One More For The Road

Let’s get the important part out of the way:

I finished, I finished, I finished!!!!!

The first mile was easy…………the last 25 were a real bitch.

My very first marathon, and I finished at 3:59:18. I made my goal of coming in under 4 hours, and that is HUGE.

And coming in under 4 hours is AFTER:

1.) Stopping at EVERY port-a-potty
2.) Walking through EVERY aid station

and the kicker:

3.) Being in the hospital 24 hours ago with food poisoning.

No shit.

Friday was going great, I was eating the right foods and resting my legs and taking it easy. It was very relaxing and nice. Until I started getting nauseous at about 11pm, and was throwing up by 12:30am. I spent the night in and out of the bathroom, with diarrhea and vomiting. I have never had intestinal cramps like that. I literally felt like I was being squeezed from the inside. It was horrible. But even all of that wouldn’t have sent me to the hospital, until (Sorry, TMI!) the bloody diarrhea started. That scared me, and we went to the ER at 6am.

Some IV fluid, some pain meds, an antibiotic, and I was sent on my way. My blood tests indicated food poisoning, and the decision to run the race was left up to me. He didn’t think I’d be able to do it, but it would all came down to how healthy I was feeling, and hydrated I was.

All day Saturday I slept. By the evening I felt better, just tired. I told Eric I wasn’t going to run, because it takes a lot even when a person is completely healthy. He kept telling me to wait and see, so I set my alarm for 5:45am, and went to bed at 9.

I slept all night, with no diarhhea or vomiting since Saturday morning. I told Eric, “If I had never had food poisoning and woke up feeling like I do right now, it would never occure to me not to run.” And he said, “Then let’s go.”

I carried the cell phone in the pocket of my capris, and we figured the worst case scenario was that I would call to be picked up at either the half marathon finish line, or from somwhere else on the course. At that point, after the injuries and the illnesses, and the freaking food poisoning, who cared if I didn’t finish?

We made it to the start in the nick of time, and we were off. I was comfortable and relaxed, and the first 9 miles were pretty easy. At mile 10 the half-marathoners split off from us and the course emptied out, which was when it got quite lonely. On Friday I had looked at the race profile and (duh, maybe I should have done it before?) realized that miles 12-22 were uphill. Slightly, but enough to make a difference over 9 miles. I also knew that 20-21 was (supposedly) the worst of it. So miles 10-13 I took it pretty easy, reserving as much as I could for what was to come. The slow garde made for some going.

I ran it strong. The course itself was horrible, with most of the marathon on closed toll freeways and even under overpasses. It was boring, and tedious, and the runners were spread out enough that most of the time I ran alone (with runners in sight, but none with me). There were miles and miles and miles where spectators weren’t allowed and there was no one out there to break things up. This marathon had none of the camraderie that I’ve heard about at other races, and even though the organization was good, the aid stations were well stocked, and the volunteers were great, I would never do that one again.

Anyway, I kept talking myself through the miles. I stopped at every bathroom (just in case there was a reoccurance of the food poisoning, I didn’t want to be stuck between 2 stations.) and I walked through every water station. These were both deals I made with myself this morning, concessions I was making to how sick I was yesterday. Honestly, had it not been for all of those stops I probably could have shaved another 5-7 minutes off my time.

At one point (15.7 miles, the viewing station where I saw Eric), I was only 9 minutes behind the 3:40:00 pace group. I really considered trying to catch up, but forced myself to go steady at my own pace. But boy, was it tempting to try for Boston.

I didn’t have my HRM (BIL never came up), so I could only calculate my time at the mile markers. Some weren’t working, and they aren’t at every mile anyway, so for much of the race I really didn’t know how I was doing. I only knew about the 3:40:00 pace group because Eric told me.

The last 10 miles were pretty hard. Well, the last 8. At 18 miles, I was counting down and begging for each mile marker. My legs were hurting from the constant, slow climb, and there was nothing out there to distract me. To make matters worse, during some of the worst of the hills we had this horrendous head wind that kept pushing me back. I don’t know which was worse; when the wind was blowing so hard that I almost lost my hat, while I was trying to run uphill, or when it stopped blowing completely and had this hot hot hot sun beating down on me. Like I said, it was pretty barren landscape, with no trees, no buildings, no houses. Nothing. Just the silence and the hot sun and the hot asphalt and no wind.

