Marathon.

It has taken me a few days to process everything that happened over the weekend. I am alternately elated with myself for finishing a marathon, and disappointed in myself for not having a better race. It was a fun weekend, and I'm so glad I did it, but I have definitely seen firsthand the kind of punishment that the 26.2 can dish out.

I've struggled with how to respond to seemingly innocent questions like, "How was the race??!" and "How did you do?!?" In my mind, there is no simple answer, no pat reply. I find myself squeaking out, "I finished," and then going on to try and explain how the race went as people's eyes slowly glaze over, their smiles start to fade, their heads nodding but not really comprehending what the heck I'm talking about. I stop myself and just say again, "I finished." They don't want the details, but how does one possibly describe 26.2 miles of ups and downs, agony and ecstatic, dejection and elation into a sound bite reply?

The start was chaotic. There were 39,000 runners (although I heard somewhere there might've been as many as 44,000) packed like sardines into 39 corrals in Balboa Park. The gun went off at 6:15, but my group didn't hit the start line until almost 7am. I was SUPER excited, well hydrated, well pottied (three times through the portapotty line before I queued up!), well nourished with my regular pre-long run breakfast...I was READY! Crossing the start line was exhilirating and terrifying at the same time.

Miles 1 through 8 were fantastic. I felt great, and had to keep holding my pace in check. Passing through mile 5 we ran through Petco Park, where the jumbotron screamed in bigger than life letters, "The San Diego Padres congratulate you on your first 5 miles!" That was cool, and got me excited all over again. We ran on through downtown and back to Balboa park. I had fallen into a great pace and I felt like I was "in the zone." And then....the 163. We ran on the 163 freeway from about miles 9 to 12.5. This is where things started to unravel for me.

The marine layer that had hung around all day the previous day decided to burn off early on race morning, so by about 7am when I started, it was already gone. The humidity was pretty intense. So much so that at mile 6, I kept feeling something dripping on my back. I reached up and literally wrung sweat from my ponytail. Ugh. By the time I hit the freeway miles, it was hotter, more humid, and on the freeway asphalt with NO shade, beginning to get brutal. The freeway was uphill, which I had trained for and wouldn't have been so bad, except the camber was extreme. (Camber is the way a road is arched or angled in order for water to drain off and not pool in the middle of the street.) By mile 10, my hip was hurting from the angle and I was getting side of foot blisters from my feet repeatedly hitting the sides of my shoes instead of the bottom. I walked mile 11 to 12.5 until we got off the freeway because I was beginning to be in severe pain. I stopped at a med tent just after that to be sure I hadn't REALLY hurt something. They iced me and gave me some muscle rub and sent me back on my way.

I pushed through to the half marathon mark and was still feeling okay about my time, but I was hurting and mentally out of sorts, frustrated that I had been thrown off so early on in the race. My pace became slower and slower until I realized I could be walking and not be MUCH slower, so I decided to walk again for a little while and see if my hip pain subsided. I don't remember much about miles 14-18. I know that I was running as much as I could with some walking breaks to rest my hip. I remember seeing my Coach, who encouraged me and helped me remember that I was going to finish and that was all that mattered. I remember an adorable little boy on the side of the road, not much older than my youngest son, dressed up as Elvis and playing an inflatable guitar while screaming, "You guys ROCK!" I remember wanting to hug the sweet elderly lady passing out orange slices and bits of wisdom like, "Just keep putting one foot in front of the other!" I remember somewhere in there I stopped at a med tent again, for more ice on the hip, which was continuing to ache and throb relentlessly. When I thought I was ready to move on, I couldn't get up out of the chair they'd sat me down in and had to be helped. Someone looked me in the eye and said, "Do you want to continue?" I remember nodding and numbly moving on, thankful to be upright again.

About halfway into mile 18, I remember saying a prayer, and telling God the last nine miles were in his hands because I was getting really scared I wouldn't make it. I have never wanted to quit something SO BADLY at that point, but I was not going to allow myself to give up. I hurt. A lot. I was hot. I was frustrated with myself. I really wanted to just throw up my hands and say, "It's not my day, I'm out. Ya'll have fun!" But somehow my feet kept going. I jogged along. As we ran along Mission Bay, I gave myself a stern talking to. "You have a little more left, you know you do. Pull it out and suck it up, buttercup!" Suck it up buttercup became my mantra, and I said it to myself over and over.

