San Diego Rock N Roll Marathon: Rocked It? (Part II)

At our Inspiration Dinner on Saturday night, John "The Penguin" Bingham served as emcee for the evening, telling a few jokes that only marathoners, or those in training for a marathon can really understand.  I've heard him speak once before (at my Inspiration Dinner for my first marathon in Seattle) and will hear him speak again at the Inspiration Dinner for the Rock N Roll Seattle Marathon in a few weeks--I'm running the half.  If you've never heard of the Penguin before, look him up.  He is a huge supporter of Team in Training and its mission and cause.  He's written several books about his running life, of which I've read one called the Accidental Athlete.  Until his 40s, he was an alcoholic smoker who'd never run a mile in his life.  Now he is the ultimate self-deprecating "back of the pack" marathoner who's run more marathons than you can count on both hands twice over.  He's known as the Penguin because of the way he describes himself "waddling" through his races.  He was jokingly introduced at our dinner as the most famous marathoner who has never come close to winning a race.

I've heard many of his go-to jokes before, but at this dinner, he described a moment in the marathon that will become extremely relevant later in this post as I relive the race.  Most runners refer to the point where your mind breaks down, where your body doesn't want to go any further, and where you simply think you can't make it any further (usually starting about mile 22) as the wall.  But the Penguin told us Saturday night that there is no wall.  He told us that there is what is simply called the "Bite Me" zone.  In this zone, you will tell all those wonderful people you've been training with for so long to simply "bite me."  As a preface, I told no one I care about to "bite me," but I may have minorly yelled at someone around mile 24-25ish.  Maybe.  Let's just start the race recap and you can decide for yourself.


3:15 am: Alarm goes off.  Pretend to snooze once.  Remove clothing from pre-dressed chair that has been waiting since the night before.

Shoe tags in place, throw away sweatshirt
ready and waiting.

Water bottles are filled and waiting in the fridge.  Breakfast is pre-packed and ready to be taken to the start line.  Nerves are shaky.

Suited up and ready to go.  At least I look
that way.

4:15 am:  Meet team in the hotel lobby to congregate prior to race start.  Talk excitedly with teammates, some of whom are getting ready to run their first full or half marathon.

Look at us marathoners, ready to take on the day.

4:30 am: Board the Team in Training shuttle to the start line.

4:45 am: Arrive a start line area.  Immediately begin the bathroom line wait.  If you've never witnessed the race day port-a-potty experience, here's how it works.  Get in line for the bathroom, use bathroom, immediately get back in line so that you can use the bathroom again 30 minutes later.  I'm going to be fairly blunt and say here that there is something that must happen in the bathroom that isn't #1 before a marathon.  Because if it doesn't happen before the marathon, it will certainly happen during.  What made me the most nervous that morning was that this didn't happen for me until the last bathroom trip before the start.  Very nerve-wracking.  Nonetheless, it happened.  Enough said.

6:15 am:  Race starts.  The first corral takes off.  I'm in corral 11, so still a little while before my start.

6:26 am:  My corral starts.  Here we go.

Over 30,000 people ran this race.  The energy
and adrenaline at the start is amazing.

Erica and I had a plan for this race that included two main things.  1) Stay at a 9:30 pace for at least the first half.  2) Walk the water stops.  #2 might sound silly, but this ended up making a huge difference for both of us throughout the race.  There's several reasons to walk the waterstops.  Firstly, it's really difficult to drink water out of a small cup while running.  May as well slow down and get it all in.  Secondly, it's a pre-planned, guilt-free, mini break every mile or two.

The first half of this race, I felt pretty good.  Erica and I ran along at a pretty steady pace, a little faster than our 9:30 pace.  We saw one of our coaches at about mile 4.  We saw a teammate running the half at our mile 10 (her mile 6).  We saw a TNT cheer stop where we recognized a few friendly faces.  We saw another teammate running the half at our mile 12 (about his 10?).  We even managed some mid-race pictures.

Running down the highway--our half of the
road dedicated to full marathoners, the other
side had half-marathoners.  

The energy on the first half of the course was awesome.  High energy=running faster.  Every few minutes, we were looking down at our watches, reminding ourselves to slow down, take it easy.  There were many miles to go before we were done.  Here's how the first half went:

Nike just changed their website, making the splits look funny
here with weird percentages in the middle.  If you click on
it, it'll get bigger.

