and so I ran........

Soooo, my 2 faithful blog fans, I promised the Creme' de la Creme' finale, so be it.

Where do I even start?  Guess I should start at the Start, eh? 

*cue Twilight Zone music*  


Why?  Cuz with marathons, ya never know what you are going to get  It's true dat.  You can train like a fool, be all that you can be, and then the wheels could totally fall off somewhere in the marathon game.  On the flip side, you could not train as much as you need to, be sorta lackadaisical about it all, and do awesome in said marathon.  Tho, I still can't grasp how that happens.  I guess I'm to Type A to train or not train like that for 26.2 miles of fun.  *cough-cough*

Anyhooo, considering my year and specially the mid chunk of this year.....my training was there, but I was out to lunch mentally at times.  Let's just say I had good reason to be out to lunch.  At the very least I was out there tearing up the dirt daily. 

K, so back to my day in Chicago.  Got dropped off by Ms. Tasha somewhat early, city was blanketed in predawn darkness, and very quiet and pretty I might add.   Us runners for the most part, were still trying to wake up as we walked about.  We stood in lines at the porta-potties, and just chatted it up periodically, finding our corrals for the pace we were running at, and waited some more. 


Finally 7:30 rolled around, the marathon had officially started.  I was a little worried about trying to get around, or even move in a running sea of 45,000 runners.  Yes, that number is correct.  The biggest marathon prior to Chicago that I had ran in, the number of runners in that race were 26,000 and some change.  So, after I start this race, I do not want to stop, and retie my shoe laces, stretch, arrange whatever might be bugging me, pick up items that might be dropped, etc.  This would equate into a fast and brutal trampling for sure.


Within the 1st mile of the start, we ran under our 1st overpass/bridge like structure and are pretty much headed into the heart of the City.  For the first 8 miles or so we were doing loops thru downtown Chicago.  The spectators/crowds were xcellent.  They tried to stay out of our way, tho I do have a beef with a chick who decided to dart across the street in front of me and a few others shall we say.  Not wise, since I almost smacked into her.  Tho, for the most part the spectators behaved well. 


My pace was ok for the 1st part of the race.  In the 9's min/miles here and there, hitting 8's (where I really wanted to hang for the most part), all was looking good.  Bout mile 8'ish or so, things started to rapidly change.  Can we say, bilateral foot cramps and hot feet.  Not good Sponge Bob, this was not good at mile 8.  I'm thinking shit!  How can I be cramping up?  The weather is still mild, bout low 70's still, I'm in the shade of ginormous buildings thruout downtown....this is just not happening.  Sooo, yes, it was happening.  I was kicking myself all over the place for not bringing salt tabs with me.  I had four Gu's stuffed in my sport's bra, but no salt tabs----damn!  Damn!  Right at the same time I was starting to cramp up, I noticed a major fluid shift. 

My fingers were swelling up like a Chicago style sausages.  Nice....k, so rearrangement of plans on the fly.  I would take in more Gu as tolerated from my stock earlier than planned.  Hopefully it would provide me the xtra sodium I needed before I became a bonafide cramp striken puffer fish.  I start to ingest 2:1 Gatorade/Water at all aid stations and pray that my guts would not shut down, so that I could get said sodium into my muscles.  Plan started working right away, whew!!  I was going to be ok, as long as I could ration my gel out until mile 17 or 18 where the race would be handing out gels at those miles.


