Sunday, May 15, 2016

Flying Pig 2016


I spent most of the week staring at the weather reports. 80% chance of rain the morning of the run. As we got closer and the hourly forecasts became available, it was starting to look like I might only be facing rain in the last hour.

I had also decided because my training had fallen apart so much, that there was no way I could really push myself too hard. I was going to hope for 2:45, or about a 13 minute mile pace. Basically, I was going to treat it like a long run, but hope that the crowd and the adrenaline would allow me to pick up my pace a little and maybe I could beat the 2:45.

I got the the night before and it suddenly looked like there wouldn't be rain after all. So, I put on my favorite tank, my favorite capris, my new Spibelt, and my hat. I brought some Honey Stingers and what I THOUGHT was a fuel gel that I had already tried.

I got down there and realized I wasn't ENTIRELY sure where we started, though I had an idea. It just meant I wasn't sure the best place to park. I settled for a big landmark that I knew I wouldn't forget no matter how exhausted I was. Bonus: I got out of the elevator and there was an actual public restroom and not a port-o-potty!

I started walking down, realizing I was running behind. The first coral started while I was still walking! I never actually found the real entrance to my coral, I just slipped in through the fence. I was probably in the middle of my coral, though I wasn't entirely sure. We started and I immediately realized that while there were some runners, there were so many walkers.

That is what I remember for a lot of the first mile, and for a good portion of the second. Dodging walkers. Sometimes they clumped up and literally blocked the whole street. At one point I just yelled "Coming through!" and pushed through a group. Maybe rude, but I couldn't get through in any other way. I didn't pay much attention to time because I was weaving so much. Later I looked back and saw that despite this I was running a sub-13:00 mile, which is all I could hope for.

It was around 2.5 miles that I realized my feet were wet, and before mile 3 they hurt. I wasn't sure if it was my socks being bunched up and wet or something else. Before much longer I realized it was the pain of blisters. I had been getting blisters on my long runs, but never this early. And they usually didn't hurt until I was done. Maybe this sounds overly dramatic, but every step hurt. And possibly because I was running a little weird due to pain, but my legs started to hurt as well. I recognized the pain as the one I had been feeling when I was adding a new mile to my long run, but this was what, mile 4? Why was I hurting already?!

I didn't realize at the time, but it was humid. I knew it was warmer than it had been for pretty much all of my runs in the past few months, but I didn't process that it was humid and it just made me sticky. The rest of the race was just a haze of making myself not stop. I was passing walkers the whole way, which doesn't seem possible. Shouldn't they have started behind me? When I got to the big climbs, my run was just as fast as their walk. The climb wasn't even that bad, just slow. What was bad was going down.

I never understood why going downhill was a bad thing. I watched the Boston Marathon coverage for the first time ever this year and they talked about it starting on a downhill and that being a challenge. I thought, why? Downhill is easy! Well, it just felt like my swollen feet were sliding further into my shoe and rubbing my blisters. Like the tops of my toes had a lot of pressure. I could feel the purple toenails coming on!

I alternated water and gatorade. I ate my honey stingers one at a time and finished them by mile 7. I tried my gel and realized it was a different one. It was honey stinger and the sugar just burned in my throat, so I had to throw it away. I ate a few pieces of gatorade energy chews they were passing out. I was so hot. It was supposed to be cloudy, but the sun was shining the whole time.

Somehow I finished. I never walked. I saw all the people at the finish line cheering and I got a little teary eyed because I had done it, but none of them were there for me. I got one of those shiny foil blankets right after, which was good because I got cold really fast. And that was when I realized the finish line was not at the starting line, and I had a walk ahead of me. Not one I would mind otherwise, but as much as my feet, calves, and hamstrings hurt, I didn't want to do it. And there was a LONG row of fenced in goodies that was going the OPPOSITE way that I had to go through. I couldn't find a gap in the fence.

So I trudged back to my car slowly. I figured if I sat down I might not be able to get up. All the people around me had someone helping them and I was wishing I had that. But, but the time I got back to my car I felt like I had worked out a lot of the pain in my calves and hamstrings. My feet possibly felt worse. I told my husband on the car ride home I was never doing that again before I lost weight. I was up about 6-7 pounds from when I started training.

I got back and got my official time. I had forgotten to turn off my garmin for a few minutes so I didn't even look. 3:05:06. I was really disappointed. People messaged me to congratulate me and ask how I did. I kept saying not well. I finished, but I should have been able to be faster than that. I wasn't expecting a breakout performance, but 2:45 seemed achievable.

By the afternoon I had decided I was at least doing a 10K in August. Before I went to bed I had decided I needed to do another half marathon.

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