Des Moines Marathon Race Report (Warning: this is nearly as long as the race itself)

I awake before sunrise after a fitful night of sleep. At this point the opportunity to get up is a relief. I’m not prone to nervousness but, in spite of the fact that this has never actually happened to me, I’m always worried I’ll sleep through my alarm on race day. Consequently, I repeatedly awake with a start, like a kid nodding off in his 7:30am entry-level college Economics class because it’s just so damn early in the morning and, admittedly, Economics is just so damn boring. Since this is always the case, the lack of good sleep causes me no concern. Running my first marathon promises to fill me with enough nervous excitement and adrenaline that if I could bottle it I could give Starbucks a run for their money in the business of keeping awake college students stuck in 7:30am entry-level Economics classes.

Without stepping out of my hotel room I know that it is just under 40° and slightly windy. I had committed the hourly weather report to memory before going to sleep. It’s cold, so I pull on some layers of clothes and my shoes and head out for an easy jog to raise my body temperature and “get the plumbing working.” My jog is more of a shuffle. The city is still quietly wrapped in dark and stars. I jog the three blocks to the start line, where my excruciating journey will begin in just a few short hours. The only people out are those unlucky volunteers who are constructing the Start and Finish lines and setting up the fencing. It’s hard to imagine these streets filled with over 6,000 participants, not to mention their friends and families who will be there to cheer them on. Looking back on it now, I never got to enjoy the happy crowd of lunatics who tackle the marathon with me that day. Honestly, I lined up at the front and between the start and when I left the finish area, I probably didn’t see more than a couple hundred runners. There’s a good chance I saw that many volunteers that day. Strange.

I shuffle a few more blocks and head back to the hotel. The entire jog takes me about 15 minutes - just enough time to get me feeling a little warm. I go back inside and have a cup of coffee and breakfast; nothing special, just exactly what I’ve been eating before all of my long runs for the last two months. The routine comforts me, but I know there is still a lot of time before the race and that I won’t get through this morning without at least a few pre-race jitters. As I mentioned above, I’m not prone to nervousness, but this will be the first time I force my body to run this distance, and I’m attempting to do it in 3 hours no less. Many people think the Boston qualifying time of 3:10 is tough enough and many more people think 3 hours is crazy. They’re right, but I didn’t sign up to do this because I thought it would be fun. I did it for the challenge. Hell, I could walk the damn thing and say I did a marathon, but that won’t tell me anything about myself.

I eat with my thoughts. I turn on the TV to drown out the thoughts. Now I’m eating with my thoughts and the news, but I don’t manage to catch any of the stories. I finish breakfast and try to relax for a bit. I flip through the channels. I go to the bathroom. I peel off my layers and put on my race outfit. I go to the bathroom. I drink some water. I grab arm warmers and gloves, knowing it’s too cold for just shorts and a singlet. I put on a few layers and head out for an honest warm-up, but since there’s plenty of time during a marathon this warm-up is a jog - one step up from the shuffle of an hour and a half ago. The sun is up now and, despite the increasing wind, gives the illusion of warmth. I come back, drink some water, and go to the bathroom. I head out for the Start line.

I get to the Start line and go through my warm-up routine: strides, butt-kicks, high knees, some light stretching. I drop my layers and go to line to search for the 3:00 pace group. I introduce myself to the pace leader and wait nervously for the gun to go off. This is the worst part. Months of training being smothered by anticipation. Suffocated. I’m gasping for the freedom to just start running. Someone sings the Star Spangled Banner. I’m not sure if she does a good job. I bounce nervously in place. They start the wheelchair athletes. I turn around and see nothing but heads. Somewhere behind me are over 6,000 people, but I can only see the few hundred around me. Finally, “runners, take your marks.” Finally, the gun.

At the front of the race, the pack thins out rather quickly. We go through the first mile in 6:30. This is 20 seconds faster than goal pace. I look at the pacer. He looks at his watch. He shrugs.

“I always do that.”

“Sorry.”

