paradigm shift

Marathons are short.

nashville ultra

I have a friend in Nashville. Have not seen her in 20 years or so, but we email once in a blue moon. So in October, a couple of weeks before the ultra, I did that and asked he if she wants to be at the finish line with the kids, estimated time of arrival 7 pm.

She said sure. A few days later she emailed again. She has an Ironman friend who offered to pace me.

My first reaction was I can do this on my own. Then a little voice made itself audible in my head: the gods are sending you an Ironman pacer - what do you say?

I said, yes, thank you. Then I emailed the man, with all the disclaimers. Save for the transitory two-mile companion in a race here and there, I never ran with anybody. I was undertrained. I was slow.

Speed is overrated, he said, and he would see me somehwere in the second half of the race.

The course consisted of two out-and-back loops on mostly paved greenways or streets. I planned to finish in under 12 hours.

A small crowd assembled at the start line at dawn. The morning was chilly, the attitude casual. The first loop ran along Stones River, and the sheer beauty of it - misty water, damp fields, autumn foliage, wistful skies - made for enchanted running. Or maybe it was the exuberance of the race, the extravagance of engaging in something as unnecessary as 50 miles. I found a few of those ephemeral companions, and talked much more than I usually do. For many this was the first ultra. I also heard repeatedly "I am just doing the 50K." It became poignant I was in a different kind of race - a 50K, which had always been "longer than a marathon" had somehow become "just the 50K."

Engaged in good conversation, I ran for a while faster than I had intended, fooled by that heady feeling that I could go on for as long as it took. I also worked on fueling, without much enthusiasm, but with steady intake. The morning flew by, the day became hot. I must have done something halfway good in my haphazard training; there is a picture of me taken at the halfway point, and I look fresh and clean, as if I had just stepped out of the shower.

Well, that did not last long. A few miles later the temperature reached the record level of a heatwave, and I was starting to wilt. Fueling had become a disagreeable business and I felt I had run... well, enough. I didn't get to dwell on this - at mile 30, the Ironman pacer was waiting next to my boyfriend, and a few minutes later my friend arrived, with her kids and his kids. We had a brief reunion, the epitome of short and sweet, and I set out with the Ironman.

He was wearing sunglasses, so I could not read his expression, he was not big on smiling, he had been in the war, and he had run a 200-miler. Tough guy. I wasn't sure why he wasn't spending his afternoon somewhere with air conditioning. We got along though (we even laughed a couple of times). My right leg hurt (the old thing from Provo), and I felt nauseated, but we advanced.

At the mile-40 aid station the nausea turned into some kind of monster that was chasing me from inside, yet I was unable to throw up. The temperature dropped - all of a sudden I started shivering. Then I heard a big swishing sound somewhere in my head and the connection I had with the world, the feeling of being in synch, tuned-in, aligned with reality, faded. I almost fainted.

It took me some time to process all this. According to my new crew I rocked, and I didn't want to disappoint. Only the kids stirred with relief when I admitted I was miserable - they could see the truth in my face. So did the Ironman. He took one look at me and declared I was hypothermic.

"Your face is blue," he said.

There was a sort of finality in his tone, as if the game was over. The brutal marathon in British Columbia flashed through my mind. "I have run like this before," I said.

"This is different," he said.

"I have dry clothes." The car was right there. I had to convince him I could go on.

"You do?"

I could see it in his eyes, this meant something good. While I changed, my friend and her husband went to get hot tea. My boyfriend took all the kids in his car. We were getting organized. The mood changed. It felt as if the battle was just about to begin. It felt as if only now I would start running.

I put on two running shirts and a wind jacket. The Ironman said this was not enough, so my friend's husband took off his woolen sweater and I pulled that on too. I felt like a mummy on a British afternoon - chilled to the bone, swaddled in layers, slurping hot tea.

Now, the Ironman explained, I had to run, some way, any way, he didn't care how, I had to run until I would break out in a sweat.

So I ran until I did. I knew the gods wouldn't send me an Ironman pacer for nothing.

The stretch to the next aid station was the shortest of the race - only 3.5 miles. All this time I was thinking that was all I had to run. A 5K, I was telling myself. Okay, so I am sick, but I can do a 5K any day, and this day is no different.

