State #41, marathon #50, and my right foot is f****d.
I apologize for offending the sensibilities of my more proper readers, but after lengthy consideration and use of a thesaurus, I've concluded that there is no other single word that describes the condition of my right foot today. Here are the things that caused problems in today's race: plantar fasciitis (most recent flare-up started after OKC and just went away two days ago), Achilles tendon (came back today after lying dormant for almost a year), mystery pain in the ball of my foot that felt like a stress fracture but I'm HOPING is just worn-out shoes, and blisters on the tops of three of my five toes because for some reason today my foot was just too big for my shoe.
Despite the fact that almost every step of this marathon was painful, it was still a great marathon, good enough to earn a spot in my top 10 list. There was not one thing I didn't like about this marathon other than the fact that getting to Fargo is a little bit of a pain. You can choose whether to make it a logistics pain (by flying into Minneapolis and driving 3 1/2 hours to Fargo) or a financial pain by flying into Fargo. (My round trip flight from Detroit would've been over $1000.) I went the Minneapolis route because I like to drive. The drive was painless. The freeway through Minnesota was as nice as the ones in Michigan are horrible. It was smooth, like driving on a road made of glass. Can someone tell me why Minnesota has nice roads and Michigan does not? I do not believe that it's weather, so it must be money. But I digress.
North Dakota was the second-to-last state in the U.S. that I had never been to. (The last is Hawaii, and I'm going in December.) I was excited to visit it. My great-grandparents were homesteaders there. I like the idea of being descended from North Dakotan homesteaders. I mean, seriously, it takes tough people to farm out here, especially in the 1920's and 1930's. I totally intended to drive out to the middle-of-nowhere town where they actually lived, but I ended up not having time because it was two hours west of Fargo, and I was on a tight schedule. I will just have to come back some time, I suppose.
The first thing about this race that is awesome is that it starts and finishes in the Fargodome, the giant stadium at North Dakota State University. The Fargodome is huge! 7000 people can fit on the floor, and 25,000 can fit in the stadium. So parking and bathrooms were more than adequate for the 2000 marathoners and 6000 half-marathoners. The expo was in the Fargodome too. This race has the best goodie bag ever. Not the goodies, but the bag itself. It is a really nice Under Armour bag, with zippers and lots of pockets. And the shirt is a lightweight hoodie, which is my new favorite kind of race shirt. But the best thing of all about the expo was that I easily got a (free) parking spot about 200 feet from the entrance. (Hear that, Oklahoma City? I did not have to drive around for 20 minutes and then walk through four blocks of wind and rain on my sore foot to get to the expo.)
After the expo, I went out to dinner with three random strangers. Actually, they were not quite random because I "met" them on the Marathon Maniacs Facebook page, and they were staying close to my hotel. So we all went to a pizza and pasta place right across the street from my hotel. I like when I get along well with total strangers and am actually interested in what they have to say. That's a rare experience for me! All of them were also 50-staters. There were lots of 50-staters here checking off North Dakota, because North Dakota is really slim pickings for marathons, and Fargo is clearly the star of the ones they do have.
I had done everything possible for my foot (everything, of course, except rested it) -- rolled it on the lacrosse ball for literally a couple of hours every day, taped it, deep stretched my calf at every opportunity, taken Advil all day, worn a night splint -- for the past couple weeks. It was pain free for two days in a row prior to race day, good enough for me to take a chance. I suspected there would be problems, though. I had such bad pain at work last week that if it hadn't improved, I would not have gone. When getting through a day of dog training was agony, even I wouldn't be so stupid as to try to run 26 miles. But it resolved just in time, so I figured it was worth a try. I have all of my remaining states planned out so I can finish in New Jersey next October, but that schedule is heavily reliant on me remaining injury-free. Fargo was one I really did not want to miss because there are hardly any other North Dakota marathons, and none I wanted to do. I figured in the worst case scenario, I could walk the whole thing, as long as I made the time limit. I was secretly hoping my foot would be totally fine. Plantar fasciitis is weird. It flares up and goes away for seemingly no reason sometimes. Maybe today it would just go away?
My foot felt good on race morning, no pain at all. I loaded up on Advil and stuffed three extras in my shorts pocket. I stretched and rolled my foot. The forecast leading up to race day was for rain, but luckily the morning was clear, with no rain predicted till after noon. Now it was supposed to be cloudy and mid-to-high 40's, with no wind to speak of, another vast improvement over OKC. This would be a good place to point out again how nice it is to have a stadium start. It was warm! I was comfortable! There were no vile porta potties and I didn't have to hide under my blanket shivering like a homeless person until gun time! Even gear check was in the stadium. One more word: Jumbo Tron! This alone would've been enough for me to give this marathon a 5-star rating even if everything else sucked, which it didn't. Nothing else sucked. I'm telling you, it's a great marathon.
The actual start and finish line were both inside the stadium, but they had opened up one of the big doors to the outside, so of course we weren't inside very long. Outside it was chilly, but the kind where you know you're going to be really comfortable really soon. There was plenty of room on the roads for everyone to spread out because we had the whole road. Another thing this race is, is FLAT. It's like running in Michigan. I think I had something like 160 feet of elevation change over the whole marathon, and nothing that I would actually consider to be a hill.
