2018 Athens Marathon Race Report

When you are running a marathon, you start looking at the weather forecast 10 days in advance, and obsessively click refresh with an ever increasing frequency as the week goes on, especially when it calls for thunderstorms the way it did the morning of this year's Athens Marathon.  I couldn't care less about running in the rain, but if 4 months of training goes down the drain due to a race cancellation, I'd have been pretty disappointed.  But all we could do was carry on and hope for the best, and that's exactly what we did.  We were ready to partake in Ohio's oldest consecutively running marathon experience, which promised to be a flat and fast course perfect for Boston qualifiers (not for me!)

Grandma, who was taking both kids on their first ever overnight, decided at the last minute that she'd pick up the kids one day early and take them back home with her, so Chad and I had an impromptu date night (At Wolf's Ridge Brewery) - our first ever without worrying about bedtime since Laurel was born!  We probably drank more than is advisable two days before a marathon, but you've got to make hay while the sun shines!  And without the kids around, it was the least stressful packing and planning experience ever!  

Shit you don't get to do with kids around!!

Can you taste the freedom!?

We got on the road around 9:00 and made it to Athens around 10:15.  A friend had recommended Donkey Coffee so we tried that out and bought some beans to take back home with us as a souvenir.  Then we roamed around campus a bit, and lolled about quietly in the sun, without a care in the world and feeling a bit freer than we thought we ought to.  We decided to take a walk and look for the cherry blossoms which were apparently in bloom, but we got lost and ended up in the middle of a giant student street/drinking party, and I have never felt so out of place!  Then we made our way to Casa Nueva, an Athens local food institution, to meet up with our buddy Noah who was also running the marathon.  Afterwards, we went to pick up our packets at the Ohio Valley Running Company store, where I snagged some amazing shoes for $30 (!), and then made our way to our Air B&B about 5 minutes outside of town.  

My amazing $30 shoes!

We unpacked and dallied about trying to figure out where to eat.  After looking at the website, we thought we'd give Avalanche pizza a try.  The pictures on Google reviews looked *amazing* and the menu said Food Network had voted them the "best pizza in the USA", so we had high hopes.  I don't know if we caught them on a bad day or what, but I think Chad, Noah, and I all agreed that it was some of the shittiest pizza we'd had in a long time and we were sorely disappointed in our pre-race dinner.  I also had had high hopes for an appetizer called Mount Carb-o-more, but it was some still half-frozen soggy fries on top of some shitty, shitty cheesy bread.  Chad was feeling the effects of our previous night's escapades (or so we thought) and we were all pretty tired and needed to get a good night of sleep.  All evening he kept saying he wasn't really hungry and felt bloated and just generally not great.  Regardless, no one else had problems falling asleep, but it took me a while to turn my mind off.  The bed at the B&B was less than comfortable, so of course that contributed to the pre-race jitters.

Donkey Coffee!  Nitro brew!

Casa Nueva!

The disappointing Mt. Carb-o-More, I had high hopes for thee!

The race didn't start until 8:00, and with it being a smaller race, we were able to sleep in until 6:00, which we are definitely not used to!  Chad woke up and said that he still wasn't hungry, and felt bloated and his stomach felt off, but otherwise fine.  I had a croissant and some iced coffee for breakfast.  The weather was quite nice - mid-50s, cool and overcast.  It seemed both the the rain and thunderstorms were supposed to hold off until later in the morning, so we all felt optimistic.  We milled about for about an hour, and left for the race around 7:00,  where we got a free parking spot (yay Sunday) about ONE BLOCK from the start line!!!  That has NEVER happened before!  We found the porta-potties, and used them one last time.  Then I looked for some of my running buddies (Go MRTT!!) I had trained with all season, and got a photo with them.  Then we milled about a bit more and Chad got some good video with our new Go Pro that we had bought 2 days before the race.  I'm sure no one else would enjoy the footage, but I have loved watching our pre-race conversations!!  Everett also asked to watch it this morning, so after breakfast, we all sat around the kitchen table watching our own pre-race footage - we're an exciting family, I gotta tell ya!  I had heard from other veterans of the race that there wasn't a lot of fanfare at the start of the race, and that pretty much the only way you knew it had started was that people in front of you started running. Not so this year!  We were all quite shocked when some military people set off some sort of loud boom to signify the start of the race.  We ran about 7-8 blocks through the small city streets of Athens and soon enough we were on the bike path.

