I’m writing this after just having walked in the door.
The race was not fun. I came in nearly thirty minutes after my goal time. On the other hand I know that I can run 26.2 miles and only walk a couple of the “You’ve got to be sh1@ting me” hills three weeks after having the flu.
It’s a great course for anyone looking for their next one. You start out down by the Space Needle and Experience Music Project, out along 5th to the I-90 floating bridge, then and back along shore of Lake Washington until it is time to turn North again, run past Lake Union and return to the Seattle Center area.
Milestones:
Mile 4-ish – catch up to the majority of the walkers who departed before the full marathon runners about halfway across the floating bridge. Many of them have backpacks on and some are in regular street attire. Suddenly and strongly reminded of every post apocalyptic/disaster novel and movie I’ve ever read or seen – aka War of the Worlds and The Stand.
Mile 6 – Feeling good. All systems go. No twinges. I scoff at porta-potties. I meet Cheryl, who is 48 and running her second full on marathon this month (New York). I’ll run off and on with her and Tom, a Marathon Maniac, who ran the full Seattle course yesterday and will do a 30 mile trail run tomorrow. Both of them were very nice people and neither were out for a certain pace or time today and stayed at my pace and helped me quite a bit with their easy banter and encouragement.
Mile 9 – I love everybody. Why have I waited so long to run another marathon? I can’t believe this song on Pandora is even better than the last one!
Mile 10 – I see the family, hand off outer clothing layers. Hi-five boys, kiss wife. Life is awesome
Mile 15 – Remember the demon in the movie Twilight Zone who perches out at the end of the airplane wing and tears pieces off the plane to throw in the engine? He is clinging to the underside of my solar plexus and tunneling up to see what was for breakfast. ‘In through the nose’ – not working.
Mile 16 – Asthma like condition sets in. Throat tightens. Can’t breathe, which make constant hacking up of flem difficult. I see my family again, which helps a lot.
Mile 18 – expecting the beginning of hellish hills. Thankfully those don’t start until about mile 19.5. By this point, even though the hacking, coughing, breathing problems, nausea and general awesomeness continue I’m beginning to see the end. I know this is doable – just a matter of keeping on.
Mile 23 – I’m in pain. I’m slow. I’m having trouble with basic addition and remembering when to take gel shots but I move into a level of runner’s high than I can quite ever remember. It wasn’t a sense of elation but more of extreme confidence that even though I’m sucking, I’m going to keep doing it one step at a time until this is over. I have looked the demon in the eyes and I know that Good wins this round.
Time moves very slowly but steadily after that. Sound and sight took on a far away quality. Suddenly it was time to take the last turn into a short down hill and into the sports arena where the finish line was. I didn’t really sprint at the end but suddenly here and now came crashing back and saddening a woman was handing me a medal and someone was helping me with the ankle chip and then my family was there. I’m laughing, coughing and crying a little all at the same time.
Inside, I get a big hug from Cheryl and introductions all around. We exited the craziness of the recovery corral/sway grab with as little delay as possible and pointed the minivan for home. That is a new vehicle for us and turned out to be sooo nice for post marathon travel as I could sit with my legs fully extended and could even have laid down if I wanted to risk whatever my sons might have thrown on my face from their car seats. All is all; it sucked, but in a way I’m glad I now have under my belt.