Choose your battles!

Most of my thoughts for this weekly (okay I was hibernating for 3 of those weeks) running tableau collect in my brain for the duration of the weekend. I usually do a brain dump on Monday to report the weekend events. You get the report somewhat more organized than what first gets emitted on the keyboard, but not much. This week is somewhat different. I am writing this alone in my hotel room in Indianapolis prior to running the Indy Marathon on Saturday and then pacing the Chicago Thon on Sunday to hopefully yet another sub 3.

This being the first relatively long traveling trip I had some spare time to ponder a few thoughts. Yes, the first thought was that one marathon a weekend is enough….or is it? I was able to do a true double (the marathon argot for two marathons in the same weekend Saturday/ Sunday) in 2003 on this very same corresponding weekend. So why not try it again?

The second, slightly more explorative thought was about when do you get it? When does it sink in? When is it that the “aha moment” occurs? Do we control it? Do we always recognize it? There are times in a marathon when I know the race is not going my way. Not always the smack in the face that makes learning things obvious. For example you grab the hot plate just to learn that when someone says it is hot that it really is hot. Or perhaps for you thick skulled guys out there, when your girlfriend leaves you and you go out with someone else because you thought she said she didn’t want to see you any more. Thus you go out with someone to move on because she convinced you that all hope was lost. Then a month and two weeks later she calls you and says she wants to work it out with you. You are left thinking oops!!! This “light bulb” moment is often given well before the lesson is learned. We Kool Aid drinkers like to call it planting the seed.

I was having a discussion about my weekly tirades with a close friend. My friend asked about my plans for the weekend. Since he finished his first full marathon at Columbus we can now discuss the lesson(s) learned. It is often difficult to have a discussion with someone who is not educated in the subject matter at hand. My marathon completed friend now gets it. You might say he has passed Marathon 101. He did it in real time and not just vicariously. Our discussion brought up points about when people truly acquire a lesson that was taught to them. We are each taught lessons at different times. But I think many times they are not truly learned until later in life. Break through moments can be seeded early in life, although they may not bloom, or click, until much later. My friend, Louis, and I had to fight with severe cramping during our 26 round title bout at Columbus. The fight with cramps was over after the race. However, most fights continue until one person looses. Louis and I managed to hang on through the 26^th round which we, and most marathoners, will call a win. We both were over salted and under hydrated. Cramps ensued. Less clothing, more water was the lesson learned.

A slightly more prevalent lesson my father told me, when I was about 15, was that it takes two people to fight. It was pure timing that about two days after that little talk that a fiery red head on one of my high school sports teams would come to take out his frustration on me for chatting a little to closely with his girlfriend. What can I say? I was a cute little guy then. I took a beating that day and I am pretty sure he wound with the girl for life. I never raised a hand other than to keep from getting more lumps on my face. While I would later learn how to pull the trachea, ears and other more personal areas off the human body in hand to hand fighting (isn’t the military great) I remembered another lesson taught. Any man can throw a punch and fight…it takes a real man to walk away. It is difficult to control those most innate instincts of survival. Plus the offended and jealous teammate seemed to come at me like a pro fighter. I didn’t stand a chance. If he had known that she had kissed me too, he probably would have killed me on the spot. In each situation a decision is made to fight or not fight for something important or not important. Some would call it choosing your battles.

This weekend I chose to fight not once but twice. Seemingly not learning any lesson about how arduous the marathon can be. So ignorant was I about getting hit by each mile that I wanted to tackle two marathons. Don’t get me wrong…I know what I feel like after fighting with 26 miles. For 41 times this year a marathon course has tried to teach me a lesson. Maybe, in a way, my running is more about fighting things I can’t fight. Running has been a great way to release this unfocused hostility. Who knows? But it sounds like as good a reason to run two marathons in the same weekend as any other reason I have heard and it beats the hell out of staying home and wasting time on the couch watching TV. I was in Chicago for cryin’ out loud. Woo Hoo.