You can see that we were a little up and down with our pace, sometimes holding on to the 9:30 goal, but many times running faster and closer to 9:00.  The funny thing about the first "half" of the marathon is that it isn't really the first half.  Yes, mileage-wise, this is considered the halfway point, but the marathon isn't really half-way over until you hit your "bite me" zone.  Then the biggest battle begins.

8:38 am:  Pass the half-marathon mileage marker.  This was a 2:02 half marathon.  I was impressed by this, but wary as well.  In my last marathon, I ran the first half in 2:15.  This is a big difference.  I knew I was faster than my last marathon, but was I pushing too hard?  Only time would tell.

At the half-way point, I swallowed my first salt packet.  The weather in San Diego was perfect "June gloom."  Cloud cover, upper 60's, but more humid than I realized.  I was sweating a ton.  I was losing more salt than I realized.  Should I have taken more salt packets earlier?  Would it have made a difference?  Oh the mysteries of a marathon.

Let's pre-load the race splits for the second "half" of the race.

Can you tell where my "bite me" zone started?  Bet you can guess.

I felt like I was holding strong and steady until about mile 18.  At 18, I started to get tired.  My legs started feeling a little heavier, my body a little more burdensome.  But it was right around this time that we saw Nadine (remember coach Nadine from yesterday's post?  Whose dad passed away the week before?).  Nadine was there on the course, smiling brightly, ready to support us.  And seeing Nadine helped me to remember that this race was not about me.  And so I started my chant.

If you've ever talked to a marathoner, they'll tell you that there comes a point in the race where words just seem to repeat themselves rhythmically in your brain.  If you can control the words that are repeating, give yourself a motivating mantra, you can help push yourself through the tough parts.  In my first marathon, my mantra was "you can do it."  This worked, but I wanted more.  So for the second race, I adopted "pain is temporary."  This also worked, until I hit my bite me zone and wanted to say "Screw it. THIS HURTS NOW."  So for this race, I wanted something better, and I had decided on it at the Inspirational Dinner the night before: "It's not about me."  And seeing Nadine reminded me of this.

So from about miles 18-21, as Erica and I continued running, that is what I repeated in my head. "It's not about me...it's not about me...it's not about me."  I said it with the rhythm of my breathing. "It's not about me."  The rhythm of my feet.  "It's not about me."  The rhythm of the race. "It's not about me."  

By mile 21, my legs were hurting.  We hit a water stop, started walking our way through, and when it was time to start running again, my legs said no.  So I waved Erica on.  And then it was just me.  You might be thinking, well you made it through 21 miles.  There's only 5 miles to go.  That's easy.  But those 5 miles...they were 5 times as hard as the first 21.  Those 5 miles were where my torn heart finds its confusion.

You'll notice that at mile 21, my pace drops off.  I walked for a bit.  During mile 22, I made a port-a-potty stop.  After sitting in the port-a-potty and then standing up again, my legs screamed that NO, they WOULD NOT be running anymore.  But they still had four miles to go.  So I repeated my mantra "it's not about me it's not about me it's not about me." And I started running again.  I told myself I'd run to the next waterstop. Then I could walk again.  This got me through mile 23.  I walked through the water stop.  I took another salt packet (why didn't I take more??)  I walked a minute longer.  I thought about running, but my stumps hurt so deeply that I walked another minute.  And then I tried it again.  I told myself I'd get to the next waterstop.  I told myself it's not about me.

If you are at all familiar with San Diego, from miles 22-25, you circle Fiesta Island before crossing over into the SeaWorld parking lot for the finish.  Fiesta Island is NOT a fiesta.  At this point in the marathon, it feels like a deserted island.  There's no one out there.  No enthusiastic onlookers, none of my coaches around.  No running buddy at my side.  Just desolate, sandy beach, and no indication of how much farther to go.  I thought I'd make it to the next water stop, but I couldn't see it, and my thighs were cramping so badly I felt like I was running on inflexible stumps.  I walked again.  And then I remembered that it's not about me. And then I ran again.  And I walked again.  And this continued until I finally hit a medic tent at mile 24, where I crashed onto a cot and told them to massage the cramps out of my thighs.

