06/25/2024
2024 Grandma’s Marathon
When I arrived it was cool but not raining. I got through the porta pottie line with a moderate wait, then got in line. I was in corral C but I could see that I was stuck a fair bit behind where I wanted to be, which was nearer to the pacer for 4:20 who was in corral B. When I got to the start I took off at a faster pace than I had planned in order to try and catch up with the pacer. I was doing under a 9:30 minute mile for at least the first two miles. I spent a good deal of this time navigating around slower runners as the crowd was still fairly packed. I don’t remember what mile it was, but at some point I caught up and passed that pacer and I was still feeling good, so I decided to try and keep a 9:30ish pace and see if I could stay ahead of that group.
It was cool and rained lightly with a nice backwind so everything was feeling great. Nothing to notable happened until the half marathon mark where there were a ton of porta potties for the shorter race. I’d been holding off on going until then and it was a much needed stop. Just before mile 15 I passed a woman who was bent over the guardrails sobbing. I almost stopped to see if I could help get her to the first aid station, but I saw that she was already on the phone with someone and continued on. Shortly after I and some others saw what we thought was a covered body on a stretcher, but as we passed it turned out the stretcher was empty and just had an unusual amount of padding. Around mile 16 I started to feel my joints starting to become unhappy with me, which was no surprise, given my effort and the rainy weather. I kept my pace.
At mile 19 I was having to consciously push to hold on to my pace and was starting to feel lightly nauseous, I knew I would have to cut back at some point, but managed to hold on. Just after mile 20 my peroneal tendon in my left ankle gave up. In just three strides I could feel as it pulled and became painful. I had injured it just over a month ago, but aside from some residual soreness I thought I might make it to the end of the marathon without significant issues. This was a significant issue.
I switched to a walk, then a speed walk, then I alternated between speed walking and a gentle jog. Partway through that mile I took some painkillers as soon as I was relatively sure it wasn’t getting worse at the lighter pace. I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish at this point as I still had a 10k (6.2 miles) to get through, but I was determined to continue forward. I took a second and final painkiller and swung into a first aid station to put a wrap on my foot. I put it on too tight the first time and had to stop, sit, and rewrap it. With this stop and my slowed pace, my time between mile 21 and 22 was 20 minutes long. I don’t really know if the wrap helped but this short down time gave the meds time to kick in. My average cumulitive pace after this was about a 12 minute mile. I finished in just over 4 hours and 36 minutes. Only 5 minutes over my marathon PR.
I’m going to mentally struggle with this as my main goal was to get a new PR and stopping for the wrap is what prevented this. As I write this it is my second day off from running. My quads are still pretty sore, but much, much better than last year. My ankle still hurts to walk on, but I think I’ll be able to do short light runs or at least a long walk by this weekend. Once I’m healed enough to run again, I’ll be hitting the woods so I can be trained up to the Midwest States 100k at the end of August.
