Digging Down Deep

After running 26.2 miles of the 2010 Chicago Marathon, spending 15 minutes in the medical tent, and slowly – very slowly – shuffling 1/2 a mile back to the American Cancer Society tent in Charity Village, I did something I haven’t done since finishing my first marathon in 1999.

I cried.

I don’t even know why I cried. It was likely a cocktail of emotions and body chemistry that brought it on.

• Disappointment in missing my “dream” goal by 9 minutes and coming up just 55 seconds short of breaking my PR
• Elation in running my 2nd fastest marathon – and coming so close to my dream goal and PR in really tough running conditions
• Fatigue – I’ve never been so totally cooked after a race … any race
• Satisfaction in knowing I fought hard, very hard
• Pride in running – and completing – this race in honor of my sister (as always) and Emily, who had worked just as hard as I had all year for this weekend but couldn’t be here (Read why here)
• Concern for several friends who were still out on the course, especially Nancy, who was tackling her first marathon since she started undergoing chemotherapy late this summer for the cancer that was just discovered in July
• Respect for my friend Kristin, who gave an emotional, stirring, inspiring speech at the DetermiNation team dinner Friday, and who continues to be the athlete I wish I could be as she keeps up her fight to kick cancer’s ass

As I sat in the ACS tent with my feet in a wading pool of ice, an ice pack under each armpit and another on my neck, I bowed my head, covered my face with the mylar blanket that was warding off the shivers and shakes, and I cried. Not for long, and I don’t think anyone knew, not even my dear, sweet wife who was standing next to me. But I just had to let those pent up emotions flow.

Like most runners I know, I’m always looking to improve, striving to shave seconds or minutes off a previously recorded time. I know that not every race can be faster than the one before it, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. When I enter a race, I’m either working to pace a friend to a personal best, or I’m gunning for one myself. Conditions be damned!

That’s the attitude I took into “Chicago Marathon 10-10-10,” which was billed by race organizers as “The Date To Motivate.” At the start of this year, this marathon wasn’t on my race calendar. I was going to run the Boston and New York marathons, and a handful of other races at shorter distances. But after running Boston and recording my then second-best time, even though I struggled through some tummy problems, I knew I could run much faster than the personal record I had set at Chicago last year. And after getting a taste of the Boston experience, I wanted to go back for seconds.
While technically I was already qualified to run Boston 2011 from my 2009 Chicago time, I felt that was going in the “back door,” living off past glory. I didn’t want that. I wanted to earn the honor again this year. I would have to run 3:30:59 or better to do so. Sure, I still had the New York Marathon to make that qualifying attempt, but that course is hilly and is not known for the blazing times that Chicago turns out. Plus, since it’s not till November, if I missed qualifying at New York, I might get shut out of having another shot. So in May, I signed up through DetermiNation to run Chicago for a seventh time.

That became the sixth race this year I had committed to run with DetermiNation, following the Phoenix Rock ‘n Roll Half Marathon (January), Boston Marathon (April), Seattle Rock ‘n Roll Half Marathon (June), Chicago Rock ‘n Roll Half Marathon (August) and New York Marathon (November, which I committed to earlier this year). It meant I’d have to raise another $950, but I have a strong base of donors, and I was confident they would pull through for me if I could give them a higher “return on investment.” Besides, once you’ve run with DetermiNation, it’s hard to imagine doing anything else. The people affiliated with the team – from the staffers who organize the program and the volunteers who pull it off, to the people who are battling cancer and their families who support them – are all so wonderful and inspiring, it makes the task of training for and running a marathon much better and more meaningful.

Immediately after hitting “submit” on my Chicago application, I set my sights on not just breaking my PR, but shattering it. I wanted to go 3:20 – 8 minutes 42 seconds better than my year-old record. Since that was way behind anything I’d done before, I hired a local coach to help prepare me. Every workout she gave me, I did more or faster. If she said “8×800 meters in 3:15,” I did 10 in 3:05. If she said “20 miles with 8 at race pace,” I did 22 with 10 at pace.

There are a plethora of race calculators on the web. You can plug in a finishing time of any recent race at nearly any distance, and the calculator will predict your marathon time. I’ve raced a lot in the last year: 5Ks, 8Ks 10Ks and half marathons. Every time and distance combination I plugged in spit out a predicted marathon finish of 3:14-3:17. My 3:20 should be well within reason, as long as I continued working hard.

Just about the only thing that could do me in was injury or weather, two variables largely out of my control. I did have a minor injury in June that set me back a couple of weeks, but I bounced back quickly and got back on schedule. Three weeks ahead of the Chicago Marathon, the weather was in the low 50s, perfect for running. A week out, it was in the 60s, still very good. Three days out, and the mercury started rising: 76, then 83, then came the race-day forecast: low 60 and high 84 “with a chance to set a new record of 86!” said the weatherman, giddily. I cursed him, vehemently.

If my own personal drive weren’t enough, I was blessed to have a weekend full of inspiration all around me. First, there was the situation with Emily, the ACS staffer in charge of the DetermiNation program in Chicago. I blogged about that earlier, and I decided to run this marathon in honor of her. On Friday night, we had the DetermiNation team dinner, which was highlighted by wonderful, touching stories of families that we have helped through our fundraising. But the highlight of the evening was the keynote speech by Kristin, who I’ve blogged about before but who you really must hear from yourself.

On Saturday, the day before the race, I met some friends at the expo. I first met Cara, Charlie and Nancy in Boston, where we all ran the marathon with DetermiNation. We all just clicked and have since stayed in touch on Twitter, Facebook and DailyMile. Cara and Charlie even launched a long-distance relationship: she in Atlanta and he in Reno. But Nancy is really the glue that bound us together. After her cancer diagnosis in July which came after she had signed up to run Chicago, she could have backed out. But that’s not how she is. She was determined to face and beat cancer.

Thus, the Dream Team, as she calls us on her blog, reassembled in Chicago. She and Cara even ran the marathon in superhero costumes, as Wonder Woman and Bat Girl, respectively. Both women are capable of running 26.2 miles in the low 3 hour range, but recent chemo had taken a toll on Nancy, and she was gunning for “anything under 4 hours.” Cara sacrified her personal goals to run alongside Nancy.

Saturday evening, my family hosted Sam Felsenfeld, who I met on Twitter, where he goes by the handle @OperationJack. Sam is an amazing athlete who is running 61 marathons this year to raise money to fight autism, which afflicts his second of three kids. As we ate dinner and he told stories of the 47 (at that point) marathons he’s run this year, and the people he has reached with the autism-fighting story, I could not help but to be moved.

So when race day dawned early Sunday morning, I was primed, physically and emotionally. By virtue of my previous year’s time, I had a great seeding in corral B, which put me ahead of about 33,000 of the 38,131 runners who started the race. Even better, I was there with Nancy, Cara, my nephew-in-law Brian O., and Ed, a friend and fellow DetermiNation committee member. We all started together and ran together for about 4 miles till different goal paces edged us apart. Brian and I continued on, each hoping to turn miles in a 7:45-7:55 pace.

Mile 1: 7:44. Perfect. Mile 2: 7:25, okay, let’s back it down. Mile 3: 7:21. Huh?! No way that was 7:21! Mile 4: 7:22. WTF? We’re not going that fast! Mile 5: 7:19. Seriously, what is going on here? We slowed down, we know we did!

At this point, all I could think of was the conversation with my coach Saturday afternoon. “Start conservatively,” she said, “Don’t be the guy who said ‘I was right on pace for the first 18 miles, then the wheels came off.’” I desperately wanted to slide back to 7:45 pace for the next few miles, but it just wouldn’t come. Miles 6-13 all went by between 7:19 and 7:38.

As we crossed the half-marathon mat, I asked Brian how he felt. “Eh, okay,” he said. He had rolled an ankle a few weeks ago and wasn’t able to train much in the critical big-mile weeks leading up to the race. As much as our pace was faster than I wanted, it was much faster than he was planning on. By mile 16, we had finally dialed in a 7:44, but Brian was at his limit. He wished me well and slid back for a more comfortable pace. Shortly after Brian dropped off, I found a nice tree in a parking lot that needed “watering.” (If you’ve ever read any of my other race reports, you’re undoubtedly wondering when the pee story would come. Well, mile 17 it is!) With the break, that mile clocked at 8:28, but man, did I feel better!

I missed the next mile marker, which meant my split at mile 19 was actually for two miles. I couldn’t believe it when the numbers on my watch read 15:35. That meant I had just run two miles at an average of about 7:47, right on the pace I had wanted earlier, but now the numbers were trending slower. What’s more, I was on a wide-open part of the course with the sun blazing down through a cloudless sky and not a building or tree anywhere to offer shade. It was about 10:00 a.m., and the temperature was in the mid 70s. I had taken water or Gatorade at every aid station, but still, I was getting dehydrated.

Mile 20 was 8:10. I was becoming the guy who “was right on pace for the first 18.” In mile 21 I peed again, partially because “the seal was broken,” and partially because I needed to regroup mentally. That mile was 9:32. Shortly after mile 22, my niece Lauren hopped in to run me in the last 4 miles. She did that the previous year and is the main reason I was able to attain my Boston qualifying time. When I asked her for a repeat performance this year, I said, “You’ve gotta be tougher on me. Don’t let me walk. If I do, get me started running again.”

She took her mission seriously. Somewhere around mile 23, I started fading fast. My fingers were tingling, and I started seeing stars. I made it to an aid station, where I grabbed two cups of water and drank them all down as I walked. She cut me a little slack because it was an aid station, but as soon as I cleared the tables, she put her hand on my back and pushed me forward.

I went some distance – a half mile? a quarter mile? – before I stopped again. My vision was getting dark sporadically. Again, the hand in the small of my back kept me moving forward at a pace faster than my walk would’ve been, but not so much that I couldn’t handle.

Time and distance were getting really blurry. I remember asking what mile marker we had last past, “24” Lauren said, and I desperately wanted it to be 25. Over the next two miles, I walk/jogged/was pushed ever forward, even as my feet started to go numb. I knew the symptoms I was having were all bad, so I drank as much as I could at every station (though even drinking was unappealing at this point), and I walked as much as I could get away with.

Occasionally, a fellow runner would urge me on or one of the DetermiNation coaches along the route would offer encouragement that would keep me running twice as far as I just had been (which probably means 200 meters instead of 100). As we approached mile 25 (I think), I was walking. But a huge throng of DetermiNation volunteers and staffers spotted me and yelled my name from across the breadth of Michigan Avenue. Lauren said, “The DetermiNation people are awesome!” and she was right. I forged on.

About 1/2 mile from the finish line, Lauren said, “I have to hop out now. Keep running. You cannot stop till you cross the line, do you understand me?” and I knew it was more a command than a question. That meant I would have to conquer my Mt. Everest – the bridge overpass on Roosevelt Road right at mile 26, a two-block slight incline that had nearly caused me to miss my Boston qualifying time in 2009 because I melted down mentally and walked a portion of it, even though I was less than 1/4 mile from the end. That memory had haunted me all year, and throughout the months of training I repeatedly told myself “you will not walk Mt. Everest!”

Now that it was looming just ahead and around a sharp right turn, I wasn’t sure. I no longer knew what my splits were or what my elapsed time was; I had stopped keeping track at mile 21 (Hell, I couldn’t even keep track of mile markers, let alone complicated clock time!) Even with all the walking and slow running of the last 3 miles, I thought I would still break my PR of 3:28:42 and maybe come close to 3:25.

But all that was secondary to my immediate goal: get to the end without walking. The crowd right there is immense, and many of them read my shirt and yelled “Go Dave!” I’m sure they could see I was always just one step away from slowing to a walk. I forged on.

With my head down, I felt the road begin to rise and I began repeating the mantra I developed while training for the infamous Newton Hills of the Boston Marathon: “Hills make me stronger. Hills make me stronger.” Step after slow step, I moved ahead, repeating the mantra and never quite slowing to a walk. Finally, the crest. Hard left turn and a slight decline one long block to the finish line. Stop the watch: 3:29:37.

Fifty-five seconds off my PR, but still good enough to re-qualify me for Boston. It was also my second-fastest marathon ever. All on a day that caused me to dig deep into parts of my body that I didn’t know existed.

Some of you will read this and ask, “Why would anyone do that to themselves?” Others will get to this point and fully understand why I am now looking forward to running New York on November 7. If you’re in the former group, I hope that one day you can experience something so deeply personal and moving as running is to me.

Related posts:

1. Boston Bound
2. Rock ‘n Rollin’ in the Desert
3. THAT’s what I’m TALKIN’ about!