Sorry, wrong universe. How about, nearly two years ago, on a phone line between Portland and Grants Pass...Amy had mentioned to me that she wanted to get into shape, and that her goal was to run the Portland Marathon. She knew she had a lot of work to get there, but that was her goal. Always eager to encourage people to work out, I told her that if she ran the marathon, I'd run it with her. She told Dad, and he got in on it to. We gave ourselves a year and a half, and set our target marathon for the Portland 2009 marathon, last September.
Well, former track athlete Dad got all excited about running marathons, and went and ran the Austin marathon in February 2009. The Portland marathon never happened, but I figured I might as well run one anyway, so I told Dad I'd do the 2010 Austin marathon with him. Dad trains with the Round Rock Fit group, so I got their training schedule off their website and did the long Saturday runs on my own. Most of the runs are in the 10-12 mile range, but they had a few longer runs sprinkled in--primarily a 16-miler and a 20-miler.
I was feeling pretty good after the 12-mile runs I'd done, and figured it wouldn't be a big deal to just double the mileage. Just for one day. How hard could it be? Then the 16-miler came along, and I figured it might be good to do a little bit longer run. Just once. Just to see what it was like. Man, was I ever hurting after that run. Just four extra measly miles! Took everything I had to convince myself to keep plodding along, one foot in front of the other. Okay, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea to skip the long runs.
Then I went for a run the day before Christmas and noticed that I was slower than normal, and that the back of my leg was hurting. Oh well, ignore it and it'll go away, right? I went for a run the day after Christmas with my Dad, and noticed that it was swollen and that I couldn't walk without limping. The pain went away, but the swelling hadn't gone down several days later, so I ducked into sick call on New Year's Eve. They sent me up to the hospital and determined that it wasn't a blood clot but didn't tell me what it was. Go see your normal Doctor, they told me.
I went to sick call the day we got back from leave, and was diagnosed with an Achilles strain. Two weeks light duty, no running. (And if you ignore the doctor and go running anyway, there will be consequences, my best friend warned me. How am I supposed to train for a marathon if I can't run? NO RUNNING. Aye, aye, ma'am.) I got off light duty with five weeks to go. First run, three miles. Felt great. Two days later five miles. Still no pain, no swelling. Eleven miles--just fine. Time to go for twenty.
It was raining that morning, and the reader board said 33 degrees when I left. I was wearing gloves, but the first seven miles were into the wind. My hands froze in place around my water bottle and gels, so I had to use my teeth to tear the tops off the gels. The next eight miles going with the wind weren't quite so bad, but my route included a 1.5-mile jaunt down to the water right around mile 15. Down to the water--that wasn't bad. Coming back from the water was into the wind again. As I ran back into Courthouse Bay, the reader board said 35. Awesome. I was convinced that an extra six miles couldn't be nearly as miserable as running in nearly freezing rain.
That's debatable. We started the marathon this morning right at 7. The problem with me running in a gigantic group of people is that I want to pass them all. So I ran the first eight miles faster than I wanted to or should have. It took me just over an hour--actually the fastest I've ever run eight miles. By mile ten or eleven, my calves were starting too complain. It was too early for this to happen, but I couldn't go back and run slower to start! I kept running.
The last ten miles I ran a mile at a time, using every mental trick I could to keep myself going. The spectators between miles 18 and 19 were amazing, and gave me a big mental boost that helped a lot. Here's what I suggest if you ever go watch a marathon: place yourself somewhere past the 15 mile mark, and do your best to read the runner's names off their bibs. It's more encouraging when someone shouts out your name than to hear "Go runners!" or something similarly generic.
My original goal was 3:40, which qualifies me for the Boston Marathon. Not that I want to run the Boston Marathon, but it seemed like a reasonable goal. That was before I got hurt, though, and my training runs since then indicated my time would be closer to the 3:50-4:00 range. My official time is 3:41:39, and I know that I couldn't have run any faster, so I'm happy with it.
Dad cut an hour off his time from last year, finishing at 4:33:38. We took naps and are now sitting around the house, trying to recover and replace fluids. This is us as we were about to head home.
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