Race Report: 2009 Eugene Marathon

A lot goes into getting to the marathon starting line. And no, I’m not talking about training. I’m talking about traveling to your destination city, getting enough sleep, waking up on time, arranging transportation, deciding what to wear, dealing with the clothes check, and using the porta-potties. In my case, Sweetie and I drove down to Eugene Saturday afternoon and stayed with my Mom. Since I had to wake up at six at the latest (and since I like to get a lot of sleep), I started trying to get to sleep around nine. This is on one of those air beds. I’m not terrible at sleeping on them, but it’s never the best sleep. (Than again, maybe the only really good sleep is in your own bed.) At 5:45 I was up. I made a final check of the weather, and it was raining, but not too cold feeling. Even that early, I thought it was near 50. I went with the clothes I had decided on the night before: shorts, a tee, light gloves and a black rainy-season cap. I ate my usual Go Lean Crunch and soy milk breakfast, got everything else together, made some tentative trips to the restroom, and we were off to the start line.

Mom lives about two miles away from the start and the three of us packed into my Mini. (Mom doesn’t drive. Never has.) We drove pretty close to the starting area and they dropped me off. I was wearing a long-sleeve disposable shirt and a rain jacket to keep warm, but the first thing I wanted to do was get the rain jacket to the clothes check area. I was also going to check my el-cheapo cell phone, so that I’d have it if Sweetie and Mom had trouble finding me after the race. As it turned out, I had gotten dropped off about as far from the clothes check as possible. I hiked over there, gave them my bag with the coat and phone, hiked more than halfway back to use the less-crowded bank of porta-potties, then hiked over to the starting corral with only five minutes or so to spare.

I do not like hiking around like that before a marathon. I subscribe to the school of thought that says you save every precious drop of glycogen (your muscle-moving energy stores) before you try to run 26.2 miles as fast as you can. Warming up is crazy. Use the first mile of the race to warm up. If  you think your marathon pace is too fast for warming up, then I think your marathon pace is too fast for running a marathon: the first miles should feel easy, you know.

I lined up to the left of Scott, the 3:40 pacer. It was raining very lightly and I wasn’t cold. I was nervous. My throat felt funny. For the five hundredth time, I wondered if that bad three mile run I’d had earlier in the week was a sign of things to come. All I could do was my best.

We were off. I discarded my disposable shirt as soon as we started moving. The marathon only ended up with 1,713 finishers, but throw in the 3,073 half-marathoners starting at the same time and there was a big enough crowd to create the usual slowdowns in the first half mile. The pacer plowed through it well, quickly getting up to speed. He nailed mile one, even with the congestion and a hill, getting us through it in 8:21. (A 3:40:00 marathon is an 8:22 pace.) This was the first time I’ve run with a pacer at all in a marathon. It was nice not having to look at my Garmin every 20 seconds. There were a lot of women in the pace group, since 3:40 is the Boston Qualifying time for women under 35.

During miles two and three I started to notice something ominous: It didn’t feel slow enough! It wasn’t laughably easy. After marathon #1, that was my new rule: thy first five miles shalt feel laughably easy. What to do? Well, if it wasn’t super-easy, it also wasn’t too hard. And I noticed the pacer was going faster than 8:20, according to my Garmin. So I hung with the pace group, hoping it would slow a bit like it should, and hoping that I would loosen up a bit. (Readers who took umbrage at my earlier diatribe against warming up are now getting their revenge.) It barely registered at the time, since I wasn’t looking at my watch much, but it turns out mile two was a great deal faster than it should have been: 7:47. What the Hell!? Sitting here now, I am feeling irate about this. I am grumbling and cursing about blowing out my legs early. OK, yes, mile two is all a gentle downhill. But still! 7:47!? I should have let the pace group go and caught up later.

But I didn’t. I hung with them through mile three (8:03) as we made our way south through Eugene. Somewhere in here was going to be the first spot where Sweetie and Mom would see me. Wait for it… wait for it… there! I caught their attention by waving and nearly tripped over a cone in the road. Lookin’ good!

Miles 4-7 were basically an out and back, with a bit of a hill at the midpoint. 8:18, 8:34 up the hill, 8:11, 8:10. Right after the hill (and shortly after passing the house I grew up in), the pacer said something about being 45 seconds ahead of pace, which I have to admit doesn’t sound like much when he puts it that way. I make it 48 seconds, but close enough.  Anyway. After mile four or five I did start feeling better. Things were rolling along OK and I had no major complaints. My hands were getting a little warm, maybe. No problem! I peeled off my gloves in anticipation of seeing my cheering group near mile seven. There they were! Sweetie made the catch but after the race, Mom couldn’t stop talking about how amazed she was at the way I threw my gloves at her.

We were now running through Amazon Park, on bike paths, and so there was a bit of congestion. After half a mile of that, I overheard someone talk about how it was a lot clearer up in front of the pace group and that they were going to move up there. They were right, and I did the same. Then at mile eight we hit one of the high points of the race. As you round the turn by South Eugene High School, you enter a corridor of music and wildly cheering, high-fiving people. We get 100 yards of this; probably most of Boston is like that or better, but you take what you have. I careened through the curve, high-fiving madly. By the time the crowds and an aid station were left behind, I realized that I was also way out in front of the pace group.

