Marathon madness: story of a first (and last?) time marathoner
Written after the 2013 Blackmores Sydney marathon, when I can barely hobble from one room to the next
After Pheidippides ran the first marathon, just to deliver his one word message ("Nike", or "Victory"), he fell over and died. People seem to forget this crucial part of the story. His countrymen thought "what a great idea –- let's turn that into a race" and so the marathon was born. In the first modern Olympics the event had only nine finishers, and eight were Greeks.
Now of course, there are thousands of marathons every year across the world (more than 700 this year in North America alone) and most of the podia are graced by those with African heritage. In Sydney yesterday, the Blackmores marathon was won by an Ethiopian woman and a Kenyan man.
But while the elite have their race, the rest of us, particularly those on our first marathon, are in our own battle. Perhaps a race against the clock we have set for ourselves, but more a battle against the dark, negative forces deep within us, that beg us to lie down and stop, and question why we thought we could do this anyway.
Anyone can run a marathon
One of my favourite magazines in the world is the US's OUTSIDE magazine, (it has the tagline "live bravely") and a few years ago I found an article that I've dubbed "marathon running for the time poor". It was actually titled "Yes, you can run the New York City marathon", but the premise was this: if you have general fitness, it doesn't take that much more training to do a marathon. The emphasis was on a lot of cross-training to help protect your legs, joints, knees, and every other part of the anatomy that is damaged by long-distance running. It recommended six exercise sessions a week, three of which should be running. But what caught me was that the distances, on the whole, weren't that big (and, listed in miles, they seemed even shorter). In short, my short runs (then 30-45 mins) needed to jump up to about an hour, and my long runs (then 60-75 mins) needed to increase to about 1.5 hours. Not a big ask at all, or imposition of time. And about four weeks before the race, you need to do a very big run (about 32km). It looked achievable and manageable in a busy work/life schedule, particularly when I worked out I could run 12km each way to and from my part-time work .
I tried a couple of times to get ready for a marathon, but did my Achilles one year (those Greeks featuring again) and then got quite ill with a lung infection another year. This time, this year, however, I felt ready to go, so enrolled about five weeks before the event.
After all, I really enjoyed a half marathon a couple of years ago, and a full marathon must be twice as fun, right?
The start
The strangest thing in training is the last couple of weeks, and particularly the last week, when you "taper off" your running. The theory is to give your legs a break before the big day, but it feels weird after doing a lot of kilometres in the weeks leading up to the event, to suddenly be running a maximum of 6km.
Still, we arrived at a way-too-early time of the morning (tip to future marathon event planners - what about an event for us night owls? i.e, one that starts at about 8pm?) under the Harbour Bridge for the tight Sydney circuit. I sort of wish I had a chance to do the Sydney Olympic marathon course from the year 2000, as it covered a lot of ground, finishing in Homebush - you'd actually feel like you had run a long way. But I guess too many roads have to be closed for that course, so instead the Blackmores course has a lot of doubling back in and around Sydney, picking up such Sydney icons as Lady Macquaries Chair, St Marys Cathedral, Hyde Park, Oxford St, Sydney Football Stadium, Centennial Park, Randwick Racecourse, Harbour Bridge, the Rocks, Darling Harbour, Circular Quay and the Opera House.
So we stood at the start line, and a woman next to me had goose bumps in the cool air.
One runner gave me a great summary before we started. "A marathon is like a 20-mile warm up to a six-mile race." Another told me about two years ago when the temperature topped 30°C, and the last six kays was covered in technicoloured vomit, and sprawled runners receiving attention that you had to step over if you wanted to finish. It didn't bode well. He said simply: "the first 35km is fun".
I asked one nearby runner, who was starting his ninth marathon, if he had any advice. "Don't go out too fast."
What's it like?
I hadn't expected to be so emotional. At the 10km mark, as a woman passed her husband and young child, calling "go mummy, go mummy, we're proud of you" I held back a little tear. At the 25km mark, an older man, perhaps Russian, was given drinks, food and encouragement by his wife, and I found that moving too.
Surprisingly, although I have been running in my race shoes for weeks, I started to feel a blister on one toe at the 12km mark, it grew bigger than the toe itself, but didn't pop. A piece of gravel got stuck to my shoe on the Harbour Bridge and it bugged me for the next 10km as I could hear it "click, click, click on the bitumen". At 15km my right knee was hurting way more than it should have, and at one point my right leg completely gave way, but somehow I didn't plummet to the ground. But 10km later I couldn't feel my right knee anymore, and had other issues. Still, my time was going really well – better than expected, and I was still running ahead of the 3.15 time marker (these poor guys run the whole race with a stick taped to their back and a time on it). They slipped past me though when I stopped for a quick toilet break in Centennial Park.
Because I struggle to drink from an open cup while running (all my training was with bottles, not open cups) I decided before the race to stop at selected drink stations, walk for 30 seconds, and have two cups, then start running again. I figured it was more important to keep the fluid intake than to save the extra seconds. What I didn't bargain on was that each time it became harder and harder to start running again. By the end it was agony to go from a walk to a run and took me about a minute to convince myself to do it.
After the 20km mark, we were offered Gu gels at some drink stations. These are highly concentrated bursts of sugar, in a suckable gel form. It's a bit like drinking cordial straight. I had trained with them a couple of times, and knew that the flavour was really important (some are quite foul). After my first gel, an espresso flavoured one, I nearly threw up - could feel the gag reflex, and just held it in. I took a second gel 7km later and almost threw up again. I gave up on them after that.
Up to 33km, my time was very good and the pain was manageable. After that, it became a slog. They used to talk about "The wall" when marathon runners would run out of carbohydrates in their body, and so in order to fuel the activity, the body starts breaking down proteins, fats or anything else – sort of destroying itself in order to keep going. At this point your brain says "this is really dumb, it's killing you, you should stop now". No one talks about this much anymore, because Gu gels etc are meant to stop it, but I definitely felt it. It wasn't just the pain - by now my thighs were solid knots and my calves on fire - it was the very strong voice in the head. "Just stop. Lie down. Give up. Look, that guy there has. Those people will give you medical attention. You've done enough. C'mon, this isn't fun anymore." I guess it's the ability, or the stubbornness, to override those thoughts that makes any great achievement great.
My aim in those last 9 kilometres was to get to 3km from the end. I knew that if necessary, I could walk the last 3km home. But then, in some sort of delirious haze, 3km became 2, and 2 became 1. I stopped at the last drink station, and looked at my watch. If I could do the last 1km in 9 minutes, I'd make it it under 3.5 hours - which was the best time I was hoping for. As I'd started the race at 4 minutes a kilometre, I thought "c'mon, even you can do that now."
Pretty much every runner was overtaking me now, as I hobbled and shuffled my way to the finish. Others seemed to be sprinting, and I wondered where they found the energy.
As I ran over the line, I cried, surprisingly. And a woman, old enough to be my mother, was standing there to give me a medal. "Perhaps I'll come to you," she said kindly, realising I could barely go another step.
I sat in the shade and cried again. I really don't know why.
42.195 km
3 hours 28 minutes
www.kensbigbackyard.com.au
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