CMM, Part IV
Around the 19-mile mark, I hit the wall. This is what I get for not doing more long runs, I thought. I had walked through all the water stations, even the early ones, and thought that those would be all the walk breaks I would need. But I hadn't planned on these temperatures, so at around 19.3 I did something that I had never done before in a marathon: I walked on the open course. It was only a few steps, and I got back into a 10-min. pace pretty quickly; yet it was but a hint of things to come. I walked again at 20 miles, this time for nearly a tenth of a mile.
For the next half-mile or so I managed to run, but everything below the knee was one big ache, and even the liberal stops at the water stations hadn't been enough to keep me hydrated. But by the 21-mile marker I was beginning to feel a little better, and I gathered enough strength to begin running again. Actually I was running quite well -- back down to a 9:30 pace and feeling for a while like I was going to take it on home in that fashion. Within a half mile, I went from feeling that way to resolving to take another walk break at the 23-mile mark. I thought I would never get to it. "Heckofa job, Brownie," I said to myself. "Two 18s and a 16. Way to get in those long runs."
I started thinking seriously about finishing times. I had planned on a 4:10-4:15 finish, which was still within reach at 24 miles: but I had not begun to anticipate how tired I would be in the last 2.2 miles. I was more tired at the Spinx last October, but it was a different kind of tired this time. Dehydration played into it, but it was not the main culprit. This was a wheezing, slumping, aching, blurry-visioned, how-much-further-dammit kind of tired. After my first marathon a couple of years ago, I was tired mostly from the knees down. Now I was tired all over, and in no shape to do much more than put one foot in front of the other. I always adjusted slowly to the warm weather, and as most of my long runs had been done in temperatures that hovered around freezing, I hadn't had much of a chance to adjust; but this was the first time that I had dealt with that in a marathon.
When I rounded the bend past the scrapyard and headed toward the stadium, the roar of the crowd and the sight of the 26-mile marker inspired me to pick up my battered feet and run it in. I must have looked kind of bad after I entered the triage chute, as one of the medical guys asked me if I was OK. I was, but damn, was I tired. My feet had never been so tired, and my stomach was churning so badly that I wasn't able to get anything down but a few bites of a doughnut and about a third of a banana. I felt like crap, but I was done. After picking up my gear, I made my way toward the reunion area, stopping along the way to lie down for a bit in the New Balance tent.
My finish time was 4:20:22 -- my slowest one ever, but the first that I have run out of town, and in temps 30 degrees warmer than those to which I am accustomed. Yet I still managed to log sub-10-minute splits, which was adequate consolation for me, as I had once pondered that mark (a little over 4:22) as a rock-bottom goal, and had wondered a couple of times in the final miles if I would make it. My wife finished in just over six hours, her first full marathon, surprising me by finishing quite strongly despite going out much harder than she should have. I don't know how she did it, because I was totally wasted and had still missed my time goal by five minutes. But by the time we walked back to the hotel, I felt reasonably well, due in large part to the high of having finished a marathon and the added high of having someone around to share the experience with. Of course, as the beginning of this long, multi-part story indicates, our celebration would have its limits. No matter. It was still the best time that I've had in a while.
Posted by MHB
at 10:03 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 8 May 2007 9:06 PM EDT
