All The Gory Details: My Nike Women's Marathon Race Report

Pre-Race
The wake up call from the front desk came at 5:00 am on Sunday morning. I (completely uncharacterisicly) hopped right out of bed and over to my massive pile of marathon stuff. I put on my marathon ensemble, posed for some pictures, and headed downstairs with Melissa to catch the Team in Training bus to Union Square. Well, we thought there was a bus, anyway. We got downstairs and realized that we were just walking down to the start with our teammates. At any rate, by 5:45 we were on our way. We arrived in Union Square, paid our first of many visits to the Porta Potties, and checked our gear. Then we shivered. For at least an hour, huddled together. It was freezing at the starting line.

It’s Go Time.
At 7:00, the gun went off. And we still stood there, huddled together, in our garbage bags, shivering. Finally, after about 15 minutes, they opened our corral and we began to walk towards the starting line. (No sense wasting those running miles before the actual start, right?) About 20 minutes after the gun went off, we crossed the starting line, and we were off! About a quarter mile in, we tore our garbage bags off and we were ready to take the race head on. We were all smiles, in utter disbelief that the marathon had actually started. How did this day come so soon? Wasn’t it just yesterday we were sitting in line at a concert, coming up with this crazy plan? And certainly training just started a week ago. Yet, here we were, running in San Francisco, ready to take on 26.2 miles. It was an energizing, happy feeling.

Bliss: Miles 1 – 6.
The run started off towards Fisherman’s Wharf. Miles 1 – 6 were a happy blur. We ran along the Wharf, past Ghiradelli Square, and saw the Golden Gate Bridge with a beautiful, mountainous backdrop. Melissa, Lauren, and I didn’t talk much during these miles. I spent my time concentrating on keeping a slower pace than I thought I needed, soaking up the moments, and coming to the realization that it was race day, and I was, in fact, running a marathon. We passed several clumps of spectators, including a church choir. I was feeling happy, calm, and confident.

Oh, Is That All The Hills Are?/Somebody Make the Half-Marathoners Go Away: Miles 6 – 11
Everyone tells you the big hills in San Francisco will be bad. Surprisingly, we didn’t mind these hills. I didn’t love them. They were steep, that’s for sure, but there was an end in sight. Somehow, a huge incline doesn’t seem too bad, if you can look up and see that it will end soon. We ran/walked up the hills as best we could. I was confident that even if the hills slowed us down, we could make up the time in the less hilly back half of the course.

During the hills, we did develop a strong dislike for the half marathon walkers. (Sorry if any of you are reading this!) Many of them walked in large groups, and as the hills narrowed the course, they seemed to line the enitre trail, making running without weaving nearly impossible. During miles 10 and 11, we were counting down the seconds until the half marathoners dissappeared. I was ready for a little breathing room.

Wait, Come Back, Halfers & I Hate Trees: Miles 11 – 15
Right around mile 11.5, the marathon and half marathon courses split. As soon as the half marathoners left, I regretted my disdain for them. I wanted them back. Did I mention we’re slow runners? Well, apparently some of the only people around us were the half marathon walkers. Suddenly, about 80% of the people around us dissappeared. The spectators all seemed to be cheering the halfers on to the finish. Nobody seemed to care that we had 10+ miles to go. We were surrounded by trees, flowers, and nature. It was deafeningly quiet. We could hear crickets chirping.

It was horrible. I cursed the trees. I cursed the slow, steady incline that had no end in sight. I said I never wanted to see another tree again. I blamed Jon (who had visited this part of the course, Golden Gate State Park, the day before) for telling me this part was beautiful. I cursed the spectators for not cheering for us. I wanted to hear noise, to see a familiar face of someone who wasn’t running alongside me, to see something other than nature. I couldn’t wait to get out of this part of the course, to see something different, to see other people – even if they were running towards the finish line. I was having a total mental meltdown.

Happy Again: Mile 15
Just before the 15 mile mark, we saw our husbands! It was one of my happiest moments on the course. They chatted with us, encouraged us, gave us Jolly Ranchers, and assured us that the forest was almost over. I felt energized. I was ready to take on the rest of the course. I was ready for a good time for this course. 6:30, perhaps?