By the time we reached the last aid station it had started raining. I had another 6.5 miles to the finish. This was a bit longer, and it went through the woods, and it was dark, and we had a thunderstorm, and the path being unpaved we would slosh-slosh through the mud. But it was the last stretch, and I had the Ironman with me, and we had gotten rid of the hypothermia.

We took off into the night. I wore the little headlamp we had bought with much pleasure for this precise moment. The pain in my right leg had gotten worse, but I didn't pay attention - everything hurt. The muscles had reached a whole new level of pain. They felt like metal clumps attached to my legs, some sort of alien insertion grafted unto my bones. That didn't bother me either. I barely remembered it from time to time.

What was really bad was the queasiness, not simply a stricture in my throat, but a violent rebellion of the body against the current state of affairs. I had to fuel, of course, but the idea of ingesting anything was associated with sheer terror. The Ironman taught me to take Coke in my mouth and hold it, letting the sugar absorb for a while before spitting it out. The hot tea at mile 40 was the last thing I swallowed in this race.

All this time I was preoccupied by time. As a general rule, I had stopped timing my marathons years ago, and here I was in a 50-miler, frantic about the minutes passing, obsessing over the clock, concerned I would not make it in under 12 hours. I wasn't thinking that I was sick or how good it would be to have this over with. I was thinking can I please stretch out the time between now and 7 pm so I can cram all these miles into it?

In hindsight this proabably is what helped me finish.

Mile 48 was the longest mile I ever ran. It wouldn't end, no matter how far I was running, it stretched itself into further distance the more I ran, it become longer and longer with each step I took. It was the most elastic and perverse mile I ever experienced.

When it was done we stepped out of the woods and had only two more very normal miles to go. A couple of times I had to stop, I felt as if I didn't get enough oxygen, although there seemed to be plenty of that around. I bent over, letting the blood come to my head. I started to recognize the road, the lights leading up to the finish. I had to push just a little further. And then I was there.

12 hours 15 minutes.

My crew cheered, I got my cheap finisher's mug, we posed for pictures. I was happy and quiet. Putting words together wasn't my strength at the moment, so when I shook my Ironman's hand it was was pretty wordless scene. Someone liked it though and had us re-enact it for the sake of photos, as if we were heads-of-state.

My boyfriend, even more happy than I, took me and stowed me in the passenger's seat, the way one does with a precious package that has been safely retrieved. He was about to turn the key in the ignition when I told him to wait a minute. I opened my door and threw up in the parking lot.

An hour or so later, showered, clean, merry, and ensconced in a mound of pillows in the hotel bed, I threw up again.

So I didn't have barbecue after the race. But I sent my boyfriend out to get take-out for himself.

duke city marathon

Convenient, for more than one reason. The starting line was about ten minutes away from my house, and the finish line provided the motivation for the longest training run I ever did.

I was pretty relaxed. I didn't feel I was there for a race. It was a practice run.

The morning was chilly and the start line next to the entrance of a Doubletree Hotel with generous management, so the lobby filled with people in athletic gear. Since we were all waiting around in plentiful light, it was easy to observe the dynamics of mutual assessment between runners, checking out each other's looks, the trendiness of equipment, and the color of bib numbers to figure out who runs what, with posh satisfaction if one ran the full while the next person had signed up for the half only. I never noticed that before. It was almost funny. Almost.

I had planned to take my time and walk as often as I felt like, and that is pretty much what I did. Or almost. I could have walked more, but it seemed practical to also run from time to time. I was trying to do this as I would a 50-miler and what I had read on the internet said not to rush. At times it seemed I was going too fast. Later in the day it got hot, and it seemed I was only crawling. I wasn't overly worried one way or another. It's amazing how little pressure I associated with this marathon.

The only thing I was concerned about was fueling. During a 50-miler I would have to eat, eat, eat, and I am not good at that. I had experimented lately, and was still trying out all sorts of things - potato chips, fruit, yoghurt-covered pretzels. Since I hate gels with absolute passion, I even tried a McDonald breakfast sanwich (I figured we could find that in Nashville, too). That took me about ten miles, I am not kidding. I started at mile 10, I took the last bite during mile 20. In hindsight I didn't eat as much as could have or even should have, but it felt as if for hours I was doing little else than stuffing my mouth. I didn't get sick; for that I was grateful.

