Pain cake. It’s something every marathon runner eats day in, day out. During training. After training. During races. During time off. The trick is, as I see it, to eat as small a slice as possible. Avoiding the big piece of pain cake, or the whole cake, comes from mental and physical preparation. Eating well. Sleeping well. Thinking positively about training and the race. Looking after your body.
Unfortunately, however, no matter how much time you spend training yourself to swallow the pain cake, some always goes down the wrong way. It is unavoidable…
After two weeks of being Fully Sick, bro, I knew the slice of pain cake I’d eat during the marathon would be well more than my fair share (fair share being determined by a complex equation involving time spent healthy, training, thinking positively, and amount of cash spent on physio and massage therapists). If any of this is out of whack, you may well find yourself facing a tough race, or even a runner’s worst nightmare–a D.N.F. / D.N.S.
I knew I wasn’t quite right on the morning of the marathon. My body felt tired and just depleted of the stuff that gives you the goods when running. Mentally, however, I was strong. The distance wouldn’t be a problem, it would be the time.
The race started well. With my Mum cheering from the start and having already met a few new friends, I felt confident. The morning was cool, clear and sunny. An unusual combination of good weather from the notoriously unpredictable city of Melbourne. But by the 2km, I knew it was going to be a tough race. The first few kilometer markings were clearly not accurate. They were several hundred meters long–a fact that bothered me and absolutely everyone around me.
The sluggishness in my legs and general exhaustion didn’t abate. By the halfway mark on St Kilda beach, I was fifteen minutes behind where I should have been. I can’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed, but in all honesty I knew my goal was to just haul myself over the finish line. Only a few kilometers later, however, this looked even less certain.
“Crack!”
At 25km my hip made a dramatic noise and my knee collapsed on a slight downward slope. Pain seared up my left leg and I grabbed the light pole I almost hit my head on as my body lurched sideways. Tears welled in my eyes as I instantly thought my day was over.
I tried to take a step. My left leg wouldn’t respond. My hip and knee were staging their own coup d’etat and were unyielding in the face of my barrage of bad words.
“&%$(_(*&^$%^((( R#@##$*&&*((&%%$&**”
My hand met my foot and yanked my leg backwards, stretching my left quad. I stood this way for a minute or so and then tried to take a step. My leg responded. I stretched again.
At this stage I was able to walk but not run. I walked slowly down the hill, then started a slow and very painful Cliffy Young shuffle on the flat. 1.5km later my leg collapsed again. I stretched. I shuffled. I stretched. I shuffled.
For the rest of the race, every two or so kilometers I had to stop and stretch to both ease the pain and remain vertical. The hell that I was in is quite indescribable, but nothing was going to stop me. I’d trained for nine months for that event and finishing was the most important thing in the world. Nothing was overriding my focus.
I remember so much but so little of the remainder of the race. The scenery was lovely, but my focus became tunnel visioned and my movements automatic. At 40kms, a member of the crowd decided to cross the road in front of me and told me to “run around” him. Needless to say, my zen was temporarily broken and I responded like a wharfie on ice who’d just run 40kms. In other words, in a very unladylike manner.
Seriously. What a moron.
But not long after I was feeling nothing but elation as I ran into the MCG. Tears welling in my eyes, I crossed the finish line almost 45 minutes after I’d planned to, in 4hrs57mins. The adrenaline and my own mental determination (of which I am very proud!) had carried me through to the end and as soon as I crossed that line my leg once again seized up.
But who cares… Despite the pain, ten minutes later as I lay on the massage table I was already planning my next marathon.
Gold Coast 2010, here I come!
And if you want to know about the injuries I sustained, I’ll get to that next time…