Some Motivation Required

On Saturday, I ran the 2010 Seattle Rock and Roll Half Marathon.  I’ve heard “The hardest marathon/half-marathon is your second.”  I figure this is mostly attributed to actually having an idea what’s coming up and no mystery ahead, but it was true enough for mine for some much more specific reasons than that.

I got an early start with my alarm going off at 3 AM.  Crashed at my mom’s place on Friday night.  She was going off to cover her own race on Vashon Island early in the morning so she could get me down to the pre-race shuttles running from Downtown to the start line Tukwila before the city busses started running.  Ate some granola and a small smoothie to get the motor running, grabbed my gear bag and we hurried to the busses.

Marathoners are a funny breed.  Not necessarily just because they’re willing to run for hours on end for fun, but because they like doing this so much that they’re willing to wake up and get going while it’s still dark only a few days after the longest day of the year.

4:10 or so, I make it to the Seattle Westin Hotel where a fleet of already packed yellow busses are waiting, climb aboard and off we go.  Mine took off shortly thereafter and made a speedy trip to the start village in Tukwila.  It was still sparse by the time I arrived, so I killed time, had a bagel and a few bottles of water, checked my gear for delivery to the finish line, made some chitchat with fellow racers and stretched until everyone lined up in their start corrals around 6:50.

By 7 am, things had gone from pretty sparse to 28,000 marathoners and half marathoners in their places ready to go.  I was in the 22nd corral of something like 36 corrals, so while the race itself started at 7 am, my group didn’t start until after 7:30.

First few miles were a little rougher than usual.  Tight shins and calves, probably due to the admittedly lapsed training over the last two weeks when I’d get home from my new job feeling too pooped to do anything.  But this mostly loosened up over time and around mile 3, was in a relative groove, though still feeling rougher than usual.

The route was pretty, though it was a cloudy morning, and the crowds were out in droves to watch us the whole way.  Still, by mile 5 or 6, I was sweating pretty hard and feeling pretty burnt, but kept going.  About then, my achilles tendon started giving me trouble.

I pressed on, hydrating regularly and watching my upkeep of energy chews, though probably not taking in as much sports drink as I should have, and I didn’t use the salt packet they passed out at the start.  Big mistake, I was probably suffering early electrolytic imbalance by that point.

Mile 9, we headed up the road running along Lake Washington and into the I-90 express tunnel.  This is probably one of my least favorite parts.  Know what happens when you put 28,000 runners through a mile+ tunnel?  That’s right, warm, stanky sweat vault.  Got to the other side and not far beyond it, around mile 11, just a few hundred feet from the exit of the tunnel, my will to run just gave out and my achilles really started to hurt sharply.

I had to slow down to a walk, couldn’t run any further.  I stopped, breathed, did some stretching, no help.  Couldn’t run.  I was pissed.  Pissed at myself for not training harder in the prior two weeks, pissed for not having the will to keep running.  I looked ahead and thought, “Shit.  Well I’m not going to have a DNF on my race record with only two miles to go.”  So I limped.

I limped, fast as I could, and kept a pretty solid pace for being unable to move my right calf.  One thing I’ll say is no one gives you crap during a race like that when stuff goes wrong.  The crowd cheered just as loud for everyone that passed.  There was a lady waving a Texan flag.  I shot her the Hook-em Horns, and she cheered for me that much louder.  Around Mile 12, going down a hill downtown, I decided to give running another shot.  Lifted my heel up…

…And bam.  Big mistake.  Got a horrible shot of pain and felt my entire calf undulate and seize.  Nearly buckled on the spot.  Regained my composure, gritted my teeth and dragged myself as fast as I could through the last mile.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, but was really more like 15 minutes, I rounded the corner at Qwest Field, I was able to manage a half run for a few feet across the finish line.  I collected my medal, got my picture taken and then asked the nearest volunteer to please direct me to the nearest aid tent.

It wasn’t until I actually sat down that the adrenaline wore off enough that I suddenly registered the kind of pain I was in, as suddenly I was choking back tears of pain when I opened my mouth to describe the symptoms to the doc on site.  He felt around, said he could feel a minor tear of the gastrocnemius and prescribed icing for the next few days and if it didn’t improve, to see my doctor about it.

From there, they wrapped me up in ice, and I called around, since my original plan of bussing and walking back to my car parked in Wallingford just wasn’t going to happen, and a good friend of mine came to pick me up.

At the time, I was pretty pissed and disappointed that it’d all happened that way, that I was behind my target time by 23 minutes, and so on.  Since then, however, I’ve had a chance to think while resting up, and realized: I still finished.  And really, between breezing through a half marathon, and finishing it while dragging yourself through two miles of agony, the latter seems to be more in the spirit of the marathon.  Pheidippides dropped dead of a heart attack after his run.  This seems like the closest way to commemorate that without involving paramedics.

Tip for running long during the summer: For 9 miles or longer on a warm day, I’ve taken to sometimes stopping for a brief break a little after half way at some random convenience store and having an ice cream bar.

Picks you right the hell up, cools you off and it’s tastier than energy gels.