I hadn’t been sprinting, though. The pace group had just slowed down to an accurate pace, I think. I ran mile eight in 8:15 and mile nine (which includes the last long hill as you return to the campus area of town) in 8:20. I could hear the pace group behind me once in a while, but they didn’t catch me. Mile 10, north through campus and then across Franklin, was another 8:20. Right on schedule, I started to get that not-so-fresh-legs feeling about then. Nothing bad. Just the usual feeling of having run about 10 miles. At least I was done with the first bit of the race and didn’t have to eat so much now. I have this unorthodox marathon strategy where I shove down a lot of solid food the first 10 miles, while I can still stand it, in hopes that doing so will push out the wall later to somewhere past 26.2. In this race, I had one whole bag of Clif Shot Blox, four fun-sized Milky Way bars, and a chocolate Clif Shot. Plus, Gatorade at most of the aid stations. I’d keep up the Gatorade after 10, but I think I had just one more Milky Way after.

Mile 11: 8:13. We were now over the Knickerbocker Footbridge and headed east on the paths north of the Willamette River, out toward Springfield. The half-marathoners had turned west after the footbridge, so the crowd thinned out quite a bit. The loop toward and through Springfield was uneventful. 8:21, 8:34, 8:17, 8:15. I was still somewhere ahead of the 3:40 group. Just before milepost 15, we finished up the Springfield loop and found ourselves once again by the Knickerbocker Bridge, now heading west. That meant we were rejoining the half-marathoners at their mile 11. Unfortunately we were on the same path with these slower runners, and though it had dividers conveniently placed down its center, it lacked signs or marshals telling people which side was for who. Not a big deal, and it wasn’t long before they split off again, but still an annoyance.

Mile 16 cruised by Autzen Stadium and I ran it in 8:18. I can remember how right after the milepost, we turned south toward the river and went over this wooden pedestrian bridge over a creek, and how the wood was a little uneven, and how even that little unevenness seemed like a real trial. Like it was something that made me more out of breath. Yes, I had hit the next phase: general fatigue. It’s difficult to describe what this state is like for me. It’s like there’s this little core of energy somewhere it my torso that keeps me going, and that core is pushing out less and less power to my limbs. That core of energy doesn’t feel like it’s my lungs or my heart, though I suppose in reality it is some combination of the two. But it just feels abstract. Yet very, very real.

Don’t let me get too dramatic though: the fatigue was still minor. This wasn’t the kind of fatigue that would stop me running, just the kind that would make me worry about whether I had enough juice left to go the distance. The thing is, if I wasn’t planning on slowing down (and I wasn’t, at this point) then that worrying is absolutely pointless and really pretty harmful. I need to do a better job of letting it go.

Mile 17: another 8:18. This was through Alton Baker park and I expected to see my cheering section there like I did last year. I didn’t, but I wasn’t disappointed — I leave it up to them where they want to go. I’m glad they’re not stuck in a rut. Actually it was very nice of them to come out and cheer at all, for my third marathon and on a rainy day. Mile 18, nearly to Valley River Center: 8:20. Mile 19, past Valley River and into the Delta Ponds: 8:16. And there were my cheerleaders, at the footbridge! I asked Sweetie if she were going to run with me a block or two like in previous years. She said no.

In here, last year, was where I started feeling like I didn’t quite know whether I was standing straight. At least that didn’t happen this time! I was still doing pretty well. I find that as you approach 20, you can feel pretty good about yourself because you’re thinking “after 20, it’s only a 10K!” It’s only after you hit mile 20 that you realize you were just absolutely totally fooling yourself. Mile 20: 8:17. At Eugene, you can keep fooling yourself during mile 21, because at the end of that one you cross the bridge and start heading back into town. “After 21,” you tell yourself, “it’s just straight back into town and done!” Mile 21: 8:18. As we looped around to get onto the Owosso footbridge I looked down and saw I still had a good gap on the 3:40 group.

After 21, it was just running on fumes. Mile 22 was 8:22, and at the end of it I was surprised to see Sweetie and Mom one more time. Mom was very proud of her navigation, getting to this section of path somewhere off River Road. Sweetie had changed her mind about running, and kept up with me for a block.

I started playing around with different running styles, switching from rapid shuffles to slower lopes and back to try to find something that seemed a little easier. Of course, nothing really did. Still, I eked out an 8:23 mile 23. I congratulated myself for making it halfway through the “just 10K” that was left after mile 20. There, was, of course, nothing to do but keep running. Ignore the people who have stopped to walk, ignore the signals your body is sending you, ignore your doubts, count your footsteps over and over again to have something simpler to focus on. Just go. Mile 24: 8:15.  You’re back in the center of Eugene that you know so well, but that’s a blessing and a curse: because you know it so well, more mental distance is packed into every block. “Can it really only be two miles from here to there? It always seemed longer.”

Mile 25, through Skinner Butter Park, under the Ferry Street Bridge (a sharp downhill and an unfortunate up a little later, past EWEB), and halfway to the Autzen footbridge:  8:26. More people were starting to shout that I was almost done. Abstractly I knew it was true — 10 minutes or so left — but keeping it up is so hard at this point. It really doesn’t seem out of the question that I could throw in the towel during the last mile. Most prison escapes happen in the last few months of the convict’s term, right?

It takes a lot of work to get to the finishing line of a marathon.

OK, enough drama: I got through mile 26 in 8:16 and survived the long, long, long last 0.2 miles as well. I had a little to eat in the recovery area, found my cheering section (who had cheered me to the finish as well), and together we took a very slow walk to get my stuff out of the bag check area and (after a brief sit-down rest) make it back to the car. Which they had found a great parking spot for. Mom’s house, shower, more rest, lunch, alcohol, happiness, pride.

Official results – 3:38:16 (8:20/mile pace). 412th/1713 overall, 325/924 males, 65/154 age group. Official splits – 10K: 25:15, 20K: 51:05, Half: 1:48:50, 30K: 2:35:40, 40K: 3:25:58.