My morning for the Flying Pig Marathon started at 4:30am. The race started at 6:30am but I needed time to get dressed, eat breakfast, double check my stuff for my bib, gels, inhaler, and headphones, then make the 40 minute drive to downtown, park, and find our corrals. It also took a little bit longer to get ready because we were coordinating when Red's mom and sister Tam would see us on the course to cheer and also try to get them in multiple spots to see Red, Me, and his other sister Sarah. Originally we had finish times that would have spread us out by an hour between the three of us. My dream time was 4 hours or less, Red was hoping for something between 4:20-4:30, and Sara was aiming for 5 hours. Red came the closest with getting his marathon time at 4:46. Meanwhile, the start of the morning was uneventful which was nice. We quickly found parking and made our way to the corrals and commenced standing in line waiting for port-o-pots.
The race started at 6:30 and it took us about 8 minutes to get to the starting line from our corral. The weather was decidedly warmer than in years past and I tried to make a plan of drinking more Gatorade earlier in the race than normal. The last 3 times I have done the Flying Pig I had only ran the Half Marathon and it was normally raining, cold, or both. This Sunday it was hot, humid, and had some of the clearest bluest skies ever. Normally I love a nice clear blue sky, but not when we are running on a stretch of highway for 6 miles with no shade and no one really cheering. Red and I started out the race with the idea that he was going to pace me at about a 10 minute mile to loosen up my legs and keep me from going out too fast. I have a horrible habit of flying out of the start and weaving in and out of people like it's my job, it normally then bites me later in the race and kills whatever time I had gained earlier. Well this time I had a plan and I tried very very hard to stick to it. I stayed right with Red, my human metronome, and didn't try to make him reel me in every little bit, and things worked well for the first few miles. I pointed out that since it was so warm that we should be drinking more Gatorade since we were sweating like crazy. The fact that I pointed that out at mile 5 should have been a strong indication that I should also replenish my body with water, my brain didn't make the connection at the time but afterward it could have had a stronger impact on my race than I realized. We took our gels at mile 4.5 and migrated onward both feeling great and enjoying the weather, the volunteers, and just running in general. Finally around mile 10 or so I was getting "froggy" as one friend put it, and started pulling away from Red. We had talked about him pacing me for the first 9 miles, so to pull away at mile 10 would have been ok except I had just told him I wanted to run the entire first half with him. Hmmm...well he told me to go ahead and go on since I was running down hill so fast and he didn't want to push it that much that soon. So I went ahead and was feeling great! Then I realized that we were decidedly not done with the hills yet and Red caught back up to me. We continued to play leap frog until about mile 15 where I would break away on the down hill portions, then he would catch up on the up hill portions. I love running downhill, but Red is champion when it comes to climbing up hill! Finally we reached a hill around mile 15 where I caught back up to him and he told me to go on because he needed to take 30 seconds and walk, that was fine. I continued on and looked at my watch and realized that it could be possible for me to still hit my 4 hour mark if I picked it up a notch or two.
Up until that point we were set at a great pace to come in around a 4:30 or so marathon, which was not what i had planned. I had the great idea that at mile 15 after taking a gel and dumping water on my head, that picking up the pace would totally work and I could cruise in at around 4 hours or at least get a new PR. I'm not sure what number of mistake this was but it was a terrible idea. I couldn't figure out how to make myself go too much faster though without losing motivation so I decided that I needed to change something. For nearly every race I have the same play list on my ipod. It's not the exact same, but quite similar. I am greatly motivated by music so I decided that if I wanted to change my pace I needed to motivate and change my music so I switched to Pandora on my phone. That worked! It helped me move forward and pick up my pace and bounce along just happily listening to something different. Well now that I had fueled my spirit I really should have fueled my body so it could keep up with my positive thinking and positive attitude.
