Well, it’s a week later (and I blame the delay in posting on glycogen depletion) and up to about Thursday I had minor difficulty standing up and sitting down. Which is awesome. Because the difficulty was only minor, and my legs still work.
Marathon over, bitches! Yippee!
When I got to Tasmania, I was mostly happy (and ashamedly disappointed) that the race would be going ahead as planned. The air quality was great, and I think the wind was blowing the bushfires back on themselves. I may have drunk a little more than I should have in the few days before the race, and I also may have eaten badly. I was super-stressed about the race itself, and the drinking was as an alternative to thinking about it. When forced to think about it, I didn’t think I’d be able to finish. I anticipated pain.
I put off thinking about it for long enough that the night before the race I hadn’t even finalised the basics, like breakfast for the next morning, or how I was going to get to the race.
The breakfast issue didn’t get sorted until about 9pm on the night before the race, when I stumbled back to the hotel, fairly drunk, with some muesli bars and yoghurt I’d bought from a supermarket up the road. Not my finest moment.
The transportation issue sorted itself eventually, but I really should have planned better. I set my alarm for 3:45 and upon waking and groaning and swearing, I forced a nasty muesli bar and three quarters of a tub of unappetising yoghurt down my gullet before hitting the road and walking to the race hotel in hopes of catching the 4:45 coach to the start line. If not, there was a bus at 5:15, and an absolute last chance bus on 5:30. It was a fifteen minute walk over to the race hotel, actually a pretty good warmup, and I managed to get a seat on the first bus.
The weather was pretty freezing before the race. It was windy, pretty much par for the course as far as Hobart is concerned, and it looked like it was going to rain. I was loathe to check my bag too early, as I didn’t want to surrender my jacket. Man, I’m so not hardcore. Shivering out in the pre-dawn and whinging about the cold, hoping my painkillers would kick in before any possible hangover hit me (a hangover which never actually arrived, so I must have been relatively good the night before).
Before the start, I saw Cathy Freeman out by the portaloos. It was quite a treat. I thought that’d be the only chance I’d get to see her on the day, being as she was all athlete celebrity and everything. Yeah. I was kinda wrong.
I started out not very well. A little too fast, and I could tell it was too fast for me, but my GPS told me I was right on pace. So I felt like that was a fail, straight off the bat. I didn’t expect that I’d make it the whole way. I settled down into 6 minute kilometres, and told myself that I’d reassess a couple of kilometres down the road. My knees started to hurt. My shins started to ache. And I hadn’t even done the first two laps of the Cadbury estate yet, let alone started down the long out-and-back loop.
That really sucked.
I got an early second wind at about 3 kilometres, when the race announcer suddenly called out “And it’s Frankenberger! Frankenberger?”
I smiled and nodded at the guy, because he seemed a little confused. I’d forgotten for a moment that I was wearing my moniker emblazoned on my bib, like an elite. It gave me a little shock to hear someone call it out.
“Frankenberger. Okay then. Way to go, Frankenberger.” He said, after my confirmation. I don’t know why he was so befuddled by my name. It is actually a real surname, after all.
I coasted high on the wave of my own awesomeness for a while after that, mostly because I was heading downhill. A couple of water stops passed me by, I poured some water on my head, and my legs eased up on the niggles.
Then, about 12km in, after walking through a water stop, I saw a lady I’d met before the race and decided to pick up the pace a little to catch up with her and have a chat. Ran alongside her for two kilometres or so before I noticed that an awful lot of people were giving cheers and encouragements. I didn’t really think they were calling out to me. When someone said “Go Cathy!” I turned my head and realised that we’d been running right in front of Cathy Freeman for some time. And I’d overtaken her after the water stop.
That’s something kinda cool. It sort of fell apart later as I had to take a bathroom break, but it was definitely an experience, and the first 20 kilometres were pretty dang fast because I wanted to stay ahead of the olympian. So sue me. I’m silly.
The race went downhill in the second half, figuratively speaking (as the course tended more toward the uphill). It wasn’t so much that my lungs weren’t keeping up, but everything just started to hurt and it seemed a whole lot harder. I got a blister maybe 20 kilometres into the race, on the sole of my right foot. The sock was dragging across it, and it hurt like a bitch. Super fun-times were over.
30 kilometres in, I was pretty much done. It was windy, and cold, and I was on the verge of bonking (if not already there). Between here and the end of the race, I don’t know if I ran more than a kilometre at a time before having to take a walk break.
I do have to say one thing for the Cadbury Marathon, and that’s that the people were super nice. I chatted with a couple of folks before the race, and during the race I chatted with some more. Everyone was supportive, and awesome (apart from the girl who swore her head off at me, seriously, wtf? But I’m not going to hold it against her. She was hurting).
I’m sincerely relieved that it’s over. I didn’t run this weekend, because the lady who took the chip off my shoe at the end of the race while I sat there and sobbed told me that I could have a week off. I may run tomorrow. As much as it hurt, I can’t quite bring myself to swear off running entirely.
I’m just a glutton for punishment, aren’t I?
If I do actually run tomorrow, it’s not going to be great. I’ve been doing the Insanity workout DVDs. Lots of plyometrics. My legs won’t be very fresh.
Here, have some photos:
This is me before the race. The very face of determination. And enormous sunglasses. And horrible iPhone camera.
This is me coming into the finish. Gosh, I look happy. Probably because I know my legs won’t need to be amputated.
And this is me with my best bud. Aww. I think my face was actually frozen like that. Some sort of grim rictus. Lovely.
