This might be a long post so I hope everyone can hang in with me to the end…
Saturday we drove up to Gettysburg with Max and Megan for the Gettysburg North-South Marathon. We were all staying with friends of mine and Bennett’s, Nikki and Brandon. They live about 15 minutes from the start of the marathon, and very nicely let all four of us invade their house.
The race adventure started out well with no traffic on our drive, and the smoothest packet pick up I personally have gone through. At packet pickup we met one of the race volunteers who is a puppy raiser for Guiding Eyes (where I got my guide dog from). We chatted with him for a bit; it’s always nice to talk with puppy raisers.
We arrived at Nikki’s and Brandon’s ahead of schedule and had time to relax some before going to dinner. Of course dinner was pasta! The food was good, but our poor waiter was clearly stretched very thin for whatever reason so dinner was a bit of an adventure. We hung out for a bit after dinner before going to bed to get up at 5am.
I was nervous about all the small logistics surrounding getting ready for a marathon away from my own home, but luckily being at Nikki’s was almost as easy as being home. I got up, ate a breakfast of oatmeal, cooked with milk, with a spoonful of peanut butter and dark chocolate chips mixed in along with a mug of coffee. This is seriously my new favorite pre hard long run breakfast! I don’t normally have coffee before a race so it was a bit of a gamble, but I really needed something warm and caffeinated to get me going.
Megan and I had both packed a lot of running clothes for various temperatures and spent a bit of time the night before, and that morning, trying to decide the best combination of clothing. Eventually I settled on my knee length compression shorts and a long sleeved light weight Nike shirt with a jacket to wear at the start. This was a good choice for the majority of the race; it only got a little hot towards the end. Had I worn short sleeves, I would have been too cold for most of the time.
Max, Nikki, and Bennett head out to drop Megan and me off at the start line and park to walk over and watch us start. I handed off my jacket to them right before we started so I didn’t even lose it by tossing it during the race. Megan and I were busy talking to the guys behind us when the starting shot went off, and it really caught me by surprise. This was a small race, somewhere around 500 people, but it was definitely crowded at the beginning. Having little patience for trying to negotiate, Megan pulled us over a median so we could run quickly along for a bit before merging back with the crowd. People started to spread out bit by bit, and we ended up running near several of the same people throughout a lot of the race.
One of our worries about Gettysburg, as many of you have read in previous posts, was how hilly the course would actually be. Well there were lots of rolling hills and maybe a handful of hills that were more challenging. The very good thing was each up hill was followed by a downhill. That at least gave some nice running time that you could recover and also pick up a little speed at the same time.
There were more people out along the course cheering than I had expected for such a small race. Nikki Max and Bennett had picked a few spots they were going to watch from, and it was great to see them several times along the course cheering us on! Just before mile 6, and the first spot Max, Nikki, and Bennett were going to be, there were horses in a field right by the road. One of them cantered along the fence very close to us. So, of course the first thing I said when we passed them was “there are horses back there!”
The course was really a nice one through farm country. Most of the roads weren’t closed, but there wasn’t much traffic, and they did a great job controlling it. I was really impressed with all the volunteers out on the course; the bikers and people at the water stops were awesome! This was my first experience with a really small race, and they did a great job!
So Megan and I were running, hill by hill, ahead of our planned pace, but feeling good. The first half of the race held almost all of the harder hills. It was heartening to see other people out of breath and struggling along with me on some of the more difficult hills. Our pace felt great, but having never run a long run with almost constant rolling hills, I really didn’t know how much they would slowly wear down my legs.
At the half marathon point Megan looked at her watch and said if we kept up our pace we could come in around 4:00. I told her I didn’t think it was possible, but we’d see. Hill by hill my legs got more tired. After a longer hill we’d slow down a bit to let my wheezing lungs recover. It was my calves that started to hate the hills first. I expected this as they are always the muscles that start to tire first on longer hill climbs. I don’t remember exactly where in the race my calves started to tire, but it was earlier than I would have liked.
By mile 18 my calves hurt, and I was positive I couldn’t run and eat at my next fuelling time. So at mile 19 we walked for 30 seconds for me to try and eat some shot blocks. I managed 2, decided that the other 2 I had planned to eat would make me sick, and started running again. At mile 20 there was a water stop and I forced myself to get a cup of Gatorade, which I hate, and walk another 30 seconds to drink it. I needed the sugar and only liquid was going to work at that point.
We had planned to have Bennett meet us at around mile 20, just in case something was going wrong with Megan. Sort of as an extra security to make sure I had a backup person to finish with me. So Bennett jumped in at mile 20.5 and ran the rest of the race with us. Megan was doing awesome; I was feeling like crap!
That last 10K was the hardest thing I have ever run! I never really hit my wall in MCM. I was tired, but because I had to walk in that last 10K, I recovered just enough to stay on the better side of exhaustion. Not so at Gettysburg. “Hitting the wall” sounds like a sudden thing, but it was not for me. Gradually my legs felt less like legs and more like led weights.
Megan, with Bennett helping her, kept me going. Megan pushed me forward and really talked me through the last few miles. You couldn’t have made me run that last mile faster had my life been at stake. It was all mental grit that kept me moving…grit and Megan and Bennett telling me to keep going. I remember one of the people cheering in the last mile (or maybe a volunteer?) telling us we were at 4:02 with only a few tenths of a mile left to go. I almost started crying then. I didn’t even hear them announce my name when we crossed the finish line; all I was listening for was Megan to tell me I could stop running. I had never been so relieved, so happy, and so sick feeling all at once.
The order of things I cared about post-race…time: Megan’s watch said 4:05 and something or another. We checked our official time a bit later and it was 4:05:07...amazing! Then shade. Then chocolate milk. Then Jacket because I had started to shiver. We waited impatiently for the awards to see which team, north or south, one, and had a great surprise that Megan had won in her age group! The north also won so we got engraved beer mugs!
This post is getting way too long so I’ll sum it up with we had yummy food back with Nikki and Brandon. Nikki had gotten mini cupcakes for me as a treat and they were really delicious. We got back to DC and headed straight for sushi! So all and all an exhausting and awesome race experience! More thoughts on the race and recovery in a later post. :)