Hey, I’m allowed to bitch about it, right?

Mile 20 came and went, and there was no major hill like I thought was in the profile. I thought I was home free, because the profile makes it look like it’s mostly downhill from mile 21. Oh yeah, except for the other hills. The ones I didn’t know about. The ones at the end when you’ve already run 23 miles and you’re trying to decide how bad it would be if you quit. Yeah, those hills.

I saw Eric 3 times on the course, and that was awesome. Each time it gave me the boost I needed to keep going. The last time I saw him was at mile 23.5, and it was soooo welcome. I knew he wouldn’t be at the finish line to see me cross, but I needed him there. I was getting tired, I had just seen the hill that was past him, and I was getting really run down. As an indication of how much I had slowed down, the first half of the run was at an 8:30-ish pace, but I finished with an average 9:09/mile. That’s a lot of slowing down!

After I saw Eric at 23.5 miles, I powered up the hill. I reached the 4 hour pace group, and I passed them. I saw the big balloons and could hear the crowd at the finish line. I turned a corner……….and saw another hill. A pretty big one. It went on and on, and once I started the downhill I was still about a third of a mile from the finish. I turned another corner and saw it, and heard a guy over the loud speaker say, “here she comes, you can still make it under 4 hours!” I realized he was talking to me and he said, “Pick it up, pick it up, you can do it! Callie Lambeth, folks, from Paso Robles, Ca.! Bring her in, let me hear some noise!”

I picked up my pace, and he saw it, and made a comment about my increased speed. I threw my hands over my head, and ran across the finish line where he said my name again along with my time.

It was amazing. It was like what you see on the movies when teams win games or at the Olympics where the athletes win big awards. Having him talk to me and hearing the crowd start screaming when he told them to bring me in……..I can’t even describe it. It was beyond my wildest imagination, and so much more than I ever thought it could be.

Of course, it was almost ruined when the first words out of my mouth were, “Where’s a trashcan?” because I thought I was gonna puke. But I was fine, and I ate my oranges and my banana and my water and my Gatorade. And Eric met me at the finish about 20 minutes later.

He’s just sick that he didn’t see me cross the line, especially after I told him the story. But he got stuck with traffic and road closures, as I knew he would. 23.5 miles only gave him ~20 minutes to get there, and I knew he wouldn’t make it.

But I needed him right where he was. Seeing him there gave me the push I needed to finish at all, and although I wish he could have seen me, it made such a difference to have him at mile 23.

The last few miles, and right after when the muscle cramps were the worst, I was saying no F’ing way to another marathon. But now I am fed and rested and the cramps aren’t as bad, and I am thinking………..maybe.

Eric’s aunt Elaine asked me today if I wanted to work on speed, and go for 10k’s. She said, “what’s your goal?” And I said, “To run a marathon. I did that. Now I don’t know what my dream is.”

It’s still a little surreal, but THAT defintely defines my day. I don’t know what my next dream is, but I just achieved this one. I’ll revel in that for a while, and see where it takes me.

Thanks for all the support and the well wishes and the love. I couldn’t have done it without you, and thoughts of you kept me going during some of the hardest parts of my run.

I’ll be home tomorrow, and will check in again to add any details I may be forgetting now. I haven’t even mentioned the sore knee, the blisters, or the chafed skin, but they don’t seem all that important anymore. Neither does the foot injury, the knee issues, the back injury, the food poisoning, or any other the other things that nearly kept me from doing this. I have a medal. That’s an amazing thing.

I will leave you with this, though, copy and pasted from the OC Marathon site:

Bib: 16772
Name: Callie Lambeth
Gender: F
Age: 25
Hometown: Paso Robles CA
Place Overall: 257 out of 1169
Women: 50 out of 442
F 25-29: 5 out of 69
FINISH: 3:59:18 pace: 9:08
10K: 52:05 pace: 8:23
Turn: 2:05:37 pace: 8:37
20 Mile: 3:01:58 pace: 9:06
Chip Time: 3:59:18
Gun Time: 3:59:44