I RAN A FUCKING MARATHOn!

I really did it. It was brutal and everything that could go wrong did go wrong, but I really did it!

Training

First of all, I’ll be honest, my training was not what it should have been. I worked hard, was sober for almost 4 months, and did the best I could with the time and energy I had. That said, my longest training run was only 10 miles and I struggled with injury and depression during the months leading up to the race.

I also made the enormous decision to uproot my life in New York City, my home for the past 13 years, and buy a house in Baltimore. Once that decision was made thoughts of my adorable new house and the home buying process consumed all my thoughts. I went into the Marathon saying to myself, ‘If I can’t do it, at least I’ve got home ownership as the biggest accomplishment of the year.’ I can’t wait for the move in day and I am very excited to start blogging about the Baltimore running scene.

While there was a mix of amazing things and not so good things holding back my training at the end of the day I went to Philly knowing full well that there was a real possibility that I wouldn’t be able to finish. AND because my race packet was lost in the mail (twice) that I might not even be allowed to run. The support email for the race was very unhelpful while I was reaching out about the missing packet. The few responses I did get were generally a single sentence that didn’t address my questions and they came in days apart. The responses were so abrupt it was hard not to take them as rude. It takes very little effort to make an email come across as friendly or at the very least, polite, so it really bugs me to receive a reply that doesn’t include a greeting, or even any punctuation, and doesn’t answer all my questions.

In person however, the volunteers were amazingly helpful and kind and gave me a new bib without hesitation when I explained the situation.

Accommodations

My incredible family came up to Philadelphia to support me; My sister and her husband— Natalie and Doug, and my sister in law and her boyfriend— Cassidy and Sid, and my two nieces— Izzy and Lyla along with their dogs— Boba Fett and Luna.

My sister booked a BnB through booking.com that was too good to be true. Sleeps 10, dog friendly, not too far from the sarting line….

Things that are too good to be true generally are.

The place was a nightmare and my sister’s check in experience was terrible. First they sent her to one address where they found the place dilapidated, with several homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk. There were broken bottles and crack pipes on the sidewalk and she worried about her dogs and the kids even walking around there. Then the BnB people called her to let her know a mistake had been made with the address. What a relief right?

But the second address was arguably worse. Again, the home was dilapidated, there was a heap of garbage consisting of old liquor bottles and god knows what else on the porch, and while there were no homeless people sleeping in front of it, it was a VERY active corner for drug deals. The man on the corner approached her husband as they pulled up as if he was the proprietor of the BnB and offered to get them anything they needed— He did not mean more towels or the wifi password (LOL there was no wifi) he meant any substance they needed. The home also did not sleep 10, it slept 4-6 people “comfortably” with two filthy floor cushions not fit for the dogs for two more. There was no heat, no furniture in the living room, the windows appeared to have been broken into previously, and there were bullet holes behind the portrait of Jesus at the top of the basement stairs. The front door was one of those hollow closet doors fitted with a combination lock.

The level of poverty in Philadelphia is pretty heartbreaking. I don’t want to sound like I am indifferent to the struggle of the people who live in these neighborhoods every day. The homeless people at the first place and the drug dealers at the second place all deserve better opportunities and support from their City.

That said, we were being watched by the whole block and it was fucking creepy. It’s not good for a shady corner business to have kids and loud dogs drawing extra attention. It really was not a safe place for us to be.

Still, we left, feeling anxious about it all but unsure what we could do about other accommodations with 10 people and two dogs with such short notice. We gathered everyone and went to see The Magic Garden, top of the list of dog friendly attractions in Philadelphia my sister had researched. We got tickets for the 10 of us and went to Starbucks to kill some time before the next tour started. Then my sister got a text from the BnB people… once again they sent us to the wrong place…

This was the push we needed to gtfo of there. We booked two rooms at a Motel 6 a 40 minute drive from the starting line. It was a no brainier that it was worth it to get up extra early to make the drive to the starting line if we could stay in a commercial motel with real locking doors. I impersonated my sister on the phone to express my outrage to the woman running these two disgusting BnB properties and insist on a refund. They said as long as we didn’t touch anything and could vacate our stuff immediately a refund would be processed. We told them not to worry, we didn’t touch the big pile of garbage on the porch or anything else.

Doug and Sid missed our tour of the magic gardens to go back to the place and gather our things as quickly as possible. They really are the best guys. The Magic Garden was incredible and I was so sad they had to miss the only nice thing we’d seen in Philly so far, but knowing we had a safe secure place to stay rather than that trash heap of a house made it totally worth it. We had a great time with the kids at the Garden and after met up with the guys in a nearby park.

We quickly realized that none of the ‘dog friendly’ places my sister researched were actually dog friendly at all so we decided pizza at the motel was the best way to go. We were all exhausted from the day anyway and in all that running around, none of us had really found time to eat much of anything.

The motel also had drug and sex worker activity, cigarette burns in the bedspreads, and generally was what you would expect from a crummy motel outside of Philly— but as we told the incredulous desk lady when she said ‘This place is not really very nice…’ it was absolute HEAVEN compared to where we were before.

Race Day

Between the stress of the day and the dog whining and barking at the partiers in the hallway at the motel all night… I did not sleep much at all. I also didn’t eat enough so I woke up even earlier than I planned to. getting dressed in my race outfit I couldn’t find the underwear I brought for the race. I weighed my options and decided that the potential consequences of wearing regular underwear were more worth the risk than the potential consequences of wearing none. Was this a mistake? I’ll never really know which would have been worse but I can say that I REALLY wish I had found the underwear I planned to wear. Everyone knows you don’t wear cotton and you don’t wear anything new for a marathon. Since none of my other plans worked out, I decided to wear a pair of socks I’d worn only once before and I can say that was DEFINITELY a mistake. Our exit from the motel was pretty smooth though and while a man did offer me a dipper first thing in the morning while I was standing in the hall with my nieces, I still felt incredibly grateful for the Motel 6.

I was feeling good and whatever the outcome of the race, ready to try my best. We’d expected rain but it was only a light drizzle and it was not as cold as I’d worried it would be. Usually the early early morning is the coldest part of the day so I decided to leave my warmer clothing with my sister and wear only my long sleeve running shirt layered under another running shirt and a down vest overtop of that.

There were not enough port-a-potties available and the runners and spectators were sharing the few that they had so the lines were incredibly long. The 7 am start of the race came and went while I was still standing in line but I tried not to be too worried about it. There are 35,000 people running this race and I was certainly not in the first wave anyway… But did the anxiousness of not being in my corral when the race started contribute to my next mistake?

I went out way too fast. Maybe it was just keeping pace with the people around me or the excitement of the big day but I did my first mile way over my planned pace. Mile 1 was under 10 minutes which for me would be a fast 5k pace NOT a marathon pace. I am a slow runner and should have tried to keep it to an 11 or 12 minute pace to start out. That was what I planned. Between the new socks and the unsustainable pace I found I had blisters before I even got to mile 6. I stopped to get band-aids from a volunteer but it was too late. I was on a path that could not be undone. Then my headphones suddenly stopped working. They unpaired with my phone and would not reconnect. 20 miles to go with only my own horrible thoughts to listen to… and… thank goodness for the encouragement of the crowd and the other runners.

Seriously, I Almost Quit

By the time I got to mile 9 my quads were locking up on every downhill and I started thinking about quitting at the halfway point. I figured I’d done plenty of half marathons and it would still be an accomplishment to finish half of this thing. I could always try again… or not…

I text my sister, my friend Mandy, and Patti about the situation. I said I was thinking of quitting at the half due to blisters and quad pain. They were all supportive of whatever decision I made (except Patti who was busy also running a fucking marathon and so did not have time for texting). I told them I would decide at the half.

But I Didn’t Quit.

When I got to the halfway point I knew I couldn’t just quit. I did however lie to myself and tell myself that I did quit but since I was at the halfway point anyway and the finish was in the same place as the start, I might as well go forward since it was just as far to turn back.

