Newport marathon un-race report, the unfortunate sequel to the pre-race report

Sometimes you go into a marathon expecting great things. Your training went great, you feel awesome, the weather is perfect, and you can feel it in your toes that you are going to kick some ass.
Sometimes you're cautiously optimistic.
Sometimes you get sick or injured and you throw in the towel during training and don't even show up for the race.

And sometimes you show up just needing to run the damn race, even when you know that the best possible outcome will still be slightly disappointing.

Yesterday's Newport marathon unfortunately fell into the last category for me.
Even more unfortunately, my race ended like this:

DNF.

Ugh. Are there any uglier letters to a runner?
No one likes a DNS either, but once you physically step across that start line, there's an implied contract between you and yourself that you will also cross the corresponding finish line. That's a tough contract to break.

Tough enough that between the wheels falling off at 18 miles and finally dropping out at 22 miles, I let two shuttle buses pass me by, while I doggedly tried to pull myself back together. I mean, who drops out of a marathon at 22 miles?? It''s only 4 more miles, just finish the damn thing!! And I came very close to letting that third shuttle bus pass me by. Very very close.

But let me back up.

As I left the hotel on race morning to jog down to the start, the only specific thing wrong was that I was hungry. I had just eaten a big bowl of oatmeal about an hour earlier, so that was weird, but it's just nerves, right? And the start was less than an hour away, so what was I going to do, eat another bowl of oatmeal? Just nerves, I thought. Everything's fine. Relax.

The first few miles (not flat, by the way, Newport marathon race director) went by. The hills and the 837 turns made it a little tricky to relax, but I knew things would settle down. Miles 4 through the turnaround (at 15.5) and back to the finish were on one road along the bay. That's where I planned to settle in. I wanted to stay conservative on the way out and try to negative split the way back.

There's a small uphill as you pass by the finish line, and then a long downhill on the other side. For those following along at home, yes, that means a long uphill on the return trip, conveniently located at mile 25 of a marathon. (Again, note to race director: hills are not flat.)

I didn't know exactly how many total women were in front of me as we crested that hill passing by the finish line, but there were 3 that I could see: 2 directly in front of me and one maybe 1/4 mile up the road. There was also a handful of guys and the 3:05 pace group a little ways beyond. Ok, I thought. I will get comfortable, run steady low 7 pace, and everyone that I'm seeing right now will come back to me.

That is actually how things went for a while. I ran steady, I passed two women and some of the guys, and gained a little bit on the next woman. I fell into about a 7:05 pace, so the gap to the pace group remained pretty constant.

Miles 4 through 13 should have been fine but they weren't. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with me, but something was off. Breathing was fine, legs were not awesome but were ok...  hmmm...  was it just the annoyance factor?

Wait, annoyance? where is that coming from?, you might be wondering.

I've run lots of small road races, but I've never run a small marathon before. Newport only allows 1000 people in the marathon. There are some great things about small marathons, like no corrals, less money, small town friendliness, etc etc. If there's a drawback, it should be small spectator crowds and fewer people to run with, right? Well, I do 99% of my training alone, so I was not at all concerned about running alone, in fact, I expected it. I have no problem running alone.

Unfortunately I was not running alone. I found myself trapped in a small group of dudes whose main purpose in life seemed to be to annoy me. In hindsight, it may have been mostly just one of the dudes, but I was trying to exist in my own little world as much as possible, and the annoyances were relentless, so it seemed like a small army of dudes.

While I wouldn't want to tell anyone else how they should run their race, here are some things that I'd like to think would be universally agreed upon as bad:
Breathing heavily 4 miles into a marathon. And I mean heavily heavily. Like I said, far be it from me to question your fitness in a race I didn't even finish, but if you sound like you're running a 1500 when there's still over 20 miles left to run, it might be a good idea to back off a wee bit. There's plenty of time for heavy breathing later.
Surging like you're doing a fartlek workout. I suppose an occasional surge can be a good thing for some people, like maybe you want to catch up to a group and tuck in with them, or maybe you're trying to get yourself out of an uncomfortable pace rut, but if you're needing to charge forward every 5 minutes to catch back up with the same people, it's possible you shouldn't be running that fast early in a marathon.
Drafting behind someone like it's a bike race. Tucking in with a group is one thing. Veering dramatically around the road to run directly on someone's heels is not only rude, it's a waste of energy. And in our case it was stupid: if anything, there was a tailwind in the direction we were running.

Now, combine those things into one person, and you have the annoying dude running near me while I was trying to find my rhythm. I actually wanted to slow down just a teeny tiny bit until I felt a little more relaxed, but there was no way I was going to relax with that guy around me. In fact, when I was watching him tail this other guy around the road right in front of me, it was all I could do not to yell at him to run his own race. Anyone reading this who knows me is probably quite surprised that I did not yell at him. But I was trying to find my zen place. Let it go, Andi, I thought, it's not important.

