Saturday, December 6, 2014

Marathon Eve - a Pregnant Pause

The phone app 'Find My Friends' drew a rather sad map, showing the family flung to the four corners of the world. Guy in London - 5,382 miles, Laurence in Oregon - 543 miles, Rose in LA - 373 miles.  I was home alone for about the first time in 30 years.  The only reason I was home and not in any of those exotic locales was my own neurotic desire not to disrupt 'taper'.  I tried to explain to one of the High School runners that whilst they race sometimes twice a week during their season, I had only raced once at the Nike half marathon and that had been as a mid training fitness test back in October, with no rest either side of it.  There had been no investment in that event, no anxiety, it was really just a training run.  The reason the marathon is an intimidating race is you spend 20 weeks training for it, then sit there like a dolt reading every weather forecast, because if something goes wrong on race day it might be another 6 months before you are capable of racing another.

The list of things that could go wrong was epic.  My last attempt had resulted in a DNF due to weather - 90f in Boston when you have trained in 30f in Philly all winter is not something that creates optimal conditions. One glove had dropped off that year it was 14 f in Philly and I had run like a deranged Michael Jackson, switching the glove every mile to keep both hands from frost bite.  A bad cold, or stomach upset just before the race can negate weeks of training.  Even in the best race I had ever run it had not been perfect, over lacing of the shoes had resulted in a couple of minutes lost as I spent time relacing at mile 15 when my now swollen feet started to complain loudly.

Isolation during taper is probably not a good thing, I could feel a taper tantrum brewing. After an evening and two hours of morning being alone in the house with loud music and very little clothing I started making plans for company, lunch and dinner.  Of course I could only meet with those who no longer had the bad cold that was going round, and where I could eat my 90% white unprocessed carb meals, no shellfish etc.  At dinner at the local Italian I was trying to explain to my friends Pete and Renee why it was I had changed my life so much in this last week of taper, going to bed at 8 pm to rehearse getting up at 3 or 4 am, changing my diet, barely drinking alcohol, staying away from sick folks, trying not to run with students at practice, giving the briefest demonstrations of lunges or core work at practice.

It seemed to me that the final stages of preparing for a marathon was very much like preparing for birth.  Of course there is the general feeling of bloat as you make sure you are fully hydrated and don't eat anything remotely good for you - stodging up on white pasta, rice and bread and eschewing all the high fibre beans, fruits and vegetables that have been your staple all training cycle.  Then there was the heightened emotional sense, this exaggerated focus on every little ache or pain in your body.  Pete asked if I was going to enjoy taking in all of the scenery and atmosphere of CIM to which I nearly choked on my pizza. His reasoning was it was my 6th marathon, I was a pro, of course I could relax and just run.  What he couldn't appreciate was that I was still trying to PR at the vintage age of 48 which meant relaxing and taking in scenery was not part of the plan sadly.  I tried to convey that like child birth you knew the marathon would be rewarding, you are excited for it to happen, but at the same time you knew it was fraught with lots of small risks and that at some stage it was surely going to hurt.  In fact if it didn't hurt, you weren't doing it right.

At breakfast the week before with Laurence and Dean, Dean had politely inquired about the race: "So, are you going to win it?",  "er, no", I replied "the first female will likely finish about an hour before I do".  A puzzled look crossed his seventeen year old face.  "So, are you going to try and win your age group then?" Dean asked encouragingly, Laurence joined in noddingy approvingly.  "Er no, in this race even if I run a 3:25 I will likely get 20th, its a pretty fast race and people travel a long way to come and run it".  It did sound sort of lame at this point, so I tried to help him out "But I am hoping to qualify to run Boston again in 2016".   In a deliberate and 'shall we try this again' tone, Dean asked "So let me get this straight, your going to run over 26 miles just so you can do it again in a year or two…"  Yup that was about it.  It made zero sense to a teenager, or in fact to any intelligent human who was not a runner, but in my case running another marathon wasn't about a bucket list or really a qualifying time; at 48 I could run almost a 9 minute pace and still get into Boston.  It was about working hard, putting yourself in a place of pain and seeing how long you could stay there.  I knew after the delivery, regardless of the outcome, the effort would have been worthwhile.  Distance running was, after all, a long conversation with myself and it didn't really matter if every one else thought I had caught the last train to Crazy Town.