Miles 21 to 25 were a lap around "Fiesta Island." It was not, as it's name would imply, a Fiesta. Someone said the city of San Diego used to use the island as a place to dump human waste. It was definitely a wasteland. It seemed barren and endless, and with the breeze that had kicked up over the bay, it filled our eyes and mouths with blowing sand. It was not a party. Thankfully, I met up with another Team in Training member from Virginia. She and I talked (okay grunted and grimaced a lot and talked some) through mile 24. It was a godsend to have someone to suffer with, to talk to and to take my mind off my hip and my frustration. We were just two strangers with a common goal, pulling each other through a rough spot.

Approaching 25, my new BFF needed to stop to clear her shoe of a rock she'd picked up. I thought if I stopped I might not want to start again, so we said our goodbyes and I kept dragging myself forward. Now, in addition to my right hip screaming at me, my left knee was starting to really hurt. I'd been trying to compensate for my hip and evidently my knee was now in rebellion. I imagine I looked like Quasimodo minus the hump as I limp/shuffled my feet along, arms pumping as I willed them to make my feet keep going. I was not going to finish like this. I took a deep breath and forced myself into a better form, in spite of the protests of my body. The finish line was coming into sight and I knew I was almost done. I could stop soon, and if I could just run, really RUN the last mile the stopping part would come much faster.

Miraculously, my pace picked up. It hurt so badly, but I wanted to finish strong. I was almost through mile 26 when out of nowhere my assistant coach popped up. He wondered if I was okay. I must've looked awful. (In fact, he told me later I DID look awful, but he wasn't about to tell me that at that moment!) I remember telling him I was dying. He said, "You are SO close! You are almost there!" I wanted to hug him for telling me that. Those were the most wonderful words I could've imagined hearing.

As I came down the last .1 stretch, both sides of the course were lined up many people deep with people, cheering, screaming, yelling my name. (It is amazingly effective to put your name on your shirt. You wouldn't believe how much it helps when people cheer for you by name!) I don't know who yelled it, from which side of me, but a woman's voice rang out, "GO JANA!! You're a MARATHONER! You're a MARATHONER!" when I was just steps away from the finish line. I can still hear those words in my head even now. As I crossed the finish, my intention was to throw both my arms up in my "signature" finish line pose, but I found that I only had the energy to get one arm up there. I was done. It took me 6 hours and 15 minutes. A far cry from the 5:30 I was hoping for. Still, done.

I completed 26.2 miles. Do I need to explain the highs and lows, the pain and frustration, the joy and relief when people ask me how the race went? Maybe I don't. Maybe I just need to resist the urge to try and describe it all. Maybe I just need to smile and say, "It went fantastic. I finished!"

Why I hate the taper

You'd think tapering would be a good thing. Tapering is when you start backing off your higher mileage running in the few weeks before a race, in order to rest your body in preparation for the big day. You'd think after the kind of mileage I've been putting in, I would be rejoicing about tapering. Right? Wrong. I hate tapering. In these last days prior to Sunday, I am antsy, jittery, nervous, pacing, grumpy, stressed...and I can't run it off. I have become really dependent on running as my time to process, plan, think, pray, meditate and just breath when the day to day stress of life starts to wear on me. And now, when I really WANT to be running off all this excess energy, nerves and anxiety, I'm not supposed to! It's maddening to me! It probably makes me pretty annoying to be around, too. I can't sit still, I'm having trouble focusing, and I keep making lists. I've probably made 15 different lists, just today. To-do for now, to-do for tomorrow, to pack, to mail, to buy, errands for me, errands for others, to-do for others....heck, I am annoying myself!!! Aaaaaaaaargh! I need to run!! Who could possibly ever imagined that I would one day desperately desire to go running???

On another note, I am starting to pack and plan (and make lists, don't forget the lists!!!) for this weekend. I'm heading to the Expo in San Diego on Saturday to pick up my bib and packet. I will be ready to run. I will be dying to run. And as much as I dislike it, I can thank my taper for that.

In closing, I'd just like to say that Taper Madness is a real disease. http://blog.runnerslounge.com/2008/09/symptoms-and-tr.html (thank you to these bloggers for this hysterical and very true post!)

The countdown is ON!

