A Tale of Two Half-Marathons

I am not a great athlete. I played right-field in baseball because it was unlikely the ball would ever make it out that far. I played on an adult soccer team, but usually had to be substituted after five minutes. However, I have run off and on since college, at least when I didn’t sideline myself with injuries. Mostly I did 5ks. However, in 2005, I decided to do a half-marathon just to see if I could finish it. I was a middle-aged, overweight lawyer and somehow the challenge of forcing my body through 13.1 miles seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I have been doing the 3M Half-Marathon every year since. However, this year, I decided to try doing two half-marathons within a month of each other.

Run #1: Planning Makes Perfection, Well, Maybe Not Perfection, But Not a Fail Either

I started training for the 3M Half-Marathon in October. I ran a 5k at the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges in Tampa, Florida in October. I was barely able to drag myself through the course, sweating profusely. I started doing progressively longer runs each week, including doing the Thundercloud Turkey Trot, a 5 mile run on Thanksgiving.

Two weeks before the big day, I decided to do a 12.5 mile that would be close to the course distance. I had previously done nine miles and eleven miles without hitting a wall. However, my new course had a lot of hills. I ended up dehydrated and exhausted four miles from home and had to walk most of the way back. The next week, I reversed the course so that I did most of the hills on the front end when I was fresher. I planed water bottles every two miles so I would stay hydrated. This time I made it nearly ten miles before hitting the wall. The cedar pollen was out in full force and by the time I finished, I was so exhausted that I slept for most of the day.

The week before the race, I went in to see an allergist and got an allergy shot. I also had several Muscle Activation Technique sessions with my trainer, Brandon O’Connor. Muscle Activation Technique tests to see which muscles are not firing and then manually palpates the ends of them til they work. It really is remarkable.

The night of the race, we got a room at the Candlewood Suites, which was a few yards from the start of the race. I had a brief moment of panic the next morning when I unrolled the race shirt I had picked up at the expo and realized that it was short-sleeved. The morning temperature was supposed to be 32 degrees. Fortunately when I walked out the door, the race was already starting and I didn’t have time to get cold waiting for the start.

The 3M is mostly downhill. I was able to keep to my plan of running 30 minutes and walking for one. The only specific memory that I have is that around mile four, we were coming up on the 183 overpass just as the sun was hitting it. There was a pond with ducks nearby. It all seemed so peaceful, like that was the best place in the world to be at that time. I finished in 2 hours 41 minutes, which was my third best time of the eight years I have been running it.

Run #2: The Kingdom of the Hills

The Austin Marathon and Half Marathon was three weeks later. The week before the race, I decided to run the course to get an idea of what it would be like. I was doing pretty well until mile ten. I was feeling excited about reaching the end when I realized that the end of the course was filled with hills, one after the other, including a giant hill on Lamar. I limped my way through those final three miles walking most of it. My time of 2 hours 52 minutes wasn’t great, but I figured it was a new course for me and it would give me something to compare myself to.

This morning, on the day of the race, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. and was out the door at 5:40. It was full dark and there was the slimmest of crescent moons. I wanted to leave early because they were expecting 20,000 people and I expected a massive traffic jam. There were a few more cars on the road than usual for quarter to six on a Sunday morning, but nothing bad. I parked by my office and was all ready to go by 6:00 a.m., an hour ahead of time. I played a game of Scrabble on the computer (the computer won) and went to the restroom one more time. Finally it was time to venture out.

As I made my way to the Capitol grounds, I could see thousands of people making their way to the starting point. I got in line at the very back, up against the Capitol, over two blocks from the starting line.

It took me eighteen minutes just to reach the start after the gun started. I continued with my plan to run 30 minutes and walk one. My first thirty minutes took me up Congress to MLK, over to San Jacinto, down to 11^th Street, across to Guadalupe and across the Congress Avenue bridge. I was just entering the first big hill of the day when I took was able to take a walk break. I snapped a picture on my phone to show my progress. I had taken my phone along (packed snugly against my body in a Spi-belt) in case I had a heart attack and needed to call 911. However, it came in handy for pictures as well. I had made it through the first two miles in 23 minutes, which was under my goal time of 12 minutes per mile.

The next stretch was up two and a half miles of hills on South Congress. It was early in the course and I was mentally prepared for it. When I had run this stretch last week, I had to stay to the sidewalk and dodge my way through all the Bo-hos shopping on SoCo. This time we had the street to ourselves. The long series of hills was do-able and I took my second walk break just after the five mile mark.
I was still ahead of my goal time.

During the next stretch, there was one more hill leading up the Ben White access road to South First.. The series of hills that we had just gone up mirrored itself in a long downhill. This was probably the most fun part of the race and I was able to relax and look at some of the interesting people around me. There was one girl who had written “does my butt look fast” on the back of her shirt. There was another one whose shirt read, “If you can read this, I’m not in last place.” There was a fireman in full gear. Back towards the beginning I had come across two girls with full military packs on their backs. (Now that’s crazy). There was also the guy with silver parachute pants and the two girls with Happy 40^th Birthday helium balloons tied to their pony tails. Some time later I would encounter a big guy in a kilt and a man and a woman in matching bumblebee costumes with tutus.
At the crest of one hill, I got my first view of downtown, shimmering in the morning haze. I also saw someone with a sign that said, “Run Like You’re Being Chased By a Zombie.” I thought it said, “Run Like a Zombie,” so I shambled by. Through miles six and seven, I continued ahead of pace and feeling good.

We reached the First Street bridge around mile 8. When I crossed back across, I had spent one hour and fourteen minutes South of the river, for a total time of one hour 39 minutes. There was a long flat stretch down Cesar Chavez. Somewhere around mile 9, there were a bunch of yellow-clad Livestrong volunteers cheering us on. Approaching mile 10 was the first of five hills that would be a huge challenge. I trudged up the ramp from Cesar Chavez to Lake Austin and was rewarded when I passed mile 10 in under two hours.

After mile 10, I knew that I had to conserve if I was going to make it through the next four hills and 3.1 miles. There was a long hill up the access road. I made up it all right and stopped to take a picture.
As we reached Enfield, the marathoners split off and we crossed mile 11. I remember thinking that running another 15 miles at that point sounded like suicide. The first portion of Enfield was the third in the series of hills and I barely made it up. A little while later, there was a long gentle hill.
As I crested the hill, I saw the long decline to where Enfield crossed Lamar and then brutally climbed back up again. At the base of the big hill, I decided I would walk it. I was able to walk the insurmountable hill in just two minutes, saving precious energy for the remaining effort. At the top of the hill were girls dressed with halos and wings. They had signs like “This is heaven” and some that were more suggestive. Once again, it was a shot in the arm to see organized cheerleaders for the race. I never saw the mile marker for mile 12, but it must have been somewhere after the hill.

After cruising down 15^th Street (the continuation of Enfield), I turned onto San Jacinto knowing that the last hill lay just ahead. I had traveled this same hill in mile 1 of the race when my legs were much fresher. However, I was able to summon the energy to trudge upwards and keep going. The effort was rewarded when I turned onto 11^th Street and saw a sign that said 400 yards to finish. More importantly, I could see the turn onto Congress Avenue where the finish line lay ahead and it was all downhill. I pushed on past 300 yards, 200 yards, 100 yards. I glanced at my watch and realized that I was going to finish much better than I had expected. I crossed the finish line in 2 hours 40 minutes 56 seconds, four seconds faster than my time three weeks ago.
Four seconds may not seem like much, but this was a much more difficult course, so it was huge to me. I finished 4014 out of 4486 men, which put me in the top 90%. However, for me, finishing strong was the only thing that mattered.