Where’s the peanut butter?!

Last weekend I ran my first marathon. The experience was incredible and I’m thrilled to have completed it and really, really thankful to the friends who supported me leading up to the race and in Portland. I wanted to write about the experience at length but am just not getting to that so I’ll recap it in installments as I can get to them and talk about it from the perspectives of support, training, nutrition, accessories, the race itself, and the 27th mile.

Today - marathon support.

On one hand a marathon is really pretty simple. Get in shape and go out and run (or walk or crawl) for a couple hours and 26.2 miles later it’s done and you’re part of a pretty select but growing segment of the population who have accomplished what I now have way, way more respect for as an incredible feat of endurance.

Forms of support start appearing from the day you commit to running a marathon. One interesting thing about support is that it won’t always be explicit and the giver may not even know he’s giving it. For me, it came from people wishing me good luck, agreeing to talking about the experience or logistics, being willing to listen to me talk a bunch of nonsense about training before I understood what words like “tempo” or “strides” meant (if I do now). I know these weren’t always interesting conversations but people were supportive or at least captivated by my enthusiasm that they would talk. And we talked.

Support also comes from doing group runs together. This can be a little harder because runners have pretty different goals and abilities. It’s not super easy to pair up someone who’s training for a near-3 hour marathon with someone training for a 5 hour finish or someone who is just casually running or even to pair up people with similar goals and but whose races are at different times. Or in my case, if most of your friends just aren’t really interested in running. So it’s super-helpful if you can join a running club. There, you’ll probably find a huge pool of people with a broad enough pool of goals, abilities, and schedules to find a good match or two. And you might get a coach (either formally from the club or informally from a fellow member). For me in Seattle - this is definitely Chuck Bartlett’s training club: ChuckIt. But if you’ve read my blog before or had a conversation with me since June, you probably already know that My secret mentors in the club are Terry Wong and Craige Blackwell. They don’t necessarily know this, but they’ve been huge positive influences and I’m really thankful for their advice and companionship on the track and the long runs. And I really look up to everyone in the club and get a short burst of adrenaline whenever I see a “runchuckit” shirt during a recreational run or race. That’s part of what I’m talking about when I say that not everyone will give you explicit support. Sometimes it will be explicit but just as often you’ll manage to find something that says to you “I should keep going.”

Finally there is support during the marathon itself. Saturday night in Portland before the race I started to feel a little weird about the whole event. Thousands of people come from out of town or fly in to go on this enormous endeavor to burn energy just to say they’ve done it or feel some sense of accomplishment. Isn’t that representative of the opulence I’ve at least talked about resisting for much of my life (um, even if I haven’t always exactly walked that walk)? By Sunday morning as Tanya and I talked with some ladies from the Red Hat Society on the train on the way to the race or while I was in line for the port-a-potty talking with fellow marathoners or when I saw Aaron, Steve, Tim, and friends from ChuckIt getting ready for the race or when I saw friends after they blew the starting horn - all of that washed away. Suddenly I was part of over 9,000 people trying to do something that is one of the hardest things a human can do, the hardest thing some of us would ever do in our lives, and we’re surrounded by people with similar goals and, far more importantly, friends and family who love us and want the best for us and want to see us accomplish that goal.

We are all there as individuals, but we are all doing it together.

At the Portland marathon, they print your name on your bib which means complete strangers can cheer you on. I remember around mile 5 the first time I heard someone say “Go, Patrick!” and as I think back now it really moves me. A pessimist might suggest he was just trying to kill some of the boredom of standing outside for a long morning, but if it’s true that the body is physiologically much more effective at synthesizing glycogen out of carbohydrates in the 30 minutes immediately following a hard workout, it’s just as true that the human spirit is much more effective at synthesizing a drive to persevere from “Go, Patrick!” while in the middle of a marathon.