Porta Potty Lady: Bad Times Around Mile 15.5 – 16.
Just after we left the boys, we got ready for yet another Porta Potty stop. As I was exiting the facilities, someone nearby glanced at her watch and said, “Ugh. We better get going if we’re going to make the cutoff.” Cutoff? What cutoff?
“Excuse me?”
“The cuttoff. You have to be at Mile 18 ¾ by noon, or you don’t get to finish the race.”
[Insert angry yelling, screaming, cursing, and angry discussions with Lauren and Melissa here.]
We knew nothing of a cutoff. We read every piece of literature given to us by Nike, TEAM, every e-mail, every packet, scoured the website. Nobody said anything about a cutoff. We were prepared to be off the course in 6.5 – 7 hours. We were NOT prepared to be to mile 18 ¾ by noon – especially because we didn’t get to start until 7:20. We were livid.

Run, Run, Run, As Fast As You Can: Mile 15 3/4ish – 18 ¾.
But, in our groggy, marathoning, frustrated state, we came up with a plan. We had 30 minutes to cover about 3 miles. There’s no way we come close to that at our normal pace. So, we did the only thing we could do. We “sprinted.” To those of you who are speedy or who run shorter distances, a 6:2 Run/Walk at an average pace of 10:00/mile doesn’t sound like a sprint. To the three of us, who had just run 15 miles on hills, and are used to a 6:2 Run/Walk at about a 13:00 – 14:00/mile pace? It was agony. We about doubled our run pace and walked as fast as we normally run.

A little bit into our spriting, we ran past a TNT coach. “Is it true that there’s a cutoff ahead?” I shouted. She shouted back that yes, there was a cutoff, and we better hurry if we were going to get there. Super. Just the encouragement we needed. We commenced sprinting and cursing, simulateously.

Any distance runner knows, and those of you who aren’t runners certainly could have guessed, that picking up the pace by 3 – 4 minutes per mile in the middle of a 26.2 mile run is not the best strategy. It was absolutely awful. A few hundred feet away from the cutoff, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I could see the blue chip timing mats waiting for me, but I just didn’t know how I was going to get there. That’s when my first angel of the day found me. I don’t even know his name. A TEAM coach in a green and purple jacket found me crying, speed walking towards the cutoff. He assued me that I had plenty of time, beautiful walking form, and that I would make the cutoff. In between sobs, I told him the story of my Chicago run last year, and how afraid I was that I wouldn’t make it in time. He walked me all the way to the cutoff, where I met up with Lauren and Melissa, who had run ahead.

We celebrated, and then continued hating the cutoff.

A Long, Cold Walk: Miles 19 – 21.
This was the part of the race that was supposed to be easier. The hills subsided for a while, and we just had to do a little loop around the Bay, back to the Pacific. Piece of cake, right? Yeah. Not if you just finished an all-out sprint. We cursed. Our feet hurt. Our hips hurt. Everything hurt. We’d just blown any chance of spending the last miles of the race happy… and we knew it. We were mad, mostly, that we had been caught off guard by the cutoff. Had we only known, we would have run a different race.

We walked slowly, agonizingly over these miles. We were mad. We talked about how mad we were. Melissa started jogging a few times, and I was afraid we were going to lose her. Turns out she just needed to do something different than walking to keep her muscles going. Lauren and I jogged up to her, and we thought we’d try to do a 2:6 Run/Walk. We decided against that during the 6 minute walk.

We got passed by the “end of race” cop car. We got to timing chip pads as they were tearing them down. We got to food/water stations to watch them clean up and to be handed the last few glasses of water or Gatorade. (They did have chocolate left at the Chocolate Mile, thank God.) There were no spectators to be seen. We were lonely, we were sore, and we were angry. It was miserable.

We did the only thing we could do. We found a Porta Potty and stopped for yet another bathroom break.

An Angel Named “Mama Lisa”: Miles 21 – 24.5.
In line for the Porta Potty, I noticed Melissa sitting down on the curb, stretching and crying. Seeing her tears made me cry again, too. A TNT Coach ran by with some of her team, and hugged us both tight after checking to make sure we were okay. At that point, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I prayed. I cried and prayed. I didn’t have a clue how we were going to do 5.2 more miles. We were really struggling, and it seemed like a long way.

And there she was. Mama Lisa. A coach for the TNT Bay Area, this woman saved us. I’m not sure we would have made it to the finish line without her. A spunky little woman, Lisa said, “Oh, baby, don’t cry. Come on, we’re going to do this thing. Let’s go. Come on.” She wouldn’t take no for an answer. She had us laughing. She told us stories about being cutoff from a 100-mile race, and stories of her 86 year old friend Helen, who is still running marathons. Somehow, Mama Lisa managed to do all these things without making our task or worries seem insignificant. She was the perfect, encouraging distraction.

