Outer Banks Marathon Report: Warning....It Isn't Pretty.

Today is day three of  post-horrible-everythingbadthatcouldhappendid-cryfest-Outer Banks Marathon experience and since I've finally stopped crying,  I thought it would be a good time to jump back on the blogging bandwagon, pick my head up and get going with the next step. 

What's the next step?  I have no idea.  None.  I have no desire to run....well, that's not entirely true.  I have a desire to run one mile (but only one) really really fast just to prove to myself that I can, in fact, run but my body has other plans.  My hips are still in pretty bad shape - more on that later - and since I still feel pretty beat up, I think I'll keep running on the shelf for a bit longer.  In the meantime, I'm making sure that I'm staying active.  I took Monday totally off.  I parked my tired, cranky, crying at the drop of a hat ass on the couch all day and felt sorry for myself.  By Tuesday, I was totally sick of myself so I went to the gym.  I went to my favorite strength training class (meets every Tuesday and Thursday) and did as much as I could and honestly, it felt really good to move.  It also felt really good to see my running peeps.  The people who know me best and have seen  me run a 3:56 marathon so they know that a 4:29 majorly broke my spirit.  Two of them were even down in the Outer Banks with me so they saw my body give out on me and then my head quickly follow.  After making sure I wasn't going to cry, we had a good laugh about it and they started talking about my big come back.  Yup.  It's gonna be huge.  Huge!  I'll let you know what it is as soon as I come up with something.

So I'm just going to get this part over with and be done with it.  The goal at the Outer Banks Marathon was to run a 3:50 which would qualify me for Boston 2010.  After my first marathon, Shamrock last March, I felt confident.  I went into Shamrock with a great attitude.  I just wanted my first marathon experience to be fun.  I didn't put any pressure on myself, no time that I had to get, I just trained really well, and got super excited.  On race day, I was happy.  Excited.  Jumping up and down ready to run. I started out with the 4:00 pace group and stuck with them until mile 22.  At that point, I felt so strong that I was able to pull away and finished with a 3:56 and huge smile. 

Contrast that with how I went into the OBX Marathon and you can start to see where it all unraveled.  I put a ton of pressure on myself to get that 3:50.  It's all I thought about on every training run.  I ran all my long runs at almost marathon pace which now looking back on it, was the beginning of my downfall, it really beat my body up.  I knew I was supposed to run them slow but I was so busy trying to convince myself I could run at that speed that I threw all common sense out the window.  I have a friend who qualified for Boston when we ran Shamrock and she really wanted me to get to Boston too.  I'm certainly not putting any blame on her, I wanted to get to Boston too, but she was so convinced I could do it that the idea of letting her down really haunted me.  I was running a lot and fast and  I wasn't doing the cross training that I did prior to Shamrock.  The week leading up to OBX, I was full of fear and dread.  The morning of, I felt horrible.  I was this close to having a full on panic attack.  I didn't feel positive, I felt scared.  And not ready.  Not a good way to start a marathon.  I found the 3:50 pacer who was lackadaisical at best about getting the 3:50.  We started off fast.  Too fast.  We should have been averaging an 8:47 but instead, we were averaging 7:45s for the first 6 miles.  I'm not going to sit here and blame my failure on her, I knew better.  I had my Garmin and knew exactly how fast we were running.  A few of us kept telling her we were going too fast and her response was "Oh,  guess we should slow down" which she would, to an 8:10 or 8:20 for a few minutes then all of a sudden, we were back in the 7:50s.  Oh, then she dropped out at mile 6 because of a head cold.  She certainly didn't help.  After she left us, I tried to keep up with the group - there were 4 others who needed that 3:50 for Boston - but they were continuing to run too fast.  By the time we got to 13, I was toast.  My legs felt like cement blocks.  My breathing was out of control thanks in part to the fast running for so long but also due to aniety.  I kept thinking, 'this isn't right! this isn't how this is supposed to go! this isn't the plan!!' A little past the 13-mile marker, I let them go.  I slowed way down to try and regain control and watched them run off....along with my Boston dream.  Yeah, I can be dramatic like that.

The rest of the race went downhill from there.  I managed to keep running until the water stop at 18.  I walked through it and couldn't quite convince myself to start running again.  My hips were on fire and my left knee (which I believe is ITB related) had all but totally given out on me.  I walked for about 200 yards then started running...ok, jogging....again.  It went on like that for a long time.  My friends kept shadowing me, trying to keep my spirits up - by this point, I had cried a few times.  When the 4:15 pace group ran past me, I lost it.  Just totally lost it.  I was that runner you see in races and  you never want to be - that hobbling, half jogging, half running, crying mess.  At that point, I just wanted to finish before the 4:30 group so I somehow, willed my legs to move. 

When I crossed the finish line, I limped to a curb and sat down.  My friends found me and I just cried.  Sat there and cried.  It was awful.  Awful.  Then we still had a long drive home.  Plenty of time to rehash all that went wrong.

So that's it.  I trained all wrong.  My attitude was all wrong.  I honestly can't think of anything that I did right.  So that's my lesson. That's what I learned.  It was way more then the fact that the stars didn't align or that the running gods were out to get me.  I had a hand in this disaster too.  And now I'm just trying not to beat the hell out of myself over it.  I've now blogged it and that officially makes me done with it.  Move along, there's nothing to see here!  On to the next big thing....whatever that happens to be.