Indianapolis was one of my favorite courses back in 2003. I was looking forward to the excellent support and a great course again in 2006. There were a couple of unexpected punches thrown at me on race day. A minor issue was the starting temperature of 39 degrees. It would warm quickly to near 64 by race end. A very short section of the course was covered with mulch intended to soak up water and offer better footing through a muddy entrance into Fort Harrison State Park around mile 12. This offered a slight challenge to all runners. It was much better with the mulch as a quick fix than what could have been a knockout punch had it been left as a quagmire. The only other issue with the course was the crowning of the roads. This is experienced at most races. For Indianapolis the course was mostly closed to cars and runners could traverse more to the center of the road and avoid the harsh crown at the extreme edges of the road surface. With so few punches thrown by the course and water stops aplenty I strolled to a sub 2:50 and 6^th place. Joel Sauer, race director, continued the Indy tradition with another great race and a huge amount of support from the community. Indianapolis is a slightly challenging course that seems to improve in support and fans each year.

Having survived this bout in 2:48:51, I rushed quickly to my “yeller” Jeep and sucked down the well cooled 16 oz. bottle of Endurox. I packed both of my quads in prepped ice bags and darted back to the hotel for a 3 minute shower before the noon checkout.

I will thank my younger sister and her Panera Bread store manager, Fred, for their generosity toward this trip. I had bagels and more bagels for breakfast. This little bindle of bagels and bread made for a quick exit from Indy.

I arrived in Chicago at McCormack Place about four hours later thanks to the incessant construction surrounding the windy city. For you reading who have not been to a large marathon expo…Chicago does it right. This is how expos should be done. While I am not the typical fan of large crowds and over crowded marathon starting lines, I was excited to help as many runners as possible pace to a sub 3 hour marathon for the NEW BALANCE 3 hour pace team. I stopped by the Drymax Sports booth to pick up a new pair of the only socks I have worn this year. Apparently this is also the only style of socks that no sports store in Columbus Ohio carries. Brett Richardson who works for Drymax remembered me, probably due to my constant badgering of emails to him about how awesome the socks are. Brett sold me on the Drymax Sports socks two years ago in Chicago. I have been blister free since then and I thought a stop at the booth was all to appropriate. I had another minute to swing in for a quick massage at Patrick Materna’s (native of Austria) THE STICK booth. I have found it is always good to get in the last minute massage before the second marathon in two days. And of course I would be remiss to not visit our daily reading material booth of Marathon & Beyond and get a hug from Jan. She is beyond a doubt one of the friendliest people you will ever meet. With all the pleasantries out of the way it was time to further mentally prepare for the battle at Chicago that would start promptly at 8 am.

I ventured down to the Big Town Restaurant and was told the wait would be one hour. I was seated in less than 10 minutes at a table for four people. After a salad, app, and the start of my meal the matre’d asked if I minded sharing my table. Oddly enough in this town overstuffed with marathoners I was graced with a business woman from Spain. A glass of water and a language barrier later and I was off to my room. I was asleep by 9 pm and up at 5:30 am for breakfast. Two Clif Bars and a big bottle of Accelerade was standard protocol. Race day arrived with biting winds and temps in the lower 30’s. In order to be in the corral for the start we had to be at the New Balance Tent by 6:30 am. Dennis Linehan escorted me, Alex, Sweet Lou and Dorothy into our corral. It was really first class service. I was very nervous about the cold, wind and my pacing ability in such conditions. There was about 100 or so runners relying on Alex, Lou, Dorothy and me to help them run even splits of 6:52 per mile to hit the magic mark of 3 hours. Nerves aside, I am used to running my pace and according to my plan. This would be a great lesson in how even pacing pays off in the fight with a marathon.

