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.