I had pretty much only been drinking Gatorade and wearing the water, I should have tried to drink more water instead of wearing it. I realized around mile 16 or 17 that my stomach was grumpy and I became scared of what to put into it since I still had 10 miles left in the race. About mile 17 is when my race started to come undone. My stomach was upset, I knew I had a bad blister on the inside of my right foot and it was making me run funny, and my legs were getting tight. By mile 18 I needed to slow down and let the 4:30 pace group pass me, which irritated me for quite a while. I had been using them as my carrot to stay in front of them but meh. After the 4:30 pace group passed me I decided that I just needed to stretch a bit then I would keep them in my sights. This worked for the next 3 miles or so but then it was all down hill from there. Mile 20 I was really struggling to keep the pace group in my sight and by mile 21 my idea of staying anywhere near them evaporated. My legs were seizing and I was hot, really hot, I just didn't know it at the time. I was wearing as much water as I could at every water station, I had stopped drinking so much Gatorade because I thought it was the source of my grumpy stomach, and was really focusing on keeping my legs moving because they just got worse the more I slowed down. By mile 22 Red had closed the 5 minute gap we had between us and surprised me by running next to me all of the sudden. I had no idea he was next to me until I just started looking around and looked right at him. It was quite nice to see him smiling and asking how I was doing because from miles 17-25 there really weren't that many people cheering or much of anything to look at, so seeing his smiling face was a great pick-me-up. He asked how I was doing and I pointed out that I had started running 3/4 of a mile then walking about 1/4 mile and that was my goal for the rest of the race. He said he knew I was walking since he caught me, but our walk breaks were opposite of each other and I was walking slower than he was during the breaks. We hung out for the next couple of miles and he tried to help me stretch out my angry seizing legs and we just enjoyed jogging/walking/shuffling until about mile 24. I took a gel at 23 or so and started to feel better, but I knew that I was just holding Red back. Normally if I'm hurting he stays with me during races, or I stay with him when he's hurting. Whenever he starts to slow down during a race he tells me to move on, etc. etc. etc, well this time it was my turn to tell him to migrate onward. My IT band was almost completely seized up, my hamstrings were ticked off beyond compare, and I was bonking hard and taking two gels back to back was only scratching the surface.
The ticked off band.
Red was still doing great, he wasn't sprinting away, but he wasn't cramping or feeling bleh, so I told him to go ahead at mile 24 because I was only able to jog about 100 - 200 yards without having to stop and work on my IT band. So the next two miles I ran by myself again and finally crossed the finish line in 4:51, almost an hour over what I wanted to be. After I crossed the finish my legs were shaking like crazy, I was so tired I wanted to cry but I couldn't, and another one of the many awesome volunteers came over to check on me. Something I learned at the finish of a race is to not tell the medic/volunteers that you want to sit down. If you do then you get a one way ticket to the med tent. Nuts. The medic volunteers were awesome though so I was not grumpy or upset at all about them wheeling me away. Since it was so hot they were being extra cautious about anyone that said they had cramping, felt cold, or just didn't feel well. I was taken to a cot where I was told to lay down and let someone stretch me while I was also told to drink two more bottles of watered down gatorade, as if I hadn't drank enough of that already. Apparently I needed it though because the only way you get out of the med tent is if you can 1) walk without cramping and 2) go pee.
I downed the first Gatorade like it was nothing while one of the most awesome people on the planet, a complete stranger, stretched my legs to try and get the tightness our of my ticked off muscles. She was a physical therapist from Children's Hospital who volunteered to help people out on her Sunday off. I also had two nurses who kept talking to me, checking my vitals, and insisting that I drink...a lot. I wasn't nearly as bad off as the other people in the tent, but I certainly appreciated their help all the same! I was finally released and was able to walk like a fairly normal post-marathon human being. I learned some lessons during this race and as beat up and cranky as I was during/after the race I am already attempting to plan when I will run my next marathon so I can attempt to get some kind of redemption for the Flying Pig Marathon. To know some of the things I learned during my marathon check them our here, from my last blog.
Happy running!
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