I Survived the Napa Valley Marathon

There are a few things I learned about the Napa Valley Marathon.  First, the scenery along the course as every bit as gorgeous as you would imagine on a country road winding through the iconic wine country. The race was impeccably organized, every last conceivable detail executed by some of the most enthusiastic volunteers you'll ever meet. And you have to love a marathon that features beer and wine tasting at the marathon expo.

As for running the marathon, I learned a few things from that, too.  For example, no matter how slow you think you are starting out in a marathon, go slower. I also learned stuff you never experienced training for the race can hit you unexpectedly. The marathon is a cruel and unforgiving endeavor and despite your best efforts to prepare for, a marathon will still throw the unexpected at you.  Which happened to me around mile 20, where I was feeling  optimistic about my finishing before the wheels fell totally off.

Just after the 18 mile mark, still feeling good, 1-2 miles
away from full blown melt-down

In many ways, simply getting to mile 20 was an accomplishment in itself. The last month of marathon training, I was hobbled by a pain in the left half of my butt. Sitting down for an hour as a time caused a dull ache, requiring me to get up and walk around to work off whatever was ailing me. Morning runs began to start off with me limping around for 10, 20 yards, before I'd loosen up and regain my form although dull aches in my hips often persisted throughout the run. My usual stretching routine and ice, old standbys for combating any injury, didn't seem to do much for it.

What was this mystery ailment? Believe it or not, I figured it out reading Facebook. The morning the day before the marathon, I noticed a post from Runner's World on Piriformis Syndrome. Piriformis Syndrome is caused by a hip muscle imbalance where the small Piriformis muscle in the hip tightens down on the Sciatic nerve, causing pain. The symptoms of this injury matched what I was experience perfectly. I even tried one of the specialized stretches from the article to relieve the tightness in the Piriformis muscle and the numbing ache immediately decreased in intensity. Better to learn late than never, but I do wish I had seen that article a month earlier. The last month before the marathon, I had some good runs, although it was becoming increasingly obvious my sore butt was really starting to compromise my training.

So while it was still looking good for me at mile 19, running mile 20 became a struggle and it all went downhill from there.  Staggering across the finish line after shuffling the last six miles, I still just made it within my time target range. Gasping and trudging through the finishing area, a medical person at the finish line singled me out from the crowd and started asking questions like "Are you all right?" and "How do you feel?". This was not a good sign. My insistences of "I'm OK" finally persuaded her to let me go.  Five minutes later after meeting up with my wife, I needed to lie down and sure enough, another medical volunteer comes right over and starts asking the same "Are you OK?" questions. This time, they take me the physical therapy room.

Yours truly finishing the Napa Valley Marathon

The problem was electrolytes, or the lack thereof. I avoided Gatorade at the aid stations, drinking water instead, worried Gatorade would upset my stomach. Problem was, I wasn't replenishing any of the electrolytes I was sweating out, which caught up with me at the end.  I had six runs of 20-22 miles prior to the marathon without these problems. But those runs were completed at temperatures 5-10 degrees F cooler than race day and covered at slower speeds, so I probably wasn't sweating as much.  These factors may have conspired to hide an electrolyte deficit issue that reared its ugly head on race day.

I sat in the physical therapy room, cold and shivering, not looking too good. Some Gatorade and salty broth later, I got to the point where I was coherent enough to walk slowly back to the car on my sore left hip so my wife could take me home.

Finishing a marathon is an accomplishment in itself. I entered this whole deal with both optimism and apprehension, both of which in hindsight seem totally warranted. Will I ever enter the marathon madness again? Perhaps. Before I'll even consider another one, I've got to get rid of this Piriformis thing, get my hip muscles into balance and figure out the best way to get electrolytes into my system. Then, I'll consider doing another marathon. Or not.

Running a marathon is like climbing Mount Everest. The human body was not meant to climb Mount Everest. It serves no essential purpose to the rest of civilization, the climb is full of real dangers, yet people do it anyway and we celebrate those that do. You learn a lot about yourself and look at the world in new ways pursuing dramatic, yet obsessively absurd quests. Which is why I'm glad I took this on in the first place. Three years ago while I was battling injury inducing form imbalances, the mere idea of running a marathon was totally inconceivable, but I've broken down those barriers and proven its possible. That's what runners do, break down barriers. Breaking down barriers in running has given me the skills and tenacity to take on challenges in my family and career, which have far greater consequences than a finishing place and time.

But you'll notice all the emphasis on the word "I" because running a marathon is undeniably a self-centered act, even if family and friends are cheering you on. Trying to achieve the family-work-running balance becomes exponentially harder when the running part of that triad involves long morning runs necessary to prepare for a marathon.  Something tells me I'll be on a marathon starting line again, but there's a lot more to running than marathons. I'll be doing non-marathon running stuff for a while.

Two weeks to the Napa Valley Marathon

The first mile of the Napa Valley Marathon
(Napa Valley Marathon photo)

I haven't written anything on running the Napa Valley Marathon since the personal, soul searching post I wrote last October.  Well, the big date is two weeks away. I'll do my best to spare you the gory details on all the training I've done. Going into this, the whole idea of running 26.2 miles was scary. With over 700 miles in the last four months, including six runs of 20 miles or more under my belt, let's just say this whole marathon thing doesn't scare me anymore.