Yesterday I did my last "long" training run before race day. Ten miles seemed like a short run...but 26.2 seems like an awfully long way. I'm ready, I've trained, I know I can do it, but today I have begun my pre-race wrestle with self-doubt. This is typical "me" and always happens to me in the week or so before race day. I start having ridiculous anxiety about crazy things like...what if I need a change of socks at mile 5?? What if I forget something?? What if I'm too slow and the SAG car picks me up??? (Support And Gear vehicles will pick up runners that are too slow to meet the course time limit, lagging or injured.) Then the big fears start creeping in. What if I can't do it??? What if it's too much for me??? What if I DNF?!?!? (That's race code for Did Not Finish, and something no runner ever really wants next to their name on the results list.)

Now is the time I have to sit back, stop pacing the floor (because I'm tapering down my runs, and I can't work off the anxiety running!) and just trust my training. I KNOW I can do this. I will do this. I am strong. I am ready. Watch out San Diego. I'm going to ROCK the Rock 'n Roll!!!

Back on track!

Just a short post tonight to let everyone know I seem to be back on track. The new shoes have me feeling MUCH better. No more hip pain!! I've put about 17 miles on them this week so far and everything is feeling good again. Tomorrow is a short (ha!!) 10-miler and I'm feeling confident that it'll go just fine! I've learned a really important lesson about paying more attention to the shape my shoes are in. From now on, anything over 300 miles and I have to start checking the treads and wear, and really listening to my body. My husband wants me to start looking for a shoe sponsor because I'm wearing them down so fast now. Any takers??

Shoes Blues, Part Deux

Wow. So I got my new Mizunos. I didn't think my old ones really seemed THAT worn down from the outside, but I took a look at the soles of the new vs the old. The old ones have places that are so worn down, I'm practically running on the cushion instead of the tread. I took some pictures but I'm not sure they do the issue justice. Still, have a look.

The first shot shows the drastic wear down of the heel tread on the sole of the right shoe (the side where my hip hurts!) The interior edge of the wedge is almost completely gone. I've worn it down to the cushion area, and you can see that the cushion (white) portion has begun to start wearing down, too. The photo beside it is the NEW shoe, same location.

This is the same spot, but a different angle. Here you can see the tread is completely worn down smooth on the old shoe. I had NO idea it was this worn down until I compared it with the new shoes.

There were several other spots that seemed rather shocking to me when I closely examined both old and new shoes, but these were the most easy to see in photographs. Don't overestimate the life of your shoes, people! Tomorrow's run will be really telling. I'm anxious to see if I can tell a big difference.

Shoes Blues

I've read in a ton of places that a big sign that your running shoes are blown out (broken down, worn, crushed, whatever you want to call it) is that you start to hurt in places where you've never hurt before. I know this, and I also know that my "new" Mizunos I got for Valentine's Day have over 375 miles on them. Most running shoes are good for anywhere between 300-500 miles...depending on a ton of factors. Weekly mileage, your weight, your running style, the surfaces you run on, sooooo many things can contribute to your shoes wearing down, and it's different for everyone. The kicker is, the shoes can still LOOK fine, so it can be hard to tell when they are cooked enough that you shouldn't run in them anymore.

Anyway, I always track the mileage on my shoes, so I can get an idea of what life may (or may not) be left in them. My Nikes gave me easily close to 400 miles, so I assumed my Mizuno wear would be about the same. I figured I still had some good wear in them. But three weeks ago is when my hip started to hurt, and though it felt okay during my (mostly flat!) 20 mile, it was pretty sore afterward. Last Saturday we had 12 miles on the schedule, and I thought it would be an easy cutback. The course was much hillier than the 20 miler was, but it was a much shorter distance. However, instead of the easy run I was banking on, it was terrible. My hip started to ache less than 2 miles in, and the hills doubled the intensity of the discomfort. It wasn't a stabbing pain like I had torn something or broken something, but it was a constant aching throb. Kind of like one of those headaches that doesn't incapacitate you, it just makes you feel crummy and grumpy. It was annoying and uncomfortable.

I had to take quite a few walking breaks, just to ease up on the hip. My coach suggested I consider turning around early, but of course I was too stubborn to take his advice. I am the first one to tell someone else that rest and ice are better than pushing a potential injury, but do as I say and not as I do!!! I managed to get all the way through the run, even pushing my pace a bit for the last few miles, but when I stopped, I was hurting.

