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Month: July 2016

the 2016 San Francisco Marathon race report – DNS

the 2016 San Francisco Marathon race report – DNS

I’ve been in the marathon training and racing world since 2007, and during that time, I can count on one hand the number of races I’ve DNSed (did not start). They all had good reasons, and typically, I’ve decided to DNS well in advance of the race.  A list, because lists are fun and make for easy reading on mobile devices:

  • a Bastille Day 5k (or 8k?) in Chicago. reason missed: I wanted to go see Salman Rushdie speak at Harold Washington Library. While I didn’t get to hear Rushdie because I didn’t get there in time, I scored some autographed books instead, so I still consider this a win in my book (slow clap for that horrible pun).
  • the Shamrock Shuffle 8k. reason missed: This was just a few weeks before my first Boston Marathon, and I took myself obnoxiously seriously and wanted to ensure that I was going into Boston as healthy as could be. The SS weather that year was for shit — we’re talking ankle- or calf-deep slushy, thick, nasty nonsense, with sideways snow and the whole shebang — and while I will gladly train in that before I get on a treadmill (true story … it’s not so much a pride thing as it is that I don’t like how treadmills make my body feel), I didn’t want to risk getting sick before my first Holy Grail of marathons.
  • the Lakefront 50/50 (50k option) in ’08. reason missed: overtrained and ITB issues. I’m lucky a few weeks of reduced volume did the trick because I was head-over-heels in overtraining and ITB maladies.
  • an 8k in Rockford, IL, over the summer just recently. reason missed: exhaustion. I lovingly blame my children, travelling, and humidity, that last one to which I have become wildly unaccustomed in the last three years.
  • and finally: the ’16 SF Marathon. reason missed: fucking stomach flu that showed up on Friday morning at 4am, on race eve eve.  boo hiss scorn
a great icon that I posted on my IG with the explanation of "well, not really." next year. next year.
a great icon that I posted on my IG with the explanation of “well, not really.” next year. next year.

 

The girls and I returned to California from our midwest sojourn on Wednesday, and in terms of the cross-country travel, everything went swimmingly. On Thursday, I spent most of the day getting our life back in order by doing the usual mundane things like cleaning, groceries, and laundry, and everything was fine. I opted to take a rest day on Thursday instead of Friday because of how G had slept Wednesday night-Thursday morning, but nothing seemed too out of the ordinary.

our last night in the midwest, hanging at my nephews' football camps. seems like a perfectly good thing to do on a summer night :)
our last night in the midwest, hanging at my nephews’ football camps. seems like a perfectly good thing to do on a summer night 🙂

 

Come Friday morning at 4am though, wow. I’m not one to shy away from TMI details about the gory details of anything, really, but suffice it to say that I had abdominal pain that literally took my breath away, and I spent the entirety of Friday daytime and evening in bed … or in the bathroom. For perspective: I don’t think I’ve ever called C at work and asked him to come home to watch the kids because I’ve felt so bad. It was ugly. I’m not a medical practitioner or a medical student, nor do I know the exact inner-workings of how our GI systems operate, but holy shit (bad pun, sorry, slow clap for that one for sure) I don’t think there was anything — anything — left in my system by Friday night.

In case you’re new to the marathoning scene, fully “emptying” your “system” 48 hours pre-race is basically the antithesis to how things are supposed to happen.

I was deliriously hopeful for things to turn around as quickly as possible because for as much as I love running TSFM — and as far as marathons go, it’s a hard course, and it’s hilly, but it’s beautiful, and SF in the summer is just unbeatable — I love the social stuff surrounding the weekend as well, the opportunities afforded to me by being a race ambassador and the opportunities I get to see SF friends I never get to see (hi, Erin!). Chicago-based friend Erica would be in town to race SF as an anniversary run of her first marathon, Portland-based Austin would also be in town … #yaddayaddayadda … I had a race to run and people to see! I knew in my heart of hearts, though, that even if I woke up on Saturday feeling like a million bucks, totally “free” of the gnarly-ass symptoms I had on Friday, that attempting to run, much less race, 26.2 challenging miles would be unwise. In fact, it would be idiotic. Thus, by 9am, I called it, told the people I needed to tell, and decided to DNS my first marathon, what should have been marathon #28, I think, and my three-peat of TSFM since 2010.

Admittedly, deciding to bag it was a tough decision.  Aside from all the stuff I just elaborated on above, in the running world, it seems like social media has aggravated this bullshit notion of “no pain, no gain” or “doing it for the insta” (gag me) or whatever. I very much wanted to cover SF by foot, and I knew that I’d probably physically be able to, but for what? What do I have to prove — or to whom do I have to prove it — by running a marathon two days out from a nasty stomach bug that left me in bed and basically fasting all day long? A marathon is just that — a marathon — a distance you just can’t “gut out,” especially when said guts have been seemingly “gutted out” (I’ll be here all night) in the preceding days by a (probable) virus. This is all to say that I very well could have just sucked it up and slogged through the race, posted a pic on IG about how I had stomach flu 48 hours before the race and look at me! I have a marathon finisher’s medal around my neck! I am so badass and tough that I can go run a marathon feeling sub-par just for the hell of it! People do this shit every weekend on social media, and every weekend, other people applaud these people’s efforts and commend them for how much “stronger” they must be than they actually realize.