The last four months of training produced elation, disappointment, and pure tedium. Going out the door at 6:00 am into a dark, drizzly morning to run 10 miles is not the way I prefer to start my day, but that's what I signed up for when I decided to do this thing. Some days, I surprised myself with how strongly I ran, making me feel nearly invincible.  Then there were those days where I struggled through the miles and after several furtive glances at my stop watch, I realized it was time to just turn the damn thing off, forget about time and just trudge my way back home. It's days like these that made me feel fragile.

They say it's not the destination, but the journey. Of course, what happens on race day is a big part of how the journey really turned out. Without boring you with time goals, I've had to dial back some rather ambitious expectations I had for this race that clearly aren't in the cards given my performance on some key runs.  But that's OK.  Three years, I couldn't even conceive of running a marathon.  A hip imbalance and some other bio-mechanical issues made any run over 12 miles a pretty dicey proposition. After four months of training, I can say that finishing a marathon at a pace that would challenge a lot of people of is definitely in my grasp. I just need make sure I'm prepared properly, run smartly with the necessary effort on race day. I'm not worried about have the desire necessary to run a good marathon. It's been with me the last four months, and it will be there again the morning of March 6th.

In many ways, that is a victory in and of itself.

Descent into Madness? Entering the 2016 Napa Valley Marathon

"You have to forget your last marathon before you try another. Your mind can't know what's coming."

 - Frank Shorter

Start of the 2015 Napa Valley Marathon
(photo from Napa Valley Marathon Facebook page)

It's been over 20 years since my last marathon. Now, jumping back into the marathon waters, I've registered for the 2016 Napa Valley Marathon on March 6th.


Those marathons I ran over twenty years are fleeting memories, so what's in store for me in the Napa Marathon is a bit of a mystery. I remember after my last marathon telling my girlfriend, "If I ever think about running a marathon again, talk me out of it". That woman is now my ex-wife and needless to say, she's no longer around to talk me out of it. Indeed, if I told her I was contemplating an act well known for causing insufferable pain, her immediate response would be "Go for it!".

I have vague recollections of the 1994 Boston Marathon. I trained for it through a particularly harsh Ohio winter, badly overestimated my fitness, went out too fast and crashed well before Heartbreak Hill. Gasping at the finish line in exhausted delirium, barely gripping an open can of grape juice hanging upside down from my limp arm, I was too disoriented to even notice the steady stream of purple juice pouring out the can down my leg. It took a full two months to recover.

I remember even less of the 1995 Columbus Marathon. It is the only race of  the hundreds I've entered in my life I didn't finish. Coming through mile 23 having a particularly bad race, I was tired but certainly had enough left to finish. At that point, I was only a block from the finish line, the course looping back out a final three miles before the end. I didn't feel like fighting those last three miles. So I stopped, walked over to the finish area, picked up my sweats bag and went home. I'll take few regrets to my deathbed, but that is one of them. Running is about finding a ways to overcome barriers, developing personal growth through the struggle, so quitting that race just because I didn't feel like doing it anymore goes completely against what running is all about.

You might say the marathon and I have some unfinished business. The was a time where I envisioned myself a full time marathoner back when I was in my twenties. My first two marathons were in fact, fun and encouraging. But I also discovered the human body was not really meant to run 26.2 miles, and the after struggling through the marathons at Boston in 1994 and Columbus in 1995, I was done with marathons.

Still, thoughts of one day returning to the marathon never died. I've always regretted never fully embraced or enjoying the Boston Marathon experience, and for decades, I've had thoughts of coming back to Boston, maybe when I get to be in my 50's, to run it again and just enjoy the experience of being part of the historic race.

Well, I'm 48. If that dream's going to happen, it's about time to start getting busy. After a few half-marathons over the past years, I'v gotten antsy to scratch that marathon itch. Maybe I'll find the marathon was just never right for me, and the dream will be like a lot of dreams, nice to think about, but something particularly problematic to actually do. But it's worth noting back in the day I was young, overly ambitious, physically strong but mentally weak in certain ways and perhaps just couldn't handle the whole gravity of a marathon. Back then, almost every race lead to disappointment from over estimation of my abilities fueled by definition of self-worth dictated by finishing time and place. Today both older and wiser, I go into races with more realistic expectations, enjoying the competition and the whole running experience, grateful to be still at it after all these years. Maybe a more mature mind piloting my body through all 26.2 miles will make all the difference.

As I begin to embark on four months of training focused for one morning in March, there is certainly the risk hope and optimism will end up being eclipsed by the inevitable tedium and discomfort inseparable from that training. Of course, life has a way of getting in the way of running for good reasons. If there's one thing I've learned in 35 years of running, how you take the journey is more important than whether or not you take the goal. Success will be sweet, but never assured, and it's going to require a lot time running alone in the pitch black of early winter mornings and plenty of days spent dragging around tired legs. Is willingly entering into such a strange bargain madness? Perhaps. But that's what runners do.