After months of training this past Saturday the day had finally arrived. The North Face Endurance Challenge Marathon in Madison - or to be more accurate Eagle, WI which is about 2 hours away from Madison (but Madison is hip and sells better on the advertisement). I had been getting more and more nervous the week of the race, where my thoughts would not allow anything other to be processed than visualizing the course and making sure I knew all the things I had to prepare and how I would handle them.
Surprisingly enough, I slept really well the night before and as I was preparing my breakfast on race day and getting the last things together, I felt really calm. Since there was also a 50 mile and 50k race that day, my starting time was not until 9am. On the one had, I was glad, because it meant I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn, but on the other hand, it posed a problem. I had never done any of my long runs this late in the morning, so I didn't know how to properly fill my stomach to not get too hungry, since it would be later, when I finish and not overfill it.
I had asked Homebody and the little one to just greet me at the finish line, since I knew it would be many hours between the start and my finish and I didn't want them to have to drive out twice or hang out for such a long time. I drove myself to the race. The morning was very beautiful. After the weather forecast changing on me many times and me going "Oh, no not rain!", "Okay, that's better", "Wait, not that hot" the morning started off nicely! When I arrived the 50k and 50mile runners had already left and the marathoners were starting to trickle in. You could sense that everyone was a bit nervous and that combined with the fact that many people didn't know each other yet, there was an abundance of cell phones on the scene. I swear each runner was updating their Facebook status "Okay, marathon day is here" or "I am about to hit the trails - marathon style" or something like that or just texting or surfing the internet. Even more telling was that I only saw smart phones. If I would be doing a survey on the most popular phone, this would have been a good place to start.
Speaking of start, after waiting around for a while, walking, jogging and stretching to get ready, all of the sudden the race was about to start. Countdown and off we went. Or at least for 50 steps, then everybody reached a bottle neck and we already had to walk. People were joking and saying stuff like "Here goes the minute I counted on" or "Geez, I thought I would make it farther running than that". Those jokes set the stage for the kind of people that were part of this race.
It didn't take me long to find somebody who was running my pace and following him in his footsteps to not take off too fast. Since after a while, there weren't too many people around us, I decided to pull up next to him and introduce myself: "Hey just wanted to say thanks for pacing, and no I am not a creep following you so closely". Luckily he was happy to serve and for the better part of 10 miles we stuck more or less together. Our new found "friendship" almost went sour, when he paced right to the first aid station's bathroom and took it before me. I "hmpfed" and decided I could wait another 5 miles. For a short while thereafter our pacing group increased to six people. I didn't like the feeling of having somebody directly behind me and placed myself at the end of the group.
When I reached the next aid station, I started making the first mistake of my race. I felt like I needed more than just water an pretzels and drank something with flavor. Between this and the next aid station my stomach started to hurt when I was running. I had to walk here and there, but ran once I saw the next aid station. Second mistake: Now that my stomach hurt, I felt like it needed food and I ate a little bit of a PBJ. BIG mistake. Not only did my stomach not like it, but I actually hate PBJ and it took all my might to swallow and not spit things out in front of a group of people. After mile 17.5 it went downhill. My stomach never felt upset, but whenever I forced myself to run for a little while, it felt like I had a spleen in the front of my stomach that was about to rupture. Walking did not aggravate it and so the last 8.7 miles were spent mostly walking.
I promised myself to stay in good spirits and enjoy this adventure, because I knew it would be a while before I embark on a marathon journey again. Those distances just take too much time away from the little one and make things rougher on Homebody. I absolutely loved the company of all the other runners around. Everybody was cheering each other on and you could rely on people watching out for each other. My pacing buddy turned around a couple of times, when I scraped a rock with my shoe to make sure I hadn't bit the dust. One of our six team pace runners, hit the ground a couple of times and we were all there to get him back up and check that he was okay. Later in the race another lady and I checked in with somebody hunched over at the side of the road re-checking if he had the right food intake, which he obviously didn't since it was hitting the ground again. Oddly enough, it wasn't even weird at that moment - although I do think he was a little embarrassed. I had lots of nice conversations along the way and whenever people were asking me, how many marathons I had done and I said that this was my first one, they looked at my astonished and said "and you chose this one?".
Yes, I did and I proudly crossed the finish line near the end of the pack. I accomplished my goal. I finished 26.2 miles. I learned a lot and I loved all the people I met.
And the best of it all, I got to go to the runners tent afterward and get myself a free massage. Heaven I say. We should all be so lucky!
