Marathon Reflections

One of the questions that I was asked on a pre-marathon post was what one should say to motivate a runner on marathon day. This varies depending on whether said runner is at mile 2, 5, 16, 24, or so on. Here are some of the things I found motivating (and one not so much) in Burlington this past weekend:

Before the race: My parents (both there - obviously pretty awesome) let me focus on my mental preparations and were willing to follow me around the starting area and hold the sports drink and various other items I occasionally handed their way. This allowed me lots of time to focus on my race.

Miles 1 - 5: I started the race near five Army National Guard men in full packs. Each of their packs, it turns out, weighed 40 to 45 pounds. I wanted to start out at a slow jog (unlike last time, when I ran my first couple of miles well below my training pace) and ended up sticking near them for about five miles. One advantage of this was that spectators always cheered loudly when they passed (five guys in full camouflage and boots with big packs on running a marathon - wouldn't you cheer for them?) so I got to be surrounded by some of the most vocal spectator support on the course.

The other advantage of running near these five was the mental boost the rest of us got from the sheer awesomeness of what they were doing. You're running. Somebody next to you is running in the boots he wore for a year in Iraq (seriously) wearing a 45-pound pack. No matter how fit that guy is (answer: very) there's some part of your brain that thinks, "If he can finish this, so can I." This feeling sticks with you; there were moments in miles 15 and later when I would think about those five guys somewhere else on the course with their packs. I even saw them a mile back around mile 20. If they could finish this, I could too. They did; I did.

Miles 6 - 17: Funny comments and posters tend to be highly motivational here. We non-elite runners aren't the most comfortable we've ever been by now - our bodies are starting to feel the distance by hour two - but our cardiovascular bases are strong so we're not yet in why-are-you-talking-to-me-right-now mode. I appreciated some of the random posters people had come up with, including one with Ryan Gosling's face and some fake quote along the lines of "Hey, I'm looking forward to seeing you at the finish line." There were a few people sitting on their lawn drinking around mile 8 with a sign that said "We're having one for you." Music also helps in this stretch (and on to the end) and the Taiko drummers and assorted local bands helped us get up hills and down flat stretches with relative ease.

Miles 18 - 22: This part is pretty miserable. You've been running for hours, you still have quite a while to go (roughly an hour in my case), every part of your body is either vaguely uncomfortable or very painful, your mind has started to understand why other people think you're crazy for running a marathon, and you aren't yet on the final stretch. The only people I was truly happy to see on this stretch were the volunteers manning the aid stations. They gave me water and gatorade, becoming my new best friends (for the next 45 minutes at least).

As you might have guessed from that mental state, this was the stretch in which I felt greatest annoyance towards a single piece of posterboard. A few minutes after mile 20, jogging through a quiet suburban neighborhood, I ran by a poster that read "Only 6.2 miles to go". I wanted to point out to the creator that 1) I had under 6 miles to go, as we had passed mile 20 a little way back - be accurate, okay - and 2) 6.2 miles is a very long way when you've already run 20 and this sign was 'only' reminding me of the interminable stretch of road ahead. I kept running and kept these comments to myself, trying to return my focus to the less-annoying dull ache that was slowly overtaking every inch of my being.

Miles 23 - 26: This is when an "Only __ miles to go" sign might have been okay. Indeed, one of my favorite signs in this stretch (the Burlington spectators are fantastic) was "The End is Near", held by a friend of the Ryan Gosling signmaker (who had another funny fake quote on the flip side of his poster which he was now displaying). This came around mile 24, when the end was actually under half an hour away and starting to feel relatively quite near. Much later, right as we rounded the final curve, race officials had hung a sign that read "Almost there!" This too felt right.

My favorite motivational comment also came in this stretch. Around mile 19, a woman in the neighborhoods had announced that I won the best smile award. (As I wasn't going to win any speed award, I took this as pretty cool.) She walked past on the bike path on which we finished around mile 23 and said, "I'm rooting for you. You have a great smile." She kept walking and I kept running (well, slowly jogging in what I like to think of as my "marathon shuffle"), but that stuck with me and helped boost me to the finish line. In the end, sincerity wins.

I'm off for a nourishing restorative dinner. Enjoy being able to walk down stairs painfree for the both of us, okay?