My flight for Dublin was Sunday morning. Tessa drove me to Stanstead while it poured rain, and I mentally checked off everything I had packed, looking for anything I had missed. Everything was there, oddly enough. I was definitely wearing a new watch that I had to buy last week, because a German watch-maker ruined my tried and trusted Nike running watch by improperly affixing the back after replacing a battery. I noticed this after I got out of the shower one day and checked the time, only to find out that it was “foggy o’clock.” The watch I was (am) wearing was a cheapo replacement watch that held up to sixty laps in its memory, meaning that it didn’t do much, but if I wasn’t too tired after the marathon I could run a second one and throw a 10 K onto that for good measure, all while keeping track of my splits.
Oddly enough, that option never came up.
Once in Dublin I met up immediately with Sixpack and his friend, Catherine, whose husband agreed to take my luggage home for us while we went to the expo and registered. Without even getting to the marathon yet, I need to say right now that Sixpack’s Irish friends are good people. And by “good people,” I mean “fantastic people who grill you steaks and make you hot whiskey drinks while letting you ride around town in their Audi TT and play with their beautiful children.” We stayed with his friend Claire, who single-handedly made sure I was constantly fed, washed, and remained generally overly content. Catherine, meanwhile, ferried our friends around on marathon day, also kept me fed, and always maintained a high level of fantastic-ness that was simply awesome. I am a firm believer in contentedness leading to a less-miserable marathon, so I owe both ladies, and their families, a major shout out. Soooo, *major inhalation*, SHOUT OUT to the Irish homies!
Anyway, back to the marathon…
Sixpack and I met my friend Keith at the expo and hatched a simple plan for the following morning. Since Keith and his wife were staying in a hotel right next to the finish line, we would meet there an hour before the race and get ready. Keith is a good friend of ours and when I heard he was running Dublin, I knew I wanted to give it a shot and see what it would be like to run with him. Although we didn’t train for the marathon “together,” we kept in solid contact for the few months of training and both felt that our times were more or less compatible enough to run together. In all honesty, though, he is quite a bit faster than me. I just kept hoping that adrenaline and the miraculous “taper boost” would propel me up into his speed group.
As I showed up at Keith’s on the day of the race, I was pretty nervous. I only slept around five hours the evening before, and my breakfast didn’t go down well at all. I was continuing my Michael Phelps plan of eating two giant plates of pasta two hours before the run, but nerves just wouldn’t let me keep anything down easily. Sixpack was quick to help me calm down with lots of encouraging words, and he reassured me he would be at many mile markers to cheer me on. Still, I was pretty nervous but trying not to show it. I knew I could finish the marathon…but I wasn’t sure if I could finish it at the pace I wanted to finish it in. I had joked earlier about a 3:45, but I knew that I would never reach that because of injuries while training. As a result, I quietly modified my goals to the very hazy “somewhere around four hours” range. Since my previous marathon involved lots of tears, lying on the ground, a little crawling, and possibly even a somersault or two, even this modified goal wasn’t a given.
The main thing to tell you about the race was that it was very, very, very cold. It was near freezing when we started, and although it warmed up considerably about halfway through, it felt near freezing again by the time I was winding through downtown Dublin, looking for the finish line. Also, you should know that there were many hills. Many, many hills. Dubliners are clearly drunk when they tell you that the marathon is flat. Because it isn’t. Not only do they lie to you in the program, they lie to you on the course, as well. I can’t tell you how many people stood at the base of one particular hill near eighteen miles shouting assurances that it was the “last hill of the marathon.” Not only was it not the last hill of the marathon, I am convinced that they were spreading these rumors intentionally, and taking glee in the knowledge that each runner would be devastated with each incline that they encountered after it.
Keith held true to form in the marathon. He ran about twenty seconds a mile faster than I typically do, and I was able to keep up with him for the first half marathon. By sixteen miles though, I had to send him forward. I was feeling the pain already, and I didn’t want to jeopardize anything by pushing too hard for too much longer. I slowed down my pace and found that I was relatively comfortable until around eighteen miles, which is when things got tight and my calves started aching.
At twenty miles, I was really sore. I think I had fallen a few minutes behind Keith at this point, but I was buoyed by the knowledge that I was going to finish. I worked my way through “the wall,” and tried picking people off who were stopping to stretch or walking a lot. That helped me psychologically, but by twenty-two miles I realized that there was no way I could run the full marathon non-stop. This dawned on me when I noticed that a short walk made me want to die a little less, so I made the executive decision then and there to stop and walk a minute for each mile. Basically, once I hit a mile marker, I noted the time, and then just walked for exactly one minute. I would have liked to say I ran the whole thing without walking, but I think this method may have prevented me from worse problems. It may have saved my time.
There’s not much else to write about the last few miles other than to say that they hurt, a lot. I had a massive blister explode on the bottom of my foot at twenty-four miles, and by the time I was circling Trinity College towards the finish line, I was ready to be finished. There were no poses when I crossed the line. I just walked to the nearest barrier so I could hold myself up. I was dizzy and exhausted. I was exhilarated from finishing. I was proud. But honestly, I was mostly very cold.
I made my way back to Keith and Kate’s hotel room, where we took pictures with Sixpack, Claire, and Catherine. I bathed, showered, and then napped. I dreamt of “Murder, She Wrote,” because that is what Kate watched from underneath Kenny’s comatose, drooling body. (He deserved to be exhausted, because he finished his first marathon in about 4:06. What an amazing achievement.) Then we all woke up and went to the pub.
Although I was initially dubious about the concept, there is something amazing about a few Guiness after a marathon that I can’t describe. I felt like I was getting nourished by the calorific, stouty, goodness while my muscles were being relaxed by the alcohol. We threw down some chicken tenders and chips, and I damn near felt normal. Everyone told their war stories, and Sixpack shared some great pictures he took while cheering on half of Dublin in every language he knows. (Apparently he knows about fifty-two of them.) After the pub, we hit a bistro and loaded up on more food and, um, Hefeweizen. Sixpack and I then went home for some well earned rest.
I’m finally back in London, and my legs are sore, but I don’t feel crippled. Generally, in fact, I feel pretty good. I know I voiced some hesitation about my training plan in July, but I can only say now that it must have been the right one. I improved my time by almost forty-five minutes, and challenged breaking the four hour mark (I finished in 4:08:45). That is almost mind-boggling to me, because I’m not a “fast runner.” I’m much more of a “zen runner.” I can’t tell you how happy I am to have finished, and finished well. And I also can’t tell you how great the weekend was. I was lucky to have such a great support network, both in Dublin, and back at home.
Needless to say, I’m not going to be running another marathon for a very long time. It took two years between Cologne and Dublin, and I am not rushing to say when the next one will be. I figure that if there even is another one, it will probably be in another two years. I do know that I set up a great challenge for my fellow Drunkrunners with my time, and I would really like to see Sixpack or Dr. P.P. pick up where I left off and be the first one of us to break four hours. We’re pretty close to that as a collective goal, so while I sit here and heal up my aching bones, one of you guys needs to start training and beat my time.
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