26.2 miles, 42.25 kilometers... either way I did it!

The following is a group email that I sent out to everyone I knew after I finished my first marathon. I really wasn't sure if I could do it, and when I did, I was prouder of myself than I ever have been in any race since. If we are lucky, we have that moment once in our lives where we do something that we thought impossible. After that, "impossible" becomes just another synonym for "hard". It's what hooks us and keeps us forever seeking the high of that first finish line. So after MY first finish line I got on my computer and began to write (as I do), and sent out the following email to absolutely everyone I knew, even my former Italian teacher - who wrote back, "brava". So, here it is, as it was sent on April 27, 2005.

After 6 months of training my marathon is finally over, and I did it!!! When I first got the idea into my head and started reading books on how to train for it I didn't think 26 miles was so far, I mean, old people and people in wheelchairs do it, so as a young, healty, athlete it would be a piece of cake, right? Then I sarted training... 12 miles is far, 16 miles is really far, and 20 miles is really f***ing far. I never went more than 20 miles in my training runs so to all of you who saw me these last couple of weeks, I really wasn't kidding when I said I didn't know if I could finish. There were still a full 6.2 miles I'd never practiced - that could take an hour or more! Thanks to all of you who believed in me, it really carried me through when I couldn't go anymore. Well I did do it and I'm really proud of myself. Since I didn't get to do it with anyone else (except Mayra and Megan who came to the finish but I didn't even know were there and left without them) and cuz y'all know how I love to write I'm going to share the experience with all of you now.

Saturday afternoon: I went to Monterey to pick up my race packet. On my way out of the expo I decided I should get souveneers for my parents. Tee shirts were rediculously expensive so I got them socks (how fortunate that my mom is the sock fairy so my cheapness isn't quite as obvious). Then I saw that they had hand-painted christmas ornaments. My parents buy a new ornament on every trip they take, whether it's to a non-Christian country or just up to New Hampshire (which makes for a pretty over-decorated tree). I saw a display of hand-painted globes, which was perfect so I went to look at the price of one and it fell and SMASHED into a million pieces! I looked around to see if anyone had seen me but none of the volunteers had noticed, only the dozens of people milling around me and giving me dirty looks as I tried to figure out what to do. Eventually I had to walk away to get in line and I DID admit to what I did, but I'm sure I looked like a jerk just walking away from the darned thing. Since I bought another one they didn't make me pay for it, which is a good thing cuz they cost 50 bucks!

5 p.m. Saturday: I go to bed.

2 a.m. Sunday: I wake up. Savannah probably thought I was drunk being awake at 2 and cooking myself food.

3:45 am. After drinking tons of water and coffee on the hour drive down to Monterey I have to pee and there are no bathrooms before the bus picks us up. I have to run across the street from the bus stop and pee in a parking lot that wasn't nearly as private as I would have liked. On the bus I start to get nervous for real. I convinced myself I was going to forget how to run, I was sure that when everyone else started to move I was going to fall over and that would be it. On the off chance I could remember how to put one foot in front of the other I would surely forget where I was going and run straight off a cliff. It seemed like a real possibility at the time.

4:45 am. Arrive at the starting line and wait, and wait, and wait. I used the porta poddies three times, twice in the dark; they were better in the dark.

7:00 am. The gun goes off. At 7:03 I cross the start line.

Mile 1: luckily I remembered how to run and did not fall over. Unfortunately I have to pee again. Men keep running off to the side of the road to relieve themselves in the bushes. I'm jealous of them when in a couple of miles I see the porta poddy line and decide to hold it until I sweat it off.

Mile 2: I hear the conversation of some runners behind me. "Hi! *Name*, do you remember me? We met last year! You were trying to get a date. Did you wind up getting her number?" No, *name* did not get a date, the girl finished way ahead of him and he is still single. Better luck this year!

Mile 6: Some guy drops his water bottle and it rolls under the wheels of a passing van and explodes. It was pretty spectacular. I can't believe it's been 6 miles already. I'm going slow and most of the people I see are passing me, but I'm holding out, "running my own race" as they say. I have to admit I felt pretty lame to be passed by old people and a woman with a very large bum wearing spandex.

Mile 7: I crest a hill and think, 'was that hurricane point that everyone complains about? That wasn't so bad!'

Mile 8: I hear sirens. A bus passes, a police car passes. I think nothing of it. Then I hear the police loudspeaker "Stop the bus! Pull the bus over!" He was pulling over one of the school busses that was carrying relay runners from one tradeoff to another. As I pass the people on the pulled-over bus cheered us on (except for the driver who was talking to the trooper).

Mile 9: My butt hurts. I look up to see that the last hill was NOT the 2 mile climb to hurricane point because I can see the enormous incline winding around the hill in front of me.

Mile 9 again: No, my butt really hurts. Usually my tendonitis doesn't start bothering me until about 12 miles, this is not a good sign.

Mile 10: I was glad that I live in Santa Cruz and trained on hills like this one, but my butt really hurt. I start climbing the hill and the man next to me starts talking to me. It was a welcome distraction and we stayed together the entire length of the hill. He came from Alberta, Canada, and at the top of the hill he took a walking break and I had the Canadian national anthem stuck in my head for several miles. I only know "O Ca-na-da... na na na na na na..." so I kept singing that over and over in my head.