As I began to try and unravel what had changed to cause the problem in the first place, I finally thought of what I SHOULD have considered first. My shoes were probably done. I did a little research and found that many other runners experienced the lighter weight Mizunos breaking down a bit faster than their slightly heavier competitors. Many reviewers of the shoes said they felt they got about 350 miles out of them. Since mine are at 375, I considered that this might be a big part of my trouble. I cut my scheduled mileage for today from 8 to just over 6, and ran in my old Nikes just to see if the difference in shoes was noticeable.  It was. The hip was still sore, but nowhere near as achy and throbbing during today's run as it was on Saturday. Afterwards the recovery has been noticeably better, too. Time to break out the NEW new shoes!

The moral of my story is, TRACK your shoe mileage, and even when you do, consider the condition of your shoes FIRST when you get out-of-the-blue pain. I'm cutting back miles a bit more than my taper calls for this week in order to continue to rest and recuperate the hip. Lots of ice and massage, too. Hoping a fresh pair of Mizunos will help put this behind me. Luckily I still have two weeks to get them broken in and race ready!!!

Warning: Gross Stuff Ahead

There are some things about running that you just don't find out about until you get deep into your first long runs. Gross stuff. Toenails fall off and toes bleed. Everything chafes. Sweat dries and leaves cystals that feel like you've been sandblasted, furthering the chafing problem. Snot rockets are pretty much a necessity. And when you run for a long time, blood is diverted from your digestive system to your muscles, which can cause extremely nasty lower intestinal upset. I'm going to tackle a few of these icky beasts, so those with weak stomachs might want to skip this post.

First, toenails. I used to have lovely pedicured toenails. I would get them painted in bright colors, with decorative flowers and other cute things adorning them. Heading into my second year of running, I now paint my own toenails in deep, dark shades of black, purple and red to hide the fact that underneath the polish, the nails actually ARE black, purple or red. Two toenails have fallen off completely, so I just paint the nail beds so they LOOK like toenails are there. And yes, I do have good shoes, they were professionally fit, my socks are in decent shape...it just seems to be a fact of life for me that a couple of my toenails do not like it when I run. So they quite often choose to fall off. I haven't had a pedicure in ages. I'm too mortified to go in and have them see what's left of my nails. Gross. One toe in particular is now referred to by my family as the "Zombie Toe," because it looks so scary.

Then there's the chafing issue. When I first started running, I heard about men whose nipples would bleed due to their shirts rubbing against them on a run. I thought this was horrific and surely only happened to people who ran hundreds of miles at a time. I have since learned that not only is that extremely commonplace, almost everyone I know that runs has a story about chafing in some horrible place at some point during their running lives. Myself included. Suffice it to say that I now buy and use both Body Glide and Vaseline and I'm not afraid to use it. I once put my housekey in the pocket of my shorts during a long run of about 10 miles. I came home and realized blood was dripping down the side of my leg, because the key had rubbed my hip completely raw. On my 20 mile run, I wore a newer but exactly-the-same-style-as-I've-always- worn sports bra. It still had a tag on the back with wash instructions, size, etc. I didn't think to tear it out. While I put body glide all around where the bra band goes, I couldn't reach the middle of my back. Right where the tag was, apparently. I still have a giant scab where it rubbed me to bleeding. And absolutely do not underestimate the pain that chafing can cause when you are rinsing sweat off yourself in the shower. Salt + raw, open wound = OW. Ick.

Next up, snot. It happens. Especially if you're running early in the morning and it's cool out. Your nose will run. I used to carry tissues in my pocket or in my belt and try to stop and blow my nose on the run. Problems with this include sweaty hands and face and tissues that stick to the sweat as well as the issue of where to put the nasty tissue after you're done. Then I started wearing gloves on colder mornings and began just wiping my nose with the gloves. (Yes, I washed the gloves post-run, and no, don't ever shake my hand if I'm running in gloves.) One day a friend of mine said, "You just have to let it go and learn how to shoot a snot rocket." WHAT? EW!? Also known as a "farmer's blow", you pinch one nostril shut and blow out the other one, preferably NOT into anyone who might be behind you. Blech!!! But it does keep the gloves a little cleaner. This tip is handy for beginner runners running their first races, too. Watch out for snot rockets if it's a cool day. I always try to check behind me before I do it, but some people just aren't that polite.

I will leave the digestive runs that often happen to runners for another day, but I'll leave you with this warning. If there are 47 port-a-potties with a line on race day and 3 with no line, just wait in the line. There's likely a reason those 3 remain empty...

All this and I still run. Toenail-less, chafed and snotty, I run on. Call me crazy.