A Marathon...Really?

It was a big day  for me. On 27 November, I ran in the Space Coast Marathon, Florida's oldest running race. It was the 40th anniversary, too. It was my first Marathon.

Yup, I did the thing that for the longest time, when mentioned in my presence, elicited the response "Man, I don't want to do anything that feels good for that long!"
And it was pretty cool...I mean, it's not a big deal in the broad universe of things to consider (I didn’t set out to win it or even come close to doing so); but it's not so small a thing either. Some effort went into getting to point where I could finish let alone do so in under 4 hours--my own effort and that of a handful of wonderful people.

I did not get there on my own. Even though I ran ALL of my long training runs alone long before the sun came up on many Saturdays (before most of you were awake--I'm twisted that way), I was buoyed along and cheered on by friends and family. THAT is the fuel that keeps you going.  And I have a ton of folks to thank for their love, support and encouragement.  Jen Hudgins, thanks for the love and for understanding, if not the running, then the need to do it and all the other whacky things I do. Thank you for being the Home Team cheering section. Ultara, HardCore, Rock Star (Tara Tosta, Kim Austin, Sheri Golden), my Marathon Muses and Mentors throughout the last year of workups and training. You kept my brain filled with the right mix of science, lore, and expertise to help me think like and be a Runner. Your encouragement lighted the way to what I consider a success and a great experience. Thanks for training me and training with me.

Cupcakes! Mistress Hay-Hay, "Big" Jess, and Melissa (Halley Haack, Jessica Sheffield, Melissa Impallomeni). You made the training tolerable because you made it FUN. Your positive energy could run a small city. It is infectious and it motivates me. You three put me back in my running shoes. Thank you.

Jen McKay, Mike Hester; you believed. Thanks for training with me. I am faster and stronger for it.
To all the rest of you, my friends and family, for your words of encouragement, your love, for the imagery of golf carts and Blue Moon beer on race day, for setting the example and providing the level to which I need to aspire. Thanks.

With thanks put appropriately first and now out of the way, this post will be about some observations and lessons learned from my training and from the Marathon itself.

1)      Believe and Do.  If you have any inkling at all that you want to try to run an endurance race (half marathon or longer), I strongly recommend that you do it.  It was a great experience and I am pleased beyond words that I did it.  If you want a challenge beyond the grind of your daily routine, if you want a truly human community experience that allows you to pit yourself against, well, yourself, and then against and alongside elite athletes from all over the planet, then a Marathon (or other such endurance event) is for you.  Of course, this is a recommendation based on a lesson learned after the fact.  Why did I originally commit to a Marathon?  Man, I don’t know.  One morning I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  I spent the next three days cranky and restless.  Me, restless, is not good.  The mind thinks unsavory thoughts, plans devilish acts.  When the body finds itself with excess energy, it must DO SOMETHING to expend it.  Push-ups weren’t enough, so I started running.  I ran a 5K with friends, the result of which was *yawn* mediocre.   Aha!  A challenge.  “Do better or quit,” I told myself.  I did not quit.  A ran another 5K.  And another, and then a Warrior Dash (Google it.  It’s a blast.)  I improved at the 5K level (won a few medals), but I needed a bigger challenge.  And so I committed to a Marathon and started training.

2)      Set a goal for yourself and find the training expertise to help you achieve it.  When I finally let the cat out of the bag, that I would be running my first Marathon, I got a ton of enthusiasm and some very specific advice from my running friends.  One of the most important bits of help was my training schedule.  I decided that, once started, not finishing a Marathon was not an option.  I needed a training plan that when followed would get me across the line running (walking was also a non starter idea).  Under the heading of “your eyes may be bigger than your stomach”, or “you might be writing checks your body cannot cash”, I set a loftier secondary goal to finish my first marathon in under 4 hours’ time.   NOW I needed a training plan that would condition my brain and body to push faster than it was originally prepared to go.  One of my muses/mentors above had such a plan and had used it to good effect on four other marathons.  So I took a copy for myself and for the four months of training, this was my road map to success.  A copy hanged at my desk and was on my desktop on my computer at home.  Every time I looked up, there it was—what I “owed” to the Training Plan everyday for 16 weeks from August to Thanksgiving 2011.    It was a reminder of my commitment, and every time I looked at it I could hear the question, “Are you committed enough to do this instead of something fun?”  Goal number three:  Say yes to that question every time.