Almost There: Miles 24.5 – 26.
Around mile 24.5, we caught up with my worried husband, who was thrilled to see us in one piece. We were hobbling along with Mama Lisa, still slightly annoyed, but in a better place overall. He walked and talked with us, as we made our way closer to Melissa’s husband, Jim, and Lauren’s fiance, Kenny. When we reached the other boys, Mama Lisa went on her merry way, back to usher in some more runners who needed an angel.

Late in mile 25, the giant blister taking over my baby toe decided to pop and I screamed in pain. I felt like my foot was on fire, and the finish line seemed a long way away. I grabbed on to Melissa for support, and as the finish line drew nearer, we kicked out the boys and decided to have our own finish.

Sweet Victory: The Last .2.
Our hands clasped together tightly, Melissa and I began to run. This was it. The finish line. Pink’s “So What” was blaring from speakers, a man with a microphone announced, “From the Land of Lincoln, it’s Lauren and Melissa, coming in at 7:15!” (Our clock time, not our chip time). I was sobbing. A marathon finish line – I was finally realzing a long-time goal. Along the sides of the finish line were tuxedo-clad fireman with silver platters of blue Tiffany & Co boxes. My heart surged with pride as I was handed a pretty blue box with a white bow. I’d done it. I had a medal. A real medal. Not a pity medal, a medal I earned.

I haven’t taken the medal off since.

The Calm Before the Storm

Saturday Night: October 18, 2008



Although this was my second Team in Training event, I’d never made it to the pre-race pasta party before. Since we were travelling to this race, and the pasta party has just two blocks away, this seemed like a great time to start. We walked in to crazy cheers and hollers from the TEAM Staff & Coaches, frantically looking for someone to give us a ticket for Melissa’s husband. It was a bit of a zoo until we finally got his ticket. But we finally found a kind person, grabbed our husbands, found a table, and got food. The pasta was actually really good. Maybe it only tasted good because I’d been warned so much about how bad it would be, I wasn’t expecting much… but I really enjoyed it.

More fabulous than the pasta was the speaking line-up they had. The first person to speak, and the one to introduce all the other speakers, was John Bingham. He was phenomenal. He was funny, motivating, inspiring. All of the runners were in hysterics when he was speaking. Next up – none other than Joan Benoit Samuelson. Wow. I still can’t believe I heard her speak. (For those of you who aren’t runners, or are too young to know who she is – Joan Benoit Samuelson was the first Women’s Olympic Marathon Gold Medalist.) Finally, a survivor/TNT participant told her story and had the room in tears. It was a good night, and got us even more pumped for race day.

We returned to the hotel room, and Melissa and I laid out everything we needed for race day. Shoes? Check. Singlet? Check. Garbage back to huddle under? Check. We each took over a good amount of floor space just making sure we had all we needed. Then, we kicked the boys out of the room, rented a girly movie, and climbed in our beds around 8:00. We needed all the rest we could get before the big day. It was hard to believe marathon day was almost here…

San Fran Pictures :)

Race report coming soon....

26.2

We did it.

One week to go...

One week from now, I'll (hopefully) be resting up by the Pacific Ocean, wearing my coveted Nike Marathon Finisher shirt and a Tiffany necklace. Marathon day seems so close, and yet a week seems like such a long time to wait to finally accomplish a goal that I've been waiting two years to achieve.

My emotions have been all over the place this week. One minute I'm excited, the next I'm petrified. On Thursday, I met up with Lauren to get my race packet. I opted out of the TEAM run last weekend in favor of my yard sale fundraiser, so I wasn't there for packet pick-up. Just having my packet in hand -- airline ticket to San Francisco, TNT singlet, course information, pasta party tickets, transportation wristband -- it started to become real. It's marathon time. I was thrilled, thinking about the work I'd put in, knowing I could make it. Chicago's 6.5 hour time goal seemed looming for a girl who is built for distance, not speed, but Nike's 8 hour time limit? Piece of cake.

Then I got the bright idea to actually read my race information. As it turns out, Nike only "kind of" has an 8 hour time limit. Walkers who walk at a 15 minute/mile pace or slower get an early start time of 6:30 am. At this time, police escorts ensure that nobody goes faster than 15 min/mile. All early participants must walk. Everybody else starts at 8:00 and has 6.5 hours to finish the course. This sent me into panic mode for a while. Yes, I trained for Chicago last year. Yes, I trained to be off the course in 6.5 hours. But have you looked at the elevation map for the Nike Women's Marathon? When it looks something like this...

