My Non-Marathon

My running has slowed even more than my blogging. Actually, my running came to a definite pause last Sunday during the Green Bay Marathon. I was not adequately prepared. I was certainly not committed.

Although I had run a few 20-milers in prep, along with nearly every other of the long runs I was supposed to, I did not put in enough miles outside of my long weekend runs. And my heart was not in the training I did complete. And running the Green Bay Marathon became my 1st Non-Marathon.

For years distance running was my sanity. One hour or four hours - every minute I spent running was my therapy. Simultaneously my down time and my pump me up time. Whether running solo or with Joe, I returned home more centered. Slowly, since Wren was born, distance running has become less powerful to me. While I still love a good, fast 5 miles, the double digit runs (particularly those beginning with the #2) have become an un-fun burden. I started to spend more time complaining, whining and wishing the miles were over. While pounding the pavement, Joe and I would daydream about lining up a babysitter just so we could sit in lawn chairs, crack open some beers and relax, rather than go run around 5 lakes to the tune of 20-some miles.

I wanted to bail out of the GB marathon before it even started. But Joe is uber committed to everything he starts and insisted we were going to run it! I couldn't get myself trained for the race, and certainly not psyched up about it. But there we were last Saturday. Me, Joe & Wren, dropping the boys off at John & Diane's, and the three of us headed to Green Bay. What I lacked in motivation to run miles, I made up for with the thought of a Kroll's burger and seeing my mom and dad.

- Getting my race number. Somehow Joe missed snapping the photo of me when I was making a really sarcastic face and giving the thumbs up sign. Wren looks entirely bored with this marathon too.

- But she's very excited about Lambeau and the Miller Light Gate.

Back to the race in question. As I mentioned, it was pretty much doomed since I started training not hard enough. And then I went and had burgers at Kroll's the night before, lost my timing chip and I never quite seemed to recover (not that I was trying too hard).

The morning of the race was warm. But we had trained in hotter weather. The temps were estimated to be high 80's by mid-day. I'd PR'd at a marathon with temps over 90 degrees.

We set out and settled into a 9-minute mile pace. And held it solidly until mile 16. At which point I very abruptly decided I just wasn't feeling it anymore and didn't want to run another mile, let alone another 10 miles that morning. Even though my pace had remained consistent, I could tell the heat was beginning to take its toll on me. I was getting lighter-headed, a bit tingly and wanting to guzzle water and Gatorade. I knew I could handle another few miles, but wasn't positive I could make it the ten miles that were left.

At this point in the race course I was only about a mile and a half from my dad's house, so I decided I wanted to walk there instead of finish the race. My dad had kindly picked up some Naked Mango juice for me and an assortment of my other fresh food favorites. Given we had to be back on the road towards Minneapolis within just a few hours, I decided I'd rather hang out with him and Wren than run my remaining time in Green Bay.

Joe the Committed decided to finish what he started - in a very respectable 4 hours and a few minutes. After meeting up with him post-race, he got me up to speed on some of the drama that unfolded just minutes after I quit the race.

The next water stop he made it to after I left the course the volunteers were telling all racers that the race was cancelled (due to high heat and race medics not being able to keep up with the participants passing out). Please stop running because there would be a shuttle to pick everyone up and bring them to the finish line. Since Joe didn't see any shuttles, he just kept running until he'd completed the marathon. The thing is, according to race rules, since the race was called just 2 hours and 25 minutes after it started (almost exactly the time I choose to walk off the course), no one who took longer than that amount of time to run the race will be given an official race time/result.

All I can say is I'm glad I decided to quit before I heard the race was officially cancelled. Had I waited, I know I would have stopped competing in the race once I heard it was called - but I would have been pissed. This way I got to stop on my own account rather than having someone tell me I needed to stop (I would have wondered if I would have continued running the race if they hadn't called it).

And I'm glad Joe finished safely.

And I'm glad he and I can now move on to lining up babysitters so we can relax in lounge chairs with beers in hand rather than lacing up and heading out with Goo and water in hand.

- Burgers, fries and shakes (probably not the best pre-race dinner) at Kroll's. The seats are like huge Barca loungers and Wren's carseat fit perfectly in it.

The real highlight of my non-marathon trip to Green Bay was seeing my mom and dad and them having another chance to hang out with Wren. We all went to Kroll's for burgers and malts, hung out and watched a movie. This little girl puts a smile on both my parent's faces.

One last shout out to Joe, the only one of the two of us who has a really cool football shaped marathon medal. As always he just went and finished what he started, making it look kind of easy. Despite my change of heart on this race, he was always there to tackle the long runs with me, help me find time to do some additional training and motivate me with this goal.

P.S. - The Green Bay Marathon was the best resourced and managed race I've been to. We didn't run more than 3/4 of a mile without some type of official race support at our fingertips. There was water every single mile. In addition to the water, they spaced out Goo stations, timing mats, etc.