Not according to plan

I ran my first marathon. It did not go according to plan. Please refer to photo taken of me at the finish:

If you look very closely, you may recognize the contorted facial features of a man who might cry if there were any water or salt left in his system with which to a tear up. I became dehydrated midway into the race.

They say that if you run 26.2 miles, the first 20 miles are really only the first half. I would now add that if you become intensely dehydrated, the first 20 miles are the first quarter and the last 6 miles are like getting slapped in the legs for an hour with a wet beach towel by someone who didn't like you in high school.

The good news is that I finished the marathon. The even better news is that I was not one of eight runners who were hospitalized or one of another 100 + who were treated by medical teams for severe dehydration. But dehydrated I was.

What was my mistake? It was a bad judgment call, based on my lack of experience. I had trained properly to run 26 miles. I had trained sufficiently to run 26 miles with a time between 3 1/2 and 3 3/4 hours. However, I was not prepared to do these things in sunny and warm conditions. By the time I had paced the first half of the race at 8:00 minute miles, it was already too late. My body was dried up. No matter how much liquid I tried to feed it, it would not soak it in.

It was the classic blunder. The newbie goes hot off the blocks and falls apart at the end. I fell apart. I blew up, more like. It was one of the best experiences of my life and simultaneously one of the ugliest. There were ups, there were downs, runner's highs and runner's lows. There were 4,500 runners, the lady in pink, the girl with gummy worms, there was muscle cramping, day dreams, diluted Gatorade, ocean views, vomiting, hitting the wall, and then the other wall, and then another wall, there were three mates there barracking for me, and there were legs which would not move, and defeat, and somehow fun, and I think a nap toward the end. All that and more in 4:06:32. I'll take that time, all things considered. I didn't get the time I was after. It did not go according to plan. But as my friend Adel said, "Man relax, you finished a marathon."


Details to follow.

The 'G' awaits

This year's Melbourne marathon is on Sunday, Oct 11. It has adopted the motto 'glory awaits you at the G'. The 'G' is the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a sporting stadium and a significant cultural site. Marathoners have to run 26.2 miles (42 kilometers) to get there, so I think we ought to be saying 'inner-thigh chafing awaits you at the G'. That's what awaits me at the 'G', anyway. I've been running away from magpies feverishly for months now to be able to run this thing.

My favorite thing about the race so far is the 'Inspiration DVD' on the marathon website. You're watching the video. You're thinking, oh nice, running, yeah, that's cool. But wait. No. It's clubbing. The 'beat stops', the 'bass drops' and awww yeaaaaah, they're clubbing. Then there are images of people finishing the marathon in doubled over agony. That inspires something. But still, the clubbing, that's what I'm talking about. People ask me, "why would you pay someone else money so that you can run?" Yes, I paid to run this race. And yes, I will answer your question. But first, watch the video, then see if you still even want to ask that question.

The home page with the race director speaking in the accent I hear every day and cannot get enough of: http://www.melbournemarathon.com.au/

To watch the 'Inspiration' video, see the right hand column menu on the home page.

Cultural traffic: Waltzing Matilda

I was talking about Waltzing Matilda with some Australians the other day, as you do. They were pleasantly surprised to learn most American kids know at least the chorus. "You know, really", said one guy, "it's a song about disillusionment, solitude, and suicide". Another said, "Reminds me of Durkheim". Leave it to sociologists to notice the rain clouds over a bouncy play tune.

I played Waltzing Matilda on the guitar at a Rotary meeting late last year. It was an anniversary of the founding of the Whittlesea Rotary Club, so there were a couple hundred people there. I had the lyrics projected on a screen and some man yelled out, "We don't need the lyrics, mate." I laughed and kept the lyrics up because I was the only person in the room who needed them. After the meeting, a grandmotherly woman approached, put a tender hand on my arm and said, "Dear, thank you, that was just lovely to sing with you. Only, you played it too fast." I had noticed the crowd looked a mite tense during the song.

I recommend the Wiki page for Waltzing Matilda. Interesting history and some sense made of the colloquial conundrums:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltzing_Matilda

The Grand Final

Freaks pop up everywhere. Obsessive, spit flecking devotees float in the pools of politics, religion, commerce, certainly the arts, and most certainly in sport. Take these lovelies for example. You made the papers, guys! (This photo comes from a major Melbourne newspaper website). And from in front of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), the 100,000 capacity stadium which commentators knowingly use religious language to describe- the 'hallowed' MCG. This fellow is as mean as he looks. I know because I was stuck behind him for five minutes on Saturday as I paced through the crowd outside of the stadium. I could not attend the Grand Final, the Super Bowl of Australian Rules Football, so I ran to the stadium to take in the pre game atmosphere.

Saturday's contest was between the Geelong Cats and the St. Kilda Saints. "Go The Cats!" a part of the meandering crowd chanted from near a sausage stand. "Go the Saints" countered some red and black clad Saints supporters. My running clothes happened to be red and black, so I garnered a couple of slant gazes from the Cats fans. The team I actually 'barrack' for, the Richmond Tigers, are unlikely to appear in the Grand Final any time soon. (Oh yeah, England and it's former colonies use 'barrack' to refer to the team they support. The word 'root' has a different connotation. When I told some Australians last year that I root for the Tigers, one of them said, "Mate, that's more than I wanted to know about ya.")

As I was saying, I was stuck behind the freak. It took half an hour to weave through the musty crowd with their meat pies, umbrellas, steamy cups of coffee, face paint, and wind tussled hair. The man in the photo is about six foot six (if you count his painted white 'stack' shoes). This guy would start small verbal contests with fans from the other team. Nothing too bright, just "The Saints are done for" type banter.

