marathon

From the Archives: 2018 Race #1: Road2Hope Hamilton Marathon, Hamilton, ON

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  • Date: November 4, 2018
  • Gun Time: 4:05:51
  • Chip Time: 4:05:27
  • Placing Overall: 465th out of 765
  • Placing in Age Group: 53rd out of 78 (M40-44)
  • Theme Song: “Never Going Back Again“, Fleetwood Mac

Well, they say that when you run your first marathon, your goal should be simply to finish. So, I guess I did that. Barely.

It’s time to talk about the, um, difficult time that I had when I finally, after almost 4 years of trying, laced ’em up and set out to do 26.2. As I alluded to before, I had some difficulties with training for this race, and ended up at the start line undertrained. Let me say first of all that I do NOT recommend this. In retrospect, I should have bailed and done the half. I just couldn’t face doing that again. So, I found myself nervously anticipating the start gun on a very cool but clear morning at a pavilion in the boonies outside the city, hanging with my friend and training partner Michael. Conditions looked to be pretty good – temperature around freezing, sunny, and not a whole lot of wind.

Now, the Hamilton Marathon bills itself as the #1 Boston Marathon qualifier in Canada, for the primary reason that it starts up on a higher elevation plateau above Lake Ontario and descends to the lake shore, which makes the run a net downhill. (Apparently this will no longer be the case as of this year’s race, as they’ve changed the route from a point-to-point to a loop.) I can tell you that there is a relatively long downhill section, run on Hamilton’s Red Hill Expressway, but the race does not really feel like a downhill. At the time, though, I felt like I’d be able to handle the race even on my abbreviated training schedule, and I had caffeinated and non-caffeinated gels on board for my run, as well as doing the usual nipple taping, vaseline-ing, and all that stuff.

So, I was targeting a 3:45 finish as we set off, and at first things were OK. I was rolling along at about a 5:30/km pace along the dirt roads and past the farmers’ fields outside the city. I used my first gel at about mile 6, with the plan to save the caffeinated ones for an extra kick later in the race. The critical mistake, though, was not bringing additional electrolytes. I didn’t think I would need them as it was quite cool out and I didn’t expect to lose a lot. How wrong I was.

So, things seemed to be going according to plan as I hit the 10K mark at around 56 minutes and the half-marathon mark at about 1:50. This was the point at which the course started to turn downhill to the lake. Good, I thought – I can just coast downhill and have good momentum heading into the last, flat 12K of the race. But there was a problem. Actually, a couple of them. First, a stiff wind was blowing in our faces coming off the lake, so not a lot was really gained by me by the downhill. And also, I was starting to get tired already. It was clear that the lack of training was starting to take its toll. But, I soldiered on gamely, and got to the bottom of the hill and the 30K mark still within reach of my 3:45 goal.

That’s when things started to get gnarly.

There were a couple of small uphill rises and we headed over a bridge, and I was finding that my legs were pretty much jelly. I could tell I was starting to slow down considerably, and a lot of people were starting to pass me. This was probably me starting to hit the wall, but things got worse. In the sun, I had lost more fluids and electrolytes than I thought, and the cramping that I had with my last long training run (outlined in my last post) was back with a vengeance. And I still had 12K to go. I’m not talking about little cramps here. This was full on seizure of my quads that made me look like I was trying to run on the world’s smallest pair of stilts. So, I was forced to run 200-300 meters, cramp, stop, walk it off for 3-4 minutes, then repeat.

For over an hour.

I tried to take some water at a water station, but it didn’t really help, as the problem was obviously sodium/potassium loss. I also wanted to stop about 50 times. But I didn’t. I was seeing my odds of a sub-4:00 marathon slowly slipping away, but I was still holding out hope (as I mentioned, at the time I didn’t run with a timing device, so I wasn’t sure). The stretch coming back along the lake seemed brutally interminable, and I got passed by a guy running in a giant bunny costume, for fuck’s sake. I could see as I approached the finish line I wasn’t going to get under 4 hours, but I performed with enough grit that I wasn’t that far over, which I guess is something, and I was faster than the average time posted by male US runners in the marathon the previous year (4:18) so I guess that’s something. But I was still pretty disappointed.

They had cups of chicken soup being offered at the finish line and I think I guzzled about 12 to put the sodium back. The cramps were still seizing up my legs and I could not sit down. Which was a problem, since I had to drive 40 minutes home. I managed to massage my legs to the point where I could at least get in my car, but every attempt to press the pedals sent me into spasms of pain. I actually called my brother and told him I might need an emergency pickup, but at some point things subsided enough for me to be able to drive. The next problem, it transpired, was getting home and realizing… I couldn’t get out of the car. I eventually solved this by sort of rolling out the door, getting to my hands and knees, and crawling into my house.

