American Discovery Trail Marathon Report

If only Marathons were 18 miles long. Even 20 miles long. Then I would feel pretty good writing this report. Unfortunately they are not. They are 26.2 miles long, which means that this report has some good drama. The title says it all. It started with a spaghetti dinner the night before. I even went with Garlic and Olive Oil to stay away from the cream sauce. Topped it off with a little frozen yogurt.

It was hard to sleep the night before, mostly because I was excited (and paranoid I was going to miss my alarm). Up at 4:45 and on the bus at 5:15. It was a 20 minute bus ride up to Palmer Lake. It was cold at the start line, everyone was huddled in plastic bags and other cool getups.

It started with a jaunt around Palmer Lake. I was feeling great. It was down hill so it was really hard to hold myself back. I found myself holding 8:48 miles, a pace 20 seconds faster than my target. I rationalized saying that is was very downhill and I wasn’t breathing hard at all.

The scenery was beautiful, winding down the mountainside. Then following the train tracks. At one point a train passed us from behind and it was just awesome to be running along with the train.

About halfway through, just past the Air Force Academy we went through a section I called the “whoop-dee-does”. Now if you look at the elevation profile of the race, it looks like a continuous steady gentle downhill. That is because these “whoop-dee-does” are so steep and quick (drop 30 feet, climb 30 feet) that they don’t even show on the map.

I was still feeling good at this point:

After the “whoop-dee-does” you pass under the freeway and start running down the fountain river, paralleling the freeway. I was worried this portion wouldn’t be as scenic, but you were actually tucked away and it was pretty shaded.

So the problem was after the 6 real downhill miles, I didn’t pull back at all. I kept up the pace from miles 6 to 16 and then I felt my body start to slow a little bit. About this time I saw the kids which gave me some energy. Josh had made a sign that said “tap here for energy” and one with a cat saying “26.2, are you kitten me?”

The kids drove up ahead and ran with me one more time. This time Blake fell down on the bridge.

And then at mile 20, this happened:

[caption id=”attachment_449" align=”aligncenter” width=”400"]

courtesy sbnation[/caption]

I walked to eat some fuel and I couldn’t start again. My body had completely lost its stride. Every step was pain. In the course of 5 minutes my mind had gone from “I’m going to finish 20 minutes ahead of my target” to “How am I going to finish this thing?”. It was with great sadness that I watched the 4:00 flag go by. I also watched many people go by who I had met at the starting line.

So the last 6 miles were some sort of trudging “run/walk”. If there was any sort of incline or decline, I was using some sort of gimpy walk. The hardest part about not being able to run was that everything takes FOREVER. You are so used to watching the miles tick by, and now each mile would take an ETERNITY. We started to come into the city and we got our first views of Pikes Peak. Colorado Springs is awesome.

This series of signs said it all — SHUT UP LEGS:

The finish line is at the impressive “America The Beautiful” park complete with giant fountain and impressive playground. The kids ran the last lap with me which was fun, except Blake had his shoes off and wasn’t able to keep up so I could hear him screaming.

Coming across the line and finally stopping for good I felt a giant weight off my shoulders. I needed food, drink, and shade. I found all three of those. They had plenty of fruit, drinks, pizza, and sandwiches.

So that’s the report. Lessons learned:

• If you want a solid time, start training a little earlier (like 4 months)
• Try and eat something more substantial than NOTHING in the morning
• STICK TO YOUR PACE
• Learn how to push through the pain and DON’T STOP — because you can’t start again
• The wall is mostly in your head. I remember thinking that “my toenails are bleeding etc.” and everything is totally fine

At least I broke the step record:

Splits: