Confessions of a Plodder

I ran the 3M Half Marathon on January 25th. Given my slow finish, I guess that it is fitting that I am only just writing about it now, three weeks later. I am not a great athlete, but four years ago I decided to try a half marathon to see if I oculd do it. I finished without a heart attack, so I have come back to it each year. Last year, I had a personal best at 2 hours, 34 minutes.

How Not to Prepare

This year I did everything wrong, but still made it to the breakfast tacos at the end of the race. I try to work out on the eliptical or treadmill year round. However, I really slacked off during the fall. Then when it was time to start training seriously in November, I had a sore knee from refereeing, so I didn't want to push myself too hard. I never really made it to the level of training seriously. The furthest I made it in training was about eight and a half miles, which is a lot less than 13.1 miles. To make things worse, I signed up to referee the day before the race. Our club has a big tournament which is always the day before the race. I did three games back to back in cold, nasty weather. I don't think that helped me too much.

After finishing up my ill-advised refereeing gig, I returned to two pre-race rituals. The first is going out for pasta the night before the race. It is hard to eat pasta without drinking red wine, but it is a sacrifice I have learned to make before a big race. We tried to go to Spaghetti Warehouse downtown, but couldn't find a parking place that didn't charge $10. We finally went to Carabba's up north. Then we checked into a hotel by the start of the race. The race starts at 7am up near the Arboretum. I have found that it is much easier to spend the night at one of the hotels nearby and get a good night's rest than to get up at 5am and fight the race day traffic.

An Inauspicious Beginning

The morning of the race, I slept in and walked out the front door of the hotel at five minutes till seven. That gave me enough time to make my way to the back of the pack and do a little stretching. The first mile of the race is always hard to gauge. It is slightly uphill. I usually start huffing and puffing a bit as I get acclimated to the run. I finished the first mile in about 11 1/2 minutes, which was where I wanted to be.

However, the second mile was really bad. As we went under Hwy. 183 and started proceeding south on the access road, my quads started to burn. I eased up and did a very slow second mile. At that point, I knew that I would have to play it safe to finish.

Maybe It's Not So Bad After All

Miles three and four weren't too bad. I made up a little time as we winded our way through the neighborhoods of Northwest hills, following Mesa to Spicewood Springs. There was jugglers at the corner of Mesa and Spicewood Springs. One of the things that I like about this race is the pageantry of interesting people who line the course to urge the runners on. I let myself walk a bit while going over MoPac. By this point, I knew that I was almost at the five mile mark. The course loops through the Allandale neighborhood before reaching a midway point a little bit beyond Northcross mall. There is a really long stretch down Burnet which is mostly flat. I started running out of gas here and had to start walking more frequently.

The Worst Stretch

The worst part of the course is a stretch of North Loop between Burnet and Avenue F. In the space of 1.3 miles, there are three major hills. I had spent an afternoon doing this stretch over and over again so that I would be ready when the time came. It helped to an extent. I remembered every feature of the road. It starts with apartments on either side. There is a huge industrial building just before Lamar. After crossing Lamar, the course goes downhill a bit. I remembered that a guy had been breaking up concrete with a jackhammer in front of some apartments. I knew that there was a coffee shop a little ways ahead and pushed myself to keep going until there. I surprised myself and kept going until the boundary of a cemetary which also marked the start of the last hill. On the left was a frame house where some guys had been cooking hot dogs and drinking a beer and another identical house where a girl had been sitting in the driveway reading a book. However, in this case, knowledge was not power. Even though I knew what was ahead and was mentally prepared, I was rapidly tiring out. However, I was still able to keep up a rhythm of intervals between plodding running and walking. My efforts were rewarded when I made it past Room Service Vintage (my wife's favorite store in all of Austin and the source of many of our home's furnishings).

The Turning Point

After all the killer hills, the course turned south on Duval. From there, it was a straight shot down four miles to the finish. Of course, four miles is still a long way when you have been running for over two hours. Now that the course was a bit kinder, I could go longer periods of time without walking. After a little bit, I passed 51st street. Since the race ends at 15th, I could start counting down the blocks from there.

Just before the 12 mile mark, I crossed over 26th onto the UT campus. As I meandered past Darrell K. Royal Stadium, my weary brain thought that it looked more like a turreted castle than a football stadium. Orcs storming the battlements would not have looked out of place. Still I kept moving, slowly but surely. The mile through UT seemed to take forever. However, eventually I made it past the Santa Rita rig at the entrance to campus and could see the finish line four blocks away. I pushed my aching legs, telling myself that it would be unworthy to walk with the end in sight.

The End

As I approached the finish line, I heard the announcer mangle my name. Then it was over. Someone handed me my medal and a water bottle as I staggered along on depleted legs. I smiled when I saw Val and Stephanie waiting for me. Finally, I made it to the most important part: the tent where they were serving free Rudy's breakfast tacos. My final time was 2 hours 50 minutes. I was fully 16 minutes slower than last year. I finished behind 95% of the 5,000 runners who turned out that morning. However, I finished.