Tom's Big Sur Marathon, 2004

We got to Monterey at 9 to pick up race packets and then headed to Cannery Row and the aquarium where we met some friends (one of whom, Susan, was doing the marathon, but had never been to the aquarium). We were to meet them in front of the building at a specified time, but they were a little late and we were scanning the streets.  Then I saw somebody who looked like her with a guy who looked like her boyfriend, but it couldn't be: she was limping down the street and it looked like every step was painful.  It WAS her, and she had to run a marathon the next day.  Apparently on a business trip she'd gone on a hike in street shoes and wound up with blisters on the bottom of every toe.

Susan loved the aquarium, however, and we had a nice lunch in the restaurant there.  Also, we spent a lot of time in the children's "Splash Zone".  A friend named Celeste recently died of cancer, and indicated that if anyone wanted to contributions to anything that she would prefer that they go there.  It's got all sorts of great, interactive exhibits aimed at kids, and is amazingly colorful and it's clear that the adults there also thoroughly enjoy it, even without having to crawl through the tunnels, et cetera.

We spent a long time at the aquarium and then went to check in at our hotel and went to meet some other folks for an early dinner that did not turn out so well.  The dinner was with the two people with whom I'd done the most training and with their families.

It depends on who you are, of course, but I did not have a particularly excited reaction to the news that the restaurant they had selected was very good for two reasons: it was owned by a brother-in-law of a good friend of the husband of the runner, and it was "very child friendly".  But it's only one meal, with friends, so I didn't say anything.

Well, in spite of the "close" family connection, we didn't get great service -- there was no table for us at the time we'd reserved, we didn't get exactly what we'd ordered, and what we did get was not all that good anyway.  And since it was a large group (11 people) the restaurant's policy is that a tip is automatically added which was steep -- 20%, with no way to reduce it if the service is sub-standard.

But at least I figured that since it was "child friendly" that the bill would be low, but NO!  With no wine (there being a marathon the next day) for two entrees, one salad and two cups of berries for desert, Ellyn and my share of the bill was $85.  It's not a budget-buster or anything, but it did piss me off to pay so much for so little.  And there are so many amazing places to go in Monterey/Pacific Grove/Carmel.  I could have named 5 off the top of my head.

There is a "late check out" problem at the hotel.  You're supposed to be out at noon, and that is very tight if you're not a world-class runner and you want a shower after the run.  I felt like I would want one, whether I needed it or not :^)

So the damn hotel really sticks it to people, knowing that the marathon is guaranteed to cram all its rooms: higher rates, a requirement that most people spend not one, but two nights, et cetera.

They said that they could only let a few of us have late check-out, "since the maids leave at 4". But could they pay their 20 maids to stay an extra hour at minimum wage for a total of probably less than $200 on that one day only which would be totally appreciated by all their marathon guests?  Not a chance!

Bastards!

Well, we were among the lucky few to get the extra hour, and if you continue reading, you'll see that in hindsight, I was really pleased to be one of the chosen few.

The race starts at 7am in Big Sur and goes north along the coast on Highway 1 to end in Carmel, 26.2 miles away.  Almost everybody stays in Monterey or Carmel (we stayed in a hotel right at the finish line) and hence has to be bussed to the start, since the road is closed to traffic for the first couple of hours and then is severely restricted until the race is officially over at 12:30.

Ellyn dropped me off at one of the bus pick-up locations at about 3:45 and my bus got going perhaps 20 minutes later.  It's a long ride in the dark, made all the more disturbing by the series of long climbs and then long descents all the way to the start.  At least the folks on the bus are always entertaining to talk to, and black humor seems to run rampant, so I've always enjoyed the ride.

This year might have been the warmest year on record for the marathon, which is really bad news.  Normally we wait for 7am to come around, shivering, hanging on until the very last instant to turn in our bags of sweats to be bussed back to the finish but this year, most folks turned them in an hour early so they could spend their time waiting in line for coffee, then waiting in line for the toilet, and cycling back and forth between those two lines until it was time to go.

It was such a giant sea of people that I couldn't find anyone I knew, in spite of the fact that I knew for sure that 5 friends would be there.  Finally, as we were leaving the "holding area" to line up on Highway 1 to start the race I ran into one guy (Tom) with whom I had done some training and who I figured would be running at a suitable speed.  We started yakking and then Colleen walked by, making two out of 5.  She had gotten separated from Karen, and I never did see Manuel or Susan or Karen at the start.

I sort of had it in my head that I wanted to finish in 4 hours, which translates into miles run each at a bit over 9 minutes.  Tom and Manuel were also thinking of going that fast.  Colleen and Karen were aiming for a slightly slower time, and Susan might have done a 4 hour run except that she'd managed to get horrible blisters just before the race and was hobbling terribly the day before.  She did finish in about 5 hours, and, having seen her the day before, that good a finish amazed me.

At the start of all these races, things take a couple of miles before the pack opens up enough that you can run at the speed you want, and that was nice, since we got to run with Colleen for the first few miles.  Then when it opened up, Tom and I picked up speed a little to try to make up for the initial slower miles to get our averages down to something that would put us at the finish in 4 hours.

