Marathon 2008 Story

Thursday, October 9, 2008

I thought I'd share my marathon experience...

1994 

I see an episode of Oprah in passing.  She is running the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C.  I think to myself, WOW.  If she can do it, anyone can.  I want to do that someday.

April 2008

Steve and I were taking our girls for a walk in the neighborhood.  We see my friend Christine returning from a run.  She had just had a baby about 10 months prior.  She was svelte, and dressed in cute running clothes.  She looked athletic and strong, the kind of girl I felt I used to be, in a prior life.  I was interested in following in her footsteps.  I guess she could tell!  She asked me to go running with her and her running friends.  I asked her how far she had gone that day.  She answered, "ONLY 5 miles."  In my mind, 5 miles was inconceivable.  The most I had ever run was a 5k (3.2 miles) and that was HARD.  I told her I would love to, but I didn't think I could keep up.  She said, "YOU can do it!"  Christine also mentioned, "You should do the marathon with me, it will be EASY.  Anyone who can run a 5k can run a marathon!"  Deep down, hiding under a mountain of self doubt, a small part of my soul leapt at the thought...could I really dream of such a thing?  

The first morning I got up at 5:30 to run with Christine, Melisa, Kim and Melissa was quite humbling.  It was pitch black, cold and windy.  What was I doing?  I felt out of place as the new girl who didn't know anyone, but also as I did not have the running wardrobe.  Also I made the mistake of bringing an Ipod which none of them did.  They liked to talk the whole 5 miles!  From the moment we started I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.  I could not have talked if I wanted to.  I could not breathe at all.  I didn't want to embarrass myself by stopping, so I put my head down and just focused on keeping up.  I hardly said a single word.  How could I?

May 2008

When I made the lottery for the St. George Marathon I was shocked.  I didn't really expect to get in.  But now I was committed.  I knew if I signed up that it would force me to train.  It worked like a charm.  I followed the Hal Higdon marathon training schedule for beginner's pretty closely.  It was 16 weeks long.  I ran 4/5/4 miles during the week and then a long run on the weekends.  I ran 2 10k's in the summer (6.4 mi.) and one 1/2 marathon (13.2 mi.)  My half marathon experience was a bad one.  I was overtraining and my muscles seized up on me.  I ran/walked the whole race and finished at a 2:20.  I got pretty scared at this point.  I thought, how the heck am I going to run 26.2?  I started going to a PT and LMT to get back on track.  The milage went up up up every week until my last long run, a 20 miler on Saturday September 13th.  We ran it at an average of a 10 min mile pace.  After I had accomplished this, my confidence was up.  But still, I had never run the whole 26.2.  I hoped I was ready.        

Oct. 4, 2008

My friend Christine got me up at 4 am.  Steve and I had stayed at her condo in St. George.  I had not slept a wink all night from the excitement and anxiety about running the 26.2 miles.  I couldn't help but think about it all night.  What if I couldn't do it?  What if I got injured?  What if I couldn't keep up with Christine, Christy, John and Bruce?  This is what I had been training for for 6 months.  It was like graduating, or getting married: an ultimate culmination.  

I got dressed in my shorts, singlet, favorite socks, favorite visor (can't run without it) my Asics running shoes, sweatpants, poly long sleeve shirt, two fleece's and fleece gloves.  Everything was laid out like I was obsessive compulsive.  I pinned my number on: 6995.  My number was so high because I guessed that I would run the marathon in 6 hours when I signed up.  Obviously I had no clue what I was doing!  I put my hair in the usual ponytail and shellacked it in hairspray.  I put on waterproof mascara because I wanted to look good in the picture as I crossed the finish line...I am still a girl.  I washed down my many vitamins with water and ate leftover seafood pasta from the Olive Garden.  Natured called which is a HUGE relief for all runners BEFORE a race.

