I had vowed to never do another marathon ever. My previous marathon was the Hudson Mohawk in 2011 and instead of any kind of glimmer of improvement, I actually had a worse time than my last 3 prior.
It was a huge blow to my ego.
After that race, I said never! Never again will I sign up and run another marathon. I was done, stick a fork in me, retired at the ripe old age of 46 after doing a mere 6 marathons.
The real problem was not the marathon itself, it was accepting the fact that... well... I just did not train well for it. I thought I did, I convinced myself over and over again that It was the heat, It was my sister pushing me through the first half, my crappy sneakers, an ill fitted tech shirt, my lack of good sleep the night before. I tossed it over and over in my mind until I finally had to accept the fact that, yes, me, I had slacked off.
I also gained a lot of weight. I got sloppy and a little cocky. I lost the respect I had for the distance, something that no runner should ever do. It is after all, 26.2 miles, a distance in which anything can and will happen to you. Once you disrespect the distance then everything begins to fall apart. And that is exactly what happened to me at that last race.
The marathon bitch slapped me.
You see, that is what a bad marathon can do to you, one big bitch slap. The ego is bruised and often it takes awhile to get back on the proverbial horse so to speak.
So about 6 months ago, after vowing never ever never to do another one of those things again, I got an email from my dear friend Nikki. She was thinking about our friend Mike that passed away last June and how much he loved to run the Colorado Marathon. She talked about running, friendship and running in memory of him. Oh boy...
Sucked into one more.
Why? It was not even the bitch slapping. It was the other thing I forgot to mention.
I really hate marathons.
To me, the marathon is akin to some kind of Chinese water torture. Why? Why do this to yourself? Wouldn't it be much more fun to play in traffic or or poke a hot needle into your eye socket? I am convinced it would be.
In my humble opinion, training for 26.2 can be compared to several sucky things and they are as follows:
Thing one, having that sucky part-time job in food service. You get a neat polyester odor keeping, way too tight in the boob and ass area uniform. You show up, sweat your ass off by the fryer, and come back home slightly irritable with a bad case of thigh chaffing and black toenail. You keep asking yourself why you are working in this hell hole? Well, you need the money. How else are you going to buy cigarettes, put gas in your run down hoopdie car and meet your deadbeat (parents don't like them one bit) friends at the grubby bowling alley on a Friday night for a game of quarters? It is a perpetual gerbil wheel of work, gas, cigarettes and greasy fries stuck to the bottom of your orthopedic shoes.
Thing two, is it like a drug? You need it, must have it, cannot live without it. You hate doing, you feel guilty about doing it, but of course you cannot help yourself, you are after all, an addict. I have never been an addict but suspect there are several ex crack heads wandering around my running group, (throw in a few dozen meth heads too for that matter). They freak me out. They have the same far away, blood shot, crazed look in their eyes. Why would anybody with half a brain show up at 6 am to run 21 miles? Not only do they show up, they are the ones doing jumping jacks and running in place before the actual torture begins, not enough drug that 21 mile training run. More, more, more, they say. They can't stay still. They are the ones that look like they pulled an all nighter at an abandoned crack house, hair sticking straight up, rancid coffee breath, way too perky mindless chatter about nothing, stinky not so fresh tech shirts, bright dayglo spandex (yo, TMI, next time wear some undies under that dude), compression socks, beeping gadgets, and bright pink Brooks sneakers.
Thing three, maybe its like giving birth? I always thought about this myself. I see these frazzled moms shoving a cart around Walmart with 6 kids in tow. The kids are picking up loafs of bread and playing volleyball with them or crawling under an unsuspecting customers shopping cart, stealing bananas or spilling Gatorade on the floor. They are out of control and the mom is too tired to give a crap. All she seems to care about is if the customers cart that greasy kid number 4 is crawling under is heavy enough to kill him if he gets ran over. Oh, only one gallon of milk in it, OK you are fine...You shake your head and go, tisk tisk, why did she not stop at one? But in essence haven't I done the same? I swapped out having 6 screaming blood sucking demon children for well...marathons.
I must be either a crack head or certifiable.
So here I was at the start of marathon number 7. To be honest I felt good. Having a crappy prior marathon experience was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Being bitch slapped once was enough. I was no longer cocky. My respect returned for the distance and I had trained well. I followed every bit of my coach's advice, I became a slave to my mileage. I showed up diligently for every organized run, no matter how long, hilly or torturous. There were times I hated the runs, I hated my coach, I hated my friend for sucking me into another marathon, but I did what I needed to do.
I lost some weight, I added some cross-training. I ate better (well kinda better) and I was not going to let another marathon get the best of me, ever again. If this was my last, then by god it was going to be my best!
I am not typically ever nervous about races, I try to approach them like I would any training run. Go in, do my best, finish strong. I usually do not have trouble sleeping the night before, I do not need to mentally prepare, I just get up and run. It is that simple. I have no game plan, I do not wear a Garmin, I do not try and pace myself, I do not like to run with anybody, and I do not think about time until about the 3rd or so mile into the race. I had my playlist all set on my iPod, Kelly Clarkson "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." I was ready, I was gonna do this thing...
Then about mile 5 those damn competitive guys come out...
This is what I call them. They are really rather annoying. The stay at bay and then a few miles into that race they came out to rear their ugly little heads. I joke with people and say they are only about an inch or so tall and come out to sit on my shoulder during a race. They are rude and yell things like "Move your fat old ass!"
Then of course, I have no recourse but to listen to them because they refuse to go away. All of a sudden what turned into a gentle and relaxed training run became a race for time, a PR.
