinking "If I can do the next 6.2 in an hour, I'll be able to run a ......." but I can't remember now what the time was, or what I thought I could do. At that point I was trying to run 10:00 miles, and taking a walk break at almost every mile marker.
The course was very empty by then. I went back-and-forth with "tall bearded guy with a red shirt" for a while and he was usually the only person I could see. The boardwalks were lonely instead of crowded, but still not fun because by then, nothing seemed fun. At one point I was ahead of my red-shirted friend and caught up with another guy who started, and then said "Wow, you're the first person I've seen in a really long time!!"
It was very frustrating to be passed by people, because I had wanted so badly to run a strong race and pass them instead. I tried to stay on top of things that I'd neglected during the Austin race, so I took 2 Gu's between miles 20 and 26.2. Unfortunately, my calves started cramping very badly during that stretch, and a lot of the times I stopped to walk because I would take a step and they would be so tight that I thought they were going to explode (I'm not sure biologically if that's possible, but it sure felt like that was going happen). In retrospect, this was a clear sign of dehydration, but I didn't know that. I just thought they were flaking out on me. My quads still felt ready to go, and I distinctly felt that I had power left for speed, but I didn't trust my calves to propel me.
So I struggled through the rest of the race. The 3:55 pacer caught up to me, and I fought really hard to stay ahead of her. She passed me, and I caught back up. She was really encouraging, as I look back, and spoke to me a few times to keep me going. I remember wanting to explain to her why 3:55 wasn't an accomplishment, it was pathetic considering what I'd set out to do, but I'm glad I didn't because I don't think it would've been coherent or helpful. It's how I felt, though. At that point it was just "I should at least finish under 3:55".
So, I did my best. I tried to run the last 1.2 miles but I needed another walk break partway through, then I told my calves they'd better function and ran as hard as I thought seemed prudent until the finish line.
I stopped my watch at 3:54:22, which was also my official time for the race. I stumbled forward to a volunteer who gave me a medal, and then, in what I felt was my biggest accomplishment of the day, I did not vomit on her. I pushed her aside and vomited where she had been standing. Someone noticed the pale, heaving form of Nan and then I had two volunteers seating me in a chair, then telling me to get up and lying me down on the ground. Travis appeared from the crowd and as I lay there with my feet elevated and my head down, EMTs showed up to very eagerly take my blood pressure. They stood me back up again, then sat me back down again (I am not sure why) and told me my blood pressure was really, really low, and I was dehydrated.
Ohhhh.. so THAT's what was so hard about that race!
The eager EMTs proceeded to give me an oxygen mask, while telling me to drink Gatorade. I tried to explain that I couldn't drink while wearing an oxygen mask. Then someone else pointed out to one of them that the oxygen mask needed to be plugged into an oxygen tank for it to do anything. They kept telling me to drink and I stared at my bottle of Gatorade, wishing I could, but enjoying the cold oxygen.
Eventually they took the mask away and I got down to business rehydrating. The finish line was very disorganized and when Travis went to find me more Gatorade, all he could find was Powerade that he had to pay for. I don't know if there was Gatorade available, but if there wasn't, they should probably have thought that through better. I sat there drinking my Ades for almost an hour, until my legs began to cramp from sitting still, and another tired runner came tumbling across the finish line and needed my chair.
Travis stood me up and we made it about 30 feet before my quads started cramping (that is very painful. I had no idea.) and I found another chair. He went to try to find me food- in the disorganized finish area, it was really hard to figure out where the food was, and ended up with two small rolls and two egg rolls, which were delicious but not very substantial. We debated options and decided trying to get out of there was out best move, so we slowly made our way to wait for an agonizingly long time for the shuttle back to the hotel. That gave me time to process how awful my race had been and how disappointed I was, and to cry enough to dehydrate myself pretty well again. Oy.
After a long wait, and a long drive (with more Gatorade!), and a long line, it was 2:00 and I had a Chipotle burrito bowl to shovel into my mouth for the rest of the trip home.
So, that was my untriumphant race. I learned a lot about personal race strategy- reading in my training books doesn't translate directly to how I feel in the moment, doing the racing, and I felt like I learned some more cues and ways to strategize for myself and my race. I definitely need to calibrate my hydration better, and look into more concentrated sodium/potassium options. I need to be more conservative at the beginning of a race- "go big or go home" didn't really pan out for me, and if I'd started at a 3:50 pace and picked it up partway through I think it would've been a different story. I keep telling myself it was only my 3rd marathon, though, and eventually I'll figure out how to get myself from start to finish in a happy, speedy way.
The course and race were decent, but not stellar. I think it would've been a really fun half, but as a full, running a double loop in a planned community felt like running past the same 4 houses for 4 hours. Not particularly exciting, and nothing to distract from the pain. I wish there had been a clear map of the finish area available so we knew where the food was. Also, Travis is amazing and very good at taking care of me.
I will get that 3:50. I think of the 3 plans I've done, the FIRST plan with 3 days of running + cross-training was the least stressful, plus it had more long runs closer to race pace, which made me feel more confident. I'll probably try that for my next run, but for now I'm taking a break from marathon training because I've been doing it almost non-stop for 14 months.
