I Do Not Walk (But I Do, Now)
My legs were in pieces. It was horrible. I had already slowed down by around a minute a mile, half out of choice, half out of necessity. That was not part of the plan. But oh that pain. Around thirty nine kilometres in my legs died. We’re talking complete seizure here. I had never felt anything like that before. On a run! Who knew! And that was it, my first marathon, over.
The thing is, it wasn’t over. There was still three kilometres left of the race and I had every intention of finishing. Manny, Danny and Steven were all cramping up ahead of me, too. For a brief moment I was able to forget about my pain and think about their pain. That hurt too. Back to my pain. It took us a while, but we all finished together, the crowd gave us a huge lift when Steven threw his arm round me on the final stretch and got me running again. Crew love is real, people. Thank you Steven, Danny, Manny, Hugo, Wyatt, Dougie, Richard, Ian. Couldn’t have done it without you.
We crossed the line with 3:09. I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed, there’s no point in denying it. But I learnt a lot. Let’s go back a bit.
I can’t think of anything I’ve put more effort into. That’s not a joke. I started running with no intention of ever running this sort of distance but here I am, writing this on the plane home from Copenhagen. Six months of learning how to up my distance, cramming in silly amounts of mileage into my weeks around work and having a social life. Well trying to have a social life. During that time I’m pretty sure I’ve completed podcasts. People say when they are bored they’ve completed the internet but seriously I think I’ve listened to all possible podcasts. Help. Anyway.
It all started so well. We joked about having a RunDemPeleton (those NBRO Peloton of Awesome t-shirts are pretty swag…) in the lead up to this and it actually panned out like that. We had a solid core of 8 of us running together, keeping pace, rotating people at the front, blocking wind. It really was awesome. There was one point where it looked like some random guy in green shorts and a grey vest wanted to fight us as he got caught up in the peloton but WHO GETS THAT ANGRY DURING A RACE. Luckily he didn’t stick with us long.
We kept this up for around 16 miles, clocking a steady pace, 6:45 miles. It was actually really fun. I may have hit a personal record for children high fived during the course of a race. The support was amazing, and I guess it helped wearing an NBRO vest because at random points there would be shouts from people who knew the crew. They were even responding well to us (well, mostly Hugo) getting the crowd going by throwing his arms up at them (sorta like pressing R3 in WWE Smackdown if you happened to have played that way back when). Then shit got serious and people stopped talking and I guess this is where the race began. A couple of us dropped back a bit, but still aimed to get a sub 3:05 which was looking fairly comfortable. At this point it wasn’t like I thought it was easy… just I wasn’t struggling and I was expecting to.
At mile 18… The struggle was real. My pace was dropping, I had to let go of the people around me and it basically became a personal battle to keep my legs moving. I was determined not to walk. I was prepared to break myself to finish this race in the time I wanted. Maths is a struggle whilst running, I’m sure runners can relate. Converting from metric to imperial whilst running is a nightmare but eventually I figured out that if I dropped to 5min/km’s I could still do it.
And then with three kilometres left… I had to walk. Maybe for only for ten or so meters, but I walked. That was something that I had always thought I would never do. I don’t know why. I never held it against people who did, I just never thought it would be me but OH THE PAIN. Walking it is.
Just like that the dreams of a BQ (Boston Qualifying Time) were shattered. Honestly I’m pretty glad I was alone when that happened, it gave me a moment to think it through. Basically, a little self-reflection in between the sharp cramps; settling with myself; saying this wouldn’t be the last time I run a marathon and then… I got back on the horse.
Crossing the line with our broken peloton was awesome in itself — something I’ll never forget. So my answer to “are you happy with it?” would be… “well I guess I am, actually.”
Boston will have to wait. Somehow, I’m okay with that.
* Can I just say a few words about the NBRO cheer station? Good god that was amazing. You damn well nearly took over the course on the way back it was basically a tunnel of love. They were amazing. I don’t really have any more words for it so yeah. Amazing.
** 17 kids high fived. Booya.
*** Headbands are the shit. No sweat in my eyes! Cheers Alex!
****
WWWs (what went wells)
· The first 16 miles were pretty chill
· High fiving kids remains pretty chill
· Vests make the airflow pretty chill
EBIs (even better ifs)
· I probably need to do more ‘at pace’ training beyond 18 miles
· I might have to listen to music on an iPod shuffle because my phone locked at some point during the race… because of sweat. Mmhmm.
· Imagine if it didn’t get so hot. Hmm
