Nike Women's Marathon

Sunday, October 17, 2010

We wake to the alarm at 4:30 am.  With our eyelids half drawn, we shuffle around our apartment  - brushing our teeth, pulling on the clothes we had neatly laid out the night before, eating oatmeal peppered with raisins.  We leave the house at 5 am as planned.

We park in San Francisco in an area we guess is just about the middle of the city.  We have an overly optimistic plan, but it is the best one we could come up with once we realized (just before going to bed the night before, of course) that the BART was not going to be running at 5 am on this particular Sunday morning.

We run at a very easy pace.  I’m following Alex’s lead.  We pass many people sleeping in stairwells and on the street.  It’s chilly, and I ask myself whether I’d just start walking south if I had no shelter to call my own - one could comfortably sleep outside most nights in southern California.  I wonder what kind of reasons I could foresee that would keep me in one place, that would prevent me from just starting to walk south in that situation…  But then we pass an old man in a light brown suit wearing a matching hat and looking awfully dapper, and I am distracted.

Soon after, we arrive at our destination, which is really just the start of our adventure.  Union Square.  We’re early enough to be the first to break into the toilet paper in the porta potties lining the streets.  Soon the streets are packed with people, and we lose our chance to make a second trip to the porta potties.  We talk our way into a decent area of the street.  It’s not where we’re supposed to be, but it’s as close as we’re going to get at this point.

Ten…  Nine…  Eight…  Seven…  Six…  Five…  Four…  Three…  Two…  One…

And we’re running again.  We’re competing in the Nike Women’s Marathon.  We’ve been training for about two months, ever since winning our first entry into the race (we also won our second entry as well).  Our primary goal is to run faster than my personal record (PR):  3:27:21 from Boston in 2005.  We’ve set our sights on a pace that will have us under 3:20.  Though we don’t have much of a base, I’m confident that a 3:20 will feel like a serious long run, not a race.

The first few miles towards and around the marina are uneventful.  We spend most of them passing people while weaving as little as possible.  We cruise past the Alcatraz dock, and I point it out to Alex.  We climb Fort Mason and continue running around the coast.  Alex sprints off towards the porta potties just before mile 6, but I keep running.  He catches me as I’m climbing up the hill in the Presidio.

Hills.  After the giant hill in the Presidio, they seem to keep coming.  They should be familiar since we’re now in the area that we ran for our long run from the Golden Gate Park to the Golden Gate Bridge, but we are not on exactly the same streets for most of it so they seemed unfamiliar.  We still felt good.  Or, so I thought.

At mile nine, Alex tells me that his knee has been really hurting him for the past mile and a half.  He’s been battling knee problems for weeks.  As a good wife, I respond by telling him to think really positive thoughts.

We enter Golden Gate Park and start climbing again.  We get a shout out from the super star Olympian Shannon Rowbury just before seeing our friends Laura, Justin, and Jordi.  We’re all high fives and smiles.  Not a minute later we see Dan, another friend of ours.  He jumps in the race and runs with us through the half way mark, 1:40.  His sage advice, “Reset.  You’re fresh and just starting a half marathon.”  We’re chatty and in high spirits.  I think to myself that we can easily negative split – we feel good and the big hills are behind us.  I’m excited we’re still on pace for a sub-3:20 marathon.

Up until this point, there have been a lot of walkers on the course.  At first we are confused, but then we see enough of them that we realized they must have let a large group start early.  I remember seeing the first of them around mile six.  We pass through the last of them just before mile 16. After mile 16, all of our targets are moving at roughly the same pace that we are.  Trouble.

Just three miles after I was confident in our pace, exhaustion begins to set in. We are out of the park running south along the Great Highway.  While it’s beautiful, it is less than great.  The asphalt is worn and pocked.  With every step I feel like I have to use extra muscles to keep my feet stable.  But, maybe that's just the fatigue.

Before the race our plan had been to take in calories at mile 5 (the last water station before the giant hill in the Presidio), mile 9 (a NWM Clif Block station), mile 13 (half way!), mile 18 (a NWM Clif Block station), and mile 24 (a NWM Clif Block station).  At mile 18 we are both crashing.  Alex especially.  He drops back in order to take in extra calories at the mile 18 aid station (he should have been taking extra calories all along – he seems to require an insane amount of calories under normal circumstances, let alone in a marathon).  Not having him by my side is psychologically tough for me.  It is a low point in the race for both of us.  We are just beginning our loop of Lake Merced, and I keep calling back for him.  Finally, he regains his energy, meets my stride, and battles with me around the lake. 

I am hurting.  My knees and hips are screaming at me.  My legs intermittently go numb.  I just keep moving and focusing on the runner in front of us, but the race I thought would just be a serious long run is turning into quite a challenge.  We seem to be passing people, but we are only running out of sheer focus and drive.

We see our friends again as we climb out of the Lake Merced loop.  Jordi is behind his camera, and it is just too much for me.  I am in so much pain, and I don’t want the moment immortalized.  In a dark moment of weakness, I yell at him to stop taking photos.  We pass Dan, Laura, and Justin, but we can hardly raise our heads to thank them for cheering.  There’s just too much screaming in my legs.  My tunnel vision will only let me focus on the road and runner ahead of me.  I wish I could say thank you.

We struggle the last few miles to the finish.  Though our heads are still in the race and our friends are helping us to refocus on positive things, our bodies will not go.  We are running in slow motion.  It starts to rain.  With one mile to go I ask Alex for the total time:  3:18.  We are within reach of a PR if we don’t slow down.  I drag Alex through the last mile, and we finish in 3:26:06 (his official time, my official time is 3:26:07).

We are exhausted.  We are cold.  We are wet. To think about picking something off the ground is impossible, and it takes us way to long to change into warm clothes.  But, we are gifted a Tiffany’s necklace by a Bay Area fireman holding a silver platter.  We are also given a space blanket to keep our body heat in (and protect us from the rain), a nice reusable shopping bag, and lots of food.

We eventually find Jordi and Dan.  Our foolhardy plan had been to slowly jog back to our car after the race.  A cool down!  Little did we know then…  Thankfully, Jordi offers to drive us to our car. 

We have a nice leisurely walk with Jordi and Dan back to Jordi’s car, and we begin plotting our next crazy running adventure.  Already.  Napa 2011.

We finished.  Holding hands.

(Thanks to Jordi for the photos.  And, I'm very sorry I yelled.)