Sunday, October 16, 2011

This Week in Kate's Big Adventure

I accidentally ran a marathon this past week. I'm not sure that statement has ever been uttered. Ever. Let me start at the beginning so you'll know how I ended up in such a peculiar situation. 

Last February Molly and I had a skype date where we signed up for the Denver Marathon. We talked about how we would train and have so much fun doing it and it would be awesome. I figured it would be a great way to get back to running and maybe have some motivation to actually do it. I got cleared from my PT to start training for it, because of my busted leg. I started running, a little, but the weather was crappy and I could only handle the treadmill for about 20 minutes. Around March we thought we should sign up for a half marathon to help us stay on track with our training. 

Well that didn't exactly happen because I stepped off a curb wrong at the beginning of May and had to spend about a week getting the swelling out and I stopped running. I scratched the half, but so did Molly, Barb, and Pat but we still got our t-shirts so it worked out.
I thought the training would pick up over the summer, but I only ran about 3-4 miles at a time. I'm not really a fan of running 10 min/miles, like at all. I'd through in occasional sprint work but my leg strength was still kind of lacking so not a whole lot. Much of my summer was like this and I went to see the Doctor at the end August and he told me I couldn't run it, that my leg was still far too weak and a marathon was not in my near future. I accepted defeat and didn't mind not feeling obligated to run for a while. I got the out I needed, the Doc said no. About 2 weeks ago I went to my parents for a few days and ended up running late at night for about and hour. That was actually the longest run I had done in the past 2 years and I was a wee bit sore the next day, and the day after, and after that. 


The weekend of the marathon I had to work on Saturday but got to cut out early, just because we weren't busy, not because I had told my coworkers I was running a marathon the next day, because I figured I wouldn't be. My plan was to just run until I couldn't so I figured 8 miles would be good and then I'd call it a day. I even had strawberry shortcake the night before because I wasn't going to be running the next day, especially if it was cold. 


The morning of we made our way over to the starting line and I told Molly that if she had to stop I would wait for her but if I needed to stop she should just keep going because I would probably tap out and find a medic tent. We started running and the nice thing about Molly is she is a really goo pacer because I usually just try to run really fast. We settled into a nice pace and around mile 3 I found an awesome sparkly purple headband which I sported the rest of the race (don't worry at this point if it was infested with lice I'm pretty sure I'd be itching). We ran into Barb around mile 8, which was awesome. At mile 12 the course split for those doing the half and those doing the full. I was feeling pretty good so I told Molly I'd take the full turn with her and told her I just wanted to make it to Mile 17. Around mile 14 I wasn't feeling too great but missed my chance to cut out at the half so kept going. I really wanted to make it to 17 too (I know such a random number, I'm sure somewhere in my subconscious there is a reason for it). I told Molly to go ahead I was going to take a walk break. At about mile 15 I saw the greatest thing in the world- people standing on the side of the street with a keg, handing out sole cups. Is this real life? I make my way over to grab one when of of the guys asks "Keg Stand?" At which point I thought when am I going to ever be running a marathon and get offered to do a keg stand-you have to know when to seize the opportunity right? So I did, not long, definitely nowhere near my record, but enough to at least call it a keg stand. I walked away with a solo cup full of PBR and decided either it would give me carbs and help me to to not feel anything or I would throw it all up and feel better so a win-win. I kept it down and it helped me to get to mile 17. I spent the next mile after that contemplating stopping while I choked down a GU pomegranate gel, yum! I somehow staggered into mile 18 and met up with a woman named Kerri, who was walking faster than I was able to run so I started walking with her. Misery loves company. We made it to mile 20 and at that point I figured, hey it's only 6 more miles, that's it? Ha well....it was actually the longest 6.2 miles of my life. I thought about stopping but didn't want to leave this woman on her own. We talked about our injuries, she was battling back from a knee injury and I told her about my leg. She was a mom of 5 (!!!) and 2 of her kids were running the half, and her husband did the full. She grew up in Iowa and got her degree in mechanical engineering, lived in TN for 3 years and didn't like it and now is in Colorado Springs. Trust me I got her whole life story. Somehow we were able to keep walking, moving and talking. We started jogging with about .60 miles left and crossed the finished line together and then went our separate ways. I hadn't seen any of our group when I was headed towards the finish and figured they made their way back to the hotel so I started walking back to the hotel wrapped up like a burrito with a bottle of water when I heard "Kate!?!?!!" and looked and saw our group.
We Made it!!!
"Kate, you little shit! Did your run the whole thing? Ha, yah but I didn't really mean too.
"We thought you headed back to the hotel after mile 17 and were taking a nap." I wish.
I couldn't really walk the next day, but neither could Molly so we went to a hot tub where would could actually bend our legs to stretch. On completing the marathon I learned a few things that people never mentioned about marathons so I thought I'd share my wisdom


1. It helps to train (this is probably a given for most)
2. Take the beer!!
3. Your hands might swell, this is gross, but not permanent
4. That feeling in your stomach only gets worse if you stop
5. That stress fracture you think is developing, is actually just a blister, and no it's not bleeding.
That's about all I got but if you need any real advice you should ask Molly, she is the textbook example, she trained, brought her own food, plenty of clothes, and said thank you to everyone who was cheering for us. The funny this is now that it's over I actually want to train for one.


I thought I would add a little bit of my other adventures this week because as Paul David told me "All you do is talk about that car, you think you'd been hit by a freight train." I think that's his way of saying he likes my blog. So in other news...

Insulin shot not included.
On Tuesday night I made Colossal Diabetes cookies for one of my coworkers who is leaving. I baked oreo cookies inside chocolate chip cookies and then baked those inside Mississippi Mudpie brownies with marshmallows. I didn't eat one (because I don't like chocolate) but I heard it was amazing. And I'm going to believe it because when I took them to work I got a marriage proposal, a roommate request and a guy's phone number. So I'm going to go with that they were pure awesomeness. And they had better been because I skipped knitting club to make them, but that's another whole blog on stay at home moms needing a social outlet...

I also did a mountain bike night ride with some of my coworkers which was way too much fun probabaly because it was dark so it actually seems like you're going faster than you actually are. I only suffered one crash when my back tire slid off a rock and I only remember sliding parallel into the ground - I scuffed up my elbow and got a couple of bruises and some grass stuck in my bike but that was about it, I'm just glad the guy behind me didn't run me over because that might have made work the next day a little awkward. 

Those were the big things this week...and so far so good I am ER free!!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment