Second chances

The American Discovery Trail Marathon didn't turn out the way I had wanted it to, and I had worked too hard and gotten too much faster to accept a 4:15 result. I was vulnerable, frustrated and desperate for a second chance when Claire B posted a link on my Facebook wall for the Ventura Marathon: at sea level, flat, fast, and still before the Boston 2014 cut-off. I knew that I could finish 2 marathons in the same week (The Big Disappointment was on a Monday, and Ventura would be run on a Sunday), but would I be setting myself up for another disappointment? I must have walked over 5 miles in Colorado, so I didn't think that I had pushed my body too hard, but the whole problem was that at 7000 ft, I had no idea how to gauge my efforts. Maybe my body was completely trashed and I just didn't know it. It's not like I was going to get to run a big workout to gauge my fatigue. But then again, I would be coming back from 8 days at altitude, which I figured had to count for something. The deciding factor was that I had nothing to lose. It couldn't be worse than another 4:15 finish.

I'm going to take a moment here to express my thanks to my wonderful, patient, long-suffering, supportive girlfriend/fiancée/co-pilot/support crew/chauffeur/massager of sore muscles, who I will give the pseudonym of Richie Porte after the world's most selfless domestique. Richie Porte moved her scheduled vacation so that we could be in Colorado exactly the week I would need to be for the race. She then suffered through a sprained toe, a bogus speeding ticket (and the retainer for a lawyer), inhumane customer service, lost (and found) designer sunglasses, and ham in her vegetarian entre, in addition to my griping about not drinking coffee, griping about not eating pizza and ice cream, and impossible dietary restrictions in the week before my big race. And when all that was over and all of our efforts had come to naught, when I looked up from my iPhone in Colorado Springs and said, "There's a race in Ventura next weekend..." she didn't miss a beat. She said, "Do you want to do it? We could drive down Saturday and come back on Sunday..."

I am the luckiest self-absorbed endurance athlete in the world.

And so it was that after sleeping only 3 nights in our own bed, Richie Porte found herself driving me 5 hours down to Ventura on a Saturday morning to check in to yet another hotel and wake up at 4am to spend another boring morning watching another stupid marathon. I chattered on in the passenger seat about my race plan (or lack thereof). "I have no idea how this is going to turn out. If I'm not there at 3:30, don't be worried. Actually, if I finish at 3:40 I'll be totally stoked. Actually... if you haven't seen me by 3:50 I want you to walk backwards up the course because if I haven't finished by then, then I'll really want to see you in the final miles because that means I fell apart. Actually... will you be seeing me somewhere in the middle? Last time I was sad that I didn't see you at mile 20 but it was just because I was having a bad race and... maybe it would be better if I saw you before the turn-around and I can tell you how it's going so you won't have to wait so long at the finish line. Or..." ...and so on until she really should have wanted to slap me in the face.

After some minor parking drama at packet pick-up, it was on to the hotel in Oxnard: the kind of place that shares a parking lot with Denny's and where dangerous-looking addicts glare out of dark hotel rooms with open doors and you wonder if you'll get shot at night walking to the ice machine. I busted out my homemade high-carb dinner while Richie Porte ate some Mexican take-out and then I promptly took a Unisom and passed out. So I missed the mariachi music that someone played in the parking lot all night, and Richie Porte had to fill me in on it the next morning (no Unisom to help her sleep). At 4:15 I woke up and sat on the hotel floor eating oatmeal (a lighter breakfast than last time) and waiting for my poop to cook. This time, it dinged in time and I put on my race outfit feeling ready to rock and roll. Then, beet juice, Starbucks, and back to the Ventura pier with enough time to wait in multiple porta-pottie lines if necessary.

Maybe the best thing about the Ventura Marathon was the bathrooms: there were so many that there was never a line, there was always toilet paper and hand sanitizer, and they didn't even start to smell. I think I pee'd 4 times before the race started, just because I could. I knew I should have warmed up a bit before the start, but it just didn't seem worth the extra energy expenditure so I just kind of bounced a lot.

I lined up with the 3:35 pacer and bounced and wiggled through the national anthem. I didn't plan to sacrifice myself by hanging on the pacer's shoulder for as long as I could this time, I just figured it would be a good place to wait out the nervous first few miles when pacing yourself can be so disorienting. The pacer didn't inspire much confidence. He wasn't much taller than I was, with a stocky build and the race had dressed him in this god-awful bright pink shirt. I would not allow myself to be paced through a marathon by someone in a pink shirt, even if he was a man.

When I'm suffering, you can see it on my face. In
this picture, I was suffering. In Ventura, I was relaxed.

The race started, and I held myself back and stood next to the pacer and started counting steps and breaths. When I had counted to 100, I looked down at my watch and saw that we were running an 8:13 pace. Stupid pacer, you're ruining it! I thought, and I let myself drift on ahead. Right from the starting line, and up through the 24th mile, I paced myself by making sure that every breath equaled 8 steps (4 in, 4 out), and every 100 breaths I would look down at my watch and make sure that I was still on pace (faster than 7:45, then I should slow down, slower than 8:00, then I should pick it up a bit, and make sure that the average pace stayed below 8:00, or 8:12 if things were going badly). Soon I fell in pace with a group that was running on pace with my breathing and stepping. Around mile 5 one guy turned to another and asked, "Are you shooting for 3:20/3:25-ish?"

"Uh oh," I said out loud. But I had been pacing conservatively by feel, not by my watch, and I felt so good! A the 6-mile aid station I stopped to refill my water bottle, and kept them at a steady 50 meters ahead of me, until I refilled again at the 12-mile aid station and fell 100 meters behind. Right before the turn-around, I saw Richie Porte and the dog waiting for me with a big smile on both their faces.

"You're on pace!" Richie Porte yelled.
"And I feel good, for now!" I said. "Who knows what's going to happen in the next 14 miles, though." Secretly, around mile 11 I had started to feel things that may or may not turn out to be a big deal later on. My hamstrings felt tired, and a new painful spot that had appeared in my left foot two days earlier was tingling and going numb. I consciously made myself let my pace bunnies get away and settled back a bit to let my body relax.

My splits for the first half marathon tell the story of a comfortable pace:

1. 7:56
2. 7:50
3. 7:42 (uh oh, that one was too fast, should probably slow it down)
4. 7:52
5. 7:50
6. 7:55
7. 7:54
8. 7:54
9. 7:55
10. 8:03
11. 8:01
12. 8:08
13. 8:07

The turn-around involved running around endless cones and through a parking lot before turning back and running back the way I'd come. While running the figure eight, I recognized a familiar face: a client that I'd done a few sessions with months ago. I shouted his name and we managed to get a quick, "Good to see you, what time are you shooting for, good luck!" conversation shouted across the street before we each ran our separate directions (I was ahead of him, for the record!). As I settled back into my counting, I realized that the excitement had nudged my pace too high and the shouting had robbed me of precious oxygen. I tried to settle back into my 4-in-4-out rhythm, but now suddenly all of the wind had been taken out of my sails. 

When I crossed with Richie Porte again a mile later, she and the dog came out and ran with me for 100 yards. "I don't know what happened. I turned around and all of a sudden, it's like I have completely different legs!" I complained. 

"It's okay, just run your race," she said. "I'll see you at the finish whenever you get there." 

"Are we running uphill or something?" I asked.

"Ummmm... no." But it felt just like a false flat where the road looks level, yet every step seems to take 2% more effort and you're inexplicably slowing down. I had turned into the wind, but could a 5mph wind really make that much of a difference? I tried to calm down and find my 4:1 rhythm.

This picture, taken at mile *5* of the SF
marathon gives you an idea of how much
sweating is a problem for me: note, shorts
are also plastered to my legs.

I had been reading some interesting theories about race nutrition lately, including Matt Fitzgerald's theory that your race performance is only limited by the amount of carbohydrate you can ingest in a marathon, and also an interesting theory put forth by Fitzgerald and Tim Noakes that we didn't need much, if any, fluids during a race. (It bothered me that these theories contradicted each other, since carbohydrate must be ingested with a certain amount of fluid to be absorbed properly. This is probably the only Fitzgerald book I don't recommend.) I had been experimenting with different amounts of fluid intake during my runs and found that far from needing less fluid, hydration and electrolytes in particular seemed to present the biggest "wall" on my long runs, not carbohydrate. After a few experimental "low-fluid" runs, I had gotten so desperately dehydrated that it had taken me weeks to catch back up and I was seriously worried about my body's ability to absorb enough fluid to keep up with my daily sweat rates. In other words, I am one sweaty motherfucker. I can't run on the treadmill for more than 10 miles without getting off to change because after an hour and twenty minutes, I have sweat completely through my shorts, the sweat has run unmitigated down my legs to soak my socks, and soon after the uppers of my shoes, after which point it soaks the soles of my shoes and I start slipping on the treadmill belt. I had had a come-to-Jesus moment a few years before in a 50K when salt tabs had led me to the strongest finish I had ever had in a race longer than 13 miles. Ventura on this morning was cool (in the mid-60's), but foggy. A marathon in the same conditions in San Francisco had flattened me 2 years earlier when I hit the electrolyte wall at mile 12. 

After much agonizing, I had decided to run with a water bottle rather than just drinking at aid stations, and now I was glad for it. I used the water to slosh down twice as many electrolyte pills (2 every 3 miles instead of every 7), as well as a Honey Stinger gummy chew at every single mile marker. I didn't notice a difference with the gummies, but every time I took a pill, I felt a little better for a few minutes and was able to pick up my pace again until just as suddenly I would hit another wall. I tried taking even more electrolyte tabs, but a sharp cramp in my stomach told me to quit that bullshit pretty quick. At this point, the damage had been done, and everything that I could shove in my face was only going to delay the inevitable, it wasn't going to bring me back from the dead. 

The next seven miles told the story of a slow, insidious death rather than a dramatic explosion. 

14. 8:07

15. 8:15

16. 8:18

17. 8:22

18. 8:32

19. 8:41

20. 8:40

By the time the little guy in the pink shirt carrying the 3:30 banner had passed me around mile 18, my pace had deteriorated too much to catch back on to his pace. At the moment he passed me I looked down at my watch; the average pace that had brought us both to that exact spot in that moment in time was 8:00 miles. Damn! I thought as he passed and I stared at his back for awhile. If I could keep my average pace under 8:12 for the next 10K, then I could still break 3:35, but as my gas needle dropped down to E, I knew that I was going to deteriorate faster than that. 

It's funny. For years I always imagined that if I got to this point, where something phenomenal like a miracle Boston Qualification were within my reach, I thought I would dig deep and find something special inside to force myself over that finish line if it killed me. But the body can only go as fast as it will go, and now my breathing was ragged and getting more and more labored, even as my pace slowed down. I remember thinking, This is exactly how hard I breathe in a 10K race, only now I'm not running 7:15 miles, I'm running 9:15's. I've never felt this before, being this out of breath so late in a race. I'm falling apart, but I'm still running hard. This must mean that I'm doing something right. A few miles later when the 3:35 was well out of range and all I wanted to do was walk for a few sweet seconds, I took solace in the fact that as dismal as this pace was, I was still racing in my own pathetic little way. 

The final miles show a body that is in distress, but not completely breaking down. 

21. 8:43

22. 9:02 I tried drinking Gatorade somewhere through this mile. It was the most vile thing I'd ever tasted, and I was glad again for my water bottle. 

23. 9:12 Here I dropped my second-to-last gummy on the ground, and managed to get the last one in my mouth. As I watched the gummy bounce on the ground, I decided that carbohydrates too were important. I lamented that gummy for the next 2 miles.

24. 9:27 Here I finally stopped counting steps and instead reminded myself over and over, "Just stay alive..." (Note: This my slowest mile was the only mile slower than my average pace in Colorado.)

25. 9:09 My water bottle empty again, I decided to throw it to the side of the road and lighten my load. I knew that my goal was out of my reach, but no one could take a PR away from me now. After slinging the bottle into someone's yard, I looked up to see a cop directing traffic 20 feet away. "Thanks for coming out," I said sheepishly. "Keep it up," he said. Phew!

26. 9:06 Please finish respectably, please finish respectably, please finish respectably...

In those last delirious .2 miles I spotted Richie Porte in the crowd. "You're gonna break 3:40!" she yelled. 

"I missed my goal time, but I don't give a flying fuck!!! I did it!" I screamed, not caring how many children were in the crowd. The crowd started cheering louder for me. The biggest sprint I could muster for that last quarter mile was 8:25 pace and I stumbled over the line more thrilled than if everything had worked out to plan. I had run a 3:38:44 in spite of everything, dropping my official PR by 19 min and even beating my unofficial PR by 4 and a half minutes.

True, I had fallen short once again of completing a Boston Qualifying time, but I have never actually cared about running Boston, because I already have. But for all these years it has been eating at me that I cheated by running Boston as a bandit, and that no matter how hard I tried, I didn't seem to be able to get anywhere close to a qualifying time. Until this summer, it seemed just as likely that I would run a BQ as that I would make the NBA draft. Now I knew that had my legs been fresh, I could have pulled out those last 4 minutes. Moreover, since I had gatecrashed Boston in 2008, the qualifying standard at the time had been 3:40, which I had finally broken. In that moment it was enough for me. I nearly broke down crying.

I asked the chip-cutter-offer if I could sit in his chair so that I wouldn't throw up on him, and when I finally got myself out of the finishing area, there was Richie Porte and a very overstimulated dog there to hug me in all of my slimy, sweaty, nastiness. Once I sat on the curb, my quad started to cramp. I said, "AAAHHHH, my quad is cramping up! My quad is cramping! AAAAAHHHHHH! This has never happened to me before!!! OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!" Just like a grown-up person would yell. Richie Porte pulled me back to standing and pushed me over toward the food table. Food ingested, we found our way to an indoor handicapped bathroom where she untied my shoes (which I couldn't reach), helped me pull off my shorts (which I could barely reach), and I rested my arms on her shoulders as she pulled off my sports bra since I couldn't lift my arms above my head without my shoulders cramping up. Then she gently re-dressed me in fresh clothes and led me back to the car, where we would soon be sitting on the 5-hour ride back to the Bay Area without my taking a shower. I'm telling you, I'm the luckiest stinky person out there. 

On the drive back, I slowly came back to life. My stomach went through periods of violent cramping and nausea while I alternately forced down the water that I knew I needed and the coffee that I insisted that I still wanted because I had earned it. It took me hours to pee again, and when I did, the beet juice came out darker than it had gone in. That was the most exciting part for me, and I wanted nothing more than to not flush in a gas station toilet, and then hide outside the bathroom to spy on people's reactions. But sometimes in life you don't get everything you want, even though you worked REALLY hard for it and it would make you really happy. Sometimes you have to settle for the satisfaction of knowing yourself what you've done, and that not everybody is going to understand why you're so proud of yourself. So I flushed the beet pee, and we drove on home.