13 Miles (A Story of Failure)

note: this is retro-posted to the day after the Half Marathon... I will start live posting soon.  Just had to catch up...

Well... it's certainly been a while.  And since I last left you with a story of (albeit piddling) success, it seems only fitting that I balance my ego with a tale of categorical failure...

As a brief background (since it's been almost a year), let me summarize the purpose (and to some degree, outcome) of this blog: I was fat. I got tired of it. I started a blog to embarrass myself toward progress. Also, I started running.  Slowly.  Also also, I eat pretty much everything I see.  Overall, during the spring/summer of 2011, I got slightly less fat.

Obviously, if you'd like to familiarize yourself more, you can just read through previous posts.  But that’s the basic idea.

So, we now find ourselves in spring/summer of 2012... I’m still fighting the fat, so to speak, but the end-of-school rush was less than helpful in that regard.  Possessing a proficiency in foresight that borders on the clairvoyant, I saw that hurdle coming.  So, why not try to systematically offset this potential blunder?  Weighing my options (see what I did there?), I decided to run a half marathon, in hopes that the “training” would at least keep me in line. 

In the interest of brevity, I’ll spare you most of the “training” details, but my goal for the half marathon was to run it in less than two hours.  That’s an almost respectable sub-9-minute mile pace for 13 miles.  (my only other running goal of a sub 50 minute 10k... sub 8-minute pace... was NOT achieved at the YL Naperville 10k a few weeks prior... so I am apprehensive about making goals).

Anyway, in “training”, it seemed this goal was attainable.  For proof, check out this 10 mile run I where I plodded along at an 8:44 pace... that’s a solid :15/mile breathing room... and only 3 more miles to run.  No problem, right?

run 3 more miles at this pace? piece of cake...

Wrong.

The half marathon dominated me.  Absolutely dominated me.  I don’t know why... if I psyched myself out... if it was too hot (it was so freakin hot)... if there was no shade on the whole course… if there was a stiff headwind for the second half... if it was because my diet the preceding week had been horrendous... or if I physically just didn’t “have it”... I guess I’ll never know.  And that’s a bit maddening, in a way.

At any rate, I started off pretty well, and ran the first six miles at a solid (goal) pace - not too fast, not too slow.  But somewhere around mile 7 or 8, I slowed down to take a drink at a water station... and you don't really understand... walking felt SO GOOD.  After that, I could barely run half a mile without walking some.  And even the "running" was incredibly slow.  I "bonked".  And I bonked hard.  I started to string together unthinkably slow miles.  I knew it... and I couldn't do anything about it.

I started seeing pacing groups pass me, thinking about how I had been staying ahead of the 8:55 pace group for the first half of the race.  It was crushingly demoralizing.  Ugh.  And just to make SURE that my demoralization is complete, I will now post my splits for everyone to see:

holy crap.

Yup. It just got real in here.  

Check out my sprint finish... "you can see the finish line!  GO ALL OUT!!!" ... 9:38 pace. 

Sweet.

Here is another embarrassing way to look at my pacing.  Some solid stretches of walking here:

and that, boys and girls, is how to fail a half marathon

I've failed so far to mention that I ran this half marathon with my beautiful wife who also is much wiser than me.  She ran a nice easy pace and finished fine.  So, after the finish line when I was in some netherworld between pain and death, full of regret and shame... she bounced up to me writhing on the ground, and chipper as can be asked "hey! how ya doin'? ready to go?"  I probably just mumbled something or other about not feeling my legs.  I think this picture probably sums up our sentiments (courtesy my instagram):

yes, that's a bag of ice on my head.

And that's about how it went.  Not pleasant.  And no where close to hitting my goal.  Shucks.

Also, it's tough to garner any sympathy when a) it was my choice, and b) it was a HALF marathon.  The next day I was bemoaning my shortcomings at school, and a student quipped "maybe you'll do better when you finish the second half." touché.

I do, however, find solace in a the following points:

• About a year ago, I could literally not run for 2 continuous miles.  To train up to be able to run 13 (or at least, 10)... counts for something.  (and even if this sounds to you like the remedial equivalent of "I used to not be able to add, but now I can do long division!" sure, but hey, progress is progress).
• While I was far off my hopeful mark, my time of 2:09 still beat my cousin Katie, who ran the Nashville half marathon in 2:12.  And she's in good shape, and comes from a family of runners.  Katie, if you read this... in your face.
• For anyone who ran faster than me... if you did so weighing less than 210 pounds, I don't care.  If you ran fast and weigh like 165 pounds, unless you carried a 50 pound backpack for those 13 miles, I'm not impressed.  It's tough to run far when you're fat.  I'm carrying a lot of extra weight here. 

Overall, an interesting experience.  I'm not saying I'll never run another half marathon.  But I probably won't.  And if I ever do, I think I'm done running "for time".  First of all, it's not that fast anyway.  Secondly, this is the second time in a row I haven't hit that goal, and it's deflating.  I think I'll just run to run (or to fight the fat).

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Food grade & weight will have to wait... I'll fill you in more later as updates come more often.  Spoiler alert: neither are good.