My first mile was in the 9:00s, and although I didn't have an exact goal in mind, my PR marathon pace was a 10:40, so I knew that was way too fast and reined it in.  I fell into a fairly comfortable 10:00 minute pace and decided to hang out there and see what happened.  The first several miles of the course was great because I knew several people running the half marathon and was waiting for them to come back so I could cheer for them on the out and back course.  Eventually I fell in with an older guy (60s) who was reportedly undertrained but had run 30+ marathons and was doing intervals based on his heart rate to make up for his lack of training.  We chatted for a bit in the spitting rain whenever he would catch up to me during a running interval.  Eventually, around mile 8, I fell in with a group of 5-6 people and ran happily with them for 2-3 miles.  There was a guy who had driven down from Toronto, and another guy who had run 60+ marathons, as well as a woman who had run 8 and was pacing her friend's, for whom it was her first.  I told her a bike path alone in the woods was a hell of a first marathon to run!  Running with people was a great way to pass the time, but they were holding steady at just under 10:00 minute miles, so I knew I had to pull off of the pack, and from that point on, I focused on staying in the mid 10:00s.  Eventually, after passing the half marathon turn around and seeing Chad and Noah coming back the opposite direction on the out and back course, things got solitary pretty quickly.  With the half runners weeded out, the pack was extremely thin, and there were brief times when I couldn't see anyone in front of me.  

I started to feel somewhat tired and get that "Man, I'd like to be done" feeling right around mile 13 or so.  But then some guy tried to slowly and cautiously pass me and turned my competitiveness back on - I didn't let him pass me then and he trailed me for probably 6-7 miles before finally falling off.  At that point, a little after half way, I made it my goal to slowly pick off runners ahead of me, which really served a two-fold purpose. One: to keep me moving forward at a quicker pace and Two: just to keep my mind focused on a small bite goal and to stave off monotony and pain.  Things started to get tough a bit earlier on than usual in this race, maybe around mile 16 or so, but I just stayed focused on each mile and getting through it.  At each marker, I'd count down how many miles left to go, or celebrate when I had only single digit miles left to run, or hit the 20 mile mark. It began to rain, which was of little significance to me with the exception of it making my phone more difficult to use (i.e. change songs when necessary.)  As time wore on, the pain started seeping into my being.  As is often the case on longer runs, I remember looking around and seeing the beauty of the place I was in, and then in this other set apart place, feeling the pain of my body, as if there were two juxtaposed experiences taking place separately at the same time, but still all jumbled together.  It's been a difficult training year for me, endurance-wise, so this has been the quintessence of the long run to me: the separate feeling of beauty and pain existing in the same place.  As I tired and fatigued, a deep "not-caring" seeped into my bones and the task at hand seems endless.  Again though, as I watched the miles slowly and painfully tick by, I kept an eye on my time, and all signs were pointing to a time record.  Unless something blew up drastically in the back end, I was going to PR, and not by a few seconds, but by a few minutes.

As I entered into the 20 miles realm, I made constant and continuous bargains with myself, as people around me started to walk - bargaining with themselves as well, as people often do in the back 6 of a marathon (though a few passed with relative ease and confidence).  The desire to stop grew and grew, the pain was evident on my face, and I groaned audibly several times.  A few times I tried walking for a few seconds, but knowing how far I had left to go, and what my target was, it was a useless task and I woman-ed up and kept moving along at a constant, slow and steady pace.  I stayed in the 10:00s until mile 24, when I dipped down to an 11:30 minute mile, but managed to improve every mile from there, with an 11:18, then and 11:10, and the final stretch after that was finished back in 10:00 realm (10:53). Finally, I could see the buildings of Athens on the horizon and knew the finish was near-by, though at that moment in time there was no "near" and "far," rather ALL was far until it simply wasn't, until it was over.  My Garmin was ahead by about three-tenths of a mile, which was annoying because there's nothing like re-calibrating your expectations in the last few miles when every tenth of a mile is it's own special chamber of hell!  Somewhere between mile 25 and 26, I noticed a sharp-ish pain in my upper right leg every time I put my foot down.  I vaguely registered this pain as an injury, but in the moment, it was just an additional singular pain in an entire orchestra of suffering!  Finally, I knew I was around the corner from the finish, as I passed the 26 mile sign, but I COULD NOT see the stadium.  What trickery was this!?  We were sheparded off the bike path through a patch of grass and across a lane of traffic and into the magically appearing stadium, where I gathered my pain and put it aside, fully relishing the victory lap that I knew was mine!  I yelled, I cheered, I crossed with gusto and pride and finally, FINALLY, I stopped running!!  My official time was 4:37:04 (for an average pace of 10:35). (Though my Garmin says 26:40 and an average pace of 10:30, oh well...)

