Race Report: Marine Corps Marathon

Oh. My. Where do I start?! I ran the Marine Corps Marathon on Sunday, October 25th, and in return, the Marine Corps Marathon chewed me up and spat me on the ground.

I had very high hopes for the race. It was a gorgeous day! I had met up the night before at the Expo with a bunch of fellow runners I knew from Twitter (Matt’s wife took that shot), and Bobby (third from the left) had advised me to get to the Metro really, really early the morning of the race, so that’s what I did…and was the first one in the station! Luckily, some folks were right behind me, or I might have gone to the wrong place accidentally. That runner happened to even be in the same pace group as I was (though she managed to actually stick with it to the end!), so Lisa and I had a good time chatting in the chilly darkness while we waited at the race start.

As the sun rose, the temperatures became very mild, and the sky was sunny and gorgeous. I used the port-a-john a few times, and then we jammed into the chutes, shoulder to shoulder, ready to go. My parents and their friends were there, and they had a big pink banner with my name on it, which made me grin. The pace group leaders for the 3:50 pace group, where I hoped to finish, seemed loud and confident, and I felt the same way, even after the guns went off and, making our way toward the starting line, the leaders’ balloons bobbed away from me in the crowd. It took about five minutes to cross, but I felt great as I shed my Goodwill jacket and jogged.

The first few miles were uphill, but I felt strong as I tackled them. I wasn’t moving slowly, but the crowd made it impossible to find my way back to the pace group leaders. Taking comfort in the fact that I hadn’t been passed by any other pace leaders, either, I kept on. The crowd support was amazing! People were screaming almost everywhere at that point, heading into Georgetown. When we got to about mile 5, inGeorgetown proper, there was a pep band from the university, which was a great thing to hear as we headed up the second hilly spot of the race.

In hindsight, it’s possible that this was my mistake, that I should have eased up a bit more on those hills, but I wasn’t far under my expected pace, and I don’t know that going easier would have helped in the end or whether it would have just made my finishing time even slower. In any event, I felt fine. When I took my first gel around mile 7, it settled a little strangely in my stomach, but after a few more miles, even that was okay.

So went the first half of the race. When I was able to look up, it was gorgeous, but too much of the race had to be spent staring at the feet of those around me, making sure not to trip. I didn’t wear the headphones I’d brought then, and it was a good thing; the wheelchair racers were occasionally passing on the sides, and the only folks who created any issues with that were the ones who couldn’t hear the rest of us bellowing at them to move, so tuned in to their music were they. It was dangerous!

(Worst, though, was the woman who passed us around mile 13…on a bicycle (on the course itself!)…with no helmet…talking on her cell phone…with a baby in a seat behind her…who wasn’t buckled into that seat. The runners around me were stunned at just how much she was doing wrong.)

As I got further beyond that halfway point, I could feel myself getting more and more tired. I did some seriously bad marathon math at one point and came up with way fewer miles left to go than I actually had, so it was disheartening when I realized that. Around mile 18, when I was feeling quite worn out but still optimistic, I somehow caught up with Sarah (second from the left in the Twitter picture), which made me feel good, even though the only reason I could come close to that was because she was in the middle of a string of distance races right now, including Ragnar a few weeks ago. Talking with her over a mile or so made me feel a bit stronger, even when she finally passed me up and left me behind her.

But then, as we crossed the bridge at mile 20, I found what I had never found in my long runs or in the marathon in Kenosha: The Wall. I wanted to stop. I wanted to walk. I didn’t want to run another 10K; I wanted to be done. I trudged on, but the much slower split times show that suddenly the bottom had dropped out for me. The crowds had thinned out enough by the middle of mile 21 that I felt better about putting on my headphones, very quietly, which helped pass a couple of miles before it started getting a bit more congested and I removed them.

The final stretch overlaps the course’s start for a little. When I’d run the first few miles, the steady uphill hadn’t bothered me, but this time, it felt much more steep. I growled to myself as my biggest concern was finally realized: the 4:00 pace group leaders passed me, balloons waving gaily. For a moment, I actually dropped out of my run and took a few walking steps, feeling utterly defeated. Then I slapped myself mentally and picked up the pace: no point in making things worse.

I crossed the finish line in 4:02:05, about eight minutes slower than Kenosha. (The number may have been disappointing to me, but it was gratifying to see, later, that it put me in 4,962nd place overall (out of over 20,000 finishers) and in 193rd out of 1,281 in my age group.)

Then came more excitement, unfortunately. About thirty yards from the finish line, I suddenly Could Not Breathe. I gasped for air, but nothing was coming. Panicking, I turned to the guy next to me and managed to wheeze out what was happening, and he quickly hailed a Marine next to the chute. The two of them supported me toward a gurney, which wheeled me over to the med tent, gasping as I went. By the time we arrived, I had managed to recover a little, but now I was feeling dizzy – probably from gasping so much. They moved me to a bed, where my blood pressure reading showed a top number of 85 – low, even for me. After having me lie down for a while, that came back to normal, but not walking and stretching had caused another problem: my legs and feet began knotting into the most painful cramps I’ve ever had. The physical therapist worked on those a bit until I could break my face out of the rictus it had assumed.

Meanwhile, my dad wandered in. Mind, he wasn’t technically supposed to, but that former Marine wasn’t paying attention to that part. He helped me out until they released me, then walked with me while I had my photo taken at the Iwo Jima memorial and hobbled to the family meet-up area. I got to see Adrith there! Unfortunately, she was heading out of town the next day, and what with that and a subsequent crisis involving her bank, we weren’t able to get together again before I left. Another time, though, I know we’ll make that work!

Now, two days later, I’m still feeling very sore, especially with skin between my legs that somehow escaped the BodyGlide and with a set of blisters on my big toe. It’s night and day compared to my first marathon; thank God I have that one to compare, unlike the first-time marathoner staying at my hotel who was stating firmly that she was never doing another one. I encouraged her to try an “easier” one before swearing them off altogether. I don’t know that I did much “wrong” during this time; it was just a terrifically exhausting experience, with the hillier course (I just checked it against Kenosha, and the total elevation gain was more than double), the mentally-taxing crowds of runners to navigate, and so on. I gave it my all, and that’s all I can do.

So…what’s next?

(Pictures as I get them; MarathonFoto claims to be about 43% done checking the photos for me. You can see a few small one here for now; that first one is Lisa, the woman I met on the Metro that morning.)