Sunday, January 27, 2013
A Marathon
I had this plan of documenting my
marathon training as I went, at least taking a few minutes to write
something after long runs as a way of remembering what the actual
journey to the marathon was. Naturally, me being me, that didn't
happen. What I do remember is around the 14 and 16 mile long runs, I
was struggling. My shorter runs had become much better, and I was
running much faster, but my long runs were disastrous. I made the
decision to move my 4 mile easy runs to Thursday nights instead of
Friday mornings, thereby giving me a full day of recovery before my
long run on Saturday morning. I also started forcing some actual food
(banana or bagel, instead of just gels along the way) into my body
before I started my long run. Things seemed better, but still not
amazing.
I went to Orlando for a random weekend
and ran about 14 miles there, and felt amazing. When I returned to CR
something clicked. I felt great on my long runs. I ran 20 milers on
back to back weekends and after each did matinee performances for the
Christmas show I was in. I ran 22 miles, in CR with the altitude and
hills (something I would remind myself of before and during the marathon) and I survived. I was ready.
I went on vacation, driving all over CR
with my parents and grandfather. I woke up early and ran. I ran in
new places I'd never been to before. I ran on beaches (and destroyed my calves). I just ran.
My family returned home, and I was left to survive the last week of
tapering without distraction. I got nervous and twitchy. I began to
think I wasn't doing enough. I asked experienced marathoners for
advice. They all told me I was fine and I needed to stick to the
plan. I stuck to the plan. (Thank goodness I still had swimming!) I got a massage. I ran my last 3 mile
shake out run, and I got on the plane.
A friend picked me up at the airport
and took me back to her place to stay for the night. The next
morning, Bange arrived and picked up a rental car at the airport and
came to get me. We headed to the expo. It was HUGE. Definitely Disney
caliber. I picked up my race packet, verified my tag, got my goodie
bag (unimpressed Disney – definitely could make some
improvements!). We walked the expo, probably longer than I should
have, but not too awful. I was bummed when ALL the marathon gear was
sold out. Guess I should have ordered that $60 hoodie online, ahead
of time. :(
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Outside the expo |
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One of the vendors had a wall with all the participants' names. I was surprised to find that I was one of SIX Skippers running that weekend. (I ended up being the 2nd fastest Skipper to run the marathon) |
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Expo!! |
We had lunch with Bange's sister-in-law
who had completed her first half that morning. She and her friends
were celebrating with drinks and were highly amusing. We went back to
my friend's house where I worked on my playlist. We went to dinner
with my grandparents who were, quite randomly, in town. I carbed up.
We headed to the hotel where My Rumming
Buddy and her husband were waiting. It was MUCH later than I wanted
to get back. I laid out my gear, fill my water bottles. I took my
traditional pre-race tequila shot (Thanks to my TicaMom who knows me so well that she gave me a single serving bottle of tequila a couple days before I left saying, "You'll need this for before the race.") and set a second alarm.
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Cheers little turtle! |
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Bottom's up! |
We all went
to bed. At some point there was snoring and I remember being highly
annoyed, not by the snoring itself, but by the fact that it meant
that someone was asleep and I definitely was not! Having not yet actually fallen asleep, I sat straight up in bed when Rumming Buddy clapped her hands twice and declared, “Let's GO!”
We all began to spring into action when her husband said, “That
clock is off, it says it's 11:30pm.” Rumming Buddy looked at her
phone and said, “Weird. My phone says 11:30 too.” I picked up my
phone, rolled my eyes and grumbled, “That's because it's only
11:30pm!!! Go back to bed people!” We all scrambled back into bed, stopping to laugh at the ridiculousness that had just occurred.
At 3:30am two cell phone alarms sounded
simultaneously. This time we all sprang into action for real. Bite of
Clif Bar. Water. Body Glide. Water. Clif Bar. Shorts. Headphones.
Sports Bra. Tank. Water. Headbands. iPod. Water. Shit I've only had
two bites of my Clif bar – EAT! Water. Compression socks. Clif Bar.
Shoes. Water. Fuel Belt. Clif Bar. Water. Sunglasses. Throw all the
random stuff into the bag and take it all to the car. Head to the
bus!
Wait. Wait. Wait. Time ticking. Buses
not coming fast enough for the giant line. We should have left earlier. Finally a man shows up
asking if anyone is in Corral A or B. That small handful get rushed
onto a bus and the man tells us there are several buses that will be
pulling up in just a few minutes. Breathe. Water.
The four of us (and MANY others)
shuffle onto the bus. Here we go. The bus ride is a blur. I think
there was laughing about the 11:30pm *clapclap* “Let's go!”
incident. We begin the walk to the corrals. A photographer has me and
Rumming Buddy pose for a picture. We keep walking. Another
photographer. This time we get all four of us. Support team
definitely needs to be in some pics.
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Me and Rumming Buddy |
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With our amazing support crew! |
Walk down a red carpet through the
giant mouse ears. Picture!
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You can't see it, but there is in fact a red carpet welcoming us. |
Exchange good lucks and I love you's with
the support squad, and Rumming Buddy and I split off. Porta Potty
stop. Ew! Keep walking. Get to corrals. Stand. Wait. Sit. Wait.
Fireworks!! More Fireworks! This is happening.
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INCREDIBLE! |
One more trip to the
Porta Potty – still ew! Back to the corrals. Wait. More fireworks.
Honey Stinger Chews. Yum! And suddenly we're actually moving forward.
Corral F start. Fireworks. Corral G start. Fireworks! Earbuds in. My
Chick Bad. Sing random lyrics of song to Rumming Buddy who just
laughs at me. Moving forward. Corral H. This is us. It's finally us.
Announcer “Blahblahblah saved the best for last blahblahblah.”
Mickey counts down. FIREWORKS!! Extra Fireworks because we're the
last corral. Let's do this!!
Slowly jogging forward. Cross the start
line. Do I seriously have to pee again?!? SO. MANY. PEOPLE. Bob and
weave through the crowd trying to stay close to Rumming Buddy. Is
that our crew?!? Wave big. Finally get their attention. Keep moving.
Mile one – Porta Potties. Are people seriously stopping at a mile
one?!? Weird! Captain Jack and Barbosa!! Just smile, no time to stop.
Bob and weave. Bob
and weave. Still so many people. Mile 2 – over 24 minutes. Gotta
move. Tell Rumming Buddy I'm going to pick it up. We wish each other
well, confirming to each other that we both know we can do this. I head off.
Focus. Focus. Need to move faster, but
not too fast to kill myself. Mile 3 appears remarkably fast. Keep
bobbing and weaving. Take Gatorade (lemon lime – so gross!) and
water and thank the volunteers at every aid station. Run on the grass
a lot to escape the crowd. Bob and weave. Coming up on Mile 4. Should
see support squad. Scanning scanning. Where are they? Trail of people
end. No crew sightings. Dangit!
Castle!! There's the castle!! Royal
Mickey and Minnie taking pics with a HUGE line of people. Run through
the castle. Try to smile at all the photographers. Please let one of
those be good. The sun comes up to full force. Sunglasses! Bob and
weave.
Speedway! Have to enter the speedway
through a tunnel. ANDDDD. We're. Walking. Ugh! I hate walking. Ok.
Out of the tunnel. Run around the speedway. Pretty Corvette. Pretty
Charger. Ooooh old Mustang. Speedways are big. Thank goodness these
nice people brought their cars to entertain me. MATER!!
Mile 14. Man I'm tired. What?!? No, I
can't be tired. Way to early to be tired. Focus. You've got this. I
really am tired. Come on. This is mental. You are stronger. You've done 22 miles in MUCH harder conditions. You are NOT tired!! My legs
hurt. COME ON!! Mile 15. Gu. That should help some. Wait. I just
broke through to an 11 minute average. At mile 15. That's not far
from 10:52/mile. 10:52/mile = 4:45. This is possible. I'm not tired!!
I have a race to run. I can do this. Focus. Mile 19. Feeling good.
Look, a giant Mickey Mouse hot air balloon. Loop around the stadium.
Search the stands for the crew. Nothing. :(
Mile 20 “spectacular.” Not sure
what I was expecting, but was disappointed by the "spectacular." Cool,
but not spectacular. Cross mile 20. Check watch. YES!!! FREAKING
AWESOME. Maintain and you get your 4:45!!! Don't let up now. Focus. Just 10k
to go. Maintain your pace. Focus. You've got this.
Back out to this hellacious hot road. I
didn't like this road running into ESPN, it's not really better
running out. Distract myself by searching the inbound crowd for
Rumming Buddy. No luck. There's a lot of trash at the aid stations. I'm now taking multiple cups at every aid station. Powerade. Water to dump on myself. Water to drink. It's freaking HOT. Keep yelling “thank you” to volunteers. Some thank me for
running, others offer words of encouragement. Volunteers are awesome!
Turn off the evil road, shade! I like shade.
This means we're headed back towards
Epcot right? I like Epcot. Yay!! Countries. So glad we're coming here
later. 23. That said 23 miles. When did lemon-lime Powerade start
tasting good? I'm so freaking close. Still on pace for 4:45. I love
this. Woah. That felt weird. What the?!?! Uh oh. I think I have an
angry toenail! That's ok. It survived this long. It'll survive
another two and half miles. Bob and weave. I really do love Epcot.
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Final stretch. |
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Finish in sight! |
26. That seriously just said 26!! Push.
Push harder. You've come this far. You will finish strong. Push.So
many people!! So much support. Where are MY people? This is amazing.
