Posts Tagged ‘purpose’
Post-Calgary Marathon
I finished!
I have no clue what time I pulled off but I know it was sub-4:30:00. This is awesome. My legs feel like they should still be moving but I walk to a guy holding a lot of metals. Pause briefly and dip my head as he puts one around my neck. “Thank you”. I move on to a table full of cups with some kind of recovery drink. They are smaller than the ones we’ve been given throughout the race but anything will do at this point.
My face is covered in salt. Everything hurts. I continue on slowly and can hear people saying my name. It doesn’t matter. I turn onto the sidewalk as my parents come over. My mom has a big smile and wants to hug or something but I can’t stop moving. I tell them so.
As I start to walk down toward the port-o-poties I hear my name again. It’s Jon and he has my hoodie. I hadn’t realized that I was cold until I saw it. Man was I cold. After puting on the hoodie he sticks out a small jug of chocolate milk. It looks as good as salvation at this point to me. I open it as quickly as possible and begin to sip. Gotta keep walking. I can’t stop moving. Continuing down a wheelchair ramp because stairs seem rather daunting at this point, I find my way to the booths and notice that there is a Team Diabetes one. Not sure if I’m supposed to check in with them or not but I finally collapse near their tent anyways.
My feet are killing me. I get my shoes off and am able to relax. My clothes are soaking up all the water from the grass and I continue to get colder. I don’t care. After a while of just laying there I realize how much I need to change my clothes and make my way to the port-o-poties. Jon brought me a change of clothes. It hurts to walk. It hurts to move. Everything hurts.
After changing, my parents let us head back to Jon’s for rest. We stop on the way and pick up some fruit. I eat a banana on the way home. Once there I eat two apples, another banana and several ribs. I love meat at this point. Upon checking the Calgary Marathon website I find myself on it. My chip time was 4:22:53, still can’t believe I pulled that off. Not too long after I head to supper with my parents. I get the largest, juiciest, most bacon ridden burger that I can find. It is so good.
I continue to eat everything I can find for the next 24 hours.
Then I head back home for work the next day.
What a weekend.
Pre-Calgary Marathon
Okay.
So here it is.
Finally, three and a half weeks later I’ve finally decided to put thought to paper.
On June 14th 2009 I stepped outside for the first time with the intention of running. I started out with a walk to run program and my first run was actually run for 1:00 followed by a 0:30 walk repeated 15 times. One month later I was able to run 5k straight without any walk breaks. I kept running 5k three times a week for another month before I decided to up the ante. It was about this time that I began thinking about running a marathon. I’ve read many times that you should be running for at least a year before you attempt your first marathon. With this in mind I began to search for race possibilities. Once I found the Calgary Marathon and saw that it was on May 30th, two weeks before my one year anniversary. I knew this was the one.
I lived in Calgary for 5 years and still have plenty of friends who live there or in the area. It just seemed to make sense. So I had my target Marathon and worked backwards to determine when my training should officially begin. I got my training schedule from Nike+ and just kept running until it started. Training went well. I was on target. Until about 3 months before the race. I cranked my knee on a rim at work and needed to take a week off to recover. Just as my knee was feeling good enough to run I cranked it again on another rim, by doing the exact same thing. Two weeks gone at this point but I had recovered and felt great. I went out for my long run and had shaved off 3 mins from my previous time at that distance. This made me completely confident that I hadn’t lost any momentum. My next run after that long run was when it showed up. Shin splints. Which require at least two weeks to recover. So here I am five consecutive weeks of hardly any running and only five more weeks to go until the marathon. I knew I couldn’t go out too fast or run too far or the shin splints would return so I had to take it slow.
If things had gone well and there were no injuries than mathematically I should’ve been able to pull of about a 3:42:00 marathon. My goal was anything under 4 hours. Prior to my injuries I was running 9:15 minute miles and about to jump up to 9:00 minute miles. To be able to finish the last five weeks without injuring myself all over again I decided to drop back down to 10:00 minute miles. I hated every run I did because it felt so slow. I even shortened all of my runs. The last five weeks were revised 3 separate times to reduce the potential of injury. By the time I got to the marathon the longest run that I had done was 16 miles. A marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards. I knew I was in over my head.
The week leading up to the marathon I was only getting more nervous and excited as the days progressed.
Friday. I drive down to Calgary and don’t have a clue what to expect. At the end of the day on Friday I had decided completing the race without walking would be satisfactory, completing it in less than 5 hours would make me happy and if I pulled off a sub-4:30:00 marathon then I would be pumped.
Saturday. I ran around and did all of the final preparations that needed to be done. Still in a bit of shock that after all this time the marathon is less than 24 hours away. I made sure to buy a few gels that I new I liked and checked the weather constantly to try and determine what to wear.
Sunday. Woke up at 4:30 am. Ate toast. Showered. Dressed. Still in disbelief. Went to get my gels out of my vehicle and realized that I had locked my keys inside. It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t driving myself there and at this point worrying about it would only make things worse mentally. In my head I’m freaking out the whole way to the starting line. The closer we got, the more busier the sidewalks got with other racers. I still don’t know what to think.
6:40 am. I have placed myself in between the 4:00:00 and the 4:30:00 pace bunnies. Standing in anticipation. I can’t wait to start. I can’t wait to find out what I’ve got in me. I can’t wait to experience all that I’ve read and prepared for.
7:00 am. The race begins.
What have I gotten myself into?
It’s Finally Here
So this is it. After a long struggle of trying to set up this website while not having the blag-o-sphere, it is finally here. Voila!
The sole purpose of this site is to inform those whom are interested in my running experience. I’ve been running since the middle of June 2009 and plan to run my first marathon in Calgary on May 30, 2010. I’m teamed up with the Canadian Diabetes Association and have committed to raising $500 for them. My goal, however, is to raise a minimum of $1000.
On December 8th 2009 I began my 25 week marathon training program and so far so good. I’ve missed the odd day due to health or injury but all in all I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to complete the marathon in under 4 hours. This is no record setting pace but for someone who will have been running for less than a year, this is a respectable time.
I’m excited, I’m pumped and I’m focused.