Marathon Weekend Day 3 - Race Day #1

Day 3 – Saturday January 8, 2011  (another loooong post)

Woke up bright and early (okay, maybe not so bright) at 2:30am.  Felt much more relaxed about the Half-Marathon than I had the past two years.  I didn’t worry about whether the alarm clock was set correctly, or have any race anxiety.  This is probably due to the fact that I didn’t have a time goal, per se, just wanted to have a good injury free run in prep for the full marathon.  It’s funny how 13.1 isn’t really all that daunting when you work toward a full marathon training plan, almost seems light work at times.  Trust me, I don’t actually think it’s light work, just relatively speaking. J

The weather was a question mark so I took the conservative route and wore winter running tights, shorts, long sleeve tech shirt and my short sleeve Team Voice shirt over it.  Brought the gloves and hat as well, no freezing my buns off this year!  Okay, so, in hindsight, it was a bad move and probably led to some issues.  While it felt chilly when I peeked my head out the door prior to leaving, it was actually in the mid-40’s with no wind and it got warmer quick.  Wasn’t much I could do about it by the time I realized my error (mile 2 and I was sweating pretty hard due to the layers).  I hung out at our meet up spot and waited for everyone to show up.  Shortly thereafter, Team Justin showed with the rest of our Team Voice folks close behind (Amanda, Jeff, Jonathan, and Jeff’s friend Deb…can’t recall if there were others…probably waited too long to write this up!).  Jeff then reminded me not to run too fast as his wife’s phone was going to get the split time notifications, got it, don’t run to fast…wasn’t planning on it anyhow, lol!  We hung out for a bit and chatted, but I was starting to get antsy so I said good luck to everyone and headed to back check.

As you might have read from others, we were held on the other side of bag check for whatever reason.  I made my way to the front as I thought the crowd was just lines for the Port-o’s, but alas it was not.  Helped a newbie with his D-tag while I was waiting, it was upside down and I would have hated for him to not have his times recorded for his first half-marathon. J  He thanked me and we ended up in a conversation with a couple of other folks as well.  One of the folks noticed I was in A corral and said “you’re in A, huh, you must be one of those fast guys…”.  I got a kick out of that as I would NEVER call myself fast, but do try like heck to keep getting better and love competing with my own times.  I tell ya, I’m amazed at what my body has been able to do these past 3 years since I decided to start running.  Maybe I shouldn’t be amazed, maybe it’s always been there waiting to be unlocked.  I just remember when I was younger and even at my best fitness levels, my lungs just wouldn’t allow me to accomplish speed and distance….was very frustrating and probably why I never got into running…  Anyhoo, I’m way off track.  So they finally allowed us to head to the corrals and I went directly there.  What I should have done was stay out on the highway and do an extended warm-up….  I did a light jog for about 10 minutes and stretched in the corral.  There weren’t too many people in the corral at that point (they were all out warming up like I should have been!).  I moved all the way up to the start gate, kinda had a Bob Uker moment “I must be in the front row…”.  I had started in Corral A two years back for the half, but was in the rear of it, so it didn’t feel the same.  Last year I was demoted to B, so I definitely didn’t have the experience…  Anyhoo, Al Roker and company were running this year and after their bit on stage he was one person away from me talking to folks in the crowd, he seemed pretty excited to be there.  Although, he didn’t look like an A Corral runner ;-), good to be a celebrity I suppose.  I took a quick video of the countdown and start and was off!

It was tough to hold back a bit on the pace, but I knew that I needed to save the muscles for the full.  Sort of good news/bad news, I was way too hot with all the clothing so it did help me to regulate the run.  I stopped once to use the Port-o, something I never do, and hit every water stop, alternating water and powerade.  Had a cramp in my back for pretty much the whole run, but it was a dull pain so the slower pace made it pretty insignificant.  Running up Main Street was outstanding as usual, took a quick peek through the crowd to see if Rae/Eric had made it there, but didn’t see them.  No worries, I knew it was going to be tough for them to get around to seeing everyone as we all run very different paces.  Tried to take a couple of pictures from the iPhone during the run, but they didn’t come out very well, so I gave up on that.  The rest of the run was uneventful.  The earlier start was helpful as I was farther along the run before the sun started to come up.  With the heat issues, it was a welcome change. 

So I finished, within a minute of what I wanted to run this at (2hr 1min), did a mental check on the muscles, no major aches or pains, check.  Walk through the finish area, go my medal, took a picture and decided to get a quick massage….mistake.  Decided on 15 minutes for the massage, hopped up on the table (sweating profusely) and the girl went to work. Quickly turned into pain as she did something and my left calf muscle locked up to rock-like status and hurt immensely!  I asked her to hold off for a second to loosen it up, but she kept at it….ugh…  finally I sort of twisted myself so she had to stop.  It unlocked, but when she did something else, it locked up again and now it felt like it was tearing muscles….holy painful Batman!  She asked one of the other guys to look at it..he worked on it a bit and at this point I was just praying for my time to be up.  I got out of there and did some stretching in the parking lot…seemed to help, but my calf felt like jelly now and was in pain.  I was debating as to whether I should wait to see the other Team Voice folks finish or not, but I knew I had to get back to the room and into an ice bath ASAP.  So I headed back.

By the time I got back to the room, the sesamoiditis in my right foot was acting up so I was hobbling on both legs at this point….Oy Vey!  It’s all good, I figured an ice bath would fix it all and we’d be good to go.  Filled bags, buckets, and the like up with ice (of course the ice machine was in the next building…  After the bath I felt a little better and figured that through the day it would heal up.  With that in mind, I must have stayed in the room to elevate and rest the legs, right?  No, of course not, why would I do something that would help me!  I made my way to MK sporting my new Half Marathon finishers medal.  My plan was to walk around casually and sit and relax as much as possible though (which I think I did for the most part).  I do love all of the congratulations and smiling faces when people see the medal as well as the mutual congratulations for those that completed it as well.  I didn’t wear my medal around the park a couple of years back and I learned my lesson, it’s a requirement of competing in marathon weekend!  I met up with Amanda, Rae and Eric and we hit Pirates and then the Team Voice Dole Whip meet.  Team Justin was there as well and Jonathan and Steve Swanson (Muppet Cast) joined us as well…forgetting someone….oh right, Team Wasowski was there too!  We toasted our DW, chatted for a while and split up for the most part.  I’m not going to get into the whole “finishers medal” thing as I believe it’s been sufficiently covered and beaten to death!  Amanda and I headed for the expo as I felt like I needed to find some sort of relief for the calf issue.  The expo was pretty cleaned out at this point, but I did manage to find a pair of compression socks that fit me and picked up a roll of KT Tape.  Thanks to Amanda for putting up with my whining! And standing around at the expo while I hemmed and hawed about what to do. J  I was pretty tired, so I headed back to the room right after to put out my stuff for the marathon and get some sleep.  Put out shorts and my Team voice shirt, no way I was going to go through the heat stroke again the next day, right?  Yeah, you’ll see what happened….