Tom was doing great (he was worried about possible problems with his achilles tendon) and I felt good, too.  I had on a heart-rate monitor and my goal was to keep it at something like 140 beats/minute average. On the climbs it would go up to 160, but then coasting downhill it drop back to 130 or less, which was just what I wanted.

Then I did something pretty stupid.  The big hill on the course begins at mile 10 and goes for two miles.  I felt so good on the climb that I left Tom and started passing lots of people.  I wasn't paying any attention to the heart rate, and near the top, I suddenly noticed that it had gotten up to about 180 -- way too high.  I backed off for the last couple of hundred yards before the top, and then anxiously watched it as I headed downhill.  It wouldn't go down below 160.  In fact, for the rest of the race, the only time I could get it below 160 was when I walked, and as soon as I started running, it would jump back up above 160, even on the downhill parts.  I think I somehow clicked some internal lever that I couldn't reset.

The extra high heartbeat didn't feel bad, but I'm sure that with a rate that high I was burning energy like there was no tomorrow so although I'd trained to have enough to last the full 26, beginning at mile 12 I started burning it at a much faster rate than I'd planned.  I sort of felt like I was the guy in the movie "Dead Man Walking": I was perfectly alive, but knew I was going to die before the end.

I hit the top of the nasty climb (called Hurricane Point) with an expected finishing time, assuming I could maintain that pace, of 3:54. With the long downhill to help I maintained that time through mile 16, with Tom somewhere behind me.  I did use a bathroom at about 16 miles, and I think Tom must have passed me when I went inside.  He did amazingly well, finishing in about 3:55.

Manuel passed me going down from Hurricane Point, and I tried to run with him for a bit, but it was clearly hopeless.  I didn't see him at the finish, so I had to wait until the race was over to find out how he did.

In spite of being unable to get my heart-rate down, I managed to hold on until mile 20 and only lost what seemed like a little time, with my expected finish dropping only to about 3:56, but at mile 20, the wheels fell off.

I started walking at mile 20, walking for one minute, and then running to the next mile mark.  It was nice that the walking did get the pulse down in the 140s, but the instant I'd start running again, it popped up over 160.  I finally finished in about 4:08 (or 4:07, chip time measured from the instant I passed the starting line rather than when the gun went off).  That means that I slowed down from about 9 minute miles to 11 minute miles for the last 6.

When I got back, I had some additional information about what went wrong.  When I hit the finish line I forgot to turn off my heart monitor and only noticed 10 minutes later that it was still running, so I stopped it then.  It keeps track of average heart-rate, and even with the 10 minutes of slow walking after the race and the first half of the marathon at perhaps an average rate of 140 beats per minute, the average for the 4:20 race plus ten minutes was 156!  No wonder I felt destroyed.

I felt bad at the finish, but not terrible, but unfortunately, that changed.  I walked around for a while to keep the blood flowing, and after a bit we decided to walk back to the hotel for a shower.  We got to the big street, and my right calf started to cramp, I tried to stretch it out, but as I was doing so, my left calf also cramped and the pain from the right actually made me black out.  I apparently let myself down, but I don't remember, and I spent the next few minutes in agony on the ground, with Ellyn being able to reduce the pain by pushing on the foot (stretching the muscle) on whichever calf was cramping at the moment.

We figured I was short on potassium, so I ate what we had that might have some of that salt, and after a few minutes was able to hobble to the hotel.  I took a long, hot shower and then stayed on the bed for another half hour, and did fine after that.  At least I had more medical help available than anyone else in the marathon -- Tom, his wife, and Ellyn are all neurologists.

It's been a long time since I felt so much pain -- I really don't recommend it.

I think in the future I'll do something to help with the potassium. Take a supplement for the last couple of days before the race to make sure I'm "topped off" and maybe carry a small bottle of dissolved salts to sip on during a run.  The trouble is that potassium salts don't taste good, which is why Gatorade does not include very much.  I think some of the other sports drinks, like Cytomax, do.  I've never had a bad cramping problem, but I never worked so hard in the heat before, so if there's a next marathon, I will do something more about the potassium.

And for all I know, it might just have been dehydration.  I was sweating like a pig in the heat, and my stomach can only absorb liquids at a fixed rate, which is probably a lot slower during hard exercise.

I had felt some hints of cramps during the run at about mile 23, but they went away.  I ate all the Gu I could during the run, and had Gatorade at every station, of which there were about a dozen.  I did have a big load of carbs at the start, too.  A package of Gu and about a half-dozen dates 10 minutes before the starting gun.

On the other hand, maybe I did bonk, since my total caloric intake for the entire run couldn't have been more than 1000 calories and at the elevated heart rate, my monitor estimated that I'd burned through 3500 calories.  I don't think my body can metabolize that much fat in a marathon, especially when all the power is going elsewhere, and there's only a limited amount of glycogen available no matter what you do.

The race results were posted by Sunday night.  Manuel finished in 3:53, Colleen in 4:22 and Karen in about 4:50.