To this — to this seemingly unending cycle of “being badass” or “tough” or “having guts” and racing when you’re not well — when you’re physically unwell (having a virus or some other sickness) or FOR FUCK’S SAKE WHEN YOU’RE INJURED (“I’m pretty sure I have the beginnings of a stress fx. Doc, do you think I’m okay to race a marathon next weekend?”the answer is unequivocally nooooooooo) — to all of this nonsense that no doubt feeds into the apparent reality that all runners get injured and that if you run, you will surely suffer from a running-related injury (or three) during your lifetime — I call bullshit. Please. Make it stop. Stop perpetuating this crap.

I’m probably being a bit crass about it, but I tend to think that runners self-divide into two camps — those who tend to think of their running in the long-term and those who tend to think of their running in the immediate — and more often than not, I feel like we in the running community are doing ourselves an enormous disservice by running (or by continuing to run) when we’re sub-par because for whatever reason, the immediate present matters more than the long-term. This isn’t to say that I think I’m higher and mightier for choosing to sit-out SF this year — see the paragraph above when I mention that it was a tough call for me; instead, I feel like if I want to continue to run at the volume I do (or higher), for as long as possible, it’s nothing short of imperative to think long-term. If we live and run solely in the here and now, we’re not being smart, gang, especially if you want to be doing this stuff for a long time. For me anyway, immediate gains absolutely pale in comparison to the long-term benefits I get from running and the goals that I have yet to realize. Perhaps you can relate.

giving your eyes a break here. (from a run in Akron in July). all the pretty mosquito-infested woods!
giving your eyes a break here. (from a run in Akron in July). all the pretty mosquito-infested woods!

 

Basically, if you take nothing else from this diatribe, take this. If you’re about to toe the line at a major running event, particularly those that are of the extremely strenuous and endurance variety (halfs, marathons, ultras), and you’re toeing the line not feeling 100%, ask yourself why you’re still there.

To whom are you proving?

Further, what are you proving, exactly?

If your BRF told you that she/he was suffering from the same thing that you are carrying at the starting line, would you advise him/her to still do the race?

And finally, how much are you willing to give up by completing this race?

If you’re running while injured or sick, how willing are you to take some possibly-significant steps backwards in training — due to further injury and/or compounded sickness — so you can complete (semantics here — complete, surely not compete in) this race?

Again, I wanted to share my experience here because I’m a normal gal who likes to run and race with the rest of us, and seeing my friends’ pics and hearing how fun race weekend was left me feeling a little deflated and gutted …

… until I realized that there’s always next year at SF and that there will surely be other marathons to run (I live in freaking CA, FFS. It’s like a veritable landmine for marathoning year-round). I totally get the sting that can come with money lost on race registrations, travel, and the like, but surely your long-term health, not to mention your ability to do this type of stuff in the first place, also matters. Like I admitted earlier, it can be a tough call.

Hopefully, you won’t get injured in advance of your race or contract a nasty bug that leaves you belly-up in the hours preceding your race, but if you do, please, for the love, have a chat with yourself (not weird, promise) about the race. I’m not a coach or a medical professional, but I will wager that chances are high that if you’re about to step into an endurance event feeling less-than, you will give yourself a hearty dose of humble pie during the race, if not also a hefty serving of totally-preventable-setbacks afterward. Maybe none of your friends want you to consider this reality, so let me. It’s probably not worth it. It wasn’t for me, anyway.

it has been a bit.

it has been a bit.

I often have these visions of how I want my blog to look, and I have all these posts planned out in my mind, things that I often chat about with other running friends, yet ultimately, when I have an opportunity to write, I do something else instead … and so begins nearly every blog post I write, with some sort of half-assed non-apology to my few readers for my relative absence.

An absence of my virtual scribbles doesn’t indicate that things are awry or that I’m not running; in fact, as is the case now, it’s really quite the opposite. It’s simply a matter of how I’m choosing to spend the very little children-free time I have available.

I’m here; I’m just … not. Or something.