...it's nice to be able to say, "It's okay. We have 8 hours to finish this baby." Look at all those hills. Yikes.

I was anxious about what to do, and quite frankly, it's still running around in my mind at times (no pun intended). Do I e-mail Nike and say, "Oops, I wrote a faster time, but I really need those 8 hours"? It sounds like a good idea, except that part about missing the "real" start and having to walk for at least the first hour and a half of the race. That's not exactly the race experience I've been training for. But then, what if we don't do that? What if we say, "We're fine, we can do it," and we can't. What if I need 7 hours? 6 hours and 45 minutes? Look at those hills.

Most of the time, I'm confident that I can do 26.2 in 6:30:00. After Chicago 2007, though, I can't help but have nagging doubts. What if it's hot out? What if it's cold out? What if the hills are worse than everybody says they are? I'm trying my best to push those thoughts out of my mind. I've run. I've trained. And I can do this.

Today I volunteered at the Chicago Marathon. The volunteering part, to be honest, was awful. It involved waking up at 4:10 am, finding out the volunteer jackets wouldn't be there until we got back from our post, being cold, guiding spectators with little to no information to guide them with, and returning to a jacket two sizes larger than requested. Lame. Jon really likes his new Dry-Fit running jacket though.

It was nice to be around the crowds, feel the energy and excitement of race day, and get pumped. I was so energized by everyone around me, and excited to think about my race day. Blanka and Cal finished in a fabulous 5:01:58, and I enjoyed running with my favorite LadyBird for the last 5 or so miles. I'll let her give her own race report, though. :)

What I didn't expect was how emotional I would get on the course. After we finished volunteering, Melissa and I met up with Jon and his dad at mile 13. I immediately started tearing up. Mile 13 is where it started to get tough for me last year... just before the race was cancelled. I remembered walking a lot at that point, seeing my family and just being thrilled that they were there. I remembered my dad saying, "I just decided I'm doing a half marathon today. Want to join me?" I remembered the determination I felt to get to the finish line. And I remembered how crushed I was just a few miles later, being re-routed through the finish line... backwards... having only completed part of the race. I was surprised how difficult it was, at first, to be there again.

I quickly got caught up in the crowds and cheered things like, "go shirtless guy," "go TEAM," and "go (insert name here)." I loved cheering the runners along. We saw Blanka and Cal running away, and decided to go separate ways. Jon and his dad headed for the finish area, mile 26. Melissa and I hopped on the red line to Chinatown and settled ourselves just before the 35k mark. We camped out and cheered for quite some time before we saw Cal and Blanka heading by again. I ran over to the, water in hand, to check in and see how things were going. They were doing great! Cal was really upset (to put it mildly) that a spectator got in his way and he managed to lose his timing chip in the process. $30 and an official time down the drain -- not exactly a dream come true for a first marathon. Reguardless, they were looking tough.

We camped out some more until we saw Barb come by. We ran with her until mile 26... trying to lift spirits, make her laugh, and oh yeah, trying to keep my jeans from falling down. There's a reason nobody goes out to run in jeans. Next time I'm a spectator, I'm wearing running clothes! I also ran into a BP to buy a huge container of salt. :) It was a fun, emotional five miles. And once again, little twinges from last year came back to me. If I thought too much, my mind wandered to, "I never got to run this part last year. So, this is what the end of the race feels like." After all those nagging feelings today... there is no way I'm not running Chicago next year. Then again, maybe I should get through marathon #1 first.

When we got home tonight, Jon and I watched Spirit of the Marathon, a documentary about the 2005 Chicago Marathon. Between the movie and the day's events, I'm feeling pumped for next week. I'm trying to ignore any nagging doubts. My plan is just to hydrate all week, read up on San Francisco, stock up on SportBeans, Body Glide, and Gatorade, relax, and get ready to enjoy my very first marathon finish line.

I can't wait.

HUGE YARD SALE FUNDRAISER

Huge Yard Sale
Saturday noon - 5pm, and Sunday 10am - 4pm.
All proceeds benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Housewares, clothing, furniture, children’s items, sports gear, and so much more…

Highlights include:
· Couch
· Bar stools
· Radio Flyer wagon
· Foosball Table
· Lamps
· TV with remote
· Stereo
· Knock-off designer purses
· Framed prints
· Dry-fit running shirts
· Children’s & adult clothing in all sizes

1522 Crabtree Drive, Crystal Lake.
Less than 2 miles west of Randall Road.

Marathon training simply put...

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