On Friday morning, we awoke what I would consider to be stupid-early and headed to the airport. Our flight was on time and after a brief stop in Philly, with 3 gate changes, we made it as scheduled to Burlington, Vermont. This was my first trip to Vermont, one of the few states I had never visited. It was a little cooler and overcast with rain in the forecast for the evening. We got in our rental car and headed to the downtown area. We stopped in at the local mall, did a little shopping and asked for recommendations on a good place to have lunch. Sweetwaters was located in a pedestrian mall area behind the main mall. We were shown to a small booth for two and I ordered the chicken wrap with sweet potato fries. It was yummy! Jeff had the turkey wrap and cole slaw. We both took a chance and ordered iced tea. While Jeff's palate told him that the tea was raspberry, it was clearly peach and tasted almost as good as you can get in the South. After lunch, we headed out to our find our hotel and relax a bit before we met Jeff's friends Norm and Lori for dinner. Jeff asked me if I wanted to drive part of the course and I declined. Fact was - I was in Vermont and absolutely terrified of the 26.2 miles that loomed before me. I knew if I drove around even a small portion of the course, the butterflies that had been in my stomach would turn into missiles and I would be tempted to back out.
Dinner was at Trattoria Delhia, a nice small italian restaurant. Norm and Lori were fantastic and I liked them immediately. Both were very down to earth and Norm is so flippin' funny! Jeff had the filet, an odd choice for an italian restaurant, but he was beginning to tire of pasta. I ordered the spaghetti with meat sauce. I just was not about to tempt fate and be adventurous this close to the marathon. And truth is, my stomach was still not back to normal. I was still having reflux and just didn't feel 100 percent. For dessert, we split the Tiramisu and it was fantastic! After dinner, we just went back to the hotel to get some rest.
Saturday - the Expo
We woke up fairly early on Saturday, took our time getting ready and headed in the direction of the Expo. We both knew that this would, by far, be the largest Expo we had attended. After a breakfast stop for bagels, we arrived at the Sheraton and made our way to the back to pick up our packets. We realized that we had to know our bib numbers first, so made our way over to another area and looked those up. I was Bib number 1261 and Jeff was 1259. My lucky number is 3 and I'm always remiss when my Bib number doesn't have a 3 in it. Somehow I just always feel better when there's a 3 and this was one time I definitely wanted all the mojo I could get. But since I don't assign numbers, there wasn't anything I could do. I also wondered how someone managed to register in between us, and looking back on it, I never even thought to look at who was 1260. We got our race packets, bibs, chips and shirts and walked around to some of the vendors. It was almost sensory overload. There were gels in every brand, viscosity, and flavor; there were walls of shoes; vendors telling you why everyone needs orthotics; clothing in every size and color; sunglasses; and yes - even Ben & Jerry's was there with free samples. We made our way through the vendors and charted out an agenda for the day's activities. The Expo included mini-seminars on everything from a mile-by-mile course preview; to racing and training smart; to recovery; there were also adventure movies. We decided to see 2 movies and attend the course preview and 2 seminars. The first movie was "The Russian Wave" about 2 expedition kayakers who were commissioned to go to the far ends of Russia and paddle in order to boost the appeal of white water kayaking in the area. There was one problem - they couldn't find any white water. I did learn that they eat an awful lot of fish and other food that looked really, really gross. I think I would starve if I visited Russia. We then went to the course preview. The race director was there and went into some advice for the marathoners. When asked how many was this their first marathon, quite a few raised their hands. One piece of information she gave was that water would be in white cups and diluted Gatorade would be in green cups. While that may have seemed very elementary at the time, it came in very handy to know. We were only able to stay through about mile 6 when we had to duck out to make it to the next movie. "Running on the Sun" is a documentary about the Badlands 135, a race run in the hottest place (Death Valley) during the hottest time of year (summer). There are 40 participants and they run 135 miles. At times it was hard to watch. There were huge blisters that were popped right along the side of the road, a lot of vomiting, heat exhaustion, black toes, lost toenails, and overall pain and agony of the runners. One man's prothetic caused a blister that covered his entire stump. The one thing that stood out to me through the entire thing was the sheer determination these people had. It wasn't easy and I'm sure at times they felt like they would rather die than go another step, but they continued to persevere. In the end, I knew that while my marathon would not be as extreme, I would have to call on the same inner strength that they did. Once the movie was over, we were hungry, so we decided to skip a seminar and go have lunch at the hotel. After lunch, we attended a seminar on Recovery and Periodization. I learned that you should take 4 weeks after the marathon before beginning to rebuild a base again.
- Week one - do nothing more than light walking;
- Week two - ride bike and maybe slow, easy runs of 2-3 miles, no more than twice that week;
- Week three - begin to add some miles or days to running
- Week four - rebuild base
I knew with the injuries that I had, I would probably be in a lot of pain after the race. I was prepared for it and knew that my recovery may even be double this schedule.
After that seminar, we prepared for another one on biomechanics that Bill Rodgers, 4 time winner of Boston, would be speaking in. Actually most of that seminar was droll and Bill came in toward the end. I found him a little difficult to follow, but entertaining overall. There was about 30 minutes before the pasta dinner, so we just killed some time. Jeff wanted to get our poster signed by Bill Rodgers, so I asked him to sign it. We stood at the table and spoke with him for about 10 minutes. I still found him a little difficult to follow. At the pasta dinner, we had a couple from the Burlington area and a couple from Poughkeepsie, NY sit with us. We were the only couple running the marathon - the wife from Burlington was running and the husband from NY was running. She had run it two years prior and we picked her brain about the course, the hill at mile 15 (she said the one on the beltline was worse in her opinion) and how rated her first experience. The gentelman from NY had joined a couple of friends to train for it and both of them had to drop out due to injuries. He felt that he was running it for all 3 of them. After we ate, we left the Sheraton and headed back toward the hotel. We made a stop at K-Mart for me to buy a cheap jacket to wear the next morning and discard before the race and a stop at Hannagan's to get a banana and a PowerBar. I had success before to do 1/2 banana, 1/2 PowerBar and 1/2 bagel for pre-race meal and I had to go with what worked. However, I had learned that the PowerBar Protein Plus did not work. I needed to avoid protein pre and during runs. Once we got back to the hotel, we layed out our clothes for the next morning, put the chip on our shoes, put the Bibs on our shirts, and tried to relax. I had decided several weeks ago that I was going to download a book on my iPod to listen to while on the course. I perused audible.com and attempted to find a book that would hold my interest and be the right length. I settled on "T is for Trespass" by Sue Grafton, a 5 hour 49 minute reading. I also downloaded some new music to have before the book. I then took a hot bath, both to shave my legs and try to de-stress. I crawled into bed and, unexpectedly, fell asleep fairly quick. It is not unusual for me even under the best circumstances to take about an hour to fall asleep, but now that night. I was able to go to sleep quickly and soundly. The marathon was now only hours away.
Funny that even though I knew I was horribly under-trained and was risking injury, the thoughts of not doing this marathon never entered my mind. Come hell or high water, I would cross the start and finish lines. But, it is amazing how quickly thoughts, intentions and limitations can change over 26.2 miles ...
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