Mission Accomplished

I did it. I brought months of training to bear on the Denver Marathon and finished. I was a bit of an emotional and physical wreck after crossing the finish line. I felt lightheaded and dehydrated, but managed to find some water and shade. I drank three bottles of water in about five minutes. It was just so hard and my body and mind were pushed into places they don't often go. There was solidarity in looking around me and seeing people in exactly the same condition; physically spent, but elated at the same time. My hat was encrusted with a white layer of salt that brought no end of fascination to some friends who I met up with after getting back from the race.

The best part of the race was seeing Catherine and Aiden at the finish line screaming and ringing their cowbells. It made me find one last bit of something to crank into the finish line gates. The race went well from a technical point of view. My splits were not perfect, but not wildly out of balance either, and I did not have anything left at the end. I hydrated properly along the way and did not have to make any unexpected bathroom stops, which means I ate right coming into the race (TMI, I know, I know). I gave it my all, and that, in the end, is all I can ask of myself.

I waited quite a while for a friend of mine to round the last corner coming into the finish, and when he came around he looked to be in pretty bad shape. I got out there, put his arm over my shoulder and told him over and over that he only had half a block and was going to do it. I told him to dig deep, and he did. He made it to the finish line, and when they announced his name I was so proud of him.

A great and emotional experience. I told someone this might be my last one. But as I write about it, I find myself re-evaluating. Disney is in January, I think...

I have to thank a lot of people who made this whole deal possible. First and foremost, my family, who put up with me leaving the house at 4:00am to go run or go out on Saturdays for hours on end. Also, to my friends in the Lifetime Fitness Endurance Club, especially Sandy, who challenges me to keep pushing and is still pestering me about doing a triathalon. I also want to thank Tammy, Will, Luke, and Clayton, who opened their home to us while we were in Denver and who always make us feel like family.

Taper

The training program peaked with 23 miles a couple of weeks ago and now I am tapering, meaning the miles come way down and I run much less frequently. I mentioned this before, but I think I am overtrained. I read the signs again in my marathon book, and am experiencing a couple of them. I am having difficulty sleeping and it has become hard for me to get motivated to run. Hal Higdon says one sign of overtraining is fear of training, and on a few occasions I have experienced a strange anxiety when beginning a run.

This is my first marathon in almost five years, and I picked the Higdon Intermediate II program, which is about 650 miles. I believe I should have selected Intermediate I or Novice II. For the taper, I am adjusting and will run very little, if at all, in this last week before the race. I talked to a friend who overtrained for the Omaha marathon and had the same symptoms coming up on the race. He simply stopped running the week before. Counter to what one might think he ran his personal best.

I think I overestimated where I was in terms of capacity coming back into running. I was coming off an injury that took almost a year to rehab, in addition to a great deal of life change (new job, moving to Omaha). It has been great to get back into the sport, but in this case I have learned (and relearned) some great lessons that apply both to running and to life when it comes to setting life-goals.

• Swing for the fence at every at-bat. Always believe you can hit it out of the park.
• Be comfortable with, and even thankful for, the strike-outs. You learn something each time you miss. Harvest these lessons.
• Challenge yourself, but at the same time be realistic.
• Run your own race. The “coach” is not always right.
• Seek out the wise council of people who know you and love you when things start to get off track.
• Listen to your mind, body, and spirit.

In spite of the challenges, I am still excited about running the marathon next week. I will show up and do my best, and in finishing know the satisfaction of setting a difficult goal and working to accomplish it, even if along the way I made some mistakes and everything did not go as planned down the stretch. I normally learn much more from my mistakes, so can see immense value in the missteps I may have made in accomplishing this goal.