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Saturday, September 3, 2011

How to Unsuccessfully Attempt a Marathon

When I arrived in Hawaii last August I was a mediocre runner who really wanted to get serious. With a little research I found the Honolulu Marathon, which takes place every December, and decided that registering for it would give me the incentive to push myself. So I did.

My family was encouraging though they thought I was a little crazy. I’d done cross-country running in High School (with mediocre results) only to keep in shape for the soccer season.

Unlike me, my eighteen-year-old sister has been a pretty successful long distance athlete. She ran cross-country (with better than average results), and did long distance skiing for the high school. Jen thought the marathon was a cool idea and immediately volunteered to run it with me, despite the fact that she’d never run more than six miles at a time.

So we did the research. We found all the webpages, read some books, bought our bodyglide and gu gels. We found training plans. We figured we were good to go. I upped my miles and she started lacing up running shoes instead of skiing boots. She was still in High School, living with my parents in Alaska, so her outdoor runs were a little more complicated than the average winter runs.

She flew down in December, we were all excited and ready to go. Unfortunately, both of our training plans had fallen by the wayside, neither of us getting in more than 17 miles at a time. I’d had to move in the middle of my training, which really messed up where and how I was running. She’d been frustrated by the cold and had only gotten in long runs on a treadmill at the local gym. We didn’t appreciate the difference between a 17 mile training run and a 26.2 mile race. We would soon enough.

It might we worthwhile to mention that winter in Hawaii is otherwise known as “the rainy season”.

We lined up at the starting line, agreeing to run our own race but we’d at least start together. By the time the gun went off it had already started raining.

By mile 2 there was standing water on the roads.

As in any large race there is barely room to breath for the first few miles, let alone run your own pace, so we ran slowly and relaxed together.

At the 5k mark I had to pee, so I stopped and waited in line at the port-a-potty (she ran on). It wasn’t until I started to run again that I realized why the line took so long, all the other male runners who’d had the same urge were relieving themselves in the bushes on the side of the road. Well, at least I was safe from a public-indecency charge.

It was still raining. It continued to rain for the next hour.

I’d been halfway intelligent when starting out and put a spare set of socks in a Ziploc bag in my pocket. At mile 8, when it finally stopped raining, I paused and swapped out socks. It didn’t help much, my shoes were soaked and there was so much water on the roads already. Within minutes the new socks were soaked too.

My feet had started to hurt. Not the blister-hurt, more of an achy-my-feet-are-soaked kind of hurt. I tried a coating of Vaseline at the next aid station, but I had a feeling that the damage was already done.

For this race I’d chosen my most lightweight shoes, thinking they would dry out more quickly and I would tire less. The combination of wet feet and the shoe’s lack of padding were killing my feet.

By mile 15 every step was agony. It was pins and needles.

At mile 17 there is a loop. As I approached it I kept watching the runners coming out of the loop for a glimpse of Jen. Whatever the odds, we did see each other. She ran over, gave me a quick hug. We chatted for a second; she admitted that her feet weren’t doing so hot either but her adidas’ were handling it a little bit better. We went our separate ways, me into the loop and her on to the finish line.

By the time I came out of the loop I was in a painful schedule. Run for a minute, hobble/walk for a minute, repeat. I started doing the math in my head. Only 8 miles to go… sigh…

The last 8 miles were pure horror. My feet felt like they were going to fall off any moment.

Somehow I managed to finish. There was a lot of limping involved. I passed the finish line in a little over six and a half hours, an hour after my little sister. Her race hadn’t been much better, but being eighteen she’d handled it better.

Before the race my wife, a personal trainer, had jokingly suggested that I coerce my eighteen year old sister into getting a “26.2” tattoo after the race. This is apparently something that many first time marathoners do. I think we seriously considered it until we actually ran the race. There was no doubt in either of our minds that this was not a “successful” marathon. We did not “compete” or even really “complete” a marathon. We simply survived one. Barely.


(Originally Posted 15 August 2009, Runners World and Myspace)

As she got on the plane to go back to the frozen north we agreed that next year we’d do it again, and this time we’d do it right. There were plenty of lessons learned and believe me, we’d taken them to heart.


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