Minutes later, I rejoined with Chad and Noah.  Chad had realized that something was wrong around the 8 mile mark and ran his worst race in the entire race history.  He finished only TEN MINUTES ahead of me!  He usually finishes an hour ahead of me, and that he finished at all that day is a feat unto itself.  It took him almost a week for food to be appetizing to him and to return to his normal self.  Noah finished TWO seconds shy of a PR.  My previous three marathon times had been within 30 seconds of each other, but two marathons run within one second of each other is something else!  And the only down-side of our great parking spot next to the start line is that it was about 3/4 of a mile from the finish line, so we had to walk back to the car.  After we went back to the B&B and got showered up, we headed out to Jackie O's for lunch and sampled some beers and a burger.  Then we went to Little Fish Brewery, where we also tried a beer or two, and got some po'boys to go from the on-site food truck.  It was almost 6:00 by the time we made it back to the B&B for the evening, which is the only downside to the late start time of the marathon - I didn't even finish until 12:30 and we didn't get started on lunch til about 2:30.  We laid around the B&B for the remainder of the evening and watched Three Billboards, recommended to us by Noah, and then sat around discussing it.  All in all (for me anyways!  Maybe not so much for Chad, sadly), it was a great race weekend!

Jackie O's

Little Fish!

One final note I'll add about my apparent injury.  After the race, of course our legs were all pretty sore, but I felt the soreness was minimal all things considered.  Stairs were painful but manageable, and it was only a few days before I was able to descend with little to no pain at all.  The main concern was my upper right thigh, which hurt to put weight on it.  Walking isn't so bad, but any specific weight bearing is not fun.  I (stupidly?) signed up to run the Cap City Half Marathon two weeks after the main marathon, and this time around I guess it just wasn't in the cards, which I'm really disappointed about.  I've been taking a wait and see attitude, but even yoga (specifically weight bearing poses like crescent lunge) hurts.  I took a week off from any type of exercise (though in the fall I was back to running 4 days later), and have felt confident only to try the elliptical.  Today, 10 days after the marathon, I tried to jog for a few seconds on the treadmill and it just was not happening.  I had been holding out hope to at least walk the quarter marathon on Saturday, but then I thought "What is the point, really?"  I think I'll just take it easy that morning, wake up easy, and take the kids down to spectate the finish line, at which point I will collect my $105 anti-victory beer and Pappa John's pizza at 10:00 in the morning!!  The other thing I'll do is look up a sports medicine doctor to get a professional opinion on what I'm dealing with and go from there.  The spring racing season, hell just the spring RUNNING season, is upon us finally and I'm stuck inside a gym running on a machine like a rat.  That's okay though!  It was a great weekend and I wouldn't change a thing except for Chad's stomach bug and my injury!!

Enjoying some souvenirs from Little Fish Brewery 10 days out from the race :)

Ruminations of the Future (Homeschooling)

A lot has happened since I last updated the blog - we have been through a lot in the past couple years...from dealing with Laurel May's medical issues, me changing careers, buying a house, and Chad finishing up his undergraduate degree.  I feel like each of those things could require their own reflection and summation, but as of now, I'm looking forward and have been thinking about setting my intention, both individually and as a family.

On a personal and unrelated note to the rest of this rumination, as I've trained for 2 marathons since having Laurel (one completed and one about to happen), I've noticed training sessions that used to be "hard but doable" are now utterly brutal.  I've been thinking about the toll childbearing and child caring has taken on my body.  My comfortable training pace has slowed considerably, maybe 1-2 minutes per mile and I don't know if I've "lost my mojo," or if I lost some of my training during the time I was pregnant with Laurel and the year after she was born that I spent mostly pumping and never, ever working out.  It's hard to see your body not perform the way it once used to, and I've been coming to terms with the fact that accepting a new normal (at least for now) may be the best path forward.  Further, in light of the toll my long training runs seem to take on me, I've been wondering if the marathon is a goal I should even be striving for these days.  I really want weekends to be an enjoyable time for us to spend together as a family exploring and seeing the world together, and scheduling long training runs between Chad and me, and being tired from exertion just seems to be getting in the way of that.  I think about how running is supposed to be "something I do for me," but I've come to realize that if I am always viewing the weekend runs with trepidation or reluctance, it may be time to scale back.  Running the point of utter exhaustion has felt like I'm missing the mark in self care.  Besides, I haven't even done any half marathons since about six months after Everett was born, and I think it'd be fun to focus on those for a while, to take the pressure off.  We're about to find out anyways, because I'll be running the Cap City Half Marathon at the end of April, two weeks after the Athens Full Marathon!!

