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December 1, 2007
Marathon
We drove to the hotel the night before the race and went to a pasta place next door for dinner. The salad came, it was shredded lettuce with onion and bell pepper slivers. I said to my brother, "Is this salad made with shredded lettuce?" Next door was a Subway. Andy said, "If the garlic bread comes out on Subway bread we will know what happened." We were picturing the waitress going in there, "I'll have the veggie sub please," and the scraping it out into our salad bowls. The waitress gave us attitude because we both ordered water to drink. She must have thought we had no money for proper beverages, therefore no money for tip. She took my empty water glass away without a word. My brother joked, "She spit in your glass." I cursed her right as she sidled up beside me with the refill. Now I thought she really would spit in it so I tried to be extra polite. She returned with our food and I gave a big "Thank you," but she snubbed me. Later she came back for more water refills and she said, You guys sure are thirsty." We told her we were running a marathon in the morning and she totally changed her tune, it was like night and day. We thought the marathon thing could be good for getting girls, but wondered how long the story is good? You can't say, "Boy I'm thirsty, I ran a marathon three weeks ago."
We stopped by the gas station before we went back to the room, and Andy came out with two beers. "These were on sale."
So we drank the beers and went to bed around ten or so, and we got up at five the next morning. A heavy rain had just finished, and the air was thick. There was no food at the hotel and we were both starving and knew we had to eat something so we went to delicious McDonalds for a pre-marathon breakfast and coffee. Unbelievable.
We took a shuttle from the hotel out to the starting line and we picked up our race packets with our bibs and the other race stuff, t-shirts, power bars, magazines, etc. We checked all our stuff at the bag check and lined up in the crowd. There were over 1600 runners, everyone was so excited. We couldn't wait to go. Finally the starting gun went off and we took off fast, too fast. The crowd was think for the first five miles or so and we were weaving through the people trying to break out. We were passing everyone and nobody was passing us. When we saw the race leader already on his way back we couldn't believe it. We were only maybe four miles into the race, still not even out of the pack and the Kenyan was already at nine. I locked eyes with him for a second as he ran past and they were clearly saying "Oh shit I am running way too fast this sucks!" We hit the turn at 6 miles in 40 minutes, too fast. Another mile or so after the turn around I saw my brother getting hot and I said "lets slow down a little." He was way into that idea and we backed off our pace quite a lot and eased through the second half of the first thirteen miles with no problems.
By the time we got to the second half of the marathon, the sun was out and it was HOT. All the moisture from the night's rain was evaporating and the humidity was killing us. I saw people struggling. Some of the full marathoners opted out and quit at the halfway point. I started walking through some of the water stations and my brother got ahead of me. The spectators were awesome. Our names were printed under our numbers, and the people would shout out our names and encourage us to keep going. We would wave and smile at people as we ran by and they would clap and cheer and wave back. Great feeling. The best was a little boy who had a microphone and an amplifier, just shouting out everyone's name, he was so into it that it just made it fun. There was another guy doing Village People Karaoke, and one group handing out water wearing space alien costumes.
The houses along the course we big and beautiful. Very expensive homes along the waterfront, that's why I was shocked to see hear the roosters. They were cockadoodle-doodling when I ran by and I did a double take. In the front lawn of this mansion were ten or fifteen roosters and chickens running loose. The beautiful scenery really helped with the overall enjoyment of the event and it helped to occupy my mind during the long final miles.
Hitting the twenty mile mark was momentous. I could hear the runners behind me shouting out, "Twenty miles, almost home!" Twenty miles was also my longest training run, so everything from that point on was a true test. My muscles and joints were tired and sore by then and I was beginning to feel pain in my feet. I started focusing on just making it to the next water station and walking every time I got a drink. The heat was killing us. People were weaving around, unable to hold a straight line. Someone went down ahead of me and the paramedics came to the rescue. It was mile 24. Imagine being so close and unable to finish, terrible. At mile twenty five I got excited and picked up my pace again. I just couldn't wait to be done! I was having fantasies of drinking a big bottle of Gatorade and sitting down! I ran strong to the finish and they called out my name over the loudspeakers as I crossed the finish line.
My brother had finished a few minutes ahead of me and he was still standing there at the line. We congratulated each other and got our medals and someone took our picture. Then we drank gallons of water and ate pounds of bananas and oranges. An older guy named Bob was sitting next to us, he couldn't get up so my brother gave him a hand. When we were ready to move Andy taunted me asking if I was going to pull a Bob, which I didn't, but I have to say I was not excited about the stairs in front of my hotel room. It was checkout time already and we were in no mood to rush, so we decided to stay for another day. We showered and ate a big second breakfast and went back to the hotel for a serious nap.
We both thought we were so glad to be done and we didn't think it was something we'd do again now that it was out of our system, but we wondered if it was one of those things that you change your mind about after a while. It is one of those things. I had such a great time, I think I'd like to do it again. Not right away though, first I need to pick a new adventure, something else on my list of things to do in life. Something I've never done before.
Posted by K