The first several miles of the course went through very pretty residential areas. Just like in OKC, there were huge numbers of spectators out. This course also had a lot of bands and DJ's to keep things fun. There were just enough turns to keep me interested in finding out what would appear around the next turn. Everything was great until Mile 2, when I started to feel a nagging heel pain. Naturally, I began catastrophic thinking immediately. "It's going to get worse -- it's going to feel like it did at work last week -- I need this state done -- what's the time limit -- what if it's so bad I can't walk -- when is it going to become really painful?" By Mile 3, it had gone from nagging to dull, steady pain. By Mile 8 (when we switched to running through a park along a river, and also when, by coincidence, I looked up and saw a bald eagle flying overhead), it was painful enough to alter my gait. My Achilles hurt just as bad as my heel, and I really didn't know what that ominous pain in the ball of my foot was. I slowed down and walked a little, but it hurt exactly as bad when I walked as when I ran, so I figured I should run as long as I could if the pain was the same either way. That became my strategy for the whole rest of the race.
I saw a marathon cheater for the first time in any race right after Mile 8. The path we were running on bended and curved and generally meandered along close to the river. This guy skipped most of the curves and ran the shortest straight line he could find, even if that put him on grass and very far away from all the other runners. He did this for about a mile. I could hardly believe he would do something so blatant and obvious, and wondered what his reasoning was. Did he not know you weren't supposed to do that? Did he not notice that he was the only one doing that? He probably saved himself a good quarter mile, not that it really helped him, because I passed him walking and looking terrible around the half, and never saw him again, but still, what a dummy. Not that I really cared; I cared much more about my own feet. After all, that guy is the one who has to live with himself, not me!
At Mile 10 I learned that stuffing Advils into skin tight shorts is a bad idea. They had dissolved from heat and sweat, and left their coating all over my shorts and car keys. Luckily the actual tablets were still intact, just minus their coating. I swallowed them and told myself now I had one 10-mile run and one 6-mile run left, and that was doable. The Advil would kick in and get me through the 10, and then I could walk the 6 if I had to.
I was right at 2:00 when I got to the half, which was much better than I thought I would do, and then I relaxed a little, because I knew that even if my foot fell apart, I would still be able to finish. It hurt, and I wasn't running fast, but I was still running and felt like I could continue as long as I could accept a moderate level of pain. I could. It was worth it to me to get this medal and finish my 50th marathon without ever dropping out of a race.
At Mile 19 there was an aid station with a sign that read "Medical Dropout." The guy manning the station had a little Cavalier King Charles with him. It was the same color as Duncan. I had to stop. I stepped up on the grass and the guy came walking over with his clipboard, looking concerned. I said, "I'm not dropping. But can I please, please pet your dog?" She was looking at me with big, adoring brown eyes just like Duncan's, and wagging her tail. "Sure, she loves to be petted!" the guy said. "Of course she does!" I answered, and petted her for about a minute while the guy took picture after picture of me petting her. I really hope they end up on the Fargo Marathon's Facebook. I got renewed energy from petting the Cavalier, which was great! Usually I only get renewed energy when I see someone else suffering more than I am.
At Mile 21, I gradually started overtaking a girl who looked like she had had a most unfortunate accident. She had white tights (why any runner would get those, I can't even imagine), and one leg was splattered with brown swirls from the crotch all the way down the leg. I stared, horrified. Sure I have heard of people deciding to just go on the run if they were about to PR or something, but we weren't even going to break four hours. I couldn't take my eyes off of this disaster. Finally, when I was immediately behind her, I saw other random swirls of the same color on the front of her tights and way up by her hips, and realized that they were colored that way on purpose! I was relieved that she hadn't had an accident, but it was absolutely inconceivable to me that anyone would either make or buy those tights. To each their own, I guess.
We had a couple miles through Fargo's downtown at the end, which is a great place for a downtown stretch in any marathon. Fargo has a cool downtown, and again I wished I had more time to spend there. From there it was a little more than a mile back to the Fargodome. It started sprinkling just as I turned into the Fargodome parking lot. Do I have good timing, or what?
I got to see myself finish on the Jumbo Tron. I was 20 seconds faster than I was in OKC. My foot hurt in all those different places, but at least I could still walk on it, which was by no means a foregone conclusion. I got my medal and then dove into the food. Chocolate milk, donut holes, pizza, and something I had never seen at a marathon before -- little plastic cups of cookie dough! Not cookie dough ice cream, but actual cookie dough. Oh yeah!
One final awesome thing about Fargo -- we got to use the Fargodome showers for free. And there was good water pressure and the water was hot. Imagine how great that felt after 26 miles in the 40's? Pretty amazing!
I am more proud of races like these, where I get a bad time after suffering, than I am of races that I breeze through and get a good time. I believe that pushing through suffering in races like these gives people strength for getting through the Mile 19's of life. Not that I have any of those in my life; my life is perpetually Mile 5, where I'm all the way warmed up and full of energy, but I guess no one gets Mile 5's in life forever, so I can only hope that when I hit Mile 19, I'm prepared.
I'm registered for Casper in two weeks. While I know I probably shouldn't do it, I also think I will be able to get through it since today's race didn't cripple me. I will get some new shoes and probably not run at all between now and Casper. I'll do what I need to do to get through Casper, then take a month off running, then maybe actually train for Baltimore in October. (What a concept, I know! I'm not sure I can actually stick to that, but it seems like a good thing to try.)
No comments:
Post a Comment