My first marathon...

[mnflyfish]

Thanks to you all for the advice. I have run a few 10ks... and I know how addicting they can be when the snow is not flying.

It's amazing how much torture we put ourselves through when there are not easily accessible slopes (i.e. hiking for turns... running 1/2 marathons... to stay in shape...)

Never having run one I guess my goal is under two hours...........?????? Am I dreaming?????

2 hours is a very respectable time. It all depends on how fast your training runs have been. My goal was to finish, then worry about time. Anything from 2 hours to 2:15 should put you solidly in the middleof the pack, where the fun people are! We're the folks you'll find running between 4:30 and under 5:00 in your first marathon. The ones cheering, waving at family, making smartass comments, and having a ton of fun. Not to say those folks qualifing for Boston aren't fun, but back in the pack we just don't take it quite as serious. Not a bad place to be for your first.

Good Luck,
Jay

[asandygal]

Thank you for all the advice on running my first 1/2 marathon!!! I just (yesterday morning) finished my first in Irvine and I met my goal of doing it in under two hours! My “official time” was 1:59:20… but since we were not issued a “chip” this was not my real time (as I crossed the starting line about a minute and ½ after the clock started). My personal watch read 1:57:40 when I finished! It was hell… but I am very happy that I met my goal!!!!

I have included my “trip report” for any of you who are interested in torture …

First off… you would think after running a few 10Ks I would have learned my lesson… but I haven’t. I (once again) started too far back in the pack (underguessitmating myself). I aligned myself with the 8:30 minute/mile pack which was a little faster than my goal… but I didn’t want to have to dodge all the mow-mows who line up in time slots that they are not going to live up to!

I had this problem at the Dana Point Turkey Trot last weekend. I had to weave in and out of people who were walking and occasionally had to run between people who seemed “joined at the hip” as they were “trotting” at about a 15 minute mile pace. I had never said “excuse me” and “pardon me” so many times in my life! I had one guy (last weekend) who said “gosh… you don’t have to take it so seriously….”

SHIT!!!! Of Course I’m going to take it seriously!!! I’m not in it for the fun of it… I’m in it to hit my best time! I can save myself $40 and run around my neighborhood if I not going to take it seriously! (If you can’t tell, I’m a little competitive…)

Well… the same thing happened yesterday. I would be interested to know if this is a common thing… people WALKING within the first mile!?! I mean please, it’s a gosh-darn race for god’s sake! If you are going to walk, start in the back of the pack! It was infuriating!

Anyway… starting a minute and half back I was trying to make up time, as I wanted to finish before the 2 hour mark… and when I passed the one mile marker at 9:30 I knew I was alright (having spent the entire first mile weaving and dodging….)

Mile 2, however, was mismarked (I am sure) as it read 22:15 when I passed it. At first I thought “Shit… that was over an 11:00 mile”… but I knew my pace hadn’t altered that much. I was happy when I passed the 3 mile marker at 26:55. I knew that I was keeping my 9:00 mile pace.

I have run a few 10Ks… but never anything longer (except for last week at the Turkey Trot where I "tied together” a 10K and two 5Ks within a matter of three hours…) Thus, this was a new challenge for me and I was going to keep running the full 13.1 miles, if my life depended on it.

When I reached the 6 mile mark I was running a lot slower than my last 10K (6.2 miles) as my time at the six mile mark was 53:50… but it was still a nine minute mile pace, so I felt good about it. The course was well marked and I was happy there where timers at each mile crossing.

At about the 7th mile, I started to loose feeling in my arms… then in my fingers…

I WISH I would have lost feeling in my feet! Oh… my freaking feet! They felt like my socks were all bunched up (but they weren’t…); they were just getting really irritated. I ran through the discomfort and kept on running… and running… and running…

Just prior to mile 10 there was a water/Gatorade stand (which they had every two miles or so…) and a girl was holding out a platter of oranges… as I reached for a delectable orange slice she squealed “Oh… you have a belly-button ring!!! How cute!!!” and as she squealed she pulled back the tray of oranges and I missed my promised fruit… I mean please, don’t a lot of people have their navel’s pierced? Or was it that my “navel” offended the god of oranges? I pondered the idea for the next ½ mile or so… because what do you think about while you are just running and running??? The crazy thoughts that ran through my head during those two hours were very entertaining.

