White Rock Misery

I am finally getting around to writing about my experiences and thoughts from the marathon I ran this past Sunday. I will be blatantly honest. It was the WORST run of my life. There were many great experiences on the way and I was able to learn a lot, but it was a completely miserable run due mostly to weather conditions.

For those of you who are looking for a very brief description on what happened at the marathon, I would suggest not continuing on. I am going to just write out all the things I feel are worth typing and have no idea how long that may go on for. For those of you who wish to hear the long version of the race, here you go...

A few days before the race I was on the phone with my uncle who lives near the marathon and and agreed to let Andrew (my brother) and me spend the night before the race at his house. He so kindly informed me that the weather was expected to be horrible. He said the high was supposed to be in the low 40s with rain all day. Being the runner I am, I blew this off and figured I had run in worse (MCM in October was below freezing at the start), and I would be fine. Boy was I wrong!

The morning of the marathon arrived and as Andrew and I said goodbye to our uncle and ran to our car, we realized just how bad the weather was. It had been raining all night and was now drizzling with the temperature at 42F but a wind chill around 38F. Forecasts showed the day was only going to get worse. The ride to the marathon was pretty normal. I took a few wrong turns (anyone who knows how great I am with directions understands that it would have been quite an accomplishment for us to arrive at the marathon without at least 2 wrong turns on the way) but we got there with plenty of time. We had agreed to meet Paul, our friend who would be running with us, at the start line at 7, an hour before the start of the run. Unfortunately, the fair grounds that the start was supposedly located on were HUGE and it took my brother and I over half an hour to track down the starting line.

By the time we finally got there it was 7:15 and we couldn't find Paul. So after some more running around my brother and I separated and agreed to meet back at our corral in a few minutes. I ran down to the end of the corrals and returned without success. Luckily my brother was able to locate our missing friend and we were all ready to go with about 15-20 min before start.

Then the fun began (loaded with sarcasm). The announcers at the start (who were bundled up in layers upon layers of coats) kept telling us how this weather was perfect for a marathon. I'm not sure who gave them this piece of information, but I have a feeling they made it up. I have never met a person in my life who describes their ideal marathon weather as just bove freezing with rain that can't decide if it wants to downpour or drizzle so it just randomly switches between the two. But, as all the marathons stood around trying, and in my case unsuccessfully, to stay warm, the announcers repeatedly informed us that this was our ideal weather.

I must take a minute to admit a very cruel thought kept going through my head while I was listening to these announcers and waiting for the start. I couldn't help but want to go find a large bucket of water and dump it on the announcers. I thought it would only be fair that they get as soaked as we all were and have to deal with it. Unfortunately, except in the announcers' case, I was too bus trying to keep myself warm to track down a bucket of water.

When the race finally started, Andrew, Paul, and I were all in high spirits. We were going to take this marathon nice and slow and just enjoy ourselves. It was Paul's first marathon and Andrew's first that he was not going to attempt suicide (go read about his last marathon at MCM in one of my previous posts if you don't know what I'm talking about). By the time we were 5 miles in, we had come to realize that the forecasts were right (possibly for the first time ever in Texas) and the weather was in deed getting worse. We decided to go ahead and pray a rosary to pass the time. This took care of the next 2.5 miles, but it got harder and harder to do as the weather got colder, rain fell harder, and talking became harder to do while running.

At a water stop just after mile 8, I came across a marvelous surprise. JOLLY RANCHERS!!! I had stopped to grab an orange slice off a table and came across a large bag of jolly ranchers just sitting there. Being a little over excited by this, I grabbed a handful and ran to catch up with Andrew and Paul. We had a good laugh about the fact that all of our hands were too cold to unwrap the jolly ranchers, but each finally succeeded in opening them.

We continued on pretty much in silence making jokes about how great the weather was, how we loved the warmth of the sun, and other various things once in awhile. Just after the halfway point we stopped for the first time. Paul's calves were starting to tighten up and the cold was definitely causing my entire body to tighten up, so we all decided to take this opportunity to stretch. We walked for about half a mile after that and then went back to running because it was just too cold to continue walking.