That lie worked for about a mile, then, at mile 14, a woman cheering made eye contact with me and pointed and said, “YOU are a MARATHONER!” and I burst into the kind of uncontrollable tears that I have only ever experienced while running. Shout out to that lady and to all the incredible spectators who helped me along the way. You kept me going when I really really wanted to stop. There were EDM kids dressed as animals, November Project cheering stations, frat boys shouting ‘MAKE PHILLY YOUR BITCH” and dozens of other amazing citizens set up with snacks, beer, band-aids, candy, trash bags and anything else a runner could possibly need. You all made this marathon amazing and I am grateful for your help every step of the way.

At this point I was starting to feel a little better, really thinking I could do this. My blisters were getting worse with every step but my quads were loosening up and I was on track to finish. But then the temperature started dropping… and the rain picked up. Soon we were soaked in freezing rain which was turning to snow. I mentioned before that I left my warm clothes with my sister because it seemed like it would be pretty mild.

Pretending to myself that I had quit but might as well go forward since turning back was just as long didn’t work as well once I reached the part of the course where we ran right past the finishing corral into a tortuously long out and back along the river. It’s hard to know every step you take is in the opposite direction of where you want to go and will need to be re-trod in the other direction. Psychologically I had to start a new game. I focused on each mile individually. Once I hit mile 16, well, there are only 10 miles left, and at mile 17, only 9 and that is single digits which means it’s basically nothing. The wet snow coming down on us and the high winds at the river created a painfully cold experience. My hands were so swollen, I just kept trying to make sure I was moving my arms and flexing my fingers. It seemed like the turn around would never get there. One runner going the other direction shouted to us that it was much easier on the way back. I had to believe him.

The course along the river with sheer rocky cliffs on the other side seemed to go on and on but I figured when I saw it curving up around a small bridge that the turn around must be right there… but it wasn’t. Still a bunch of EDM kids in animal pajamas gave me a tiny cup of beer which helped me push forward. The turn around was definitely just over that hill… ah, no… it wasn’t… We ran by bars and shops now, not just cliffs and as I passed a CVS I considered what I could buy that would help me— gloves, a hat, maybe a trash bag to wear as a poncho, maybe even an actual poncho, hot hands… but I knew if I stopped in a CVS I wouldn’t be able to make myself get back out there to run again. So I ran passed it and STILL it was not the turn around. Lots of people encouraged me to keep going. I must have looked just how I felt because they would say ‘Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Just focus on finishing!’ That was advice I could take.

While I had been focused on one mile at a time I started noticing that my Garmin had the mile markers about a .3 before the race mile markers. I just had to decide to take my Garmin as correct even knowing that if the course was long I’d just have to keep going anyway, but by the time that would happen, the extra distance wouldn’t matter anymore. Soon the mile markers were .4 and then even .5 further than Garmin. It was frustrating but I just had to ignore it.

When I finally reached the turn around I came upon a young woman who was suffering in the cold even more than I was. Alex from North Carolina was also attempting her first marathon and didn’t even have a down vest on over her long sleeve technical shirt to keep warm and was locked up tight in her movements. I told her about my strategy of lying to myself about quitting and then focusing on one mile at a time, about Garmin having us about a half mile ahead of what the mile markers say, so lets just go by the Garmin. We joked and complained and she said she said she was thinking of quitting. I told her at this point, I wish I had quit at the halfway point, because then I would have been quit since now it would be too stupid to quit with only 6.2 miles left. That’s a 10k I told her, you eat 10k’s for breakfast! She told me about her knee pain and I asked some follow up questions and advised her to pick up her feet more, not to lock up so much, and swing her arms and flex her fingers. That was my medical opinion based on my years of experience as a bartender and returns manager at a tech company. Excellent credentials for sports medicine. Encouraging Alex helped me to keep going. I was only telling her all the things I should have been telling myself all along. It’s so much easier to say kind things to other people and really mean them than it is to say kind things to myself sometimes.