Anyway, I had to settle for Gatorade and a water-bath….

Okay… here is the gross part… shortly after mile 11 somebody lost their cookies… but they lost them out of their ASS!!!! Gross!!! There was shit all over the promenade and we all had to run though it. I almost lost my “powershot” that I downed right before mile 10… I was so close to retching… it was soooooooo fowl. I kept looking for the poor person who “lost it”… poor thing… they must have been embarrassed….

The last mile was simply hell… about ½ mile from the finish we ran through a tunnel and I seriously harkened back to my beddy-bye dreams and thought I was there again… sleeping in on a beautiful Saturday morning… but no….. my spinning head still had another ½ mile to run to finish the race.

But like I said… one foot in front of the other… at this point singing Breaking Benjamin’s “Why give up, why give in? It’s not enough, it never is, so I will go on until the end” (One of many many different songs that rolled through my head during the 13 miles).

I met my goal… under 2 hours… by their time and mine. Happy happy happy!!! About 500th overall out of over 4000! Not too bad for a girl who used to think one mile was a long way to run.

----------

In the aftermath think I will lose both my big toenails… (they are both very sore with blisters under them… is this normal???) but other than that I feel good. I even put up my outdoor Christmas lights when I got home (and they look rather festive… if I do say so myself)…

Thank you… once again… and to those of you who are running the Vegas Marathon this weekend, I wish you well…

(after running a ½ marathon… a marathon seems doable… but it still seems like an AWFUL long race…)

[mnflyfish]

Hey congrat!!! Yeah the toe nail thing is kind of common. Your story of the person loosing it made me laugh. I had a guy in the Twin Cities puke on my shoe at about 17 miles. Dude, you couldn't have made it over to the grass??? Now you need to keep this ball rolling and look for a nice marathon to start training for!

Good Luck, and congrats again!
Jay

[yentna]

Not everyone is in the race to actually race, they may be in it for personal goals or just to have the experience, thus the people "joined at the hip" "trotting" along, or walking the whole thing. Getting annoyed that them doesn't change that, and may even spoil THEIR jovial mood, which isn't very nice. Think how you'd feel if someone blew past you with an angry or annoyed attitude, barely sparing you a condescending glance just 'cause you're slower or not taking it seriously.

That said, I'm off my soapbox, and just want to say congrats! Running a 1/2 is not small feat, especially running the entire thing. Well done! Something to be proud of, the training paid off. I felt SO AWEsome after my first, and I'd run the whole thing in my goal time, such a sweet taste in my mouth. Glad you had the same.

[Daywalker]

yentna, your soapbox is valid IF those people seed themselves appropriately. What they need to realize is that there are people out there (like asandygal) who are running in a RACE for a time. I am extremely happy for people to be out there enjoying the day and participating in an athletic event. They need to realize that they're impeding a lot of people by going to the very front of the race (where there are usually pace groups to clue you in to the speed and/or serious looking people).

I'm pretty sure asandy is just commenting on this trend. It sounds like she could have helped herself by seeding at a faster pace, but I would rather have people seed slow than fast. Walkers/gawkers/etc. need to be towards the back.

But I digress, congratulations asandygal, sounds like an excellent race and a great time. At least you avoided the original asscookies barrage.

[asandygal]

Thanks... and Yentna, I didn't mean to offend you. It was just frustrating to have to pass all the walkers who started at the front of the pack. I learned my lesson... and I also was never mean or rude to any of them. It's not in my nature.

[Tuckerman]

This season I lost a big toe nail on my right foot and I lost the nail on the toe to the left of the big toe on my left foot. Now ski season is starting and I will likely lose one or two more by April. Good job on your race.

[BeanDip4All]

This season I lost a big toe nail on my right foot and I lost the nail on the toe to the left of the big toe on my left foot.

