How Did I Get Here?

Sunday

Quote of the Day: “A waist is a terrible thing to mind.”

- Jane Caminos

I was not in a very good place this morning. I didn’t want to get up, the weather didn’t look as perfect as it normally is, and I was not in a good mood. Exactly the kind of situation you want when you are running a half-marathon.

Then Natasha, as she sometimes can, took me way off course getting to the race. I love her to death but why she takes me ten miles down a highway just to cut over and take me 10 miles back on a parallel highway I don’t know, especially when there is a nearer cutover I could have taken.

By the time I got to the race site, many people had showed up and I had to park far away from the start line, along the street. I knew this was going to be a pain in the ass because I would have to walk all the way to the starting area, get my registration bag, make it all the way back to the car to put it away, and then return to the start line all before the race started. I could have really used someone there but I was alone. Again.

I did make these pre-race treks and followed the crowd to a path that I assumed went to the start line.

I don’t exactly know how far it was but it seemed to be about a mile into the woods before getting to the start area. By the time I actually got to the start line, I had traveled many miles by foot. Plus, it was starting to drizzle a bit. My mood matched the way things were going this morning.

When we finally got started, it was really crowded. I was elbow to elbow for the first mile and in the woods, the narrow path made it worse. I tried to be patient but ended up running in the unkempt areas just outside the beaten path, chancing an ankle roll in return for passing hundreds of runners.

I wasn’t really going for time on this race but since I knew absolutely no one except one of the ladies from the Running Club but she was much slower than me, I knew I would be mostly business on the run.

The San Dieguito, I soon found out, lives up to its reputation as a very hilly course. With the rain, it was a little sloppy but then we got onto hardball and then it was just street running.

I didn’t feel good at all. My mood was for shit, the hills killed my momentum, and I just wasn’t into it.

A couple of miles into it, I was rolling along on the far left like I always do, jamming to my iPod that thankfully was actually, you know, working. I swiveled my head and spit to my left. A few seconds later some lady I had been playing yo-yo with (she surges and passes, I do the same after my 1-minute breaks, the cycle continues) when I saw her turn her head and say something. I was going to let it go, like I should have, but curiosity and my mood got the better of me so I reached back, hit pause on my iPod, and said “WHAT?”

“I said you almost spit on me” she said in a real shitty tone and then she mumbled something else I’m probably glad I didn’t hear.

My very first reaction was to say “Then I missed. I’ll try harder next time.”

My second thought was to say “If I would have been aiming, I wouldn’t have missed. You are at a marathon, these things happen.”

But in the end, all my smartass comments fought each other to get out and jammed the exit. Plus, I had “MARINES” sprawled across my chest and “MCRD” across my back so I couldn’t very well be as rude as I wanted to be.

So I let it go.

Well, almost. I did surge forward and pass her like she was standing still and then kept ahead of her for the rest of the race.

Speaking of the rest of the race, I really didn’t feel like I was doing all that well. Near the halfway point, I really had to go to the bathroom and kept waiting for a port-a-potty to show up. But I couldn’t find one and even though there were plenty of men finding bushes in the residential neighborhood we were at, I couldn’t bring myself to piss on someone’s azalea bush. My reward for this was REALLY having to go during the middle miles.

I was also having some stomach issues but I really do believe it’s psychological. I haven’t been getting in the core workouts like I wish I would and since I BELIEVE my core is weak, it manages to be so.

I never saw the halfway mark. I saw mile marker 4 and then didn’t see anything again until mile 8. I remember thinking to myself, crap, am I halfway done? I then looked at my watch and it said 1:07 and I thought, man, I know I’ve been running decently, enough to crack a 2 hour pace but if I haven’t hit the halfway mark yet, I’m screwed.

It wasn’t long after that I hit the 8 mile mark and knew I would be busting my 2 hour goal.

I think another thing that made this run a psychological nightmare, other than the hills, was the turnaround point. I hate this in a race because the runners ahead of you double back and you see them coming the other way. You don’t know where you turn around and then when waves and waves of people are flowing past you going the other way, you realize how many people are actually ahead of you. Then you see little kids, old ladies, and fatties. That really starts to kill the ego and the turnaround point just never seems to come.

The last heartbreak of this race was the last mile. You turn this corner, up to which I was doing pretty good on the last half but not enough to make me really feel good about the race, and you see this enormous uphill climb to the finish line.

It had started to rain a bit so I was wet and wanted all this to be over. Seeing the hill was like a shot to the nuts from good old Buster.

I climbed the bastard and then encountered that old familiar hate: where is that damn finish line. I mean, I had crossed the 12 mile mark so there was only 1.1 to go but it wasn’t at the top of the hill. There was a dogleg right and around a trail. A few more twists and turns obscured the finish line but then I saw it in the distance… too far in the distance.

I sprinted like I always do. And like I always do, I likely pissed off people that were ahead of me all the way up to the last minute of the race.

I crossed the line at 1:50:29, according to my watch.

Wow, really?

That’s what I was thinking. Not my best time but second best out of 5 half-marathons I’ve completed. For feeling so crappy throughout the run, I was really surprised.

Milling around at the end, I saw Spittle Woman. She was up against the tree and had come in five minutes after me.

How I wanted to go over and lugie right in her face and then offer my congratulations, of course. That was my mood talking.

But of course I’d never do that. (the audience goes silent…..)

The hike back was even more arduous than the walk down for obvious reasons. It took me ½ hour just to get back to the tents and since I’ve collected enough swag to last me a lifetime, I was only interested in getting a banana and some water. I had some Starbucks to get to.

But wait, what’s that? They are giving away free cans of Monster?

You know I just couldn’t pass that up. I mean, Monster!

But if I drink a Monster, would a Starbucks after that really be good? Will I be able to sleep again? EVER?

I grabbed the Monster and drank it on the trek back to the car. I was soaking wet from the rain, I was cold, and I lacked the basic satisfaction of finishing a half marathon in a decent time. I just wanted my Starbucks and to get home.

And that’s what I did.

Somehow I did get a nap in but as you can imagine, it wasn’t of the high-quality type. It was more like the restless kind borne from solid chunks of caffeine bumping around in my bloodstream.

Eh, they can’t all be grand experiences but I got the medal.

Free Advice for Today: “If you need to bring in a business partner, make sure your partner brings along some money.”

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.