Is nobody healthy?: Metric Marathon 2010

As I mentioned in my last post, my fall race season began in earnest this morning with the Annapolis Striders' Metric Marathon. A "metric marathon," as the name suggests, is a 26.2K race, which comes out to 16.3 miles. Pretty much the exact distance I failed to run last week, a thought which pushed me to work harder than usual on my weekday training this past week. 

Thursday, I had dinner with the lovely Katie Cashin and learned that she is currently struggling with a hip injury. Yesterday morning, I woke up with a sore throat, which quickly developed into a full-fledged cold. Yesterday afternoon, I logged onto Facebook and learned that Val fell and twisted her ankle on her Saturday morning run. What is going on? The month of the marathon arrives and we are all dropping like flies. I took some cold medicine and went to bed early, uncertain whether or not I would be racing today.

The alarm went off at 6am and it took a Herculean effort to drag myself out of bed. Once I did, though, I pretty much went into auto-pilot. I started the teapot to make some Thera-flu, put on my running clothes, and started packing my gym bag. I had to at least try to do the race. The Thera-flu and some breakfast were enough to get me to the race, and the pre-race crowd energy got me to the starting line.

For me, today's race was divided into two distinct sections: the part where I struggled to keep down breakfast and the part where my hip hurt like crazy. Miles 1-12 were all about fighting my cold. I spent about 1-7 in a dopey, nauseous fog, willing myself not to throw up and/or drop out. I kept thinking of my supervisor at the morgue, who told me about how she tells her body not to throw up whenever she faces anything particularly gruesome at work. She has developed an uncanny ability to give her stomach orders and have it obey. I tried employing that technique this morning and it seemed to work. Mile 7 was a milestone because, at that point, I decided that I had gone too far to drop out. Miles 7-12 were probably the best of the day, especially when I realized that I was actually hitting my time goals despite the illness.

Then, somewhere between miles 12 and 13, the hip pain started. This has been a problem for me ever since we passed the 14-mile mark in training. Whenever I pass 13 miles on a run, my left hip starts screaming in protest. To add insult to injury, I've done some online research on hip injuries and every website seems to agree that I should start doing exactly the strength exercises that I have already been doing for the past year. Helpful. The pain was really bad in miles 13 and 14, and I had to walk a fair amount. As I approached 15, though, it seemed to ease up (or perhaps the thought of finishing helped me push through it). I was able to run from the 15-mile marker to the finish, where the 3:10 on the clock told me that I had better-than-maintained my marathon goal pace of 12 min/mile. Hooray!

So, now I am home in bed awaiting pizza delivery because I don't have the strength to get to the grocery store. I wish I could say that I somehow ran down my cold, but that does not seem to be the case. Oh well. Best wishes and healing thoughts to Katie and Val! I hope that we can all meet at the starting line of the MCM smiling and feeling strong!