My First Marathon
My first marathon was the Ogden Marathon of 2004. I had signed up for the race on Monday and it was on Saturday. A friend who was a runner asked me how long my longest run was. I was so new to running that I didn’t know what a long run was. I ran about 5 miles three times a week. When my runner friend gently suggested that maybe I should train for another year, I said, “Well, I do a lot of yoga.” I was so ignorant that I genuinely thought doing a lot of yoga was helpful preparation for the race.
Let me explain a little bit more. My senior year of high school, after three years of being on the swim team, I decided to try running every morning for exercise instead. I ended up with a classic over-use injury about six months later. Because I went to a doctor who had no business telling women anything about exercise, I became convinced for the next fifteen years that I didn’t have the physical ability to be a runner. I had a “bad knee.”
It wasn’t until I was in my mid 30s that I went to a sports doctor who told me that my knees were fine (he did x-rays) and that the pain in my knee could be easily resolved by slowly ramping up my running volume and doing a set of exercises for my knee. I thought he was an idiot. I went home determined to prove him wrong. By doing exactly what he said with precision. Every damned exercise, and very slowly running again. At the end of the month, I had changed my mind. He was a genius. I could run again! I hadn’t thought that would ever be possible.
In this delusional stage of happiness, I signed up for the marathon that I hadn’t trained for. I believed that whatever magic was working on my knee wasn’t going to last long and I’d best do my bucket-list marathon while the knee was still working. Please understand that I would not recommend this to anyone. I was ridiculously underprepared. I am lucky I didn’t hurt myself worse than I did.
I am also lucky another runner friend came over and offered me some very basic, gentle suggestions.
1. Try these packets of nutrition. You will need to be able to eat something while running a marathon.
2. Try doing a walk/run strategy where you walk for a certain number of minutes every mile.
3. If you find you are not running straight or are obviously limping on one side, stop and walk and consider getting in a van to the finish line.
I did take this friend’s advice and I walked one to two minutes every mile of the whole marathon. I finished in about 4:45, which is an extraordinarily good time, given the circumstances. I also couldn’t walk normally for about a month and couldn’t run for another month after that.
Nothing hurts as bad as your first marathon. I remember being unable to go downstairs. I remember how sick to my stomach I felt and how I refused to eat anything after the race (which was another one of the very stupid things I’ve unlearned about my body).
I suppose there are a lot of things that are apparent in this story. My sheer stubbornness and determination to do something that everyone told me not to do. And also the fifteen years before that of me following advice from exactly the wrong person. I am at the same time a follower and someone who does their own thing. It is a strange contradiction.
You must also understand that I was one of the worst swimmers in the history of the swim team, especially of swimmers who came every damned day and participated. I can look back and see many of the problems, especially my lack of proper nutrition, that may have added to my problems. I never once won a race. I got second once. But I kept swimming.
My swim coach told me when I was in despair after my senior year that I was actually a long-distance swimmer and he suspected that my proper distance was probably more than a mile. I dismissed this as kindness, and it was only when I started doing Ironman that I looked back and realized that he had been telling the absolute truth, even if I couldn’t hear it.
I am never going to be a professional or Olympic athlete. I don’t have the bio-mechanics for that. But I am dedicated and stubborn and I workout nearly every day without fail. These things will take you very far, in sport and in any other place in the world, including the artistic world. I was never talented, but by the age of 35, talent mattered a lot less in races of people struggling not to age too badly. I have never gotten faster than I was in high school, but I haven’t slowed down much, either.