Marathon port mortem

In 490 A.D. the Greeks repelled an attack by the Persians in the Battle of Marathon. A solider named Pheidippides ran from the plains of Marathon to Athens – about 26 miles – to deliver news of the battle. Upon proclaiming the victory, he promptly fell dead. Had he been blogging about his experiences, his readers might have felt unsatisfied with that ending.


Highlights during the race
By far the best part of the day was seeing my friends and family on the race course cheering me on, going crazy at the finish line and being part of a really big accomplishment. Rounding corners and hearing my name, seeing signs and hearing their voices screaming at me before I could spot them among the other spectators – that was such a great boost.

Other memorable moments: seeing the race leaders coming at me down North Champlain Street as I was going out in the opposite direction; running neck and neck with Betty Lacharite, who later placed first in the 70-74 year old age group; at about 500 yards into the race hearing someone ask, “How you doing?” and then hearing the answer, “Really, really bad!”; running past the people eating on the outside patio at Leunig’s, toasting us with their Bloody Marys; running up Battery Hill at pace without stopping (and hearing the fanatical cheers of friends at the top of the hill); running the last loop in Waterfront Park with friends running beside me along the fenceline.

Pacing
I had estimated when I would hit certain points on the course based on a 12-minute mile and I was remarkably close to those predictions. Particularly in the first half, I was dead on my pace, and by the end I had only wavered by a few minutes. I set a slow pace, and trained at slow pace, because I was intently focused on longevity – I wasn’t certain I could last the distance (both over the five months of training, and the 26.3 miles of the race) so I went slowly and never trained or aimed for speed. The result was the slowest, most comfortable marathon imaginable. I got tired, for sure, and I felt aches, but the entire way through I felt very comfortable and certain that I would finish. Even at mile 18, in the midst of a serious rainstorm, I had a huge smile on my face.


Weather
Vermonters are fond of saying, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” All week long and all Saturday and even Sunday morning there was a lot of speculation about whether a big fat rainstorm was going to park itself over the Champlain Valley during the race. It did.

The morning was cool and overcast – just below 60 degrees at the starting line, perfect. The first sprinkles of rain fell at 11 a.m. By 11:30 we were in a downpour – a gutters overflowing, low visibility, pruney-fingered, spectator-scattering rainstorm. For me, that lasted from about Mile 17 to Mile 20, then it eased up and disappeared.


Marathon confessional #1
When I wrote my schedule for a 12-minute pace, there was a fair bit of optimism in it. In the training schedule, there were several long runs – 18 miles, three 20-mile runs – and I completed those miles faithfully. However.... in each run, I took a break partway. It depended on the day, the weather, where I was running – but in every long run I stopped at some point to rest and stretch. And often it was not a quick stop. More like 20, 30 minutes. So when I said I would run consistently at 12-minute miles without breaks I wasn’t entirely sure I could do that. The fact that I ended up only a few minutes off pace was spectacular.


Finish Line
I felt awesome at the end of the race. A friend handed me balloons before I crossed through the finish line, arms raised in victory. The official photographer was laughing, slightly mystified that I wasn’t in paroxysms of pain and misery like the other folks finishing that late in the race. The first order of business is to stop and let the race officials snip the timing chip off your shoe, after that – smother your friends and family with sweaty, rained-on hugs and eat a lot of food. We stood and sat around in a big group having the same conversation over and over:

"I can’t believe it!”
“I know!”
(Then lots of laughing.)

The day after
About 45 minutes after finishing, I had stopped walking and rigor mortis set in - cold, stiff, not good. I live only a few clocks from the finish line, but those blocks are uphill and I was grateful that my friends drove me home. (I was less grateful that they drive a Jeep which is deceptively high off of the ground and requires a significant jump to get into the thing.) I took a hot bath, slept and continued being sore and stiff for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I felt not much worse than had I played rugby the previous day. In fact, I can think of particular rugby games which left me feeling much worse than the marathon did (anyone remember the Newport tournament several years ago?). I walked around town with my mom the next morning and that really helped to shake out the last soreness from my muscles. By lunchtime I was taking the stairs in my apartment building and played a round of Bocce Ball at a friend’s BBQ.


Marathon confessional #2
The training schedule had us running 5 days a week, one of them a long run. I was faithful about the long runs, but I skipped one short training run just about every week. And occasionally I skipped two short runs. I felt guilty and crappy about it, but there were some days when it just wasn’t going to happen. Most weeks I tried to make up the miles on off days, but I often shorted the total mileages I was supposed run in a given week.

Next year’s goal
The thing is, I’m not too upset that it took me 5 ½ hours to finish – I really was aiming just to finish, nothing more. But when you run that slowly, the pack thins out and you don’t feel like you’re in the middle of a big event. You feel like you’re at the tail end of a big event. Which you are. (I finished ahead of only 110 of 2,600 marathoners who started the race.)

I woke up the next morning and started punching numbers into a calculator. If I want to finish in a crowd of runners, say in 4 ½ hours, I would need to run 10 ½ minute miles. That does not seem out of reach. “Shaving off” an HOUR from your time might be an extreme goal, but I’ve already met a pretty huge challenge: I went from running 2.5 miles to finishing 26.2 miles in just 6 months.

If actually complete all of my training runs; if I work on speed, which I never have; if I cut down on the 10-15 minutes I wasted during the race in lines at the Port-o-lets; and if I’m willing to feel less comfortable during and after the race than I did this time, I think I can do it - and hopefully not become immortalized like Pheidippides.