I must try to appease the competitive guys.
So here they were in full force. I knew I was going too fast. Typically about a 4:30ish marathoner, I was neck and neck with the 4 hour pace group leader. I felt good, I felt strong, but I have enough racing experience to know that going out too fast is a marathoners worst nightmare. It was marathon suicide! What was I thinking? It is all you hear while you are awaiting the gun to go off at any long distance race. You never want to bonk, you know that thing that happens around mile 18?
It is called "The Wall."
There it is, staring at you in the face as you hit it like a ton of bricks. It is a soul sucker. It is the realization that even though you packed enough GU to last you 6 months on a deserted Island with nothing but one non fruit bearing coconut tree... you have run out of gas. Of course, you have no one to blame for this but yourself, you crazed speed demon you. Why did you start out so fast?
I did not want to be that person. At a 9:15 pace, I was dissing the distance again so to speak. I know, I know, for anybody that is typically a fast runner, this might seem astoundingly slow, but for me, it was akin to running an Olympic time trial.
I needed to slow it down.
I backed off a bit, but I got to thinking, perhaps I could break my own record? Maybe I could actually PR? It was a crazy thought, yes. My nickname after all to any of my fellow running friends was "10 minute mile Chris."
How could I possibly even conceive of anything faster than a 10 minute mile? Was I insane? No! It was those damn competitive guys!
So I got the ipod situated and plowed through the race. I tried to stay focused on how I felt, which to be honest was pretty dang good. Normally I would never say this. I was the one who conned an old woman out of an Ibuprofen on the Staten Island Ferry in route to the NYC marathon. Back then, a race was painful from mile one through mile 26.2. Finishing and walking after a race was even more painful. I often wanted to swap legs with anybody that was ready and willing to suffer through a double amputation.
But here I was, feeling good, feeling strong, feeling like well... I was going to bitch slap this fucker! Bring it on Colorado!
I made sure to stop at each water station, I brought fuel, I ate, I listened to Kelly Clarkson diligently, I brought a disposable jacket and tossed it at mile 4, I bought a fancy running skirt the day before at the expo, I had a new pair of sneakers. I looked like a runner... really... for once I felt and looked like an actual runner.
The course was gorgeous, until about mile 18 then... not so much. The canyon exposed itself to a highway to the left and a narrow bike path to the right. Looming mountains became strip malls and trailers. There were sporadic spectators here and there but nothing like a large race such as NY. At mile 18 you need those spectators, where were they? A huge honkin hill at mile 19, sealed the marathons fate for me. Gorgeous was tossed out the window and replaced with sucky, psycho crack-heads and 5 demon children at Walmart. I wanted out but the only way out was to keep going, so I did. I knew I was going to PR but I was not sure by how much. I tried to stay somewhere between the 4 hour and 4:15 pace groups. That became my mantra, my goal, my appeasement to the competitive guys. Maybe if i stuck it out in this spot, maintained this pace, the guys would go bye bye. No, they stayed put. They shoved me, they berated me, they wanted to know who I thought I was? They told me that they were not leaving until I finished and they mocked me for even thinking of walking or stopping. God, how annoying they were.
At mile 23 Kelly Clarkson was really getting old. So was the GU and the Gatorade. I was done, stick a fork in me. I really wanted to stop so bad. You have no idea, it was either pull something out my ass or stop, but for some reason I kept going. I refused to stop. I started to think about my sister, my coach, my friends. I thought about the competitive guys but mostly I thought about why I was running this marathon in the first place.
You see marathon t-shirts all the time. They say something like "At mile 18 you think why am I doing this and then at 26.2 it becomes crystal clear." And this was what went through my head. I started out thinking that maybe I was running in memory of my friend Mike. I thought about the last time I ran that race and how we ran it together for the first 13 miles. I wanted to convince myself that maybe it was a lofty thought such as this... in memory of a dear friend. No, it wasn't. I started to think about my coach. I thought about maybe he would be impressed with my new PR, maybe I would feel more like I was part of the in-group in our running group instead of the quiet antisocial weirdo in the back of the pack/out-group person. Would he be happy with my time, say way to go, I knew you could do it? No, that was not it either. Then I thought about my family and friends. Was I trying to impress them? Was I trying to prove to them that because I could do this, run this 26.2, that they would care, be impressed, and think that I was remarkable? No.
I realized that it really was all about me. This was a huge epiphany actually. I had never really thought about it before and maybe doing 7 marathons was what needed to happen before it did. Competitive guys or not, the only person that really cared about this race was me. The only person who really mattered was me. This was for me, about me, my race. The time I got, whether good, bad or otherwise, really only mattered to me.
So that was what did it for me (well maybe Kelly Clarkson helped a little bit) but I finished that race. I not only finished it, I bitch slapped it! I ended up with a PR of 4:12:08. Ok, yes for all you Boston qualifying crazy crack peoples, not amazingly fast, but amazingly fast for me. I was happy.
I got to the finish and texted my sister one message "I slapped that bitch!" She called me back very concerned as she thought I got into some kind of fight with a perky pink skirted girl who was running neck and neck with me to the finish. She said "Exactly, what bitch are you referring too?"
I said "The marathon...that bitch!" "Oh." she said... I told her my time and of course she was happy for me.
And why not? I rock!
So now what? I think I am going to rest my tired legs and look for another marathon to bitch slap. Perhaps that will come with another PR or a BQ? I know, I know, very ambitious, but who knows, crazier things can happen right?
After all, it is all about me...
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