My First Marathon

so for those of you that don't know I just ran my first marathon in NYC this past weekend. It was quite the humbling experience from a running perspective, but an amazing event none the less. This is something I posted on the philly runners message board, so hopefully it makes sense out of context.

the start of the race went pretty much how i expected. It was crowded, there were people peeing everywhere, and I couldn't get enough room to just run and had to focus a lot of energy on not killing anybody. As E. Mike mentioned, the bouncing of the bridge was quite creepy and I noticed my self shortening and quickening my stride, in an attempt to get away from the natural frequency of the bridge, thus single-handedly averting total structural failure of the bridge (ala tacoma narrows). I have no idea what my splits were for any of the miles, but I know after the first 5 miles I was pretty much on pace. And by on pace I meant around 9 minute miles, which is about the pace of my long, training runs. I think around mile 5, I caught a glimpse of E. Mike, and I tried to make my way towards him to pace with him, but I couldn't make my way through the crowds and lost track of him.

At around mile 8 I saw my girlfriend and two college friends who were traveling around the city cheering for me. It brought a smile to my face to know that they were hopping all over the city to see me run. Up until this point, things were going well, my stomach felt great (which has always been a concern for me), I was on pace, and things were looking good. Shortly after that, my lower calves started tightening up, immediately followed by intense pain in both my lower calves and my arches. I am not quite sure the cause of the pain, but it stayed with me the entire race. Sadly, this new calf pain, swamped out the general, comfortable, soothing soreness in my right ankle I have been dealing with for 5 months now. Because of the tightness, it seemed I was landing on my toes, which seemed to make the tightness and pain worse, which made me land on my toes more, which made the tightness worse....

I knew once the pain set in that there was no chance at keeping a 9 min pace the entire race. I figured... I would try to keep up running until the halfway point and figure out a new strategy then. The strategy turned out to be approximately this. At every mile marker, I would walk approximately one minute... then run anywhere between 5-10 minutes... and then walk again when I wanted to. by this point in the race, i just wanted to get to the finish line to get a marathon under my belt. One thing that has never happened to me in a race was that I got really hungry. This could be a result of the later race start than I am used to or the length of the race, but after the halfway point, I basically grabbed as much food as I could. Twizzlers, bagels, gels, anything i could get my grubby mits on I ate. I saw a tin can... but passed on it because i don't think it had any sugar in it...

I saw my cheering section again at mile 15. I stopped showed them some love and my butt, and then moved on. Each of the last 11 miles was a race by itself. I was doing my best to run to the mile marker, walk to regroup, and then start the next mile race. this worked and got me to the finish. the walk to the family reunion area seemed like another marathon, because all I wanted to do when I was finished was give them all sweet, salty hugs and say thanks. who knows if I am going to do another marathon... everybody keeps telling me I will, but I am not too certain I will. I am not sure I have committment to training/motivation that is required to prepare for a race over a half marathon. who knows... i have been wrong in the past.

kristin, thanks for supporting me through all of my training, and thanks to struck and raver for making the trip out to cheer me on! Hi Granda!!