3)      Prep the body?  That’s the easy part.  What about the mind?  The Training Plans get your heart, lungs, legs, and core ready to run for a longer time than you normally do anything that feels REALLY good.  Don’t get me wrong:  This all feels good now.  And most of the training runs felt good when I did them, but none of them were competitive and none were run in the same environment as the one on race day.  On race day the body is ready whether you poured everything into training or you skimped on the harder stuff.  You’ll finish, I promise, if your body has that sole vote.  But it doesn't, and if your brain isn’t prepped, if it doesn’t buy into your body’s level of readiness, you won’t make it past “the Wall”.   Your training plan will have a handful of long runs on it.  My longest training run was 24 miles.  Until I embarked on this plan and the path to a Marathon, 9 miles was my longest run EVER.  Why do we do the long runs?  My experience says that this is where your brain gets trained.  This is where your body demonstrates its readiness to your psyche so that it will choose correctly when sides are picked for the battle at the Wall.  You need your mind at that point. After mile 20, your brain is a that last bit of muscle you need to keep your legs moving.  If you did any training at all, your lungs will be fine, your heart will actually be beating normally for a good workout, but what will be screaming at you to stop will be your legs.  Your brain will reason with them to keep you moving.  It will put its considerable power behind you and PUSH you to finish.  Do the long training runs.  They train your mind.  It’s the difference between running across the line smiling in triumph and walking across the line and wondering if you could have done better.

4)      As the training plan goes, so go your race results.  This is my lesson.  I finished my first Marathon exactly as my training performance indicated I would.  Oh, there were a handful of my supportive friends and family who were CONVINCED that I would finish faster, do better than what the training was telling me.  They were persuasive and for a few moments I thought maybe I would indeed qualify for the Boston Marathon on my first try.  To qualify for Boston in my age group I needed to finish in under 3 hours 30 minutes.  That’s an 8:12 pace per mile.  None of my training runs longer than 10 miles were anywhere near that pace.  My time for the Space Coast Marathon was 3 hours 53 minutes.  That’s an 8:55 pace which is what my pace was for my 23 and 24 mile training runs.    Believe the training.  If you want faster, train that way.

5)      Run in a pace group!  Really!  The Race sponsored volunteers to act as “rabbits”, or pacers.  These are experienced marathoners who know their pace and can maintain it through the finish.  They run a steady or slightly negative split which is great.  On advice of another of my mentors I chose to follow this path.  I picked the 8:35/mile pace group thinking that if it was too fast I could opt out and run a slower comfortable pace.  If it was too slow (umm, yeah, uh-huh, right) I could always speed up later—you know, as I qualified for Boston…
So, I chose this group, checked in and met my fellow pace-groupers.  Nice folks.  This was a great idea.  The first half of the race, in fact all the way to mile 17, went by in a blur.  I was feeling GREAT except for two minor setbacks. I will discuss the first of these in the next paragraph.  The second setback happened at mile 18.  Our pacer, a very nice man named Chris, kept us on a very steady pace from the start.  He had a great sense of humor and we talked the entire time.  No kidding, I could have kept  with him just for the fun of it without batting an eye.  And for his help I am very grateful—thanks, Chris!  But he cramped up and fell out of the race at mile 18 leaving the Wall and a 10K left for us to negotiate on our own.  Sigh….Please see the lesson above on preparing your mind for the race.  For me, this is where that training mattered most.  But all in all the lesson here is when you run your first marathon, use the pacer.  It’ll give you a great gage of your performance and you can run with people just like you.  It made the challenge more fun and not lonely.

