Running/Cycling Thread - 2015 Edition - Page 23

allegedly I have run 17:51, but or the circumstances of the race, course, and the way I felt I've never quite bought it

“If you're going to die, die with your boots on.” – Iron Maiden, “Die With Your Boots On,” 1983

When I came by City Park in Kelowna to pick up my bib for the Okanagan Marathon, a children's race was about to start. It was a 1K road race, one of those novelty events race organizers sometimes hold on the day before the race proper. I was interested to observe that the tendency to go out hot and blow up, as common in fully-grown road runners as enthusiasm for finisher's medals, apparently begins well before puberty. A horde of children, some of whom looked like they'd just recently learned to walk, stampeded down the road and around the first turn. The course ran a short circuit around the race pavilion, so I was able to see every single racer tie up on the back stretch and walk home. Take note: apparently you can hit the wall even in a thousand metre race.

Later I went to a Korean place for lunch with my family and girlfriend, all of whom had travelled long distances to come see me run. Halfway through my bowl of noodle soup, panic gripped me. It suddenly dawned on me that there had been a little shredded red cabbage garnishing the dish, and I'd eaten it without a second thought. As I'd learned the hard way in training that raw cabbage was to my GI system what the Death Star was to Alderaan, I was concerned. I even asked my girlfriend, who is a physician, if she could get me an emetic on short notice. Sensibly, she declined.

I often have trouble sleeping the night before a race, but this marathon was particularly bad. Lying on a squishy couch bed in our rented condo, I tossed and turned and turned and tossed without end. I listened to the wind, which sounded like it was blowing at hurricane-force. Sleep eventually came, but not for long. Four thirty, it turns out, comes pretty early in the morning.

Prerace breakfast was steel-cut oats with a little milk and jam, and a few cups of coffee. To my relief, my guts were moving well, and I took advantage of the fact that everyone else was asleep to make liberal use of the bathroom. Around 5, my girlfriend got up and ate a bit of oatmeal with me. As someone with Known Executive Capabilities, she's a comfort to me whenever I'm feeling nervous, and I seldom feel more nervous than I did that morning.

This race weighed on me like no other in my memory. I'd had an uneven season despite some pretty solid training, punctuated by a disappointing half marathon in August. Training had gone quite well since then, though, and I knew if everything went well I could break 2:30 today. But what if everything didn't go well? My mind churned with fears of wind, of rain, of going off-course, of screwing up my feed schedule, of getting scalped in the last five k, of getting sabotaged by my bowels. More than anything, I didn't want to quit if things got tough. I'd really phoned in that half marathon and the experience of throwing a mid-race pity party for yourself was not one I wanted to repeat.

Then she pinned my bib onto my singlet, I put on my uniform and warmup clothes, and we piled into a car to go down to the start race. My parents, along with my brother and sister-in-law, sensibly slept a bit more and met us later.

A word about this uniform: I received a modest sponsorship this year. In exchange for some free shoes and discounts on running clothes, I'm obliged to wear a pair of very short shorts and a singlet that, combined, but barely meet the demands of decency. I've gotten used to them, but when I first tried them on I remember feeling like I was not too far from running around in my underwear. Good thing I wouldn't be wearing this in some situation where my picture would be taken a bunch, right? Right.

The race site was dark and very quiet when we arrived. The Okanagan Marathon is not huge, and one of the advantages of its size is that parking is easier to find, and lineups to portapotties shorter. The downside of a small race is that the organization might be suspect, and the odds of finding someone to run with are lower.

So I used the biff, warmed up, and made my way to the start line. I also ran into a bunch of runners I knew here. This year I met almost all of the players in Edmonton's running scene, and a bunch were around the start to run the half marathon, which started 30 minutes after the full. It would be my last time i familiar company for the rest of the morning.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when the gun went off. I knew from looking at previous winning times and chatting with some running friends that I was probably going to run most of the race on my own. But who knows how the first 10k will roll? Someone might try to hang and blow up real bad. Maybe a 2:2x guy would be there and drag me along for a bit.

Instead, I was on my own after about 100 metres. With a weird mix of excitement and resignation, I tried to settle in. Excitement because I'd been building to this race since May and knew I had it in me to run a good time. Resignation because the first half of a marathon is such a test of patience–if it feels like you're working, you're working too hard. There's nothing to do but sit back and let the miles roll by, and I've never been a particularly patient guy.

To pass the time, I chatted with the cyclists a bit. I had two with me at that point, and they were as eager for stimulation as me. They asked me my PRs, my age, and my goals. I asked them if they'd switch with me after 20 miles.

Goal pace was 3:32/km, and it felt just like marathon pace should. We noodled out through an industrial area, then back along the shore of Lake Okanagan. Kelowna is a pretty hilly town, but the Okanagan course is very flat. This flatness comes at a price: the half marathon course has lots of turns in it, and the full course is just two laps of the half route. Since the half starts a haf hour after the full, I was going to have to pass a good portion of the half marathon field in the second half of the race, when energy stores are low and decision-making is suspect.

I popped my first gel at 5k, though I was not remotely hungry. I'm a firm believer that running a good marathon is as much about nailing the intra-race nutrition as anything else, and after much experimentation and hand-wringing had decided to take gel at 5k, 15k, 25k, and 35k. A schedule like this had worked pretty well in training, though I'd never taken four in one run.

After about eight k, I had my first taste of what you might call the mass media angle of this experience. I was already a good ways ahead of the rest of the field, and some dude I didn't know from Adam rolled up on his bike and started snapping pictures of me. He didn't introduce himself or ask me if I minded or anything. Our only conversation came when I pointed out some cars approaching on the other side of the road, as he was riding in the left lane. After about ten minutes he rode off.