Around 15.6 miles in, a couple key decisions were made. The first was that I decided to take my shirt off. Now, I know I have been complaining about how bad the weather conditions were so this doesn't seem to make sense. You're probably thinking "If it was so cold and wet, why would you take your shirt off?" Well that is an excellent question. My explanation is quite simple. When guys run long distances in shirts, the shirt starts to rub our nipples. Now this sounds funny, but after more than 15.5 miles, this can become a huge issue. I had rubbed the skin off and was in unbelievable pain. Each step hurt as my shirt continued to rub against my nipples and I had two choices, (1) stop taking steps (which I couldn't do) or (2) take off my shirt. So, I decided it was time to take off my shirt and finish the marathon without it.

Very soon after this decision, we again stopped to walk. We had not been able to warm our muscles up and were tightening up pretty bad. After about half a mile of walking, I realized that I my body was cooling very quickly and I was starting to go into shock. Paul was hurting pretty bad and needed to continue walking for a bit, but if I didn't warm up soon, it was not going to be pretty. So, although I regreted having to leave Paul, Andrew and I decided to move on. It was a very hard decision to make because I did not want to have to leave anyone behind, and I had hoped we would all finish together. However, I also needed to keep myself from doing serious damage to my body and this was the best option I had.

After that, Andrew and I continued on trying to avoid puddles and stay as warm as possible. We ended up stopping another 3 times to stretch out before the finish, but kept a decent pace up while running. Around mile 18, I noticed  that my hands had stopped hurting. They had been in extreme pain from the cold pretty much the entire race. Because my hands were no longer hurting, I assumed it had warmed up and happily pointed this out to my brother. At the time, I didn't understand why he didn't gladly agree that he too was warming up. I later came to find out, that it had definitely not warmed up. If anything, the conditions were only getting worse. The lack of pain in my hands came from the fact that I could no longer feel them. They had gone completely numb. As I type up this post well over 72 hours later, I have still nto completely gained all the feeling back into my right hand. It is slowly getting better though and will hopefully be back to normal soon.

I don't remember too much about the last few miles. One thing I do remember though is that whenever the wind would blow pretty hard from one direction, my brother would move around me and try to block the worst of it. To be honest, I've never been good at drafting behind others, but the little wind he was able to block definitely made a huge difference as I was stilling running shirtless and was soaking wet.

However, my brother's niceness ended there. As we came up towards the finish with about a half mile left, my brother got the bright idea that we should run faster. I know he was doing it to finish strong and to carry me through (funny how the roles switched from the last marathon) but at the time, I did not apprectiate it at all. With about half a mile left, he just took off. I remember yelling some very not nice words after him as I immediately knew what he was doing. He was going just fast enough to stay within my range. He knew I would never just let him go like that and would force myself to pick it up to his pace. I also knew that as soon as I got near him, he would only pick the pace up more. So, with all this going on in my mind, and knowing as soon as I got up to him, he would make me run even faster, I forced myself to speed up and catch him. Andrew did this a few times until he finally settled into a relatively fast pace for the last bit and we crossed the finish line together.

As much pain as I was in for that last half mile, I appreciated all that Andrew did. We both understand each other and the other's running style as well as the other does if not better. He knew I had more in me and the only way I would use it was if I was forced. He also knew the easiest way to get me (or any older brother) to use that last bit of energy stored up was to make it come down to either using what you have left or losing to your little brother and no older brother is going to willingly lose to his younger brother. He wasn't trying to be mean. He just wasn't going to let me do anything less than my absolute best and for that I am very, very thankful.

There are many lessons I learned from this race, but I don't have time to write them all right now. Hopefully I will be back soon to write what I have learned before I forget it all. Although this marathon was by far the worst run of my life, I still enjoyed it and have some great memories and experiences I will never forget from running it, most importantly that no matter what anyone says the perfect marathon weather is, my personal perfect marathon weather is no where near 42F with rain and wind.