Christine, John and I met Christy and Bruce at Smith's.  We drove to the St. George Temple together and parked.  From there we boarded the yellow school bus where there were people rushing about everywhere boarding busses.  There was a definite chill in the air but nothing that we didn't expect.  We were dressed for the cold.  We planned to remove all of our clothing after about the 6th mile because St. George is usually so brilliantly sunny and warm.  That didn’t happen.  The temperature hovered around 57 degrees with a wind chill of 10 mph and 77% humidity.  It rained almost the whole way!  

After a 30 minute bus ride or so, we arrived at the starting point.  I will never forget the sight.  Hundreds of people every which way you turned, with plastic bags on their heads, and garbage sacs on their bodies.  I finally noticed that it was raining.  We headed strait to the port-o-potty's where hundreds of bodies lined up.  We found plastic bags to take cover from the rain.  

I was in the potty when the horn went off.  Christy was right next to me and yelled, "Has it STARTED!?"  We had our electronic chips on our shoes that measured our time from the starting point to the finish so it didn't really matter that we missed the start, but it was crazy exciting when that horn went off!  Here we were, among 7,000 runners!  The song “Eye of the Tiger” was playing.  It was chaos!  Garbage sacs and clothes being thrown off onto the ground everywhere and the wind was blowing as fast as the rain was coming down!

I ran behind Bruce for about a mile.  He blocked the wind.  I kept my heavy clothes on for miles and miles.  After the few first miles I was feeling cocky.  I was feeling like I could run forever.  It was easy.  The time off my legs paid off that week.  The sun started coming up around mile 3.  We thought the rain would fizzle out.  It never did.

We ran up Veho which is "The huge hill" of the marathon.  Then we ran down the huge hill.  This killed my knees.  By mile 15, 1/2 my clothes were off and left on the side of the trail like many others.  My knees were aching, my hips were killing and my legs were sore.  I was really hurting!  Christine and I lost the group.  Christy and Bruce had gone ahead at one point and then John took off after them.  I went to the bathroom on the side of the road behind a bush at one point.  Christine and I enjoyed talking and sharing how bad our bodies ached for a few miles.  There were stations at every mile after about mile 6.  They served water, gatorade, bananas, Gu and in the later miles they offered Vaseline on a stick for chafing, and IcyHot rubdowns for your knees and legs.  Christine and I probably enjoyed a few too many IcyHot massages!  (We could have made better time!).

By mile 20 we were starting to smile more.  The pouring rain let up to a drizzle.  A guy dropped his bag of drugs (Tylenol and Advil) in front of us on the trail.  I yelled after him, but he couldn't hear me.  I asked if I should take one.  Christine said yeah, so I took an Advil.  At mile 21 I took my "double espresso" Gu with 100 mg caffein in it.  For someone who doesn't hardly ingest an ounce of caffein regularly, this apparently had an effect.  I was flying high!  At mile 22 I was feeling good.  Was it the Advil?  Or the Gu?  Adrenaline?  Whatever it was, by mile 23 I was feeling NO pain.  We kicked it in.  Normally Christine and I would run at about a 9.5-10 minute mile pace.  At mile 24 we were at an 8.  We hauled A__!  At mile 25 we were grinning ear to ear, raising our arms up in victory, slapping high 5's, enjoying the cheers and taking it all in.  I saw Dave Lindsay who I knew was with Steve, the one face I longed to see.  I heard my name yelled out as I looked to see Lacey Seegmiller screaming, "Jen Johnston!!!!  Whahooo!  And then I saw Denise, Dewey and Taylor Gardner...I sprinted full speed to the finish line with a smile plastered on my face! 

A moment I'll never forget...the lady who handed me my marathon medal gave me a huge hug and said "Well done!"  Then I turned to see Christine, and hugged the glorious person who made me believe I could do it!  What a day of triumph and pure joy it was!!

Now I am a marathon finisher at 4:37.  That’s FOUR HOURS AND THIRTY MINUTES OF RUNNING!!!!  Hear me Roar!

Jen