Running A Marathon

Getting into Endurance Sports

I took up endurance activities in 2019, mainly starting with cycling. With eventually deciding to try and work up to a full marathon, and was I in for a surprise. I was never the most athletically inclined person growing up, but starting in 2019 I decided it was time to start taking some of the endurance activities I had dabbled in a little more seriously.

Back in 2014 was the first time I dipped my toe into doing any sort of endurance sport, and it was the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo mountain bike race. It was my first time taking on anything like this and I learned a lot in the process. Before that race I had only ever ridden 20ish miles max on my mountain bike and never really pushed myself to the limit. That year my friend and I registered as a duo team, and I learned what the term bonking really meant. My first time out I managed to accomplish only 4 laps, and the last of those took me nearly 4 hours and 44 minutes, although some of that could have been some sleep. Where as my 4th time out at the 24 hour in 2022 I managed to do 6 laps with an average time right around an hour and a half for all six.

In addition to my experiences doing the 24 hour, I decided to also ride my first century ride in 2019 at the Tour de Tucson. Before that event I had never owned a road bike and only ever rode mountain bikes on single track trails. I decided it was time to give road biking a try, and suddenly found myself only riding on the road and pushing myself further and further in terms of time and distance.

Fast forward to 2022 and I now have done the Tour de Tucson three times, and each time improved my time greatly. All while this was happening, my wife was also exploring her love of running and getting into endurance running and eventually ran her first marathon in 2020. Watching people cross the finish line and watching her cross the finish line and seeing the total exhaustion, but also the sheer happiness of finishing I thought that might be something I'd love to experience some day.

There was only one problem...

I had never run more than 3 miles at one time, although this would change rather quickly. My first running event was a 5k in New Mexico, it was a small local race and this is what kicked off my road to eventually running a marathon.

Following that 5k I slowly started progressing in distances in races, after a few more 5k's, and after COVID became less of a concern in daily life, I progressed to doing my first half marathon. While I probably should have worked up from a 5k to a 10k and then a half marathon, I decided to skip a few steps and go for it. From running my first 5k in August of 2019 and then my first double digit run in October of 2021 a lot of time had passed, and if it wasn't for a global pandemic I really think I would have explored distance running after that first 5k a little sooner.

After having finished my first half marathon, in under 2 hours mind you. I felt like 13.1 miles was quite a ways, but I didn't feel totally wiped out. I had the running bug and wanted to try and see how much further I could push myself. A little more time had gone by, and I maintained my running as much as I could alongside biking and then in August of 2022 decided I would sign up for my first marathon.

That's it, I was committed and started getting serious about training in September of 2022. Which was a little difficult because I was still also training for the Tour de Tucson which happens in November each year, but once I was past that event I put the bike down and committed to running only.

Marathon Training

Luckily my wife had the experience of a full marathon under her belt already, so she quickly put together a training plan for us, we followed the Hal Higdon Novice I training plan, with a few modifications for me since we started earlier than required, and I was doing a lot of biking at the beginning as well.

Training really taught me a lot about myself and what I thought my limits were because so many times when I thought I had nothing left in the tank I surprised myself and was able to pull through. Once we got into the serious distance, this is where I realized that running was just as much a mental game as it was a physical game.

Everything was going very well in training, although I will admit I didn't stay strict with the cross training in the plan, and so that probably would have helped with my overall running fitness. The problems started occurring when we started getting up in overall mileage per week, and I was psyching myself out and doing things that led to changing my stride or thinking I was experiencing an injury when really I wasn't.

Enter shin splints.

This was a potential injury I started to experience right around the time we got into the schedule where we were essentially running a half marathon every weekend. I would feel some slight fatigue in my legs so I would adjust my stride which resulted in me running differently than I normally would. I did all the research I needed to do about how to prevent shin splits, so I'd stretch before and after every run, while I should have been doing this from the get-go. I took it more seriously after the initial shin muscle tightness I started to experience. I invested in some leg compression sleeves because I read those also helped. I used a roller on my shins after every run and throughout the week, and even went as far as icing my shins after a run. Although no matter what I did, as the date neared closer and closer it seemed as if my shins were only getting worse. That is when I decided to take a week off from the shorter runs and make sure I would be back to 100% by the time the long run of the week rolled around. Which the long run that week happened to be the 20 miles right before the taper leading up to the marathon weekend.

Those 20 miles, while tiring, went great and magically my shin pain was totally gone. I thought that my week off from running had been what solved it and I was healed! Although as the taper started, it seemed that the shin problems only got worse. I would keep doing all the things that I knew helped me in the past and every other run seemed to go well, although when the run didn't go so well due to some random leg pain I would really get in my head about it. Which coincided with the date of the marathon getting closer and closer. The final week of training, just four days before the event I had the worst four mile run of my life. My legs were tense, each step I took hurt, and I felt like my breathing was all over the place. I let my mind take over in this moment.

Then came the day of the marathon, which surprisingly the morning of I was less nervous than I had been all week, and I think that's because I had the realization that there was nothing I could do now and I just needed to have fun with it because worrying about the extra training I could have done wasn't magically going to make me any better.

The Marathon

We woke up bright and early at 3am to get ready for the day, because the Mesa Marathon starts in the Usery Mountains and ends near Downtown Mesa we needed to get there in time to be picked up by the buses to be shuttled to the start line to start the race at 6:30am. While that was rough, it was really great because this being Arizona in February it of course ended up being really warm that day because it would reach near 80º for the high, so getting done before the hottest part of the day was a blessing.

The first two miles of the marathon were quite difficult because I was so focused on getting warmed up so that I wouldn't get the same shin tightness I was experiencing on every run leading up to this. I made it past mile two, and no shin pain, not even the slightest tightness was happening, so that's when I decided to focus on getting through the miles. They came and went and before I knew it I was already at mile 5, although this is where it got a little difficult. While the Mesa Marathon is a net negative elevation profile, there is one up hill portion. This is where I experienced my first slow down in my pace, I was sticking to a 9:30min/mile pace and around here I dropped down to around a 10min/mile.

Starting at mile 7 is where the race headed back downhill and would remain downhill for the rest of the course. This is where I picked up the pace and was right around 9:15min/mile and by this point I was feeling really warmed up and things were going great.

Until I reached the half way point, this is where I started slowing down again. Mainly due to some stomach issues, but after determining it was most likely just a mental game I needed to get past I struggled for about a mile and then felt like I was back in it. Then came mile 20, which was the furthest I had run as part of training. I was quite tired at this point and couldn't stop thinking about how I was going to crank out another six miles, although put those thoughts aside and kept at it until mile 22. This is where the fatigue really started setting in and I found myself slowing at every aid station and walking for a bit after. I went from breaking up the race into three mile chunks, to quickly looking at the race in half mile chunks. I battled through that mile and got to 23 which I started thinking, just a causal 5k left, but little did I know that last 5k would feel like the longest 5k I had ever done. This is where my pace really slowed and the only thing that mattered to me at this point was finishing, time and pace was no longer important. Although to be honest, time and pace stopped being important after mile 1.

The last 3 miles of the race were also when the emotions really started rolling in, I wanted the race to end, but at the same time I really didn't want it to end because I was doing the thing I set out to do so many months ago and it felt really great. I also started thinking about all the other things in my life that seemed so hard or hard at the time and that with the right perseverance and mindset I could work through anything.

I will never forget that feeling rounding the last corner and seeing the final stretch to the finish. My body wanted to do nothing more than to stop and walk, but something in me gave it the last little bit of energy I had and that got me across the line. While I may not have been fully running anymore, I definitely know I wasn't walking across that line.