Ten miles in, the course crossed one of Kelowna's many 60 kph speed limit roads. Cars have seldom heard a discouraging word from pedestrians in Kelowna, and they drive like they are used to it. The course marshals mistakenly let a taxi cab onto the road just as I was approaching. Dude must have been making 70 kph as I came to the crossing. I was weighing whether the forces of cosmic justice would protect me if I didn't interrupt my stride to let him pass when my cyclists showed great courage and stopped in the middle of the road before I hit it. The taxi slammed on its breaks and I went through the intersection with no problem.

I hit halfway right on schedule at 1:14 high and passed through the finish zone. There was a good sized crowd there by now, and I heard my name come over the sound system and saw my family and people started to cheer for me, including my girlfriend adorably waving her arms like an air-traffic controller. This gave me a little boost of adrenaline and I felt very, very strong as I cruised through and started my second lap.

The legs started to feel a bit heavy here, but I wasn't panicked. I knew I'd put in some good work and feeling a little tired was OK. One of the benefits of this two-lap course was that I had a lot of encouragement from the other runners. People would say “look at him go!” or “holy shit!” or whatnot as I passed by, which for the most part made up for the hassle of navigating around them as I tried to run the tangents. Accessing the water stations was also harder from here, but my cyclist, sterling guy that he was, realized this. He started to ask me if I wanted water as we approached a station, then he'd ride ahead, let them know, and get someone out onto the left side of the course to hand me drink. What a guy!

Around 25k I started to feel a bit rough. The day was a bit hotter and windier than ideal conditions, and with no one to race against I had little to occupy my mind other than the next ten daunting miles. Twenty five to 30k was not great, though looking at the splits in retrospect I can see I didn't slow at all until I hit 30k. I ran that one in 3:42 and the next two at the same speed. It dawned on me that 2:2x probably was not going to happen to day at this point, but I thought that 2:3-low was still possible and I resolved to push as much as I could. I got under 3:40/km for the next three.

Then I hit 35k and popped my final gel. My stomach felt very unhappy about this and instantly cramped. Looking at my splits now, I'm amazed at how quickly this makes itself felt. I ran the thirty-sixth k in 3:52, then 3:49 and 3:55.

This was when the marathon really had me in its house of pain. I tried to spit, but I lacked the necessary energy so this gross gobbet to phlem stuck to my face. I also lacked the energy to wipe it away, so it hung there for the rest of the race. I tried to croak a joke to my cyclist about switching. Recognizing my distress, he tried to get the half marathoners to give me a cheer, but when they cheered all I could do was stare and grimace at them. Smiling was not possible and their adulation brought no comfort.

Everyone dreams about digging deep and charging through the last few miles of a marathon, but as I entered the home stretch all I could think about was making the pain stop. Over the final four k I slowed to what felt like a total death march. My stomach complained. Three separate times my hamstrings spasmed violently. It felt just like Portland last year. I knew if they seized up, not only would I DNF, I might collapse and smack my head on the asphalt.

It felt like the cells in my body banded together in a supermajority and presented my prefrontal cortex with a unanimous petition to stop moving immediately. Issuing the a veto took all the willpower at my disposal. It hurt so much I forgot to enjoy winning a marathon for the first time in my life. I stopped looking at my watch. I stopped hearing the cheers of the crowd, increasingly loud as I approached the finish. I staggered onward and wondered if being dead would feel better than this.

I waddled up the finishing chute and over the line, then shuffled over to the barricade to hug my girlfriend. My amazing family all hugged my sweaty, spit-stained body without the slightest hesitation. After a few minutes, I turned around to find a bottle of water to drink.

A pack of reporters was waiting for me. With no preamble, they started spitting questions. How did I deal with the wind? Was it hard to race on my own? Was it fun to win? What did I think about the organization? I stammered out whatever nonsense came to mind into the bouquet of hungry microphones. After five or ten minutes, they left me in peace.

Looking back, I’m most proud of those final four k. I ran them pretty slow--about 4:04 on average--but I didn’t give up the way I had at the half marathon in August. I’m not sure I really embraced the suffering the way the best runners do in the last quarter of a marathon (and like I know I can when things go well), but when things hurt the most I kept fighting. I died, but at least I died with my boots on. That’s an encouraging thought.

In the final analysis, I can say the following things went sideways on me:

1 The last gel really stung. I lost 13 seconds/k right after I took it, and things only got worse from there. I don’t know if I should have just had three and spread them out more, or waited more to eat the final one, or tried liquid calories or what, but I need to make some changes to nutrition for the next one.
2 This is the second marathon in row where I’ve had my legs freak out and spasm in the final stretch. I need to figure out what makes this happen and prevent it. One of my running buddies prescribed coconut water the night before a race to me when I told him about Portland. At the time I thought he was crazy--he’s never met a supplement he didn’t like--but I may revisit his council for my next marathon.
3 The weather was unexpectedly hot and windy. Not disastrously so, but an appreciable distance from ideal conditions.
4 Running the whole thing as a time trial made it harder to really lean in when the going got tough.
5 I failed to realize how terrible my form looked at the precise point when everyone in Kelowna would be taking a picture of me. The photos local newspaper photographers took of me as I finished make it look like I race-walked the whole distance.

All in all, though, it was a really fun experience. Despite everything that went wrong, I still took six minutes off my old PB and confirmed that I can break 2:30 next year if I keep working. My guts didn’t betray me and I didn’t get lost. Plus I had a lot of fun and got to break the tape for the first time ever.

I can’t wait to get back at it, though the few easy runs I’ve tried in the week after the race have confirmed that I should probably wait a bit more.

It’s tough, though, because running is the best.