Another one of my coaches, Shelby, owns a running store that sells running items and offers sports massages.  Sports "massages" involve a masseuse digging at every tight muscle, releasing every built up ounce of lactic acid.  When Shelby works out a cramp on you during practice, he takes an elbow and digs it into your calf or thigh as deep as he can, or takes a fist and pounds it until it's gone.  But these medics in the medic tent sprayed me with something, put some sort of oily stuff on me, and lightly massaged my thighs. This is not what I wanted.  And this is when the bite me phase sunk in.  I let them "work on me" for a minute until I said enough.  And they all jumped back, but no one offered a hand to get me off the cot.  So I looked at them and bluntly said "HELP ME UP!" and then took off again as I heard them yell behind me "Only 2 miles to go!"

Looking at more specific splits, I ran the next half mile at an 8:45 pace.  Because it's not about me.  Because I can run 2 miles.  But then I couldn't.  Or at least I thought I couldn't.  I was angry.  I was high on marathon crazy emotions, I was fully in marathon "cloud" brain where even the simplest math problems can't be solved (one of my teammates had convinced herself in the final miles that a marathon was 26.6 miles).  I saw a TNT coach from another chapter, and remembered how throughout the race I had been a little annoyed with coaches from other chapters that paid me no attention.  The coaches were there for all of us, not just their local participants.  So when I saw this coach stare at me blankly as I walked through mile 25, I looked at him and simply demanded "GET ME RUNNING AGAIN!" (with the implied, "stop effing staring at me and do your job!" or in other words, "bite me").  So he ran along with me, talking my ear off, doing an admittedly excellent job of distracting me, until suddenly I saw one of my own coaches and relief washed over me.  The other coach dropped away.  With a mile to go, Clint stayed with me until the 26 mile marker.  Here's how it went:

Tessa: "My legs are cramped.  I can't run."

Clint: "Alright, let's go.  Not much more left."

Tessa: "Where's the finish line? I can't see it!"

Clint: "I'm not sure, it's right up there, past those tents."

Tessa: "ugh, I can't!" [starts walking] "Ok, I'll start running at the next garbage can.."

Clint: "Ok.  Control your breathing, deeper breaths."

Tessa: "Where is the finish line?? I don't see it!"

Clint: "Right up there, see that banner?"  

We reach the trash can.

Clint: "Ok, ready?"

Tessa: [starts running].  "Where is the finish line?? It's so far away!" [looks at watch] "I'm still going to PR no matter what I do from here."

Clint: "Great.  It's right up there.  See the black and red banner?"

Tessa: "No!  It's too far away!" [stops running] "Ok, I'll run at the next post."

Clint: "Ok, deep breaths."

Tessa: "Where is the finish line??  IT'S SO FAR AWAY!"

Clint: "It's right up there.  Ready? Let's go."

Tessa: [starts running again] "Is that the finish line?? I can't tell."

Clint: "It's right there.  Here's mile 26.  .2 to go, you can do the rest."

Those aren't exact quotes for this half-mile to mile-long conversation, and I may be underestimating the number of times I asked where the finish line was.  Thanks for being patient Clint.  I know it's what you're trained to do, but I appreciate it.

After that, I hit the finish chute, ran 2 tenths of a mile through cheering crowds, and finished my marathon in 4:18:43.  I beat my last marathon time by 10 minutes.  This is awesome.  I am extremely happy about it.  But I am left with a very small, bitter taste, thinking maybe I could have done better.  Maybe I could have pushed through the pain more.  Maybe I forgot in the last mile that it was not about me.  

But that is not the point, because the point is that I did it.  I finished. 

I'm kind of small, but my arms are raised and
rejoicing finally being able to see the finish
line.

And we finished.

Erica waited for me just across the finish line
and snapped that awesome photo above.
She finished in 4:07.  Totally rocked it.

And we all finished.

Our smiles look a little more haggard than the pre-race photo.

And we may have done it for ourselves.  But it wasn't all about us.  We didn't get through that race by ourselves.  We are a team, running together to fight something way bigger, and way scarier than 13.1 or 26.2 miles.

When we were done, we went back to the hotel, took ice baths, ate lots of food, and went to our Victory Party that took place in the same location as the Inspiration Party.  And what did we do there?

We danced.  We danced on worn out, tired, broken down, sore legs.  We dance for over an hour.  Because we were celebrating being a part of something way bigger than running a marathon.  Because it wasn't about us.

I can't wait to do it all again.