When we got back to the bridge that marked the passage to the long stretch of road between the rocky cliffs and the river I told her if she still wanted to quit she should do it now, because once we go down this road there is nowhere to stop til we get to the finish, but it’s only 5 miles to the finish, hardly anything, just a 5k and 2.1 miles. She said no way, that I had convinced her she could do it. She said that, but deep down, I’m certain she would have finished on her own. She’s a tough cookie. All marathoners are. She said I didn’t have to stay with her but I told her I wouldn’t leave her. I was hurting too and so painfully cold and besides, it’s not like if I suddenly ran 10 minute miles (impossible) all the way to the end that I would have an impressive time anyway.

I told Alex about our stay with the weird BnB situation, about all the running advice I’d ever been given and the book Good to Go which basically says everything we know about sports recovery is a lie, I told her every joke I could think of and every random fact I knew. Still, the cold was really getting to us and no amount of arm swinging or finger flexing was going to warm us up. Then suddenly, a van pulled up going the other way and a man held up two turquoise volunteer sweatshirts! This man is a true hero. He saved us.

With our sweatshirts on we felt 10 times better. It was almost as if the finish line was closer just for the extra layer.

A group of November Project spectators with signs and music danced out onto the course jumping and pulling enthusiasm that was infectious. One young man with a sign that said ‘You are amazing’ asked us if it was our first marathon, we said yes and they pumped up the music and ran along with us jumping and shouting that we were both setting a PR today. I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but it’s true, even my dismal 6+ hour time is a PR when it’s a first marathon. Once again I almost started the crying but kept it together because even though I was in bad shape too and this marathon is not my home, I felt like Alex was my guest somehow and I needed to not be crying in front of company. I cannot express how much strength talking to her gave me back.

If you are ever struggling, the best possible thing you can do is try to help someone else. You don’t have to be a fast easy runner to help another runner, just like you don’t have to be an executive to help lift up a colleague. If you’re unhappy in any part of your life the best thing you can do is to try to lift someone else up. Offer to help your favorite barista or bartender with their resume. Discuss strategy for asking for a raise with a colleague. Help your single parent friend out with some help with chores. Give something of yourself to people who need something. Be the rising tide that lifts all boats, including your own.

When we finally reached the finish corral our families were there cheering. Alex took off her sweatshirt so her number would be visible. I left mine on because I just couldn’t deal. My finish line photos are awful because nothing flatters a figure like a puffy vest under a too small sweatshirt lol. I will not be purchasing prints. We chose a point and ran from there and hugged when we made it across. It felt like we had been together for the whole thing even though we’d only just met at mile 20.

We made it across!

The medal has a little Liberty Bell on it that makes me sound like a cat when I walk around wearing it. Patti finished a few minutes ahead of me; I thought she would have been done long before me but it turns out she was close by almost the whole race. We lost each other at the 10k when I peeled off to beg for band-aids and we just didn’t find each other on the course for some reason. I introduced Alex to my family and to Patti and she introduced me to hers and we exchanged numbers swearing to keep in touch. We’re planning on running a half together some time…

Recovery Time

Running a marathon hurts, but the pain of doing it doesn’t really compare to the pain of standing up, sitting down, stepping up onto a curb, walking down a slight ramp, or walking up or down stairs in the days after. You know what is great about tattoos? They hurt a lot while you are getting tattooed and then they stop hurting pretty much immediately. Running a marathon keeps hurting for days. I have four enormous blisters, two on each foot, and YES I DID stick them each with a pin and it shot blister juice clear across the room! Is that gross? Who cares. I am most likely going to lose a couple toenails as well, which I assure you, is not as gruesome as it sounds. What is gruesome, is the results of the mistake I made wearing cotton underwear. Remember the last time you fell down and scraped your knee? well, that is what the inside of my left butt cheek looks like from rubbing against that cotton underwear. You see, if you wear cotton your sweat collects on it and the salt builds up. This means my cotton underwear was basically fine grain sandpaper underwear.

Luckily by Thanksgiving I was walking and sitting normally again and in the end it was all worth it.

Patti thinks she might want to do another marathon eventually… I do not think I will. A half is a perfect distance for me. Still… I GOT MY 26.2 TATTOO AND SO DID PATTI.