Oct. 17-21
I’m not sure where to start. Friday was a LONG travel day. When we finally arrived in San Francisco, we made our way to the expo to pick up our race packets and do a little shopping at NikeTown. When we arrived in Union Square, we noticed a big pink wall on the side of NikeTown with lots of people huddled around it. When we got closer, we realized the names of all the names of the people participating in the Nike Women’s Marathon were written on the wall. It was really neat. We quickly found our names and took pictures next to them. The rest of Friday was pretty low key.
Saturday we took a boat to Alcatraz, and took the MP3 tour. I wish we could have walked around the island more, but we wanted to rest our legs as much as possible. Saturday night was the pasta dinner for all the TNT participants. When we arrived there were hundreds (literally) of coaches, mentors, coordinators, etc, screaming, singing, and chanting as everyone walked in the conference hall. It was crazy. After we all ate some salad and pasta, John “The Penguin” Bingham (from Runners’ World) spoke, along with Joan Benoit Samuelson. Joan won the gold in the 1984 Olympics for the marathon; the first ever women’s Olympic marathon champion. The speakers were great. I especially enjoyed John (The Penguin). There was also a speaker from Cincinnati, who described her struggles with cancer. It definitely made me extremely grateful for my health, let alone ability to train for and run a marathon. After the dinner, we went right back to our rooms to try to get some rest. To my surprise, I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I would be at that point. I was able to get a restful night’s sleep.
Sunday morning we woke up at 3:30 a.m. to get dressed and eat in order to catch the buses to the starting line at 5 a.m. I still wasn’t as nervous as I usual am before a big race. We arrived in Union Square with a little over an hour till we had to line up at the start. We found a doorway to huddle in until we were ready to warm up. The weather couldn’t have been better; upper 50s and overcast.
I arrived at the starting line about 10-minutes before the ‘gun’, after doing a five-minute warmup jog and some light stretching. When I finally crossed the starting line, I started my watch and tried to ease into the first mile. I was worried about starting out too fast, so I tried to hold back, but later realized I had probably not held back enough. I was feeling great, except for a slight tightness in my quads that I thought was just from the first mile being slightly downhill. At the 5K point, my quads were even tighter but everything else still felt relaxed (breathing, stride, etc), so I was hoping they would loosen up with a few more miles. The course was FULL of hills that started at mile two, something I’m definitely not used to. The steep uphills didn’t feel so bad, but my legs were taking a beating on the downhills; each one making my quads feel tighter and tighter. I couldn’t stop thinking about how weird my legs were feeling when everything else seemed fine. I was on pace through the halfway point, but could tell my quads may not have another 13 miles in them (at that pace).
Around mile 16 one of the TNT coaches (from Greenville) found me and ran with me for a few miles, a welcomed distraction. After he left, my run took a turn for the worst. My legs had finally had enough just past mile 19 and were begging me to stop. I resisted for as long as I could. It felt like I had just done 1,000 squats.
Coming up on mile 20 (literally running UP), I felt like my legs had stopped working. My Dad had warned me about hitting a wall, but I never really knew what that actually was; until now. I don’t remember every mile from that point on, only bits and pieces. My pace had slowed by over two minutes per mile, and I kept telling myself that I could finish, and that it was ‘mind over matter’. I think I actually repeated this out loud a few times.
The people cheering on the side could probably tell you better than I could at that point. After fighting with my legs for four miles, the TNT coach met back up with me and ran with me through finish. At that point, I’m not even sure you could call it a run. When I finally saw the finish line, I took off as hard as I could. I wanted nothing more than to be done. Even though I had qualified for Boston, I wasn’t happy with my time; but I also knew I had done the best I could with how I was feeling that day.
I cannot describe the feeling after crossing the finish line. I was not only physically drained, but emotionally drained as well. I had all I could do to keep from bursting into tears. It wasn’t that I was sad, or even happy, I was tired.
One of the things I will always remember about this experience is the advice given by John “The Penguin” Bingham at the pasta dinner the night before; to “not make any life changing decisions at mile 20”. I didn’t completely understand what he meant, until after the race was over and I had time to think about my experience and realized that at mile 20 I had decided I was probably never going to run another marathon again. I plan to start training for Boston early next year.