Marathon number 2

A marathon was my first real endurance event. It was my first A race too, and therefore my first experience in achieving a major goal. And of course, it was my first time feeling that pain: where your bones feel like they're splintering and your muscles won't move right and they ache and they burn and muscles you didn't even know you had cramp from being so long in crumpled postures you've never been in before and your joints seem to have aged 50 years this morning. Since then I've been there more than once and I guess it never hurts as bad as the first time you're there. This weekend was my second encounter with The Marathon, this time as a B-priority race and mostly motivated by curiosity to se how I could do. One year ago I watched the race at mile 10 with a massive hangover, and I have to admit, more than one cigarette touched my lips before the last runner passed. As I wathed I berated myself for falling off the wagon, not trying to get back on, letting th wagon go, and then turning my back to the wagon trail. In other words, I felt a mess and wanted very much to feel better. I also missed the excitement of a race and the brief-but-nevertheless-important-and-sometimes-even-silent friendships you make along the course. So that day I resolved to do the Barcelona marathon in 2007. And when my season ended with The Race That Never Was I started telling everyone that I was training for the marathon. From November until January that was the only training I did: telling people I was training. This phase of my training climaxed in a full month of not working out once. So when January came and I bought my new shoes and went on my first long run and only made it 13 miles, I upped my training: I signed up. But to my dismay, paying the entry fee didn't put me in any better shape than telling people I was training did.

My entire training was limited to 3 long runs building up to 30k (one of which was on a treadmill: longest 2 1/2 hours of my life), and three half marathons (one of which was the better part of one of my long runs). Race week my girlfriend was completing her metamorphasis into a mean-spirited, entitled, selfish, sullen, and inhumanly lazy bitch and my mind was more focused on how I was going to deal with the challenges of breaking up and moving out than the race at hand. I missed my last taper workout because I couldn't sleep the night before. I was nautious from Wednesday on and feared I'd have to pull out of the race with the flu. And finally, the night before the race I couldn't sleep because my girlfriend had gotten worse than I thought even her capable of. I showed up at the start focused on anything BUT the 26.2 miles ahead of me (or, let's say 42.195 km, since it always seems like you have more to go). Joolie was doing the 10k, so we were able to spend most of the first hour together, and this hour I had fun. But after breaking with Joolie, my mind started to crack. Already. The first gel went down badly. I was already walking every now and then before the 15k mark. Despite my bad mood I still high-5ed all the little kids holding out their hands along the course. Especially the girls. I chased down the little girls to make sure that they slapped MY hand. To these kids every one's a sports star. And when you're a kid you still haven't learned to doubt that you're capable of the impossible; if it's never been done, a kid says (s)he'll be the first. Who knows, maybe they'll go home and say, "I'm going to run a marathon someday." Especially the girls need to see CHICKS out there too. Maybe THEY'LL go home and say, "I'm going to run a marathon someday, and I'm even going to pass some boys!"

My house is one block from the higest point on the course and it did cross my mind to go home. I had given my girlfriend permission to not come to the finish since she hates crowds, but she said she would walk the one block the cheer from next to the house. When she wasn't there I cracked; and we hadn't even reached the halfway point yet. I was feeling anger and hate. I was also feeling like a victim, which never helps matters any. Strangely, though, the distance never really regestered as "long". At half way it felt like a big, fat inconvenience, and I knew full well we were coming into the ugliest part of the city with no shade, no views, no landscaping, few spectators, and the Agbar Tower always within sight: the giant, technicolored dildo rising like a phallic monolith of bad taste out of the ghetto to fuck you in the ass.

For about 10k we ran towards the dildo, next to the dildo, away from the dildo, around the dildo and past the dildo. I came up with a plan to run for 5 songs and walk for a minute. I got to the third song and started walking, and kept walking for the whole song. By the time I finally escaped the dildo I was running for only 2 songs and walking for one. I was also walking at the water stations and sipping my water slowly so I wouldn't have to run again too soon. Every time I stopped running people were yelling encouraging things to me in French, "Allez, allez, Claire!" And other things I didn't understand. I wanted to say, "So what if this IS my f*&%ing race plan, huh?" Then we were running along the beachfront, away from the dildo and back to the RIGHT part of town: the left half, where the finish line was. There were people all along the beach cheering like every runner was their own mother. One man was standing alone and not dressed in beach gear screaming all the names on people's bibs and clapping like he wanted his hands to fall off. "Thank you so much for coming!" I said. "Thank YOU," he said. Later on, some people waiting to cross the street cheered for me and I said, "Muchas gracias" and they laughed with glee. I've watched races before, and most people just run by with a grim look of suffereing on their face. I do that too most of the time, you don't always have time to react. But even if we don't react, the cheering registers and the presence of spectators is so crucial to digging deep in those last miles. Come on, admit it, you run faster and prouder when you know someone's watching. So whenever I can I thank the spectators, because after all, it is they who have gotten out of bed on a Sunday morning to come out and help me along on MY big day.