Toward the end I felt exhausted though - hot, breathless, overhwelmed. I normally don't walk during the last mile of a marathon, but I did this time. I did put in a little sprint at the finish, to end on a nice note, and I did drink my chocolate milk for recovery, as I had planned.

And I knew I was ready - for a shower, a nap, and Nashville.

the training

The first thing I did was to get sick. The way it happens sometime after a transoceanic flight, with some jet-lag thrown in. Only the fever dissipated after a day or two. The running nose, the congestion, and all that stuff lasted for a while.

The second thing I did - not that I was crazy, but I had committed in advance - was to volunteer at the balloon fiesta. I do that every year. It means waking up at 3 AM a few days in a row and standing around in the cold a few hours each day.

Then, of course, I went to work. In between, here and there, I ran.

It was brutal, of course, but that someone inside who had decided to do a 50-miler in Nashville, come what may, was a stubborn creature that pushed me and drove me and didn't relent. Blindly, somewhat haphazardly, I put in as much mileage as I could, when I could, and a few times when I couldn't. That weekend I did a back-to-back, a jittery half on Saturday and a wobbly half on Sunday, running early in the afternoon, when the weather warmed up a bit, a combined 26 miles of pretty gruesome effort.

Next week I started feeling better, so the short runs during the week were not that bad. That second weekend I did ten miles on Saturday and Duke City Marathon on Sunday.

The third week I tapered, more or less - I was confused here as to how to balance this out, the mileage requirements and the recovery needs, but I stumbled ahead, one way or the other.

The fourth week, after a couple of morning runs, we took a plane to Nashville.

someone inside

The week after Berlin I didn't run at all; we were still on the road. We flew back in on Sunday night. Monday morning I got up and went to work. Tuesday morning I got up and put on my running shoes.

I had not made up my mind I wanted to run a 50-miler. I mean, it sounded cool enough, but I didn't feel like taking on all the hardship.

It occurred to me, during the first half a mile of that morning, that the body was already on its way to Nashville. Someone inside had decided we would go. I had, literally, four weeks to get ready.

to add some intensity

...I thought I would run a 50-miler. After Berlin and before I quit running, since it was so hard and time-consuming to keep doing everything. Squeeze it in, so to speak. I would look at Berlin as a starting point, a base line, train very hard for a month or so, put in 50 miles, undertrained or not, and only then stop running.

It was more an idle thought than a plan. A 50-miler would take hours and hours of training which I didn't have. Besides, I could barely finish 26 miles - what made me think I could possibly double that?

I looked a bit at 50-milers though, came upon a few that looked doable, no hard terrain, no ups-and-downs. I even found one in the right time frame, about a month after Berlin. November 3rd, Nashville. Hmmm... we could have barbecue after the race.

making the most out of it

The only reason I started running again last year was Berlin. Otherwise I was reluctant (more so than I normally am anyhow), since I had also started shooting competitively in 2011. Shooting and running is not a bad combination, provided you get plenty of rest in between. Yet about the only thing that enabled this kind of schedule was cutting down on sleep. I could not reasonably cut down on full-time work, cause that pays for both, yeah.

Since I was getting ready for Berlin anyhow, I thought a couple of other marathons wouldn't hurt. I picked races in Utah and California since each time I could do a pistol match the day before - shoot in Salt Lake City before running in Provo, and in Redwood City before running San Francisco.

I though that would be cool. My own little private set-up for a biathlon, although of course it isn't the real thing. First, because it's on two different days, then because the order is reversed - it's much more interesting to run first and then shoot. There are actually competitions like that - a race shorter than a marathon and a rifle match. Since I shoot pistol, that wouldn't work for me. But I thought, especially before Provo, that would be one neat fervent week-end, a work-out for mind and body, with a good Italian dinner in between.

So I shot my match and I ran my marathon, and the weekend was full. At the end of it I said, So? It hadn't been that intense. It had been exactly what it was, a match and a marathon, a sequence of events, but not a whole greater than the sum of its parts - not synergy or quickening.

Marathons, I thought, are not enough.