I see the finish line. Give it everything. So close. Sprinting.
DONE!!! Hands in the air! I don't think I got my hands up in time for
a picture. Whatever. I crossed the finish line. WATCH. What's the
watch say?!? 4:42:11!!! It can't possibly be off by more than one
minute. I did it!!! I freaking did it!!!
Medal. So heavy. I love it!! Crying
now. Well, my body isn't actually producing tears... but I'm
definitely crying. A volunteer asks if I'm okay. Yeah. I'm good. (I
think I said that out loud). Powerade. Snacks. Banana. Thank the
volunteers. Another Powerade. Photo in front of the finisher
backdrop. Asked the photographer if my face was snotty before I let
her take the pic. Bags of ice. Oooooh ice! Still walking, just hold
the ice on my neck and shoulders.
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Medal + ice + Powerade = Happy Runner! |
Big area sectioned off with lots of
chairs and benches inside. People with bags of ice saran wrapped to
their knees. That looks delightful!!! Stumble into area. Stand.
Stare. Not sure what I'm doing. Nice man comes up and says, “Can I
help you?” I point to someone with knee ice bags and say, “I
think I want that please.” He guides me to a chair and after I tell
him I want to keep the two bags of ice I already have in my hand, he
runs off to get more and comes back and wraps my knees. I was right.
It is delightful. Stand up. OOOOWWWWW. That's not easy.
Can't find people. Where are they?
How's Rumming Buddy doing? Is she close? I don't want to miss her
finishing. I should find people. Slowly shuffle/stumble to the “S”
tent. Manage to sit down on the ground. Blue Powerade. Why didn't
they have this on the course instead of that nasty lemon-lime?! Move
extra ice between quads, hams and glutes. Realize that my clothes are
literally soaking wet. Bange!! I see her. She's looking, but I'm
sitting and not about to try to stand. I start yelling her name. I
swear I'm capable of yelling louder than that. Yell her name a couple more times. She finds me. She
remembers the importance of the post race banana pic (I forgot I had
a banana).
She fills me on Rumming Buddy. Dropped
back quite a bit. Still have about an hour until we expect her to
cross. Hope she's doing okay. Sit. Breathe. Ice. Try not to cry.
Banana. Powerade. Talk to Bange. They never saw us again after the
start line sighting. They did get splits both via text and Facebook.
They were confused when my pace kept getting faster. Smile. I did
that! Think I might lose a knee cap, or both, to frost bite, remove
saran wrapped ice packs. Decide to go scope out the finish line.
Rumming Buddy's crew is packed into a crowd and we can't reach them.
Smiles, waves, congrats over the crowd. We go to find another spot to
watch from. The moment we arrive, I have to pee again. Stumble back to
Porta Potties, still ew, but impressively, still stocked with toilet
paper. Go Disney!
Stumble back to spot to watch for
Rumming Buddy. Cheer for random strangers. Where is she? Come on.
Where is she? Cheer for more random strangers. Check watch. She
should be here. I hope she's okay. She's gotta be okay. She's okay,
I know she's okay. Come on Rumming Buddy. Is that her?!?! I think
that's her!! Turn on video. Scream so loud and so hard that video is
unwatchable due to bouncing, but she saw us, so it's okay. Stumble
back to meeting area. Hug Rumming Buddy and congratulate her. “It
is freaking hot here friend!” she says. I know. I had a bit of an
advantage in training in heat instead of snow.
She wants her official time. It didn't
occur to me that it might be different than the texts said. I wonder
off to find info. The times are what we thought they were. Me - 4:41:37 (the watch was pretty close!) Average pace - 10:44/mile. A good 15+ seconds faster than any of my long training runs. Thank you for being at sea level Florida! Rumming Buddy - 6:11:33. Heat hit her pretty hard and she decided if she had to walk, she may as well stop for some photo ops with the characters. Bottom line... we both finished.
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We are the champions!!! Matching medals and matching Disney Princess headbands (a marathon present from Rumming Buddy). When we paused for this picture, I set my bag of post race snacks on the ground. After the pic, I just stared at the bag and pathetically asked if someone would please pick up my stuff and hand it to me. Bange happily obliged. Support crew = priceless! |
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Celebrating with dinner in Downtown Disney. |
I've never run such a packed race. In retrospect, part of me thinks in some ways the crowds helped me. I was so afraid of getting stuck behind slow people that I was constantly focused on bobbing and weaving my way forward. Since I start in the last corral, I passed LOTS of people and was probably only passed by about a dozen people throughout the entire race.
Rumming Buddy and I are sure we will "runDisney" again. The Goofy is certainly in our future. We both agreed that future Disney races will simply be for fun though. We'll stop for pics with characters and just enjoy ourselves. New PRs will be for other races... Perhaps Carmel in April?
Labels: Disney World, Disney World Marathon, marathon, run, runDisney