Third Time's A Charm

Warning! This post contains gratuitous details about running! If you don't like runner talk, let me offer this as substitute entertainment.

Let me back up. This story begins almost 4 years ago during the departmental Christmas party. It was then that I discovered that Heather liked to run. We were comparing notes on our half marathon performances and were both talking about how we kind of wanted to try running a marathon. The seed was planted. We subsequently talked Rachel into participating and the three of us signed up for the 2007 Detroit Free Press marathon. We started training together the spring of 2007 and then our jobs and research led us in different directions. I went to China, Rachel went to the Biostation, and Heather went to California. We all *tried* to train, with varying degrees of success. I, for example, had only run twice, both times less than 3 miles. When we re-united in August, we had 2 months to finish training, which amounts to 6 weeks of training and 2 weeks of tapering.

When Detroit rolled around, I have to admit I was feeling pretty confident. Up to that point, I had never met a race I couldn't run, training or no. Of course, I hadn't raced much. But anyway, I headed out with thoughts of Boston prancing through my head. Around mile 8 I started to question my pace. I ate a Gu. Then the race course led us through the most awful, horrible, terrible race obstacle I have ever had the misfortune to meet. The tunnel. It's a mile long. There is no fresh air. It is stifling, and hot. Did I mention it was hot? I started sweating so much in there that I was dripping and soaking wet when I came out the other end. It only went downhill from there. My pace was flagging and I was struggling to keep a finish time of 3:40 in my sights. I think I had another Gu somewhere in there. (By the way, Heather had jumped ahead of me at mile 8 and was comfortably on her way to qualifying. Rachel was somewhere behind me, apparently suffering just as much as I was.) Around mile 17 I had to stop at the porto-potty and BOOM. Calves were solid as rock. I tried to limp along after that, but they just kept freezing up, not to mention I was really tired. I walked and limped to the finish line. 4:30:12. Disaster.

Confidence shattered, I decided to rebound and run another one in spring 2008. I was hoping to build on the my Detroit base (shaky as it was). Alex, ever supportive, signed up for the Cleveland marathon with me, scheduled for mid-May 2008. Training went well--I was able to run with Heather who was training for Boston on the heels of her Detroit qualifier. Then, a few weeks before the race, I got a terrible pain in my shin. So bad I could barely walk. I certainly couldn't run. Stress fracture. So much for Cleveland. At least I still got the shirt and hat.

Then I got pregnant. Flash forward to spring 2010.

Feeling confident about running again (having run two good half marathons the previous year), I decided to try again. I signed up for the North Country trail run and the Grand Rapids marathon. North Country counts as try #2 if you don't count Cleveland (which I don't because I didn't even start the race). You may recall, North Country didn't go great either, thanks to cramping, due in part to warm humid weather and probably due in part to a bad race strategy. 4:10:10. Sigh.

Between North Country and Grand Rapids, I bought a hydration pack (thanks mom and Liv!) and started thinking seriously about how I should run the Grand Rapids race. My thoughts went like this: "Start slow and speed up later? But what if I don't feel great later? Then I missed a big opportunity to pick up time early! But if I push it early, I might be more likely to cramp!" What to do? Although other (shorter) race performances and my training suggested a 7:23 to 7:45 pace, I had never even come close to that in the other two races. Was it too fast? I decided to just do what felt right in the moment--not too hard, not too slow. Easy, right?

Long story long, I ran Grand Rapids on Sunday and it went pretty well. I didn't cramp. I drained all 70 ounces of my hydration pack in 21 miles. I ate 6 Gu (I think) and I took several Endurolytes (electrolyte replacement pills), the last two without water. Ick. My Garmin watch tells me I ran the first 12 miles at a 7:28 pace. Then I slowed to a 7:43 for the next 6. Then at mile 18 I started the "death march" and couldn't seem to go faster than an 8:03. But I ran the whole thing and I qualified for Boston. 3:22:05.

Here's a photo of me with half my support crew at the finish line. More photos can be found on facebook.


Now that, after 3 years, I have finally RUN a marathon, I can start thinking about how to tweak my training for Boston so that I don't have to slow down to an 8:03 pace for the last 8 miles!

Oh, and most importantly, I am now officially the fastest woman Alex has ever dated.

I'll end with a few statistics (i.e. runner's crack):

Since the 3rd of May I have run ~934 miles in training.
At ~8 minute miles, that's 5 days spent running.
I was 2nd in my age group.
I was 19th out of 661 females (top 3%).
I was 190th out of 1,654 people (top 12%).
If I ran a 3:22:05 in the 2010 Boston Marathon I would finish in the top 7% for females (644th place) and the top 23% overall (5,011th place).
The average finishing time for women was 4:23:22.
The average finishing time for men was 3:55:01.
Heather ran Portland marathon 8 minutes and 51 seconds faster than me.