I’ll do a quick catch-up, a la bullet points, in the interest of brevity:

  • I had about a twelve-week-ish turnaround between Pony Express on 5/1 and the SF Marathon on 7/31. I took a good two weeks post-PEM for super easy or no running, not so much out of physical stress as much as I did for the mental side. Being in the land of the Mouse for some of that time surely made the decision to not run much pretty effortless, too. I used to be able to effortlessly jump from marathon cycle to cycle, finishing one race and then hopping right into the next cycle for the next race. Maybe it’s part of the aging process (getting wiser?!) or, as is probably more realistic, the current wonderful state of life with two young kids, but I find that I need at least a little downtime to recharge my proverbial batteries before getting back into the marathon grind. Physically, I always feel ready; my mind is the one that’s all jump back, johnny! that convinces me to take more downtime. It’s less about waving the white flag in “weakness” and more about acknowledging that if I want to continue to do this stuff for the long-term, I’ve got to respect the mental side of marathon training as much as I do the physical.

    also good for mentally recharging? running monument peak.
    also good for mentally recharging? running monument peak.
  • My family and I have been spending most of the summer in the midwest to visit our families. During our travels, I registered for both a 5k and an 8k. By my standards, the 5k was pretty shitty – let’s talk about how unacclimated I am to a) racing 5ks and b) racing in humidity, ha – and I ultimately DNSed the 8k (something I’ve only ever done twice before) because I felt exhausted and didn’t think that the stress of trying to race an 8k would do me any favors 27 days pre-marathon. I thought I’d try to sneak in a few more 5ks, but I never found any that would be convenient and minimally disruptive to my family, so I just forewent it. I was initially going to write a RR about the 5k, but honestly, it’s been about a month now, and I don’t even remember very much of it anymore except that after a 3 mile warmup, I was soaked from head-to-toe in sweat; I had GI nonsense during my WU that (fortunately) abated during the race; and naturally, I had a slow burn-and-fade during the race. I think I posted a low 21 – slow for me – but I left pissed more at myself for the novice pacing than for the time. Practice, practice, practice…

    drones are cool. (PC: tim speer photography)
    drones are cool. (PC: tim speer photography)
  • Concurrent with the awesome family time I’ve been able to have, I’ve purposely let running take something of a backseat. I so appreciate being with family, and of course, their willingness to hang with the kids when/so I can run, but realistically, I’d much rather just be with my family (whom I never get to see, due to that whole California-being-on-the-edge-of-the-western-world-thing) than running by myself for a few hours. I’ve run when I can and when it has been both convenient and minimally disruptive, and while it was initially challenging to shake the guilt-ridden ohmygodhowamIgoingtorunTSFMifIdon’tcompleteaLReveryweekendorpostXnumberofmileseachweek sentiments, I’m better with it now. It wasn’t that long ago that I’d feel completely derailed by not being able to check-off all my runs week after week. Now – and especially given our travel and my sacrosanct family time – it’s ok. Expected, even. I’ll be fine.

    buuuuuuuut this 20 miler in Akron was arguably one of the best runs I've had while traveling. when in doubts, woods it out.
    buuuuuuuut this 20 miler in Akron was arguably one of the best runs I’ve had while traveling. when in doubt, woods it out. as much as I love roads — and I really do — going off the beaten path for a while is really just so good for the soul. I’m convinced of it.
  • I’m running the SF Marathon, one of my favs, in just a few weeks now, on July 31. It’ll be my third time running the marathon, and another year being an ambassador for the race, and I’m looking forward to it. It’s always a good experience and a fun weekend. On paper, my training has been fine – I can say that both mentally and physically, I’m going into it feeling better than I did going into PEM, but not nearly as good as I felt going into Modesto – and I think I am most liberated by my relative lack of expectations and goals. TSFM is a tough race any day of the week, even if you’re especially trained for it, but it’s also a beautiful course and a lot of fun. I love the climbing (about 1,500′ by my Garmin in ’14, if I’m remembering correctly); the diversity of the course doesn’t get old; and hell, going from sultry midwest temps back to the coolness of SF in July will be a welcome treat. If I had to guess, right now I think I’ll be looking forward to the race as a wonderful and scenic long-long-run opportunity. I should hold a contest to guess my finish time because really, I got nothing. We’ll just see how it all comes together. I don’t think it’ll be my fastest SF, but I also don’t think it’ll be my slowest, either.
  • Speaking of things coming together … stuff is still being finalized, but if it all works out and I’m still needed (wanted?), I might be pacing at a popular California marathon in August. …wink.
  • This is pretty fun; someone is actually paying me to write about running (for a change!). It’s funny how the internet works sometimes. I should really make some explicit messages on my blog that state that I’m not interested in posting advertisements or promoting products in whom I don’t believe (looking at you, compression anything), or putting people’s pre-written and glowing product reviews on my blog, or writing for free (!) for some website about bodybuilding (true story) – all things that have come my way since I started casually writing here a while ago. Nowadays, in that aforementioned sparse child-free spare time that I have, I’ve been doing some freelance writing (and ghostwriting) about running. You might come across my byline sometime … or you might read my stuff that’s attributed to someone else. It’s kinda neat. Even though I’ve written and published stuff before, seeing my name in a byline – or knowing that stuff I wrote has been published on running outlets – doesn’t get old.

Maybe I’ll pull something else together here before TSFM on 7/31, but if not, you’ll probably have my SF recap to look forward to next in a few weeks. On pins and needles I surely leave you. Here’s another gratuitous woods pic, this one from the land of Lincoln from earlier this summer.

make some Illinoise
make some Illinoise