I ran through all of the aid stations, and that finally helped me put some space on the guy. I don't usually take any food or drink the first half of the race anyway, so I wasn't worried about it.

But back to that feeling of unease: it hadn't gone away. Annoying guy might have distracted me from it for a little while, but in between distractions, I was fighting some serious negativity. Contemplating dropping out of a 26 mile race when you're less than 10 miles in is not a good thing. Thus began the bargaining.

Every runner knows about bargaining with yourself. It's a very effective tool sometimes. It's where you tell yourself: just make it to (insert artificial finish line here), and then you can stop. And then once you get there, you replace it with a new artificial finish line. And so on until the finish.

I started out with: just get to the half marathon turn around (mile 8.7), so you can see how many people in front of you were only running the half (very few, as it turned out). Then it was: just get past the 13 mile mark, because then you'll start to see the leaders (hopefully my friend Kevin) coming back at you and that will be inspiring, plus then you can count the women in front of you and know what place you're in (Kevin was in second place, looking good, the lead women were looking good, and I was in 6th place). When that started to wear off, it was: just get to the turnaround, everything will seem better when you're on the way back (uh, no it won't).

By the way, my pace had not slowed dramatically prior to the turnaround. I had been been steady in the low 7s through 10 or 11 miles, and then had only slight slowing (~10s per mile) over the next few miles. That might have been a bummer on a day when I was really going for it, but to me on this day, it wasn't that bad. I wasn't crashing, I told myself, I was just going to be finishing a little slower than planned. Or maybe it was just a bad patch and I'd pick it up again later.

Coming back from the turnaround, however, did not give me the boost I'd hoped for. Sure, it was great in some ways. Sharing encouragement with the runners coming the other way is always good for a lift. Seeing my friend Carin and high-fiving my Oiselle teammates Laurel and Anne was easily the best part of the run. As my slow down continued, I kept smiling at the oncoming runners as long as I could. I was still running, at least, right?

But then I wasn't running. At first, it was just a few steps walking through an aid station. Sometimes it's worth a few walking steps just to get a decent amount of water in your mouth and actually down your throat.
That was around 17 miles.
I'm a realist, and I knew the ship was sinking fast. But I'm not too proud to finish a disappointing marathon, I've done it many times before, and I knew I wanted to finish this one. I pictured myself crossing the finish line and I knew it would feel better to finish, no matter what the clock said.
So I told myself I'd just run from aid station to aid station. They're two miles apart. Run two miles to the next one, walk through it, and repeat. Next thing you know, you'll be done.

I didn't make it to the next aid station before I was walking again. My attention was mainly focused on moving forward, and admittedly a person's brain gets a little scrambled when in distress, but I couldn't really make heads or tails of what was going on with my body. I had been mentally prepared to be hampered by my injuries, but that wasn't the problem. I felt completely empty inside, like I had no internal organs and my torso was a big empty vacuum of space.

I'd walk for a few minutes, and then I'd say to myself, just start running. Don't think, just run.
I'd start running, and for a few minutes, I'd think, see? this isn't so bad. We can do this.

A few minutes later I'd find myself fighting to keep going. And then I'd be walking again.

I might have kept on with this cycle for longer, but weird "other" pains had started cropping up. Pains that had nothing to do with my real injuries, but were more likely a result of the weird form that accompanies slow, forced running. Right plantar, left knee, right plantar again....  sigh.

As I walked on, I struggled with the decision of whether to keep at it or call it a day. No one wants to be a quitter. We all want to be the person that sucks it up and finishes no matter what.
And it's hard not to feel guilty. A woman ran by just after 20 miles and she was working hard. She still had 6 miles to go, and she was working really hard, but she was doing it. She wasn't giving up. I knew that she would finish the race. And I looked at myself. I didn't look or sound like that. I wasn't working as hard as that woman was. I was just walking. Maybe I was just being a baby and feeling sorry for myself.

Maybe.

But pride is a tricky thing. It can keep you working at something when things get tough, and it can also keep you working at something past the point where you should just let it go.

So when I heard that third shuttle coming up behind me, I looked back at it once, twice, and then finally, at the very last possible second, I flagged the driver. He pulled over instantly and I got on. The spectators on the bus were ridiculously nice to me. One lady kept offering me stuff (food, water). Another said, well, honey, 22 miles is pretty darn good.

I smiled as best I could, shook them off, and watched as the shuttle bus drove by the people still running their marathons. They were going to cross the finish line and I was not. Not this time, anyway. I let a few tears roll down my face, but only a few. Dropping out was not an easy decision to make, but I'd made it. It was done.

Now I just had to walk around behind (not across) the finish line to collect Paul, who I spotted standing there, peering anxiously at the clock as it spilled over into the 3:06's and out the finish chute and up the hill, trying not to look worried, wondering where the hell I was, but I could do that.
The day was young, I realized, and it was time to put the race behind us and go put our feet in the ocean.