Mine just turn black and then stay there dead until I pull them off myself with plyers. It's a fun test to see how serious things are going with whomever I'm dating. "Hey, will you pull off my gross dead toenail?" heeheehee

Asandygal, great time and good job on your 1/2! Do you have any plans to do a marathon now? Watch out, they are addictive.

GOOD LUCK STEVE THIS WEEKEND IN VEGAS!!!!!

[yentna]

Thanks... and Yentna, I didn't mean to offend you. It was just frustrating to have to pass all the walkers who started at the front of the pack. I learned my lesson... and I also was never mean or rude to any of them. It's not in my nature.

Sorry if I came off as offended, that wasn't my point. I'm totally stoked for you and just wanted to point out the different ways of looking at a race. If someone, as Daywalker pointed out, plans to walk and puts themselves in the front, they're the problem for sure and are being quite rude! Being annoyed at them = WTG.

Anyway.....

[mnflyfish]

Mine just turn black and then stay there dead until I pull them off myself with plyers. It's a fun test to see how serious things are going with whomever I'm dating. "Hey, will you pull off my gross dead toenail?" heeheehee

Asandygal, great time and good job on your 1/2! Do you have any plans to do a marathon now? Watch out, they are addictive.

GOOD LUCK STEVE THIS WEEKEND IN VEGAS!!!!!

I had one get real loose at a waterpark when I was there with the kids. I just reached down and said "Hey kids, watch this". It was awesome to watch their little faces turn white. Yeah, I'm "that" dad.

Jay

[Daywalker]

Steve, how did it go?

[squirrelmurphy]

bump. steve, just watching this on tv. how'd you do mang?

[BeanDip4All]

I talked to Steve tonight and he finished strong with a solid time and the only casualty is that he is now suffering from his first-ever blister.

I'll let him fill in the deets but just wanted to say WAY TO GO, STEVE on your first marathon!!!!

[mnflyfish]

Hey congrats Steve!!!!

Jay

[The Dad]

Mazel tov!

[steve]

Well,

I slacked on my last two months of training (oops) and it sure showed. I ran about half of the marathon, walked the other half. Net time was 6:42:38. 508th place out of 521 in my age/sex group, 5651 out of 5903 overall.

There were about three times as many half-marathoners as there were full-marathoners.

The first eight miles went by super-fast. The Las Vegas Strip, a couple of live bands, Blue man Group, Freemont Street - I thought that I was doing great. Then we went up MLK blvd to Smoke Ranch rd, then west to torrey pines road, then south 6 miles. It was about 13 miles of cookie-cutter track homes, with a nasty headwind, no crowd support, and screwed up mile markers (I thought I ran two miles between 11 to 12 and after the race, I found that I was not alone). Very demoralizing. I stopped walked through a water station at mile 12 and didn't start running again until mile 15. The second half of the race was probably about 80% walking. That's mostly a function of superficial training for about 10 weeks prior to the race, but the race conditions didn't help. Once we got to Frank Sinatra Blvd, I was running with a couple of elvi, and we were talking about how the headwind suddenly got strong at the home stretch. I could count that there were only 7 properties to the finish line - Ceasars, Bellagio, Mirage, NYNY, Excalibur, Luxor, and Mandalay Bay. It was great just to tick off the casinos to the finish - much better than trying to count cookie-cutter homes. Anyway, those properties are HUGE!! It was still about three miles, but it went by quickly.

At any rate, I finished, and I was strong at the finish line. At 320 lbs, you can't ask for much more than that. That bus that picks up DNFs kept driving by me, and boy was it tempting. I can harldly walk today, and my heart rate this morning when I woke up was 80.


I'd like to do another marathon next fall - one a little earlier that doesn't interfere with ski season so much, and one that isn't so far from home. I am going to enter the lottery for nyc again, and if I don't make that, I was thinking Marine Corps.

I'm not going to do any running this winter.

[squirrelmurphy]

congrats man, glad you made it through

[Daywalker]

First of all, huge congratulations. Sounds like it took some serious perserverance to finish that thing. Marine Corps is a great race, I highly recommend it provided they clear up the finish line fiasco that happened this year (reseeding grass made them lose a lot of open space).

I'm not going to do any running this winter.