Granted, I would have done that if I where trying to pace this thing on my own, but that’s why I was with the group. So it goes. By mile 2 the pack has already thinned out. At mile 4 the runners doing the half marathon branch off onto their course. By this time the 3 hour group is larger than I thought it would be with about 40 of us running together. The course gets hilly. Mostly rolling hills with a couple long gradual inclines. These are the types of hills I like. There is one hill in a tree-lined residential area that is about 300 meters long and what feels like straight up. This type of hill I could do without. The route is mostly through residential areas, with shafts of sun stabbing through the already golden autumn leaves and people dotting front yards to cheer us on. The miles roll by easily at this point. Some of the guys in the group talk to each other. I crack a nervous joke early, but save my energy. Even though I’ve never run a marathon before, I know this race actually starts somewhere around mile 20.

I’m aware of very little. I notice my breathing. I hear the marching of our feet. We’re an army and we’ve come to take your marathon in under 3 hours. We won’t take no for an answer. I’m aware of what I perceive my effort to be. I notice my breathing. Anything not happening to me is none of my concern. The cheering crowds of people aren’t much more than 10 feet from us on either side, but they seem far away and their cheers come muffled. From the other side of a wall, maybe. Or through a pillow. We hit mile 9 and I’m nudged back to reality. I know this is the end of the hills and I tell myself it’s all easy from here. I have no idea, but it seems like a good thing to tell myself at the time

More miles roll by. We run through the halfway point in 1:29:43. Perfect. I feel fine but we’re only halfway done. I don’t let myself start counting down the miles yet. I know it’s too soon.

“We’re going to start shooting for 6:45s.”

I don’t ask questions. He’s the pacer. He ran this race in 2:58 last year, so he’s the boss. Probably he’s working on getting us a bit of a cushion of time to prepare for the almost certain slowdown that will happen in the last few miles. The group is down to about 30.

We run 6:22. We run 6:42. At mile 15 I start to hurt. It starts to get hard. My breathing still hasn’t increased, but my legs know the cost of running 15 miles at 6:50 pace. I worry a little. It’s too early. There are still 11 miles to go. We run 6:43. We go up a small hill, something I would never have considered a hill until now, and it hurts. We run 6:40. My breathing is labored now. We pass through an aid station and I slow just a bit to grab a cup of Gatorade and make sure it ends up in my mouth instead of on my face, but when I drop my cup and try to catch back up to the group, which is now around 20 guys or less, I just can’t go any faster. I run 7:13

Suddenly it all begins to unravel. I feel every step. I’m now aware of all of the bones in my feet. I start to learn how many muscles are in the thigh and begin to feel them individually on every impact. My calves begin to whittle themselves into knots of wood. They spasm and jump under my skin. I have to stop to stretch them. While I’m doing this, the volunteers at the aid station as if I need anything.

“Yeah, to be done.”

But I’m not, so I keep going. I run 8:04. I try to tell myself that I maybe my legs will come around and I’ll still be able to do this. I force to go faster. I run 7:47, but every inch of that mile hurts. There are still 5 miles left, but my race is over. I run 8:15. My calves spasm again and once again I have to stop and stretch. I run 8:39.

I’m hemorrhaging. I’m bleeding precious seconds all over this course, but it’s at this point that I realize that if I can push through these last 3 miles that I can still run under 3:10 and qualify for the Boston marathon - the last race in the US that you still have to qualify for outside of the Olympic trials. I run 8:15. I run 8:24. The 3:10 pace group catches me. They encourage me.

“Come with us.”

I want to, but my legs won’t respond. I manage to run 8:03. I can see the Finish line. I know it’s going to be close. I force myself to try to sprint, but I don’t know how much faster that actually is. I can read the clock above the Finish line. It’s counting up, but as far as I’m concerned it’s counting down. If it reaches 3:10 before I get there, my race has blown up. I run harder. I wince at every step. I cross in 3:09:44. My legs buckle and someone catches me as someone else puts a medal around my head. The medal hits my chest with a dull thud and I’m surprised of the weight of it. I remember thinking that I’m glad that it’s so substantial because of what I just went through, but I’m not sure it’s quite enough. I hobble, with the help of a volunteer, to the massage tent. They work on my calves. I don’t want to get up.

