Ann's Running Commentary

All of the veteran marathoners in my running club told me not to have a goal for my first marathon. They explained that there was no way to know what to expect out of a marathon until I had run one. They tried to explain the vast difference between twenty miles and twenty six miles. Thankfully, I listened. I woke up the morning of my first marathon to rain that poured so hard it truly looked as though it was raining up and to temperatures that were twenty degrees below any of my training runs. Halfway through the race I realized that the niggle I had been feeling in my left knee was actually an injury. It was the sort of injury that had the spectators commenting (loudly I might add) that I looked hurt. That first marathon took me five hours and five minutes to complete. The good news is I knew in my gut that that was not my best time. I knew I could do better.

Six months later I did. I finished a local marathon in 4:26. This was my personal record. Yeah me! Unfortunately ten years and eight marathons later it was still my personal record. Somewhere along the way I had let myself believe that I was a 4:26 marathoner at best and really more of a 4:45 marathoner as witnessed by my eight most recent efforts. At the same time I started to believe I would never lose the last fifteen pounds I had been trying to lose for those eight years.

Then the unfathomable happened. I woke up one morning and suddenly realized I was going to be forty in less than eight months. Suddenly I knew that I would either lose the fifteen pounds or I wouldn’t but this was the do or die moment for me. If I carried that weight over the forty year threshold there would be no turning back.

So I started working harder and watching what I ate. I started acting like an athlete that had run ten marathons, several triathlons and even a fifty miler. I trained with purpose. I gave up on the marathon because I felt like this would distract me from my goal of losing the weight. I focused on running faster because it burned more calories. I added more cardio sessions and weight training and the weight started coming off. A pound a week was all I asked and it happened. Suddenly I wasn’t the runner who elicited the patronizing “Good for you comments” from truly athletic people. I was fit and I looked fit.

In the process of this physical transformation the funniest thing happened. I became faster. I ran a local memorial half marathon for a member of our club and finished five minutes faster than my fastest half. I got the bug. If I could do that, I thought, I bet I could run other races faster. I entered a couple more races and got a couple more PR’s. So I decided to go for it. To test and see whether 4:26 was definitely the best marathon I had in me. I signed up for my fifth Marine Corps Marathon. Maybe I was trying to sabotage myself. The Marine Corps Marathon is a great race but it isn’t exactly the kind of race where you get a PR. As a matter of fact my worse time, my first time was in the Marine Corps Marathon. But the decision was made. I was going to get a PR in the Marine Corps Marathon.

I kept training and kept racing and kept getting PR’s. Two weeks before the race I came in almost ten minutes faster than my best time in a metric marathon. A race I had said I wasn’t racing. I was just using it as a training run because I was tired of doing the long runs alone.

The registration form for the Marine Corps Marathon had asked what time I thought I would finish in. I had written 4:20. I felt ambitious. After the metric marathon my husband and I talked about it and I decided I would try for 4:15. On the day of packet pickup, feeling giddy from the expo atmosphere maybe, I picked up a temporary tattoo from the Saturn booth with the splits for a 4:10.

That was two days before the race. Two days in which I ran my children from game to game and had little time to think more about my goal. The night before the race I still wasn’t thinking much about it. It was just a number. I got my things together and just before I climbed into bed my husband helped me to put the tattoo (my guide to a 4:10 marathon) on the inside of my forearm. Four hours and ten minutes. Sixteen minutes faster than my best marathon. Ten minutes faster than my goal when signing up for the marathon and five minutes faster than my most aggressive goal. Needless to say I hardly slept. When I did, I dreamed about waking up with the tattoo transferred to my forehead and magnified times ten so that everybody could see what I failure I was when I once again crossed the line in 4:45.

Race morning was better than expected. I wasn’t really nervous. I had decided after the tenth nightmare that I was just going for the 4:20 mark and would be thrilled with 4:15 if I could do that. Heading out of the train, I approached the start with a good feeling. 4:20 was doable. I could definitely do that. I was fifteen pounds lighter and much stronger than I had ever been for a marathon. Plus, I was experienced. I had the mental tricks down. I knew that when everybody else was dying between mile 21 and 22 on that lonely stretch of highway, I would be okay. All I had to do was get through that mile and I knew I would be okay. I knew what to expect of the race. I knew the ups and the downs and how my body responded to them.

But I forgot that every race is a new race. Like fingerprints no two marathons are the same. Not even one organized by the ever efficient United States Marine Corps. As bad as the weather was for my first marathon that is how perfect it was on race day. Cool and sunny – a beautiful day for a footed tour of Washington, DC and all of its monuments.

Of course, the other runners surrounding me that day might not have known I thought it was perfect as at every mile I would mutter an expletive not quite under my breath. No matter how hard I tried, I found for each of the first eight miles I was going too fast. I was well below my tattooed pace and all of that experience was haunting me. I knew what bonking was and was sure I was going to do it. I just knew that I was going to hit mile twenty and suddenly completely blow it. Still, a small part of me found that hard to believe. I felt great. I was focused. Whereas I would usually run and talk to the other runners in a marathon I was completely silent other than the expletives at the mile markers. By mile seventeen I realized I had set a PR for my the 5k, 10k, the half and the metric marathon and was praying that it would not be to the detriment of my goal.

But now what was the goal? What was I aiming for? I had told myself just that morning that I would be happy with a 4:20 and thrilled with a 4:15 but now I was looking at doing better than the 4:10 tattooed on my arm. What time was I going for and how could I decide this in the middle of the race?

In the meantime, my husband, my son and one of my friends were all receiving my splits every five kilometers and were texting back and forth about what would happen. Would I break four hours or come crawling in at five after I bonked? It was the same question I was asking myself on that lonely stretch of highway I had prepared myself for. But I had prepared myself for it and I knew that all I had to do was get across that bridge and I would be fine. My husband would be at the end of the road and would bring me in. It was his job to talk to me and encourage me and not let me quit after that. And it is a job that he rocks at.

I made it across the bridge and another mile after that before the wheels fell off and I started feeling like the times really didn’t matter anymore. All I wanted to do was be done with this damned race. Then I looked again at the tattoo and imagined scrubbing it off of my arm at the end of the race. Imagined the fury I would feel looking at it and realizing that four hours and ten minutes had been within my reach and I had let it go because I was tired. If ten marathons had taught me anything, they had taught me that I was not going to be satisfied no matter what my time was. I never had been. But I knew that if I didn’t give it everything I had at the end I would not only not be happy with my time I would not be happy with myself. All of the work I had gone through to be a thinner, healthier me before I turned forty and here I was thinking about throwing it away.

So, my pace that had slowed enough between miles twenty three and twenty four to prompt a text from my son to my husband that said simply “Uh-oh” began to pick up. My husband gave me one last shout of encouragement and I headed up that last hill. Using the crowd’s cheers, I sprinted for the finish. The funny thing is that it was captured on film. In the stills at the end of the race I am sprinting toward the finish and then I look up, see the clock and smile and then cry. The smile came when I saw the clock time of 4:12. The crying started when I looked down at my watch and realized that my chip time would show as 4:07:59. And the laugh that was not captured on film came as I realized I was thrilled with either time.

A year later, I look back at that PR with a different attitude than I had before. I am still thrilled that I did so well. I am still happy that I beat my previous PR by almost 20 minutes but I know I am not a 4:07 marathoner. I don’t know what I am yet. But I intend to find out.

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