Preparing for this race was rather interesting. In late July, about a month before the race
day, my car, my beloved station wagon, was permanently taken out of commission
due to engine problems. So in turn I was
forced to ride my bicycle to work every morning. I figured this would force me to build up
some uphill endurance every day through the last month of training. I worked at a golf course in the Oldman River
valley (coulee) so fortunately the real workout would happen after I finished
work rather than before.
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| Joe had the right idea |
On one of my
ascensions up the coulee, I encountered a pair of athletic looking men, running
down in the opposite direction. They eventually
turned around and passed me running up the hill. They came to rest at the top of the coulee,
at the end of the maintenance road. I
approached them and asked if they were training for any race in particular.
They in fact were training for an Ironman competition. Swimming, cycling AND a full Marathon. This seemingly put my own competitive
aspirations in perspective.
I've got a long road ahead of me yet
Unfortunately for my sanity, I had agreed to work a grueling
23 consecutive day work period leading up to the Marathon weekend. I justified this to myself by claiming that
this work schedule would help me get into a really strict routine of
training. I was mistaken on the feeling
that I would be able to handle 23 days of waking at 4:30 am just to mow golf
course greens for old rich people. My gumption
to stick-it-out at a job I was bored of, ran out on the ninth of August. I gave my two week’s notice to my supervisor,
Trevor and said farewell, (hopefully forever) to summers of golf course
maintenance.
While I did get very good at pedaling up the coulee nearly
every afternoon, the ferocious climb did not leave much of my motivation to run
after arriving home. This was especially
true on days where the temperature exceeded 30 degrees Celsius. Despite this feeling on one of the hottest
days of the summer, I decided to try to tough out a half-marathon training
session. As you may have guessed, it did
not go well. Even though I attempted to
gauge my full marathon pace, I barely made it half the distance of the race I
was training for. I got home and felt
sick to my stomach. I had a warm shower
and I felt an unhealthy chill through my body.
Even though I must have burned a lot of energy on that run, I did not
eat that evening. I just hoped I was not
getting sick and went to be early. Luckily, I felt alright the next day and I
wrote the previous night’s ailment off to heat exhaustion. But the
damage was done to my confidence in my ability to even finish a full marathon.
As the last
registration date loomed, I teetered on the edge of pussying out and registering
for the half Marathon event. I wavered
slightly, but I figured that your first marathon is the kind of event where you
can’t play it safe. You have to set
aside self doubt and you just have to dive in head first and hope for the best. As the
Marathon weekend approached, I was looking more forward to quitting my job than
the race itself. As I was a little timid
of the full 42 kilometers, I wasn’t exactly counting down the days. When my last day of work came and past, I
packed up my stuff for the week and hopped on the bus to the greyhound station
and off to the biggest race of my life. The
Greyhound took me from Lethbridge to Calgary, where my Dad and my Brother met
me.
My Dad ended up driving me to Edmonton the Saturday before. I was thankful for that because now I would
have at least one cheerleader along the track.
Not only that but he would be buying a hotel room to sleep in the night
before the race. I was originally planning
on couch surfing at a friend’s house, so sleeping in a hotel bed was the
optimal choice. We found a hotel within
walking distance to the Northlands area, where the race would start and finish. The hotel itself was rather dingy and
hooker-riddled, but I didn’t care. As
long as I could get a good eight hour, sound sleep, that’s all that mattered. The morning of the race surprisingly I did
not have the typical prerace jitters. My
Dad and I drove to the nearest McDonalds....Yes McDonalds. Since I couldn’t prepare my usual pre-run
breakfast of bacon, eggs and Coffee with butter and MCT oil, I had to grab
something quick instead. I had the bacon
& egg McMuffin(sans English muffin & cheese) with a large black coffee. I also had a few gulps of MCT oil and a few
chunks of butter I had brought with me. The
MCT oil, what I thought was my secret energy weapon turned out to be my
downfall later on.
Race time
As 7:30 neared, my excitement rose. But I didn’t want to visualize or anticipate
the race too much. I had no idea what
running 42 km felt like. The best I
could guess was to extrapolate my experience from half Marathons and double it.
I knew the feeling of getting tired in a
race, but I couldn’t imagine what “the wall” was going to feel like. Everyone talks about “the wall” as a typical
feature of the Marathon experience, but I could only speculate how devastating
it was going to feel. Plus, the race
would probably be around four or five hours, so there would be plenty of time
to visualize and speculate.
7:30 arrived and we were off. The played us through the starting gate with
Bryan Adams’ Run to you. “Great” I sarcastically
thought “what a song to have repeating in your head for four hours.” That song particular song didn’t sick, but in
fact it was much worse than that.
Have you ever had a annoying song stuck in your head? Have you ever had a small portion of an annoying
song you don’t know stuck in your head? Have
you ever had a small portion of a really bad 80s song you don’t know stuck in
your head? All I kept hearing during the
race was “The Time has come. To pay the rent. To something, something, something.” The song was, I found out later, "beds are burning" by Midnight Oil.
At around the 15 km mark, I encountered a
woman with her headphones turned up way too loud. I could recognize the music and of course the
song that was playing was “Eye of the Tiger”.
The most cliché athletic song ever heard. I’m not passing judgement on her motivational
music in fact I was happy to have a new song now playing on my brain’s ipod.
At the halfway point, my gut began to disagree with me. Something wasn’t right in Texas. I wasn’t going to be able to continue the
race without dealing with this situation.
At one point along the race a spectator held up a cardboard sign reading
“DONT TRUST A FART”. Better advice has
never been written.
My two consecutive, emergency bathroom breaks ended up
costing me about 5 minutes. But I really
should have known better than to drink so much MCT oil without gradually
weaning myself onto it the week before. After
“lightening the load” so to speak, I felt great for the remaining 21 km.
Barring all digestive and mental soundtrack problems, what can
I say about the race itself? Other than
it was a very enjoyable time? The pace
was slow enough that I could have conversations with other runners around my
speed. The people I chatted with were also
running their first Marathon. It gave me
the feeling that many of us were all in it together for the first time.
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| Water. Sweet sweet nectar of the gods |
Overall, I had overestimated the difficulty of the race. The said “wall” felt more like a paper curtain;
I just had to pass through it. Fortunately
at around the 35km mark, my dad found me on his bicycle at my most tired point
of the race to cheer me on. That definitely
kept me going strong since he decided to film some of it.
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| I will add the video when my technology co-operates |
One of the most memorable points of the race was the very
last Kilometer. My dad was planning on
getting ahead of me to get a good shot of me finishing the race. Thinking that I would be slowing down by the
end, he was taking his jolly sweet time, casually cycling along the marathon
track. Classic Dad, I watched him ride
his bike right into the fenced off finishing chute. I guess he (and I) underestimated how much
gas I had left in the tank at the 42nd kilometer. I sprinted with everything I had left until
the finish line, leaving my Dad apparently dumbfounded and unprepared.
I’ve come to realize
that running in these competitions is where my “happy place” is. Despite all my worries leading up to the
race, there may be nothing more natural for me. When I’m
on the road, nothing about the future matters.
All the anxieties about work, school and preparing for the race disappear. Running is truly the best way that I can “Live
in the moment”. Issues arrive and they
are immediately dealt with. There are
really no hard decisions to make. If you’re
thirsty, drink water. If you’re tired,
slow down. If you need to relieve
yourself, there are port-a-johns every few kilometers. Unlike everyday life, there’s no
procrastination or ignoring problems when you’re on the track, living in the
moment.