I drag myself out of the tent and get my clothes. It’s sunny and considerably warmer than when we started over 3 hours ago, but I’m suddenly freezing. I go to the food tables and engulf anything that sounds good. I’m starving. I eat as much as I can for 5 minutes and grab more food to take back to the hotel. I don’t know what it looks like, but I’m sure my walk is ugly. I know it’s deformed. I try to hobble in such a way that causes no pain, but everything causes pain, so I try to hobble in such a way as to cause as little pain as possible. It’s not possible. It’s all pain. It takes me probably close to 15 minutes to walk the 3 blocks to the hotel. I sit down and feel like I could stay there all day, but the hotel refused to give me late checkout. I sit wondering why anyone would run 26.2 miles at once. Ever. I sit until the last possible minute, throw my stuff in my backpack, and checkout.

This is (almost) exactly how it happened.

This morning before I went to Pertu, the coffee shop near our apartment on Dob Utca, I listened to the new JVA demos. They’re amazing. The longing to be a part of that tore straight to my gut, but not the easy way - through my torso - oh no. It ripped my head off and ate through my heart before turning into a whale in the fishbowl of my stomach. I know I can’t make it through a second listen so I drag myself to the coffee shop. Pertu has become home base in a sense. I go daily in an attempt to make friends with the baristas. I want friendly faces. I want someone who recognizes my face and the smile that comes with that acknowledgement, even if it is only an empty pleasantry. Even if it’s not warm with honest emotion.

I set up shop in the upstairs corner and turn on my computer. The internet is a small refuge from my alien surroundings. I read up on my friend’s lives. I fill in the details as only one with intimate knowledge of the people and places can do. Today, however, the internet has turned on me. My inbox brings only bad news. There’s a rejection letter from a freelance writing company. There are emails from English language schools telling me I’m too late. They’ve already filled all of their positions. I tell myself it’s not that bad.

I’m the worst kind of liar. I’m lying to someone who already knows the truth. There’s no comfort in these empty words. I don’t mention it to Johnmark until we get ready to leave. He tells me the same things I’ve been telling myself.

We leave Pertu and hop on the tram. We take it to the other side of the Danube river where we begin walking up the hill. We’re going to Buda castle. It’s on the top of the hill which, admittedly, is a good place to put a castle. We walk up hills through narrow, winding streets. The buildings are packed so efficiently together that, while looking down the road, sometimes only the color of the paint can be used to distinguish one building from the next as there is barely enough room between them to create shadows or even the illusion of space. We climb stairs. Lots of stairs, until finally we reach the castle walls. We spend the afternoon walking. We take in the view of the entire city from the castle walls. I feel bigger and wonder at how such a large city can suddenly look so much smaller. I think of how small home would look if it were nestled on the other side of the river. I think of how small home would look if I could see it now, where it currently sits, from this distance on this hill. Suddenly the city re-inflates and I feel tiny again.

We see the palace. We see small shops and statues of war heroes. We walk down the hill and across the Chain Bridge. We walk to St. Stephen’s Basilica. Europe is not lacking in ornate churches, to say the least, but the enormity of this one radiates an effect that can be felt from blocks away, before the entire building is even in sight. Even if you’re someone who loathes organized religion, the awe felt when you enter the church will steal away your breath leaving you nothing with which to even whisper a single bad word about it. There’s no proper way to describe it and even showing someone a picture of the inside wouldn’t transmit the feeling of being there. It would be like if someone asked you if there were in love and you tried to show them a picture of love and ask them if that’s how they felt.

On our way home we realize that, not only do we have no groceries waiting for us, but we only had a pastry for lunch and the afternoon of walking has left us starving. We decide to stop in a small Hungarian restaurant. We sit down, open our menus, and I’m a child again. I make out one word, the Hungarian word for spinach. I turn my menu towards Johnmark and ask him for help. He starts reading through it without complaint but I decide on the first thing that sounds remotely like something I would want to eat. I don’t want to be a burden. I end up with beef cooked with red wine and mashed potatoes. The food is cheap and delicious.

