The Marathon: Training, Running, Recuperating
May 3
So, the marathon has come and gone. It's an interesting feeling, having worked myself up for one event, one day, and now it's gone. I have a pile of workout clothes, running socks, my knee brace, and other remnants of the training and the run all around my room. On my closet doors, I have a six-month spread of training schedule, with each day, in succession, checked off. The calendar ended yesterday.
So, now where do I go? What is next on my agenda? How do I pick the next goal? Now that I can say, "I did it." What do I move onto?
Maybe every accomplishment is bittersweet in this way. With every accomplishment, there's a longing to continue, to go further, faster, higher. Yesterday, as I ran, I watched this woman's back. Her shirt read, "Never again. Until next time."
May 4
So, here is a special ‘Marathon Supplement’ to my normal monthly blog update. Since the run I’ve had a lot of questions about how it went, what it was like, etc. So, I think I might as well give you all a piece of writing on training, the run itself, and what the aftermath has been so far.
I knew that I wanted to run the marathon when I moved here. It was one of the goals I had for the year even before the year got started. As many of you know, I do my best to keep myself busy, occupied, working on one thing or another, or else I feel like I’m not really accomplishing much, so when I moved here I resumed studying Spanish on the free night I had each week, I found extra volunteer work with the Conservation Volunteers of Northern Ireland, and I started running and training for the Belfast City Marathon.
Once I knew the date (May 2), and found an old Runner’s World CD ROM that had a marathon training schedule on it for first-time runners. The training course was sixteen weeks long, so I took the race date and then printed out six sheets of dates (Dec-May). These, I stuck to my closet doors and each time I finished a run, be it 3 miles or 15 I marked the date off. I watched my entire winter disappear this way. I watched the new year come and go, Lent, Easter, birthdays, friends coming back to Belfast, weekend retreats. Half my time here was stuck up on those doors.
Training was a lot of gradual build-up. It was adding miles on each week from a base of about two or three miles at the start to twenty just a couple of weeks ago. I was really worried about my right knee holding out for the training (not to mention the run itself); an old soccer injury necessitates me wearing a brace on it whenever I work out. But, I kept putting on miles, and putting ice on my legs after they were over and I realized that my knee hurt just as much after three miles as it did after thirteen.
I always did my longer training runs on Saturdays, and I can vividly remember coming home one Saturday morning having just run nine miles for the first time since I was seventeen. I was amazed that eight years after the Tiffin Columbian middle distance track squad, I was running so much again. I had a really distinct feeling that I was really going to be able to complete the marathon. I felt great after that nine miles and realized that was over one third the total distance of the marathon. I felt, for the first time, that I was really going to be able to do it.
The training period wasn’t without its set of setbacks, though. About a month ago, the route was changed, primarily, to include one overwhelmingly Unionist/Protestant neighbourhood, and one overwhelmingly Nationalist/Catholic neighbourhood. It really did bother me that my run had been changed for politics, sectarian politics on top of that. Frankly, it seems selfish of the politicians in Sandy Row and on the Falls Road to change the course for thousands of people just to get their own way. Perhaps that’s what bothers me most about it. Selfishness, pettiness, squabbling over where a damned race takes place.
My last training run was twenty miles and I ended up running about 22. Afterwards, I was wrecked. My legs were knots. My left shin felt like it had been smashed with a bat, and my right knee was swollen like a softball, my left ankle couldn’t take any pressure and the tops of both of my feet felt broken. I had been given conflicting advice about how much to train up to. Some sources said, just do about seventeen and then taper off. Some said, do at least twenty to see how your body handles it. So, I opted to train the twenty. And then, for two weeks, I couldn’t run at all. Maybe that’s the worst part of my training: that those last two weeks I could barely ride my bike without my shin burning, or swim a few laps in the pool without my feet cramping.
So, Monday came. My fantastic flatmates, Melissa and Mary were indispensable the day of the marathon. I got up at 7:00 and ate some toast, a banana, and an orange and headed down to St. George’s Market, the marathon meeting place. When we all moved to the city hall, I lined up in this horde with a guy dressed as Spider-Man (including mask), a guy dressed in a grass skirt, pink wig, and fake (ample) chest. I also saw on the run Superman and Darth Vader. Right as the race was about to begin, I looked at the guy next to me and said, “Alright, ready? I’ll race you. Go!” He barely chuckled. I thought it was funnier than that.
(Be prepared. Here comes the most surreal but true statement I can make about the marathon.) The first eighteen miles were fine; it was those miles between eighteen and 24 that were really bad. Honestly, I felt pretty good after four miles or so, and then knew that my knee and shins would be ok, which after my last long training run, was a real relief. At mile five, we ran past the volunteer house at Sunnyside Street, where Mary and Melissa were waiting with cheers and signs and a nice pick-me-up. One of the signs read, “Ian, your fly is open!” The other read, “Ian, they’re all after your Lucky Charms! Run faster!” We rounded the south loop back to city hall and headed out north to my end of town.
When we reached Gideon’s Green (the north loop turn around point), we were diverted about a half-mile further on before we were allowed to head back through Whitehouse Park (adding about a mile onto the course.) At the time, I just thought that I had trained wrong, or the course had needed to be changed for distance. I was to find out once the race was over that there had actually been a bomb threat called in because the chief of police was running in the marathon. So, again, thousands of people were diverted, and ended up running a good distance further than we should have because of sectarian issues. So, not only was my route changed for politics once, but it was changed a second time because of a bomb threat.
We headed back into the city centre to take the third loop east out toward Holywood. You may have heard about the infamous ‘wall’ that runners hit about seventeen miles into a marathon. Well, it was about mile eighteen for me, and I didn’t hit the wall. That wall hit me. My right hamstring was a brick, and my feet were numb, useless weights hanging off weak, tired legs. My muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. I wanted desperately to drink more water, but every time I did, I felt full, sloshy, and sick. I couldn’t eat any more fruit or stop moving for fear that my legs would just lock up and I would collapse. I had seen enough people lying on the roadside, attended by EMTs, friends, or bystanders to know better than to stop.
I took to a regimen of alternate periods of running and walking, trying to get a few more miles done each time before resting my legs. One thing I knew would happen, was my shoulders and lats cramping. While running for hours, my arms held a pretty steady position and the muscles all through my shoulder blades were cramped and I couldn’t really swing my arms around or loosen them up in any way. It was at about that point, that the sun came out and roasted my face and shoulders. The sun never shines in this city except when you don’t want it to.
By about 21 miles or so I realized I couldn’t make my goal of running in under four hours, so I took the last five miles as best I could. There were no crowds, shade or encouragement from about mile 20-24. By that point, though, I knew where the end was compared to where I was. The end was in sight, proverbially. So, with only about two miles left, I was about 4 hours and five minutes into the run. I ran those last two miles at a pretty good pace, for how bad I felt. And at the finish line, somewhere I found the energy to jump up and slap the official race clock: 4:19:30.
Two days later, I’m still not feeling great. I haven’t lost those toenails I thought I would. My feet still hurt and I still use the banisters a lot when going up or down stairs. I’ve been told that my body should totally heal within the next two or three weeks. I don’t plan on running or doing any training for at least a month. I’ve been asked a few times when I’m going to do another marathon. Honestly, at this point I really don’t want to, but on the other hand it would be nice to run one in under 4 hours…
posted by Ian M. Borton | 3:09 AM
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