As for other goals I've been mulling over for future, a big one is the education of my children, which is almost too big to encapsulate in one journal entry, as there are so many facets to it that I think about on a daily basis.  

When I think about what I want for my children in terms of their education, the main thing is that they grow up with a thirst for knowledge and learning, free from the confines of the institutional system and the toll it takes on both body and mind.  I don't want my children to sit in a classroom all day, being told to be quiet, sit still, and make sure they answer the questions in the right way, the way that they must if they intend to take the required state and national testing.  I don't want my children to live for grades and tests, no, I don't even want those to be words in their vernacular.  I want them to see the world as their classroom, and for them to be free to follow their desires to learn in whatever direction they see fit.  Should they have learning differences, their constitution will not be bent to fit a system, perhaps giving them drugs to help them sit still or concentrate, rather I hope to help them learn in a way that they will naturally thrive.  It is not the fault of the system, per se, as systems are meant to be the most to the most number of people, but never the most to any one person.  I see it as my responsibility to be the best to my people.  

Another main motivating factor in choosing to keep my children out of conventional schooling is that I also do not, frankly, want them to be a part of mainstream culture.  I loathe consumerism, the keeping up with the Joneses, and I especially loathe the idea of lunch time politics, where popularity is always at play.  My children will never be bullied, and my daughter will never have her bra strap snapped, or her ass grabbed in the busy hallway of class changes.  And they will never feel they have to skip meals or adhere to a certain body standard to fit in, because we will celebrate them as they are.  And certainly, I want to raise my daughter and my son both to be able to navigate outside the heavy glass ceiling of conventional society...the one in which, for example, only approximately 12% of both undergraduates and graduates at the school of engineering are women (at OSU specifically but similar statistics probably follow nationwide), because that type of disparity doesn't happen in a bubble, it happens in the everyday microaggressions (as well as macro-aggressions) of our toxic society.  

Further, as I have deepened into the role at home of caretaker and provider, I have strengthened my resolve that my children, as other animals, are meant to remain close to their parents from early childhood through adolescence.  Chad and I often remark how it could have been, almost was, him who ended up taking the role I have now taken on - I don't really care which parent it is, but I want my children to be surrounded closely and firmly by family as they make their way into adulthood.  Now, I don't pretend to know everything my children have yet to learn, and I intend, excitedly, to learn right along with them, and sometimes support them as they surpass me in certain areas.  I don't see myself as their teacher, per se, but more a steward of their knowledge.  As long as we as a family can keep the spark of yearning for knowledge alive, I have no fear that our children can soar to whatever heights they want to.  An education is not a means to the highest paying job, the biggest house, the most expensive car (and in fact we strive away from these things).  No, I won't measure the success of my children by whether they measure higher than me on the stick of prosperity.  I just want them to lead lives of contentment, whatever that means for them.

In choosing this different path, there are a lot of things I worry about: privilege, not supporting public schools (which is kind of like privilege), and unintentionally hurting or concerning others.  I worry about the inherent privilege I know that comes along with this choice.   I know that not everyone has the ability to choose this path.  I look around me in the working class neighborhood in which we live and know there's a lot of people who probably want a good number of things for their children and their families, but that lack of resources will keep them from ever hoping to attain those goals.  I worry about what opting out of public schools means about my personal micro and macro ethics.  Many fierce education advocates would say that opting out of the public system is irresponsible, and again is a signifier of my privilege.  Opting in would be throwing my hat into the system to try and keep it chugging along for the betterment of society.  When all those who have the privilege of opting out do so, what does that do to the system that contains in the end, only those on the bottom end of things...those most in need.  Anyways, I am in no way myself personally knowledgeable about education politics and policy, but I do admit to see some flaws in my personal choice to opt out, especially when my political and ethical views are pretty firmly socialist.  Finally, every time I tell someone I plan to homeschool (or unschool, rather), I worry that maybe they will think it an indictment on themselves in some way.  Often, when you choose a route less taken, people tend to see your choice as a sort of anti-affirmation of their choices, which...I don't know.  The only thing I can say to that is that, the world is a diverse place made up of people who make a hundred different choices.  In the end, in most ares I feel passionate about (childbirth, feminism, food systems, etc.), I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I think what it comes down to in the end is "Did you feel you had a choice?" "Were there options?"  No one path is the end-all and be-all, it's the idea that there are many choices out there to take, and that we can all respect, support, and celebrate each other on our many splendid journeys.