Mission Accomplished

Posted on 01. Jun, 2010 by Joe in Uncategorized

2:35:09.  Not a time that will be remembered in any record book, that’s for sure.  But, it’s a time that I will never forget.  I guess it is the beauty of running a distance for the first time.  No matter how ridiculously fast you are or how much of an unmitigated disaster your effort is, if you finish it’s a personal record.  And so it is.

I didn’t enter the Buffalo Half Marathon with a goal time in mind.  It’s a good thing I didn’t.  I was incredibly naive of the challenge that awaited me.  And trust me, I wasn’t exactly flippant about what it would take to run this race to begin with.  I followed my training program to the letter out of pure respect and fear of this distance.  I wanted to be perfectly prepared.  I think I was.  However, it took every last fiber of my being to get across that finish line.

Everything started according to plan.  My plan was to run the first third of the race at my training pace of 12 minutes per mile.  I did that for the most part.  After that, I would play it by ear and increase the pace if I felt good.  By the half way mark, me and my buddy Peter (who ran the whole distance with me) were cruising along at 11 minutes per mile, if you can call that cruising.  By this point, we were entering the lovely South Buffalo stretch of the course where the great debate erupted about how many (insert expletive here) overpasses were on the course.  Peter insisted four, I swore I heard six.  Unfortunately, I won that bet.

Anyhow, I felt strong, real strong through 10 miles.  It was right around this point we had tackled overpass #5 and headed down Exchange Street.  Exchange Street was formerly know by me as a swell back road route to get to the Buffalo Sabres games.  Now, I won’t be able to drive down it without noticing it as the stretch where the wheels started coming off the wagon.

It, to me, was the longest straightest stretch of the race, there isn’t an ounce of shade on it (and it was very warm) and next to nothing in the way of crowd support there.  For me, it was punishing.  I could feel myself start to struggle.  But, I carried on, holding my pace.  Then, “it” hit me.  Right as mile 12 began in the shadows of HSBC Arena.  Forever more, every bad traffic jam, every bad snowstorm, every debacle will be known as a “Mile 12″.  It literally felt like someone pulled the plug on my legs.  That 12th mile was the biggest physical struggle I have ever faced.  And it came out of nowhere.

I have heard of “bonking” but I will need to research it more to see if what I experienced was anything resembling it.  My working theory is I became dehydrated.  I’ll probably never know.  I literally had to tell myself to keep putting one foot in front of the other for that entire mile.  To top it off, I have Peter doing his best Jillian Michaels imitation as I try to put the pieces together again.

I’m pretty certain the only thing that saved me was seeing my wife and son’s faces on the curb cheering me on down the stretch.  I got a shot of adrenaline that got me back up to my pace for a few hundred feet.  About 100 feet from the finish both of my quads then seized up in epic fashion.  My momentum pretty much got me over the finish line.  I looked at my finish line photos online today and my face resembles someone who is having their toenails removed with pliers.  Not pretty.

But, you know what?  I wouldn’t have had it end any other way.  It definitely wasn’t an intentional exercise, but my will was able to stare down a failing body and pull through.  That’s a will that at one time couldn’t resist a dozen chicken fingers and a two liter of soda pop for dinner.  I learned alot about myself and how far I have come.  I also learned I really do love this whole running thing.  It’s not going to go away anytime soon.

The next step?  I plan on being back again next year.  Whether it’s for the half or if i go completely insane and go for the full is yet to be determined.  I’ve got a few months to decide that.  In the meantime, I plan to get stronger and faster.  Tackle some shorter distances.  Whatever I tackle next Memorial Day weekend, it is going to be with an even stronger set of tools.

Perhaps the greatest thing I learned these last three months is what I will end this post with.  It is a realization that your dreams are held back only by the walls you put up yourself.  Ever so slowly over a period spanning more than a decade, I tore down those walls.  Surrounded myself with people who helped me see how fragile those walls truly were.  The result is this.  There’s no way the younger version of me would have even thought to have stepped on that course much less fight off what seemed like imminent failure.  All because I knew it just couldn’t end any other way.

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Tags: running events