Chevron Houston Marathon Blog

One For The Record Book

The marathon isn't much more than a blur to me, one week later.

I woke up at 2:30 marathon morning, with what felt like an asthma attack. An anxiety dream, I'm guessing.

 Sonia Azad and I show off finishers' medals. She ran the half marathon; I ran the full marathon.

The race? It was humid, it rained, it was a long way. I know I ran from 7am untl 10:56am without stopping. I was in an almost-trance and I cannot remember very much of what I thought about. I remember feeling grateful to the people who hand out orange slices along the way. I have vivid snapshots in my mind - the fathers sprinkling holy water at Rice University, the halfway point (it was still raining), the hill on Westpark between 14 and 15 miles, some point in the Galleria, 23 miles on Allen Parkway when I slammed into the wall, 25 miles where I pushed through the wall, the finish line. I was carrying my cell phone and I had forgotten to silence my alarms, so at 9am my alarm went off. It sounds like church bells. It went off over and over again for miles. I'm sure the runners around me were wondering why church bells were ringing in my running shorts for so long. Sorry guys. The last quarter mile was hard - I closed my eyes and whispered to myself, knowing I was going to set a personal record.

3:56:47.

Just a few feet past the finish line and a fist pump, I stopped and doubled over. I thought at the time that I was just stopping to catch my breath, to gather my noodle legs underneath me. But I just saw the pictures and it looks more like a near-collapse, although I swear it was not that dire. Then again, I didn't understand why the medical personnel were on me so fast -- and I had thought the person in the red jacket was a woman. Looking at the Brightroom photos a week later, I see that person was a man - and not only that, there was another medical person, a man in a blue jacket, who I do not remember.

I did not qualify for Boston, but I set a personal record. And now, next year (yes I'm already declaring I will run the full 2012 Chevron Houston Marathon), I just have to shave six minutes off that time.

It was a great race.

Food Loading

I'm not going to call it a "carb load" this year. I'm going to call it a "food load." And I'm starting a week early.

Let me explain the difference between running now and running a year ago. A year ago, it was fine. I was in shape and running was easy. I'd sweat, I'd get all out of breath, I'd run my distance and I'd feel just, well, fine. This year - wow. It feels like I'm gliding from foot to foot, my shoulders square and twisting, my breath just a tick or two above standing still.

Of course, a year ago, I weighed 28 pounds more than I do now. Watching the size drop on my clothing tags over the last year has been ego-inflating. Wearing a bikini last summer for the first time since before my pregnancy was a GREAT feeling. It's been fantastic to get reacquainted with my cheek bones in the mirror.

But I have found running skinny comes with a whole different set of issues - like having enough fuel to complete some of the tougher runs, and eating enough to keep myself from going over the edge into unhealthy, scary skinny. For the record, I am not a fan of the sickly, skeletal, scary skinny thing. And I have a *thing* for blue cheese burgers and hot crisp french fries coated in salt.

Early on in this training season, I discovered I seemed to lose a significant enough amount of weight after a long run that people would comment that I'd lost yet-more-weight. Not good. I also re-discovered the horrible, dizzy, heart-palpitating feeling of completely running out of fuel on a long run - a long long way away from the car - and realized that I cannot take eating or not for granted anymore. Also not good.

A year ago, I could run 18 miles having eaten only peanut butter toast for breakfast and nothing else. Of course, I was carrying plenty of fuel on board. On Christmas Eve, I crashed and burned attempting 18 miles. As I passed the 11 mile mark, I felt weak and dizzy and sick. I made it to 11.81 miles according to my Garmin and I had to stop. Had to. I made it back to my car slowly and without incident, except for a couple of tears. This kind of burnout - a "bonk" in runnerspeak -always comes with the bottom dropping out of my mood for a few hours until I can rest and eat and drink water.

So lesson learned, I inhaled a blue cheese burger and a side of sweet potato fries 15 minutes after completing a 17 mile run the next week. In the days after that, I ate chocolate chip cookies and a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream frosting my daughter and I made to begin 2011 on a sweet note. I ate fried Japanese dumplings and scoops of steaming sticky white rice. I crunched on Baked Cheetos and noshed on cheese pizza and made biscuits in my oven and slathered them with salted sweet cream butter. I gulped down a lovely pasta with prosciutto and basil and a cream sauce. I've spooned up buckets of Greek yogurt and swallowed loaves of whole wheat toast. I've had handfuls of banana nut Cheerios and imbibed salads made of organic lettuce and heirloom tomatoes and blue cheese crumbles and red grape halves. I've scrambled free range eggs with artisan cheddar cheese and rolled them up in warm tortillas with homemade salsa.

Yeah, I'm food loading.

I've completed yet another very long run and have one more this week. This year, I believe I'm on track to at least break that frustrating four hour marathon mark. I'm not so sure about qualifying for Boston,
but we'll see. If I don't make it, it won't be because I left out one of the biggest components of marathon training - food.

Mission: Impossible

Cue up the Mission Impossible theme music. I’m aiming for 3:43 this time around.

It probably sounds, well, impossible after I ran my first two Chevron Houston Marathons in 4:twentysomething (I was so disappointed I have blocked my 2009 finishing time from my mind) and 4:11:26. After all, that’s shaving 18 minutes off my marathon personal record – 4:01:26 at Detroit in 2006.

But theoretically, I can do 3:43. I can run a 5k in 23 minutes without too much effort., so I have the speed. I have finished (running, not walking) every marathon I have entered, so I have the endurance.

So what’s the problem? In 2006, I stayed with my training partner for the first 12 miles. She’d pulled a groin muscle a week before the race and I had promised to stay with her as long as I could. She finished. I beat her by 22 minutes. (Update: She just finished the 2010 Detroit Free Press Marathon in 3:44.)

In 2009, I trained for only 12 weeks. I stopped to talk about the race twice during our live coverage. I was also carrying baby weight I hadn’t lost.

In 2010, I paced someone for the first half and stopped at the half to talk to Elissa Rivas for our live broadcast. I was also still carrying weight. I’d stopped calling it baby weight since my daughter was nearly two and a half.

2011 is going to be different. No excuses.

The day after the 2010 marathon, I started eating better and cutting my portion sizes. To date I’ve lost 28 pounds – and that’s 28 pounds that won’t be slowing me down for 26.2 miles. My body mass index dropped from a healthy 24.6 to a svelter but still healthy 20.5.

I have begun a 16 week training plan.

I won’t be pacing or staying with anyone. I’m running solo. I won’t be stopping to talk during our live coverage.

During the 2010 race, it slowed me down by more than 5 minutes. Justin Sternberg, the special projects producer who is part of the marathon coverage, said, “You can make Boston this time.”

Gulp. No excuses.

So my mission, which I have chosen to accept, is 3 hours and 43 minutes. It breaks the frustrating four hour mark. It qualifies me for the prestigious Boston Marathon. And no, I don’t think I’ll self destruct on the way to a 3:43.

See you at the finish line