I don’t want to lose track of the ways I found support during the race itself so here’s a short annotated list along the route…

• Before the start: seeing Aaron, Steve, Tim, and other from the club in the crowd and waiting with them for the horn.
• Near the start, just after the run blew: seeing Rohini and Katie on the sidelines.
• Around mile 3: I see Katie again - she seems to know this course really well!
• Around mile 3.5: me yelling “Go big Jim!” to the guy who had “Yell ‘Go big Jim’” written on the back of his shirt shortly before passing him (this was definitely a symbiotic gesture of support, not me saying it and thinking “I’m totally going to crush you!” - more on Big Jim later…)
• Crossing the 5 mile mark: checking my watch for the first time in 4 miles and realizing I had run in 28:40 - exactly the pace I (thought I) wanted.
• Around 5.5: Seeing Katie again and Tanya for the first time in the race near the bridge. They agreed to pick up my backpack since I couldn’t find the clothes drop at the start of the race, which was awesome because I left my wallet and everything in it on a random corner of downtown Portland.
• Around mile 8: seeing a rainbow to the north across the river.
• Around mile 10: seeing Tiffany as I head back on the switchback and cheering each other on.
• Around mile 17: Seeing Katie again as I climbed to the St. John’s bridge. Things were getting hard right about now.
• Around 17.5: Seeing Tanya and Rohini again on the bridge. Then seeing John and Heather who had threatened to sleep through the race Right about now I am starting to feel the need to step back the pace because I’m really not lucid. I’m really, really happy to see them in the race (and I’m just as happy today that I *remember* seeing them!!)
• Around mile 19/20: after crossing the line where I would fall apart (throwing up, cramping up, and stumbling to the sidelines) a volunteer comes to my assistance and gives me water and walks with me for some distance - half a mile? a mile? I have no idea. We make small talk - she ran in 2002, I let her tell me whether she thinks I can go on by myself, and I do - but walking, still. She didn’t tell me “keep going” but I might not have even done that without her.
• Around mile 21/22: I meet up again with the ladies: Tanya, Rohini, and Katie. I feel disappointed with myself as I see them and am walking but I’ve tried to run and just can’t (still cramping hard and no energy). But they are only supportive (as I recall…I’m still not quite all there) and keep me going.
• Around mile 22: “Go big Jim!” makes a reappearance and I watch as his sign fades off ahead of me…I’m sad for my race but really happy for him.
• Around mile 22/23: I see Anand from the club making good progress in the race. We’re on a downhill and I tell myself “it’s only about a lap around the lake to the finish line” and struggle to get myself to keep going. I’m sorry to leave Rohini, Katie and Tanya who have to walk back to the car but I have to do it (and they’re probably just as happy not to walk the last couple miles). I catch up with Anand and we run together for a while and talk a little. Seeing him is a great encouragement and probably what got me to start running again.
• Around mile 24: Kevin from Club Northwest is working a mic near the Team Red lizard support table where I got a supporting shot of beer. The last time I saw him we were both naked (that’s another running story…) and he calls me out by name and cheers on the ChuckIt shirt.
• Around mile 25: John and Heather are here again as I round off the Steel Bridge and head toward the finish. I am totally, totally exhausted but trudging to the end.

After the finish line I collected my rose, sapling, medal, pin and went out to find my friends. Far more than at the beginning of the race, I’m overcome by the incredible energy in the streets of everyone accomplishing this feat and the support in the air and moved to tears. This is a little awkward since I’m surrounded by strangers but I don’t care and just so happy to be a part of this I let it go. Then I find my friends again, I treat them to what’s probably one of the most enthusiastic and grossest hugs they’ve ever received, and we make our way to the Macaroni Grill for lunch.

At times I thought I should run the race itself alone. That now seems like one of the craziest ideas I’ve ever had. I will never think it again. I will also make every effort to support any of my friends if they try to do something like this. It’s hard to express and writing about it in a blog will never convey the sense of gratitude I feel for all the people who directly (or inadvertently) supported me this year. I couldn’t have done it by myself and I would never want to.

Running a marathon is about a lot of things - one of those is communing with the people who are important to you and learning to see and appreciate the support around you, whether the other person gives it to you directly, indirectly, has an easy time giving it, or it’s hard for them to support you but they do anyway. It can be an incredibly moving and rewarding experience.