Mile 20

Seasoned marathon runners warned me. But no matter how many warnings you hear, you have no idea what you will feel at mile 20, or 21, or whatever mile you happen to hit your wall.

Our trio of runners trained four months for this St. Patrick's Day race. We clocked a lot of miles, a lot of laughs, we felt good. Our longest training run hit 21 miles, we knew we would face a tough road from 21 to 26.1 on race day, but we knew we had laid a pretty solid foundation and would power through that last leg.

I'll spare you the details about my intestinal issues the day before and day of the race. What I thought were nerves was most likely a stomach virus, leaving me starting the race on empty, nothing would stay down, in, you get the picture.

With that said, I felt decent the first half. If I had crossed the finish with the rest of the half marathoners, my time would have been close to a personal best.

Close to crying, realizing I had another 13.1 to run, I hit my wall. Not at 20, not at 24...no, at 13.1. I felt awful and I could feel myself slowing down considerably. I could tell my neighbor was slowing down to stay with me and while I appreciated the gesture, I didn't want to see her ruin her race. But she knew I was in the pits and hung with me. I could feel the dehydration sinking in, I couldn't catch up with what I had lost the last 24 hours and nothing sounded good or tasted good even though I forced myself to eat and drink at every water station.

When training, the three of us passed the time by telling each other stories. We know a lot about one another now, and it is often hard to find a story we haven't told to one another. Many times we don't even care if we have heard it before, at least it keeps our mind off of the miles that lie ahead.

I begged my friend to tell me a story. She laughed but knew I needed it. She took time trying to find one that she hadn't told before and finally came up with one from her husband's time spent working for the secret service, nothing top secret of course, but a funny one to give me a good laugh.

A couple of the bands kept me moving, a women's drumline was particularly motivating. A lot of signs made me laugh..."Chuck Norris never ran a marathon" kept reading over and over in my head.

At mile 15 my friend asked what I needed. I told her I needed her butt running in front of me or else. We had slowed to a snail's pace. While I knew how badly I felt and that moving forward was my goal, no matter the pace, I had to get my friend running her own race. Finally she took off and when I couldn't see her within a couple of minutes I knew it was going to be a long day.

While most to all of our training runs have ended in 50 degree weather, race day we started at 55 degrees. By Mile 18 it had to be 70. The course had also opened to full sun. I kept drinking and eating what I could, but it was getting harder and harder to stomach anything. I pushed on, and felt pretty good until Mile 20. Then I got very dizzy, very sick and threw up right there on the side of the race. While I was OK with getting sick, I was not OK with the dizziness, I feared falling and hitting my head. I started walking and I called Stephen who tried the "mind over matter" pep talk until he heard the details of my intestinal issues. I so appreciated the "atta girl" talk, but had to cut the conversation short due to a wave of nausea. I went back and forth in my head about sitting down, walking over to a police officer to ask for help, or continuing on. No doubt in my mind, if I had been wearing white, I would have laid down right there and raised my white flag in surrender. I felt awful.

I did stop in a medic tent. Sat in the shade, stretched, drank some gatorade and talked with someone about my options. I could stop now, be taken to the finish and get an IV of fluids or try to walk for a bit and see how far I could go. I decided to walk but with the intent of finding help as soon as I felt dizzy again.

So for 6 miles I walked. With open cups of gatorade in my hands. I thought about a lot of things. Funny things, like how I managed to walk the worst part of the course, where the stores have bars on the windows and a house had yellow caution tape around it. I steered far away from the "I can't believe you are walking this after all of that training." I was already down for the count, I didn't need my self-inflicting talk to drop kick me as well. Pink's song "Perfect" played several times on my iPod which was a great inspiration:
You're so mean (Your so mean)
When you talk (When you talk) about yourself, you were wrong
Change the voices (Change the voices) in your head(In the head)
Make them like you instead
(Chorus)
Oh, pretty pretty please
Don't you ever ever feel
Like you're less than, less than perfect
Pretty pretty please
If you ever ever feel like you're nothing you are perfect to me

5 hours and 13 minutes later I crossed the finish line. Physically, it was difficult. Mentally, it was a beast. I couldn't believe my body had let me down after months of training. I had to walk, not just here and there, but six miles, across the finish. Even though I had already signed up for another marathon (Marine Corp in October), I was ready to hand over my bib number to someone more deserving, someone who could run.

It took quite a few days to physically recover, especially since myself and the three kids were diagnosed with strep just four days later. It took until my next race to mentally recover. April 1, Cherry Blossom 10-miler, best race of my running "career." I'm back.

Lastly, I read this quote several days ago and realized it rang true for me and that awful race day.

"There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you have had enough."
Marc and Angel Hack Life - Practical Tips for Productive Living
www.marcandangel.com

I'm back.