C'mon..... I mean, c'mon...... You'll be doing so much better next year if you keep up at least some minimal running over the winter. Take a few weeks off to get healed, and then do a couple of 3-5 mile runs a week. It will make a difference.

[BeanDip4All]

A marathon with no cutoff time and a median finish of 5 hours, 39 minutes, 40 seconds:

http://starbulletin.com/2006/12/10/sports/story02.html

All types are drawn to Honolulu Marathon
From celebrities to the common man, Honolulu's rules keep people running
By Brian McInnis
Bmcinnis@starbulletin.com
Actress Kelly Hu will be like many of the roughly 28,000 runners in today's Honolulu Marathon.

That is, she hasn't run a marathon before.

With interest in marathons at both the celebrity and mainstream level at its highest ever, novice runners, like Hu, will take to the streets confident in their training regimen and resolve.

It also helps that Honolulu hosts the only marathon in the country that leaves its finish line open for everybody, no matter how long it takes. Most marathons have limits of 6 hours for the 26.2-mile distance. As a result, the Honolulu Marathon has a median time of 5 hours, 39 minutes, 40 seconds, the longest in the country.

"It's my first and probably last," said Hu, 38, originally of Honolulu. "It's been a really hard training (period). It's taken a lot of time, and a lot of effort, willpower."

She began training in February, but realized she didn't know what she was doing -- so she hired a trainer after she injured herself in June.

"I realized that I'm not made for running," she said with a laugh. "I have flat feet, fallen arches, so I had to have special arches made. It was a real big learning process for me."

That's how it is for most people who run marathons these days, according to Ryan Lamppa, a researcher with the Running USA training group out of Santa Barbara, Calif.

Lamppa said there are a trio of factors that have led to marathons being embraced by mainstream America over the last 10 years -- most notably, the celebrity factor.

"Mark the mainstream boom as 1994," Lamppa said. "That's when Oprah did her marathon. Oprah is the poster child of this mainstream runner. She doesn't have the body type of a world-class runner. Most of them are lithe and lean, Oprah obviously is a very busy woman. But she found the time to train."

That inspired a countless number of people to sign up in the '90s -- and Hu remembers it.

"(Oprah) totally inspired me," Hu said. "I thought to myself, 'if she can do it, I can do it.' I'm basically fit and it's something that I've always wanted to do anyway."

More recently, rapper P. Diddy and cyclist Lance Armstrong have tried their hands at it. Hawaii musician Jake Shimabukuro is also running today.

Secondly, according to Lamppa, training groups, such as Running USA, have embraced the task of getting average Joes conditioned to the point they stand a good chance of finishing a marathon.

"For those people who didn't do a marathon 10, 15, 20 years ago, it tended to be because they didn't know where to begin," Lamppa said. "These programs take that novice runner, that new runner, and said in six months, we're going to get you to finish this marathon. They've been so successful over the past 10 years. By that, they tell us that they have a rate of success of over 90 percent."

And lastly, information that is easily accessed on the Internet helps fuel interest.

Participation has climbed significantly since the race's start in 1973; 167 people entered then, vs. 28,048 last year.

The Honolulu Marathon's relaxed finish requirements have been in place since the beginning, in part to accommodate Hawaii's unusually high number of marathon first-timers (estimated at 48 percent). The Honolulu Marathon circumvents trouble by starting 2 hours earlier, at 5 a.m., to avoid heat and traffic.

"There's traffic issues in these major cities," said Lamppa. "At least (in Hawaii) they have the latitude of having the course open much, much longer."

This marathon also has more than 17,000 runners from Japan, according to media spokesman Pat Bigold, and has more female runners over 50 than any other marathon in the country.

They'll all be taking their best shot today -- no matter how long it takes.

Sort of demonstates how marathons are gaining popularity in today's culture. From just my vantage point at my desk on the trading floor I can see no less than 14 people who have done a marathon. (maybe not the best subset since a lot of these people are pretty Type-A, but you get the idea). Tris are popular as well but not nearly the same draw as the old 26.2!

[mnflyfish]

Well,

I
I'd like to do another marathon next fall - one a little earlier that doesn't interfere with ski season so much, and one that isn't so far from home. I am going to enter the lottery for nyc again, and if I don't make that, I was thinking Marine Corps.

I'm not going to do any running this winter.

I'd host ya for the Twin Cities the first Sun in Oct if your interested. According to marathonguide.com it's one of the best for croud support to which I can attest, and is tops in organiztion and stuff surrounding the event. That and as long as you register online you shouldn't have much trouble getting in.

Back to the croud support, I ran TC this fall and there was literally only two blocks where there weren't people screaming and cheering on the sidelines. It was unreal. The croud started at the start line, and was there the whole time. You cross the Mississippi at one point and there were even people on the bridge. It was an awesome experience. I think they estimated the croud watching at over 300,000 people. Let me tell you, they really do help. Keeps you going when you're body says this might be the end of the road.

That said, any other Mags interested in the TC you have an open invite.

Steve, congrats again on Vegas, I've been thinking about that race for a while now. Just doesn't fit on the calendar for me.

Good Luck,
Jay

[mnflyfish]

Oh, hey Ms C, have a quick question for you. Any tips on coming back from an illness? I haven't run in 30+ days after fighting at first a bad cold, that turned into Phenomia(sp?), and is still lingering. It hasn't really stopped me from other stuff, I did attend deer camp, been skiing 4 times, and pretty much getting on with life. But finally felt good enough to run today, though just a quick 5miles to get back into the swing of things, WOW DID THAT SUCK!!!! I didn't think I could go to hell in 30 days, but I did. The last mile was something approaching 12 min mile. I felt like crap, ran like crap, ARGGGG! I think I know the answer(get off my ass and keep running) but I was hoping for some magic advice.

Jay

[asandygal]

Congratulations Steve! I can see the cookie-cutters in my mind (not much to look at...)

I tried my hand at a mini-triathalon yesterday... 5K run, 12 mile bike, 150 meter swim. I had never considered doing a tri before, but I saw this one advertised Saturday morning on "my-space" of all places (my sister wanted me to check out her page)... and it was near my house.

I thought "What the hell??? I'll give it a go." I questioned my mountainbike, as I figured everyone would have road bikes, but some folks on this forum told me to go for it. So I did.

It was fun (although my mountain bike DID suck time). I ran my best 5K ever before jumping on my slow-mo bike and pedeling for all I was worth. Twelve miles later, I hopped in the water and swam the toughest 150 meters ever! When I was done I was happy that I could call myself a triathlete (mini-style).

I would definitely try that again (with a road bike so I could be more competitive). And I have definitely now lost both toe nails...

and I have two brand new tattoos. Does anyone know how to wash off permanent marker? I have a big "1213" on my arm and my calf that won't scrub off (or shave off, or bleach off). Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[spanky]

Congrats Steve! Way to go!

[BeanDip4All]

I tried my hand at a mini-triathalon yesterday... 5K run, 12 mile bike, 150 meter swim. I had never considered doing a tri before, but I saw this one advertised Saturday morning on "my-space" of all places (my sister wanted me to check out her page)... and it was near my house.
I ran my best 5K ever before jumping on my slow-mo bike and pedeling for all I was worth. Twelve miles later, I hopped in the water and swam the toughest 150 meters ever! When I was done I was happy that I could call myself a triathlete (mini-style).

Asandy, GREAT JOB on your first tri! Why was it backwards? Shouldn't it have been Swim, bike, run? As for your # markings, wear em and wear em with pride, woman!! Why would you take them off haha... they'll probably come off in the shower eventually- like a day or two.

Jay, am I "Ms C" who you are asking for advice from? I would say just get out there slowly and do it. Don't worry about diet, give yourself the fuel you need, and just ease back into it. The accepted rule is that it two weeks of training for every week you've missed to get back to the same point of initial fitness. Glad to hear you are on the mend. And... deer camp?? fun

[Camilo]

and I have two brand new tattoos. Does anyone know how to wash off permanent marker? I have a big "1213" on my arm and my calf that won't scrub off (or shave off, or bleach off). Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Dremel.
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