I’ll spare you the gory details of the next couple of days, but suffice it to say that I was really worried that I had rhabdomyolysis (I didn’t) and I couldn’t climb the stairs to my bedroom, so I had to sleep on the couch. Overall, it was a pretty miserable experience, and I doubt I’ll ever do it again. It was no doubt the hardest bucket list item I’ll ever do, but it’s done. I’m happy to stick to the shorter races which I actually find fun, and not have to do a training regimen that’s like having another part-time job. Kudos to you all who do this on a regular basis, but I suspect you are built differently from me. I’ll leave it to you.

Well, let’s fire this up again.

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A lot, and I mean a LOT, has happened in the last year and a half. I don’t even know where to start.

The initial idea behind this blog was to document my putative quest to run the Great Lakes Marathon Series. While a laudable goal, this turned out to be, ahh, not exactly practical, mostly because I don’t seem to be built to handle a marathon. I tried multiple times to train for one, and every time I ended up hurt, and it made me hate running for awhile. My goal was revised in 2018 to just run one marathon and get it off the bucket list.

Well, guess what? I did it. But it didn’t go at all like I had planned it.

I should mention here that I had a marriage fall apart last spring. It was difficult, as these things tend to be. In the immediate aftermath, I decided that I needed something to occupy my time and thoughts; something I could cling to as a goal to keep myself grounded, and to channel all of the negative things I was feeling into some sort of positive outcome. Marathon training seemed to fit the bill, and in order to force myself to stick with it I headed off to the local Running Room and joined a training group.

This worked. For a while, anyway.

Unfortunately, I started having ankle and calf problems about two-thirds of the way through training. This led to me eventually having to take a month off training, and although I was able to get a few 20+ mile long runs in, I wasn’t ready. Plus, I was still nicked up with little niggling things, pretty much all the time. I grew to hate having to go down a flight of stairs, because I couldn’t do it without pain in various parts of my legs. Oh, and there was the long training run I did where I ended up severely dehydrated and could not drive home… but more about that later.

Anyway, training was miserable and so was the race (report to follow where I deconstruct the experience in all its hideousness) and so was my life, pretty much. I haven’t been able to bring myself to write about all this until now. Good news is, I’m a lot better, and I have some new plans, including a seven continents half-marathon series that I will be doing in the next few years. One foot in front of the other, as they say.

My plans for 2016, or, wherefore art thou, marathon?

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Well, it’s December here, and I gotta say that we’ve been pretty lucky with running weather as the temperatures for the most part have been several degrees above the norm. I went out and did a 44 minute 10K tempo run today in lovely 40 degree weather with calm winds and it felt great. This isn’t going to last forever, though, and it got me thinking about my race schedule for next year. I’ve got a few things figured out, but I also have a few questions. It’s getting somewhat difficult to work the weekend races in with my wife working 20 weekends a year and no one to watch the kids. Here’s what I know for sure.

  1. My next race is going to be in Florida in February, and it’s going to be in the Florida Everglades. Despite the fact that my dad’s going to be in Central Florida when I visit him, he expressed interest in making the 3 hour trip down to Fakahatchee Strand State Park so that I could do the 25K race that is part of the Everglades Ultras series in late February. This looks super cool, though I may be dodging some gators along the way, and we’ll see if El Nino decides to drench us with rain.
  2. I need a March race, and it’s not gonna be in Costa Rica. We’re heading down to Central America in early March, and I was really hoping to do the 10K race that was part of the Arenal Ultramarathon Series. Unfortunately, we are heading back that weekend and it’s just not going to work. There’s not a lot of choice when it comes to March races in Ontario. In fact, there’s none. Not sure what I’m gonna do about that yet.
  3. I’m going to do another three half-marathon-ish races in 2016. Right now I’ve got the Everglades 25K and the Buffalo Half as targets. I have to pick one out for the fall so that will require some thought. I’d love to travel to one, but have you seen the Canadian Peso’s exchange rate recently? Geesh.
  4. I’m definitely going to do the Kitchener Kids for Cancer Run again. Not only is it a good cause, but it’s now part of the Run Waterloo series, which I was really thrilled to see. They have a 10K this year as well.
  5. There will be another 12 competitive races in the plans for 2016. Don’t know how it’s going to break down yet, but it’s happening.