6)      If you stop to pee, do not sprint to catch back up.   “Stomach issues” plagued me on my long training runs.  I learned to carry emergency toilet paper and I was lucky that I did those runs well before the sane world was awake (so were they…).  I managed, but it was enough to keep me concerned right up through race day.  A couple of lessons here. First, eat an early dinner and watch what you eat the night before.  Spaghetti with red sauce was pre-race dinner for me.  Cannoli for dessert.  Carb loading has its merit.  Worked for me, I am sure, because I felt great the next morning.  I ate early and then hydrated until bedtime.  Not a lot of water, but enough that I wasn’t thirsty through the night.  Next morning (I woke up three hours before the race), in anticipation of stomach issues, I had a half cup of black coffee right when I woke up.  The idea was to “get it all out of my system” before the race.  Bang.  It worked! With the exception of electrolyte pills and a little Hammer Gel, my stomach was empty.  That’s how I run.  Might not work for you.  I know folks who eat a full breakfast before they go race.  Not me.  Not even maybe.
So I had an empty stomach, but not an empty bladder.  It is interesting the psychological effect the starter’s pistol has on a racer’s bodily functions.  Gun went off,  my bladder filled right the heck up.  Nice timing.  Thanks.  11 miles later, I could no longer hold it and I knew that if I tried I would be ground to a halt with stomach cramps at mile 20.  So I left the pace group by sprinting ahead to the next porta-john and gave some salt water back to the US Navy.  When done, I exited the “facility” at a sprint to catch my pace group.  I believe that sprint to have been a tactical error.  If I had simply increased my pace only slightly I would have regained the group and not have burned off energy and strength that I would need later in the race.  Instead I sprinted.  Hard.  And  I caught them in 100 yards instead in a mile or so.  I felt that at miles 19 through 21.  The Wall was higher and harder as a result.  If you must stop, recognize that you abdicate your position.  Deal with it by incremental increases or not at all.  Run your race.

7)      Water and nutrition.  Yes, please!  When I do this again, I will not wear my Camelbak.  The water stations are plentiful and the race staff are more than willing to keep you hydrated with a smile.  I am signed up to run the Disney Half Marathon in January 2012.  I will rely on The Mouse for water.  But I will bring my own running food.  Your training will allow you to find the nutrition your body will want to use.  Experiment early on if you must, but by race time, unless you have a cast iron gut, you will need to have settled on nutrition for the long haul.  Electrolytes and energy.  You MUST have BOTH.  I can’t drink Gatorade or Powerade when I run (HUGE “stomach issues”).  Water is as strong as I go.  I found Hammer Nutrition’s Enduralytes capsules to be the perfect fit.  For my weight (178 pounds) I took three 30 minutes before the race and then 3 every hour during the race.  No cramps ever.  Perfect. Electrolyte problem solved, now I needed sustaining energy after about mile 7.  Sports Beans by Jelly Belly (yup, you read that right) was my snack of choice for the early parts of the race.  After about two packs (7 miles and then again at 12), I got tired of the taste.  I ate one more pack at 16 miles in anticipation of the Wall.  Key point here:  As you approach the wall, added calories helps.     Do not over do it.  A pack of Beans is only 100 calories and is all my body really wanted to take in.  Trust me.  You’ll know if you’ve taken in too much.  Pray you learn that lesson early in training.  DO NOT think that you can take in what you are burning off as you run.  The body regulates itself magnificently and you are just in care taker mode at this point.
At 18 miles, I shifted to caffeine.  Hammer Gel Espresso is my choice.  Mocha flavored, caffeinated nutrition (carbs, protein, some e-lytes) was a WONDERFULLY TASTY change from the high citrus Sports Beans as I hit the late stage of the race.  A couple hits of the Espresso Gel and the mind cleared and the body felt a little less burdened.  On retrospect, I firmly believe that using this nutrition, the race’s water sources (vice my own on my back), and had I not sprinted to catch my group after the pee stop, I would have improved my overall time in the race.  This lesson falls under the heading of Tactics, Techniques and Procedures.  Now I have some!  A corollary lesson here: Find a variety of nutrition sources that you like.  At some point your body will revolt against eating and you will just not want to put a thing in your mouth.  Fight that by making what you eat interesting to your palate.  Shifting from fruit flavors to chocolate/coffee flavors did it for me.

8)    Cross the line running.  No matter what you do all race long, you cross that finish line at a run.  You did a hell of a lot of work to get thru the last 26.2 miles.  You owe it to yourself to look good for the cameras.  Smile, dammit.  You just ran a Marathon.