In the deep, dark moments of the laps around the dildo I'd told myself that I could walk the last 10k if I wanted to. But when I hit 30k I felt okay. Plus we were running through the most crowded parts of the city. I marvelled at how I was running unobstructed down streets where I usually had to use my best crowd-dodging techniques just to move forward. I was amazed by the logistical feat of closing down the entire city for 6 hours, and I appreciated that they had us running through the most heavily trafficked areas at the end of the race, where people couldn't help but watch and cheer us on. I kept running 2 songs and walking one, telling myself that if I didn't want to start running again next time I didn't have to. But I wanted to go home, and really, I felt okay, so I kept running. Only that after a few minutes of running, every kilometer or so, I felt like something inside me was going to explode: not my heart, not my lungs, not my muscles, but my head, or maybe my soul. Maybe it was because I hadn't done hardly any long, slow training recently, and maybe it was because my heartrate was drifting into the high 180s. However, despite this, I was calming down. I knew that I would finish eventually, and I was finally too tired to think of all my other woes outside the race. I was feeling pretty sick though and it was getting hot and I was real thirsty. Water was every 5km, but that was getting to be over half an hour now. Finally we busted out of the old part of town onto the Rambla (the Rambla always surprises me, I'll be walking through these old, narrow, ancient streets, and suddenly I'm in the middle of the biggest pedestrian promenade in the city). There were people EVERYWHERE yelling and screaming and clapping. Boystress college boys were bursting out in cheers every 5 seconds whether there was a runner passing or not. 'Yes!' I thought, 'just a few blocks down and then we're going to be running up diagonally straight up Av. Paral.lel into Pl. Espanya!' But we were only at km 39 and the math didn't seem to work out. I was really, really hoping that the 5 blocks of Av. Paral.lel would be 2 kilometers long. Unfortunately, about half way up we turned right and back into the thick of the city to come into Pl. Espanya uphill.

Coming into the finish Joolie and Jamie called out my name and I waved without looking at them. As I crossed the finish line with more than 5 hours on the clock I held up a fist (being careful to hold my arm high in the air, so it wouldn't look like I was punching my imaginary friend in the ear like in other finishing photos I've had). I sat down to take my chip off and a volunteer ran up and said (in English), "Wait, wait, let me do it!" While she was untying my shoes she said, "Did you like it?" "No," I said, "but ask me again in a couple of hours and the answer will be different." I am always amazed by the volunteers and how helpful and GENUINE they are. Especially the kids who were grabbing sponges from buckets and running backwards up the course until they found someone who wanted their sponge. And they're doing this for free! I found Joolie, Jamie and Ben and we sat in the grass for a little while. While I ate a banana they tried one of my gels and each was surprised at exactly HOW gross they were. People were sitting with their legs in the fountains: the same fountains where they have light shows during the summer and they all have menacing signs next to them with a man getting a lightning bolt to the heart. I didn't stick my legs in because I was wearing long pants and no underwear.

I was able to navegate the stairs in the metro without problems and walk home relatively painlessly. My stomach was upset all day and most of the next, but amazingly my body was fine. I lay down and tried to take a nap and felt a deep, throbbing soreness through my legs like growing pains. I got up, took 2 recovery supplements and 1 anti-oxydent supplement (the cheap stuff: 8 euros at Decathlon) and lay back down. I could literally feel the pain draining from my legs and the muscles breathing a sigh of relief. For the rest of the day I was no more sore than I would be after a normal long workout (which was good because I still had to bike a couple miles round trip to return a DVD). After my first marathon my swim coach (also a triathlete, and an amazon of a woman) asked me if I would do another one. I said, "Only if it doesn't hurt as much." "It always hurts," she said. "I don't think it hurts any less for anyone." But, the truth is, this time it really DIDN'T hurt too badly. By Tuesday I was ready to work out again, and by Wednesday the only pain I had was in my left foot from an old injury that always hurts after a long run. So when I feel like doing another one (maybe in 2009), maybe I'll try for speed. Let's see if I can train to break 4 hours? For the time being I've got to figure out how to do one of those things after biking 112 miles!