Here’s what I don’t know for sure (running schedule wise, I mean – there’s lots I don’t know about everything):

  1. Will there be a marathon in 2016? Man, I don’t know. Maybe. I’m gonna see how things go with the spring races. I think if it does happen, it will almost certainly be the last scheduled race in my area, Hamilton Road2Hope.
  2. Would the mystery race please sign in? There’s some talk about a trail race this spring here in Cambridge which sounds pretty killer. Have to see if it will work in my schedule, and indeed if it’s actually going to happen.
  3. Can I finally break the 20 minute barrier in the 5K? Hope so. I just started a new training regimen that’s a lot more formal. We’ll see if it works.
  4. Is this plan to do a series of races in the US National Parks viable? More on this later, but I really like the idea. Plus the family are all keen hikers. It may not be viable, because, Canadian Peso.

Anyway, I’m excited. Hope everyone has a great 2016.

A few things I learned in my failed marathon training attempt.

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There’s a lot of stuff they don’t tell you as a neophyte would-be marathon runner.

I think I was a bit overconfident in trying to feel my way through the process. Somehow, I was under the impression that I could find an online plan, blindly follow it, and everything would work out. That clearly didn’t turn out to be the case at all. Things would probably have gone better if I had just tried to seek out some advice from friends of mine, and there are a few, who are veteran marathoners. Pride cometh before a fall, as they say.

So, for this post, I thought I’d look back and try to come up with some clear lessons learned, in order to help myself and maybe anyone else who reads this.

Here we go:

1. Marathon plans involving rigid running schedules and a specific number of miles don’t work for me.

break 4 or bust runners world

I felt like absolute shit after I ran my first 40-mile week, and I got hurt shortly after that. In addition to the problems with actually fitting all of the mileage into my schedule, I never felt like there was enough time for me to recover in between runs. The other thing I noticed was that it TOTALLY sucked all the enjoyment out of running for me. It really made me wonder about the concept of “junk miles”. A lot of the training I was doing was probably low quality miles where I was just slogging through and I don’t think it was helping me.

2. I was doing my training runs way too goddamn fast.

speedometer-going-too-fast-11058210

The run I got hurt on was an 18 miler that I tried to do at an 8:15/mile pace because I struggle with running slow enough on long runs. This was a theme in training.

3. Going from being basically a couch potato to being a sub 4:00 marathoner in 6 months is probably not going to work for most people (it didn’t for me).

shutterstock-couch-potato

Not me. But you get the idea.

I mean, holy crap. I read that sentence above again and I can’t believe I was so naive. I was really buoyed by some encouraging early results when I made the commitment to do a dozen races this year, but I was ignoring the clear fact that a marathon is so far removed from even the 1:40 half marathon I ran in February that it might as well be another sport. Building a base on which I could work toward the marathon should have been the priority, and it wasn’t. As a result, the overuse injuries killed me. The good news is, I have that base now.

4. I probably don’t need to run all that much to be successful, as long as I put in quality work.

overtraining

Yeah. This is how I felt sometimes.

I’m not saying I can do a marathon on 20 mile weeks. But consider this: I ran three half marathons this year. My fastest time came when I was “undertrained” and running… uh… 20 mile weeks. To be fair, I did throw runs of 8, 10, and 12 miles in there. The key was I did all my mileage at or near half marathon pace and added speedwork every couple of weeks. Yes, I did feel the lack of work in the second half of the race in Toronto and given my 10K split I should have been faster. But feeling great physically going in really helped.

5. I’m wayyyyyy faster at the shorter distances.

ATANARJUATlg

Again not me. This is from the film “The Fast Runner”, which, apparently, is about a fast runner. I don’t run naked over ice floes. Usually.

My half marathon PR equates to a 21:17 5K, apparently. My real 5K time is almost down to 20:00 flat. I will continue to do a mix of distances, but my podium finishes in the 5K races have me thinking about leaning a little more toward these as opposed to the longer ones.

6. Half marathons are great, people are still impressed when you say you run them, and you can still, like, do stuff with the rest of the day after you finish one.

sYqNmBL

Yeah, we know. You a bad bad man.

 

I gotta say the marathoners I saw in Cleveland did not look like they were doing well after finishing. Not that I am disparaging the marathon. I still want to run one. But, if your goal is to seem like a badass, you can probably get away with the shorter distance as long as your friends aren’t ultramarathoners or something.

7. On balance, I really prefer running in Florida in the winter.

ATANARJUATlg

Hey, what do you know. I can reuse the photo.

 

Because, you know, genital nip and stuff. I also ran in San Francisco when I was there which was pleasant weather wise but, wow. Hills.

8. Don’t say you’re going to run a marathon for charity when it’s your first time.

charity scams

Yeesh. This was dumb. It’s pretty tough to admit to a bunch of people that have given you money that you can’t physically do the race. They were understanding. But still, don’t do it.

9. I’m still doing the damn marathon. But next time I’m gonna do it right.

It might not be next year, or the year after. But it is going to happen. Mark it down.