Friday, October 14, 2011

Alan's Marathon Blog Post, Part 2



When I got up a little after 5 a.m. on race day, the ankle was better.  Still looked a little puffy, and if I poked in the right places (which didn’t seem like it would be an issue when I was running) it was still tender, but I didn’t notice anything when I walked around.  Occasionally I forgot completely about it.  And that was that.  I won’t say all the worry was for nothing because if I hadn’t gotten to the chiropractor and spent a lot of time with an ice pack on it, I might have been in trouble, but thankfully it ended up being a complete non issue during the race.  Never felt it even a little over the whole time.

So all I had to worry about now was that trivial 26.2 miles.  I won’t say I wasn’t nervous at all.  The lack of saliva I could manage as I choked down a little pre-race breakfast proves that wasn’t the case, but I think I was more anxious than nervous.  After all the build-up, I just wanted to be on my way and see if I could make it.  We left the hotel in the dark at 6:45 a.m.  One hour till the start.
kind of a "where's Waldo" shot in the hotel parking lot

putting on my bib under cover of the lift gate

The big story of the day was the weather.  Wet.  Cold and wet.  Windy, cold and wet.  And did I mention wet?  I had been obsessing about the weather forecast ever since the extended forecast on the Weather Channel’s website reached race day (so 9 days beforehand).  It couldn’t make up its mind.  One day it looked like it was going to be perfect.  Partly cloudy, 60 degrees and dry.  The next day it would say rain.  The day after that it was going to be dry again on race day.  They couldn’t make up their minds.  But as the day of the race got closer and closer, it settled more consistently on rainy, and that was what the race was like, consistently rainy. 






It was worst waiting for the start.  There was no way to warm up and stretch and do all the other things you needed to do to get ready.  Even the port-a-potties were complicated by it.  They were set up in two rows, one on either side of a small parking lot.  The problem was that there was a slope to the parking lot.  The ones on the high side of the lot were fine, but those on the low side were sitting in a good 3 inches of water.  At least I hope it was just water.  I lined up for the port-a-potties on the upslope just in case.

And then we were off.  
crossing the starting mat




No more worrying about whether I was going to be healthy, or whether my foot was going to be okay for the race, or about what the weather was going to do.  Finally I could just run and see if I could do it. 

As bad as the weather was, though, it never really bothered me during the race.  It was only during the first mile or so that I felt its effects in a bad way.  Like I said, milling around in the rain at the start didn’t let us warm up or stretch, so I was stiff and cold for the first mile or so until the blood got flowing.  After that, as crazy as it sounds, I kind of liked the weather.  I’m not sure I would have done as well as I ended up doing if it hadn’t been for it.  I could have done without the headwind that came up from time to time, and the rain was a little heavy a few times, but what it did was keep me nice and cool.  At 6’3” and 225 lbs., I’m not built for running in the heat and I have a hard time staying hydrated.  I’ve gone for long runs where I’ve weighed myself before and after and I’ll be 5 lbs. lighter at the end, even though I was drinking regularly from my Camelbak the whole time and took in 5 lbs. of water during the run.  So, in a way, this weather was ideal for me.  I never overheated, and I never got dehydrated.  I started the race wearing a rain jacket (a nice L.L. Bean shell—much more stylish than the garbage bag ponchos that it seemed like at least a third of the runners were wearing) and gloves.  I was warmed up enough by 8 miles or so to take off the gloves (they were soaked through so they didn’t do me much good by then anyway) and left both them and the jacket with Nancy at mile 10.  After that I was fine in just a sleeveless running shirt. 



The rain didn’t even bother me mentally, and it could have.  If I had gotten down about the weather, or thought too much about how hard it might make the race (or whether it would keep me from finishing at all), I think I would have been sunk.  So much of long distance running is mental.  If I had let the weather get me down, it could have ruined me.  A couple of things helped it go the other way.  One was early in the race, just a few miles in.  I was running next to several other people (later in the race, I would be much, much more alone) and they started joking about the rain.  It seems like such a little thing, but I think if I had been next to a group of people bitching about the rain, the day might have gone a lot differently.  The other thing was my playlist on my mp3 player.  I forget exactly where and when it was, but it couldn’t have been more than a third of the way into the race.  The skies really opened up.  On a day that was wet almost from beginning to end, this was the wettest part.  And just at that moment, with the rain pouring down and the headwind picking up, Sheryl Crow’s “Soak up the Sun” starts coming through my headphones.  All I could do was tip my head back, hold my arms out, and laugh.  From then on, the weather was nothing.  It would end up changing the way I did some things, but it wasn’t going to bother me.

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