Did I say the plan was working?  Yeah, it was, but then came another frickin monkey wrench thrown at me....and HIT!!  Some other runner dude, who did a hit and run on me almost stopped my race at mile 9 or so.  I was coming into another aid station, almost to a walking pace, and he plowed into me.  He literally whacked me with his knee at my knee pit on my R leg that I have had issues with all season long.  My knee torked one way and my body was still static.  This was really not good.  I had to hobble off onto the sidewalk, where there was sorta some room, and tried to walk it off at 1st, then stretch lightly.  Nice going.....asshole!!  Him not me.  Tho, I was very good and didn't yell this.  Hey, he was long gone as it was anyways.  So I get back on the course, and pretty much hobble/walk for a bit.  I'm not even sure if I will make it to mile 13, the 1/2 way point.  I really and totally thought my race was done.  Sooooo, I start talking to myself: 

Self:  C'mon, you can do this!  You didn't come here to quit damn it!
Self:  But it fucking hurts!  Shut the hell up!  Let's just find a very small corner of sidewalk and watch, yes?
Self:  WTF

You get the gist of all this.   So it went for about 3 miles or so.  I made it to mile 13.1.  I had managed a 1/2 marathon, and my time was still pretty damn respectable at this point.  I start to cry a little, cuz of what was happening, cuz of Trent, just cuz.

Self:  No!  We don't have time to cry!  Stop it!  You can cry at the finish.
Self:  What if we don't finish?  We can't even run......
Self:  Damn it!  Pull up your Big Girl Panties!  We are finishing this race even if we have to walk the entire next 13.1 miles.
Self:  What?  Walk?  Are you frickin insane?  No, not an option.

Soooooo, we ran, or gimped along I should say.  What ended up happening is that I had to totally shorten and restructure my running stride.  If I went into my normal stride, my knee would kill, and I knew and know that I DO not run well or can hardly continue to run, if my knee pain persists.  Soooo I literally fucked up my stride, so I could still run without the pain.  Now don't get me wrong, my IT-Band, hip and both feet were still whining like crack whores, but I could deal with them if I had to, and did thruout the rest of the marathon. 

Onward, hey no choice in the matter, doncha know.  I get to mile 15-16 and am actually feeling pretty darn good if I do say so.  Well, good in the realm of everything still continuing that I mentioned above.  I'm thinking....hmmmm, maybe we'll see if I can lengthen out my stride and get back into my normal running gait.  Hahahahaha!  I'm so funny!  That was a def no go as soon as I changed my gimp grandma stride, so back to GGS for the duration of the race.

All I can say, is thankfully there were some distractions along the course. 

They had a scenic course for the most part, we ran over bridges, traversed into China Town, Little Italy, and just running thru downtown was spectacular.  My fave areas of the race were thru little neighborhood boroughs, that had small town charm, trees lining both sides of the streets, leaves falling, peeps handing out pretzels, orange slices to the us runners.  It's just something I will always recall happening during the later of miles of the marathon that will make me smile.

By mile 20 we ran over one of the last bridges.  It was a big ass bridge to say the least.  Others were stopping to stretch out their hammies.  I'm thinking...hmmm, not a bad idea.  Don't get me wrong, I was stretching as best as I could without locking up my entire musculature 3-4x during every mile since I got whacked, but the hammies not so much.  Let's just say I tried to throw my leg up, on a girder to get a little leverage....uh!!  Helloooooo!!  No way.  I almost came away from trying to do this stretch with a side cramp that stretched up from my toes to my head.  Nope, not happening.  So, after this fun I had to be really careful in stretching now for the last 6 miles.

It was getting a little warmish to on the course.   This and my stride did not do any favors to my skin.  I had a giant rasberry, chafing, bleeding area L lat/armpit area.  Thank god for Vaseline on the course.  I will just say my delicate skin areas were close to what my L side was......very uncool indeed.  My feet were swelling, toenails??  They are overrated.  Who needs toenails I ask.


Long story, yeah, pretty dang long, I know.  Long story short is that finally and I mean FINALLY the finish line appeared.  I think I started to tear up 500 meters away.  What's really funny, is that I'm sure most peeps thought I was crying because I had just finished my 1st marathon, nope.  Something like my 10th or so marathon.  So much more going on than that.  So very much more.

I did it!  Against some major odds and then some.  I figure Chicago is part of my healing process, my moving forward process, my letting go and realizing that sometimes (more times than not) I can't control things that happen.  It just is, and you have to put one foot in front of the other even if it is a grandma gimp stride.  It just is.......