Despite being billed as one of the official race hotels, the Marriott I checked into in Washington, D.C. on Friday afternoon was a dismaying four miles away from the starting line. This made a bit more sense when I actually went to the starting line to pick up my number, t-shirt, and other assorted goodies. I saw that there really aren't any hotels near the armory/stadium where the race was going to begin. While it would have been convenient if I'd been closer to the course, the hotel, which was near DuPont Circle, turned out to be great for meet-ups with friends, so it wasn't all bad.
The expo where I picked up my number was pretty typical: vendors selling running-related items at allegedly marked down prices, free samples of yogurt and energy bars, and information about different races. They're always fun to walk through. I entered a drawing to win a trip to Africa to run a marathon around Mt. Kilimanjaro, which I don't think I won, as well as a drawing for a free entry into a long-distance relay race, which I hope I didn't win because I don't know eleven other people who like running enough to be on my team.
Dinner was supposed to be a carb-heavy plate of pasta, but, amazingly, this seemed to be a rarity in D.C. After several false tries in restaurants whose menus were devoid of carbohydrates, it was getting so late that I ended up with a plate of gnocchi instead - tasty, but probably not the best option. C'est la vie. As is my wont the night before a race, I slept badly and had marathon-related nightmares.
Despite my poor night's sleep, when my alarm went off at 5:00 the next morning, I was up and dressed in no time. I called the front desk to request a cab, and the guy told me to come down when I was ready. After swallowing some Advil for my knee, the last of my Powerade, and a packet of HammerGel, I headed down to the lobby with a packed bag to find chaos. The phone was ringing off the hook and no employees were in sight. The lobby was full of people, many in running gear, who looked bleary-eyed and disgruntled. I asked the lady next to me if she was waiting for a cab, and she said grouchily that she was waiting for the valet to bring her car up. Three people in her vicinity nodded, arms crossed. There were cabs going by outside, I discovered, but I ended up riding with a guy named Aaron whose girlfriend was running and had gone on ahead. I joined two other women, also strangers to both Aaron and to me, in the backseat, and Aaron kindly ferried us as close to the armory as he could get before traffic backed up so much that we decided to get out and walk. It was absolutely freezing - 27 degrees was the predicted morning temperature, and it sure felt like it - but luckily the bag check was indoors. I ended up with lots of time to spare, so I checked my bag, stretched, and got increasingly nervous. I'm used to pre-race jitters, but it's usually excitement; this time I was truly worried my knee wouldn't allow me to finish the race. At last, at 6:45 the final call to the starting line blared over the loudspeakers, so I joined the throng flowing out towards the corrals.
When the gun went off, my corral didn't even move. We finally crossed the starting line about nine minutes after the front-runners had gone, and by then I was more than happy to be moving because of the cold. My knee was sore, but within a mile or two I knew that it was going to allow me to finish, and my anxiety and bad mood dissipated accordingly. In fact, I felt great. My two-week, post-fall training hiatus had left my legs totally fresh and ready to go. I was wearing a cheap hoodie from Old Navy over my running clothes and a pair of huge cotton gloves that had come in my goody bag, and a few miles in I'd warmed up enough to ditch them both on the side of the road. (They were in good company; the Salvation Army must have made a killing from the castoffs that day.)
I kept looking at my watch and noting that I was going WAY too fast. I was pretty consistently doing 8:00 to 8:30 miles when I should have been staying between 9:00 and 9:10. But I felt great and decided to just go with it. I figured that if I got tired near the end, I'd have enough of a head start to make up for it and would still be able to break my goal of 4 hours. There were pacers in yellow t-shirts with red flags bearing times on them - the idea being that if you ran along with them you'd finish when they did and be able to make your goal time that way - and I caught up to the 4-hour guy around mile 8. (He'd started before I had.) I blew by him and kept going.
Just before mile 13, the half-marathoners, who had started at the same time we had, veered off to the right towards the finish line. (See the course map here.) About 2/3 of the bouncing crowd of runners disappeared, as did the cheering spectators, who were far more interested in watching the finishers. We marathoners continued on in grim silence. I'd been running for roughly an hour and 52 minutes, still well on track to come in before the four-hour mark. I decided it was time to break out the mix of songs I'd loaded onto my Shuffle for some extra motivation, so I dug it out of my pocket. Good thing too, because around mile 15 I began to realize how tired I was. I'd swallowed a packet of HammerGel at mile 8, and I finished the second one somewhere around mile 17. I hadn't stopped for water yet, but I stopped three times between mile 16 and the end.
Curiously, the knee I'd been worried about hardly hurt. My right knee, however, which had been twinging a bit here and there, was slowly becoming incredibly painful. Every quarter mile or so I'd get a sharp stab of pain, sometimes fleeting and sometimes continuous. By mile 18 it ached consistently.
It's funny how quickly one can forget how much something hurts. I remember that I was miserable for about the last 8 miles, and that I was really, really miserable between miles 21 and 24, but looking back it somehow doesn't seem so bad. I made the conscious decision to start crying twice, but quickly abandoned the idea when I realized that the lump in my throat made it hard to breathe. My muscles were tired, obviously, but my knee was the biggest problem. I kept thinking that my 24-miler hadn't been nearly this bad, but then I remembered that I'd done the whole training run at an easy pace, whereas I'd stupidly started out this morning's run like a bat out of hell. At mile 20, when the songs on my playlist seemed to drag on for ten minutes each, I pulled out my headphones and stowed the Shuffle back in my pocket. The 4-hour pacer came upon me at mile 22, and a mile later I abandoned the idea of breaking 4 hours and watched him pull away from me and slowly disappear.
Mile 23 was the worst. And then, very suddenly, there was just a mile to go and that fact buoyed me enough that I felt some of the pressure had been taken off my knee. I finished at 4:05:38, disappointed, but relieved that I didn't have to run anymore. The pain in my knee increased tenfold as soon as I let myself really feel it, and it was a while before I was able to muster the mental energy required to collect my bag and head for the Metro station. Thank goodness they all have escalators.
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| Post race, looking happier than I felt. |
I was almost too tired to shower, but I knew I should eat something and so I dragged myself through the process of getting cleaned up and dressed. I couldn't bend my right knee at all if I was standing on it, and so I limped around DC until Sunday, then limped onto the bus and back into New York. Now, on Tuesday, my limp is almost gone, although my knee is still a bit sore. My muscles, while still a bit sore, feel surprisingly ok.
I'm already looking forward to my next one, although I've yet to determine which one that will be. Wherever and whenever it is, you can bet I'll be pacing myself a lot better.
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