As we stood, packed like apartments in New York, in the 30 degree air and 20 miles an hour wind my legs began to tighten. I had found a Tyvek jacket in the stampede to the corral and it fit perfect. I usually remember a large garbage bag when inclement weather is imminent. However, in my nervous excitement, I managed to forget my bag and my gels. God graced me with the jacket and ample Gel stops along the course to ease my worries. After a quick prayer with my fellow sub 3’ers, the gun popped and we staggered to the official starting line. The sheer thickness of the crowd caused us to cross the line 22 seconds after the gun sounded and we were only 40 feet from the line. I smacked my Polar RS800sd to get my chip time and help with instantaneous pace per mile whenever I looked at the watch. This was a huge advantage to say the least. I would not have to wait until the mile markers to know my pace. I simply looked down at the watch and bingo. Go to the Chicago website at www.chicagomarathon.com and look at the silly, albeit almost dead on, splits I ran. You could have set a clock by what my Polar RS800 did for me. As agreed our first mile was a little over 7 minutes to allow for warm up and to let the crowd thin a little. The warm up was nice but the crowd stayed dense the whole way. Pacing other runners was a new experience for me. I finished in the top 150 each time I had run Chicago before and in the 2:30’s or low 2:40’s. I was stunned at the shear number of runners who bumped and shuffled along the way near the 3 hour pace. Due to my small amount of cycling experience I had learned to hold my line. I think other marathoners should take a lesson here. Darting back and forth across the course is not advisable. In my steadfast drive to run even splits, I mowed down 7 or 8 of these marauding runners and 12 or 13 spectators who got a little to close to my tangential line of running. The crowd effect was just one of the many punches that the Chicago marathon threw at our sub 3 group. The more experienced Chicagoans stood well back and avoided my stock blocking rampage and pace charging effort. And although we were labeled the 3:00 Pace Team, I spoke with 25 or 30 of my fellow runners and they stated that they didn’t sign up for the 3 hour group to run 3:00 and change. I was encouraged to hear that the goal was to hit anything with the lead number being a two. We had a pack of 70 to 80 through the first 4 or 5 miles as I called off splits at each mile and gave them total seconds under goal finish time. Lou, Alex, Dorothy and I were able to run an average of 2 seconds under per mile through the first 10 miles. I recall announcing mile splits of 6:50 and 6:49. My legs and watch seemed to be molded as one. Neither wind, nor runner saboteurs, nor stopping to do the jig at mile 13 would keep us from our appointed rounds. With our robot like pace through mile 23 we had actually gathered a mere minute of breathing room for the last 3.2 miles headed into the wind toward the prize. I told one hopeful sub 3 to just line up behind me and let me pull them through the wind and up the last and only hill. I finished with 6 on my coat tails and with the last 300 meters being down hill, 12 or 13 others saw the clock and turned on the turbo to put all doubts aside. I have coached a few kids to championships, some who I was really close to, and a few more to personal bests. These experiences would be classified as a let down compared to watching runners achieve a goal of this magnitude. I don’t know what it is like to win the lottery but I knew in that flash of time between the finish line and the actual tears, in the that epigrammatic moment, that the ones who stuck to the pace and believed in our pace were rewarded beyond all wealth. Money could not have given these men the look that I took in as they broke what was once the insurmountable barrier of 3 hours. I felt as thought I had helped them win this fight and they had pushed and motivated me to continue my fight of running 50 or more sub 3 marathons in one calendar year. If you have not led a pace team or coached someone to a goal that they felt was impossible, take the time to do it. SOON!! It is a feeling that probably resembles that of your child’s first steps or when your daughter and son-in-law announces the soon to be birth of your first grandbaby. Perhaps close to that of being saved.

This train of thought goes back to another lesson that was given to me many years ago and I failed to learn it then. It hit me like a ton of bricks at the finish line. You don’t know what you don’t know. I have never known the joy of breaking the 3 hour barrier. I was blessed with that gift with my first race and, almost, unexpectedly. Through all that Chicago had thrown at our little group, I was still allowed to watch first hand as at least 6 individuals won their heavy weight title bout with the marathon. I didn’t know how it looked. I felt so fortunate to share this brief moment with these individuals and share just part of my journey this year with them as they won the fight and were awarded the title of SUB 3 MARATHONER. We finished in 2:59:08.

So many times in life we choose battles that we may never win. Often we choose fights that never should be entered into. I hope with all of your future goals, whether or not they are in running, relationships, or religion that you continue to seek hope, inspiration and knowledge to choose your battle and win.

See you next week in the Carolinas for my next battle.

MJ