We get back to the apartment and I lay down for a quick nap. Johnmark inadvertently falls asleep with his head on his crossed arms on the table. We are wiped out. We wake up and have a light snack. We head out to Nona’s apartment. Nona is from Ohio and is studying Environmental Studies at an English language college in Budapest. She’s having people over for Hungarian hot wine. There will be people from here school there. It’s an English speaking party of sorts. It’s nice to meet people who I can just talk to. I feel like I spend all of my time outside of the apartment just listening. I only talk to Johnmark.

We meet a guy from Portugal and his girlfriend, who is from California. There are two girls who are roommates, one from New Zealand and the other from England. There’s a Hungarian girl. There’s a guy from Zimbabwe by way of Australia. I couldn’t even imagine a group like that getting together in the US, except for maybe on a college campus somewhere. Everyone has traveled so much. I feel inexperienced and undereducated. We all share amazing stories. We talk about crazy clubs and about racism alike. We talk about theatre and maternity leave. We talk about governments. Almost no one has anything good to say about governments. The Americans try to explain fraternities and sororities. We laugh and joke. I marvel at how different we all are and yet how, when it comes down to it, we’re all the same. Human.

Turned out to be a good day after all.

Hallo from Budapest.

Other than having to run through the airport to catch my connecting flight in Detroit and having a 10 hour layover in Brussels, my trip over was relatively uneventful. It didn't start to get crazy until I got to Brussels and didn't hear anyone speaking English for hours on end. I spent part of the day sleeping here:

I somehow skipped customs in the Budapest airport. I think that's bad. I was so drained from the day and a half of travel and almost no sleep that I almost didn't recognize Johnmark when I saw him, but was so happy and relieved when I did. This trip is definitely and adventure of epic proportions for me, but having JM around is making it so much easier. Unfortunately he only has a week off from work to get me acclimated and then I'll be spending a little more time on my own. Most likely that time will be spent exploring the city and butchering Hungarian words from my phrasebook. Hopefully I'll get a job soon, but I'll also need to find some things to fill my time. I think it's safe to assume that the main two will be reading and writing...and learning Hungarian.

For everyone who is wondering what it's like being in a foreign country, I must admit it is a bit disorienting to not be able to read anything. I feel awkward and isolated in that sense. On the other hand, probably about half of the people here speak at least a little English, so I can manage better that way. Still, this would be impossible without JM.

We live right near downtown in the middle of the city. Public transportation is available all over, but we can walk pretty much anywhere we need to go. We spent the whole first day walking around and I got to see a lot of cool stuff that I'll explore more in depth when I have the time. However, here are a few pictures of where we went the first day:

Chain Bridge.

The Danube River.

Parliament.

Church 1 block from our house.

Here are two things that I was completely unprepared for:

They drive on the right side of the road.

Just how small our "apartment" (A.K.A. room) is.

OK, I'm too worn out to make this very good or interesting, so I'll stop now. For now it still feels like a vacation. Waiting for reality to set in.

Cheers!

Eric

1 week to race day.

Not much to say. The days off are driving me crazy, but the days I run I'm feeling really fit. I've done the work, now all I can do is wait to see how it all plays out on race day.

Three days after the race I'll be leaving for Budapest. It's crazy to think that in 10 days I'm moving to Europe. I'm sure the weight of it will hit me somewhere over the ocean and I'll have far too many hours on that plane to think about it all, but for right now I'm just really excited to see Johnmark.

Got to catch up with an old friend (Jess) from college today. Two wonderful hours and I wish we would have had a few more. It was great to see that she's lookin' good and doing really well. We should all be so lucky.

I've decided on the books I'm going to bring with me to Budapest: Moby Dick and Walden.

Honestly, I'm just trying to keep myself preoccupied. The only thing I'm thinking about right now is running a sub-3 hour marathon. Guess I'll just update this after the race.