I walked past the guy and eventually stopped to watch a woman playing "When the Saints go marching in" on the bagpipes. The Saints later lost the game, but her effort was not wasted on me. Well, until I heard it four times in a row, then I pressed on.

A curiosity about the 90,000 plus crowd was the somber mood I detected. Perhaps it was the cool, cloudy weather, or because the people I encountered were outside, biding their time until the game began. If pressed to describe the character of the crowd, it was like a 30 year old man in a football jersey, forced to be in church on Sunday morning while his friends are watching the big game on HD TV from leather couches with a banquet of salty snacks and iced beer at their finger tips. It was not the giddy anticipation I have seen at other major sports events. Probably just the weather.

Wanting to participate in something Australian I went for a sausage. The stands only took cash, so I ran to the city centre and had sushi instead. By the time I made it home the game was over and the Cats had taken the game in a close match. Today I overheard a couple of social science professors talking about the game. "It was a tough game," said one. "And it could have gone either way". Too bad I missed it, but taking in the social atmosphere was nearly as good.

Them

Some of the students in my tutorials (equivalent to TA taught classes) and I were swapping magpie 'swooping' stories. Australians are all familiar with the black and white birds who garner frequent mention in this blog. Australians all have at least one frightening story to tell. One student recalled when her mother hit and pulled a gang of four magpies off her younger sister, who later had to get stitches on her head. Another student said she waves her arms around her head when she goes running near a thicket of trees. "I'd rather look like a ----- --- than chance getting swooped", she said with a straight face. Magpies are lovely to look at, fascinating to listen to, with a shrill but enchanting song, and are a very real threat, able to draw blood and put out eyes.

My mate commented on the last entry that he doesn't know what they look like. So, take a gander at these beauties (note the size of the bird and the length of the beak):

(I know the magpie just looks like it wants a hug, but trust me, they're nasty)

(That guy in the back seems to be enjoying the show; "You're next," the bird is thinking)

Wattle

It is wattle day in Australia. September 1, bring out your sprigs of golden wattle, the plant with seeds of significance, beginning in Tasmania when people wore branches of it to commemorate European discovery of the island. Wearing the wattle blossom on the first of September is supposed to remind people of the Australian virtue of community, call it 'mateship'.

Indeed, this country prides itself on a relative high level of camaraderie. You're everyone's mate. That is, you're everyone's mate until you go for a run. Then you are a sweaty moving target.

Some lessons about being a runner in Melbourne which I learned the hard way (and am still learning).

Parking lots: Cars have the right of way, always. Don't be a silly pedestrian and inconvenience someone looking for a spot. If you walk across a parking aisle, drivers will place a bead on your shopping buggy and tap the throttle. If you run through a parking lot, you are sending a message: "Hey cars, anyone want to play chicken?"

Stop signs: Cars may or may not stop. Either way, wait until the car has passed before crossing the street because you are a runner, and that makes you inferior and weak for not being in a car, and probably means you should be crushed. Just this morning, a woman in a large sedan was approaching a stop sign at the same time as me. We made eye contact. She tightened her grip on the wheel and turned hard as she accelerated through the stop, so as not to have to wait for me. I jerked to a knee busting halt as she tilted by. Then, 300 meters down the road, she had parked and was crossing the sidewalk toward a store just in front of me. When she looked at me like, "Oh, it's you", I had never been closer to football sacking the stuffing out of a middle aged woman in my life. But I'm a peace loving man, so I just mad-dogged her. (You would have too, trust me).

Honking: Cars will honk at you. There's something about a person enjoying the mental, emotional, and physical challenge and joy of a good run that just makes some drivers go crazy. When honked at, either ignore them or chuck a big fist pump in the air that says, "yeah mates, let's get this!" Do not point and laugh at them hysterically. Do not look at them and make a large swinging arm arch ending in a butt slap. That one really makes people mad.

Birds: When the cars can't get to you, Australian birds will. It's nesting season again, and the magpies are back to attacking. I was shocked into Spring last week when a magpie dive bombed me out of a French hip-hop induced running trance. Magpies make a loud click with their beaks behind your head, right before they attempt to bite a chunk out of it. From what I have heard, they are quite capable of doing so. A bit of flesh and skull probably make a nice breakfast for a magpie. And they remember you. Seriously, they have good memories and can pick individual humans out of a crowd. When a magpie decides you are a threat to its nest and attacks you every time you pass it's tree, do just walk a couple hundred meters until you are clear of its tree. Do not plot to teach that bird a lesson. After being attacked twice, on the third run I gathered a fist full of pebbles. I was ready to go, bi....bird. It swooped, cawed, snapped, and set me writhing like a child on too much Kool-Aid hurdling into a swimming pool. The bird swooped up, readying to dive again. I hurled my rocks. I completely missed. It became more angry, now having affirmation that I am a threat.

To be fair, self defense is only a small fraction of the running experience in Melbourne. There are some people who cheer you on. Two weeks back I was passing an elderly man walking his dog on a nature trail. The guy was clean-shaven, with disheveled white hair, and the look of tough and sun-weathered farmer. "You're making me tired", he said warmly, and chuckled as I ran by. I laughed with him and said, "I'm making myself tired too". He smiled and made an ushering gesture with his arm. "Ata way," he yelled after me like a coach. "Run for your life, son!"

I was indeed encouraged. And his words stay with me, when I need a boost of energy, and when approaching stop signs.

Chafing

I carried a journal in my kit on the Appalachian Trail back in 2003. My resolve was to write something every day of the trek, even if only one or a few sentences. Entries like: "Exhausted/ chafing!/ running out of food/ too tired to write", I reckoned would indicate to me years later what sort of pace I was living at.

This entry is something like that:

August 18, 2009

Exhausted/ commitments all tidal surging at once/ no time for grocery shop/ too tired to write/ note to self: get better at saying "no"/ chafing!