Mile 12: What's that in my shoe? Damn.

Mile 13: The halfway point. I am already sore. This makes me nervous. At least I don't have to pee anymore.

Mile 14: I start to think I'm not going to make it. I'll just wait till mile 15 to take more Alieve.
Mile 14: again: No, I'm taking my Alieve now.

Mile 16: Only 10 miles to go. Wait, 10 miles is a long way and I hurt NOW. I smell skunk.

Mile 17: 9 miles to go. I'm already counting down miles. I'm not going to make it. I feel like even my bones are sore.

Mile 18: I start getting disoriented. I think I'm coming up on mile 21 and then the next mile marker only says 19. The scenery is beautiful, but it is NOT distracting me.

Mile 19: No, I will finish. No matter what I do it hurts, but it can't possibly hurt more. And I'm still moving.

Mile 20: This is the longest I've ever gone in a training run, but I still have 10k to go. I start running faster because it feels good to change my pace. I start talking to myself. I come up on another relay point and a waiting relay team starts going crazy screaming for BETSY. I pretend my name is Betsy and start running faster. One of the relay members screams, "That's my WIFE!!!" I'm proud of Betsy. Betsy is done running, lucky her.

Mile 21: I'm thinking I'll let myself walk a little more. By this time almost everyone's walking and because I'm still running I pass a lot of people. A guy comes up behind me and says, "You have this! You've got a great pace going. You have less than a 10k to go. That's nothing! Walking won't do any good now, keep going!" I think it doesn't FEEL like nothing, but I'll keep repeating his words to myself later and it helps. Everything below my waist kills and when a short hill appears in front of me I start walking. Mr. Encouragement keeps running.

Mile 22: We're coming in to Carmel now and there are more houses and less open space. I don't have anything left to keep myself going and I start channeling people who have believed in me along the way to inspire me: Lorraine, Mom, Shane, Drew (who has only had 1 drink in 2005, I'm so proud of him!!!), Olivia, Kat... I pass a farm and it smells like horse poo. I start channeling people who have to work around horse poo every day and I decide that I would rather be me right now than someone who has to work with horse poo. I met up with a girl that I'd met at the starting line with two black eyes (bruising, not her irises). She ran the boston marathon last week, and was saying it had ruined her legs. That makes me feel inadequate because I'm only catching up to her now.

Mile 23: It hurts too much to run, it hurts to walk too. I might as well keep running. I stop smiling for the cameras on the course. The only thing that keeps me going is that I have to finish, there's nowhere to sit down out here.

Mile 24: I'm definitely going to cry when I finish. I am almost crying now. I am definitely going to finish. I can't remember very much about the race from here on out. I just can't believe that there are only 2 miles left. This is everything I have... and then some.

Mile 26: Where the hell is the finish line, I can't see it yet. I start running faster. I can barely breathe, I think I'm about to cry.

Mile 26.2: The finish line! I don't cry. I'm concentrating on staying upright. When I take my foot off the stool after they cut off my timing chip I almost fall over for real.

My official gun time was 4:47:59, although my real time was a little bit less because it took a few minutes to cross the starting line. My goal was to finish in under 5 hours which I did (also, they say you can expect to add 20 minutes to your usual marathon time because of all the hills on the course). What I was most excited about was that my splits (the time for each mile) were consistent within 15 seconds of eachother for the entire race. So what if my race pace was slower than I ever run normally? I walked less than a combined mile of the entire course and finished running. I was 59th out of 85 in my age class, but I came in ahead of more than 1000 people who finished in the 5 1/2 hour time limit. I also like to pat myself on the back knowing that with my stubby little legs I probably ran the equivalent of 30 miles for a normal-sized person.

I could barely walk to get my sweats and find the busses. They put the sweats pickup and the shuttle stop on oposite sides of the finishing area which I really did not appreciate. Also, I stepped in dog poo on the way to the bus. I didn't know that Mayra and Megan had made it, so I just left without them. They waited and waited at the beer tent but I never turned up. Who would have thought that I would miss free beer?! They were worried. Meanwhile I was wandering around a parking garage in downtown Monterey looking for my car. It was gone, I couldn't find it, and I had to walk up and down, up and down the ramp! For the second time today I think I am about to cry. I was in the wrong parking garage. Oops. On the way home a fearless pellican is standing in the middle of the road, impervious to passing cars. Traffic stops in both directions temporrarily. The pellican was still there when I passed and someone at the side of the road was running at it trying to scare it away. The pellican was standing its ground. No news on whether the pellican made it.

For once I'm not downplaying this. I worked darned hard and now I'm loving it for all it's worth. The question everyone keeps asking me is whether I'll do it again. For one, that's an awful thing to ask the day after when you can hardly walk from your car to wherever you're going, but never mind that. Before the race I told myself that if I finished I would never do it again, half marathons would be enough thank you very much. But regardless of how much it hurt, you know what, I think it was worth it. So I think, yes, I might do it again someday, but the next time I train for it I think I'm going to train not to "finish at all costs and then not run ever again", but I'll train so it doesn't hurt so much for so long.

If you've actually followed me through this far, thanks. This was a really amazing experience and I'm glad I got to share it will all you guys. Next up, a triathlon in San Diego on June 26.

Love,
~C