DALLAS WHITE ROCK MARATHON RECAP. December 15, 2011

This is a race I’ll never do again.

First of all, I forgot how cold Texas is. I hate the cold. Since I’ve lived in Florida 9 years, my perception of cold has shifted and it’s hard for me to imagine anything under 50. 60 is cold to me.

Anyway, cold is not the race’s fault.

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Starting with the expo.

The expo was awesome. It was the Automobile Building of Fair Park. I’d heard horror stories about the parking, but we were able to park right behind the DAR building by the trains, with no problems.

I love race expos.

I usually don’t buy stuff, but I was on a mission for arm warmers and a t-shirt for my coach. I loved how the expo was laid out. I have to go through the booths in a methodical fashion, and this made it easy to do. Also, we went on Friday, so it wasn’t very crowded at all.

Packet Pick-Up and race t-shirts were on opposite ends of the building, which made it hard to stick to my clockwise plan for hitting all the booths (my compadres kept stopping along the way).

But from there,  it was easy to hit all the booths.

Clif -

The Clif booth was the same as it usually is. Samples of each of the Clif products, and the pace team people. I got my 4:15 pace band and asked them what it means if I signed up for a pace team already. It was Star, and she told me that they weren’t doing sign-ups. When I said I did it on the website, she said “Oh, I forgot they do that now. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

Well, I did it for the free stuff anyway, but I still haven’t gotten anything. (They said they send you a bunch of samples of Clif products.)

When I asked her which corral the 4:15 pacer would be in, she said she didn’t know. The race wasn’t telling them anything.

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Run On -

Run On is the local running store in Dallas with several locations. They had a nice big presence at the expo with 20% off everything. I got my coach a White Rock shirt.

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Luke’s Locker -

Also a big running store in Dallas. Also 20% off everything. They had tons of clothes, but we just ended up getting a bunch of gels. $1.50 for Roctane and $1 for all other gels.

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Hot Chocolate 15K -

This is a race in Dallas with a cute theme. They were doing Ghirardelli- dipped marshmallows at their expo booth. I didn’t try one, but my mom camped out and had several.

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RockTape -

There were several booths (the running stores) taping people up for free. RockTape had a booth and I went there. Since I’ve been in treatment for my psoas hip flexor for the last 6 weeks, I was nervous about it hurting during the race. My PT had taped me up a couple of weeks ago, so I went to the RockTape guys to tape my psoas and IT. It worked!

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Sport Hooks -

I get a Christmas ornament for each marathon, so I saw this one at the expo and had to have it. <3

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Pearl Izumi -

I wanted to find some black arm sleeves so I could wear my sleeveless shirt which was more comfortable than the long sleeve one I’d packed. But I found these at the Pearl Izumi booth and had to have them because they were pink, white and black!

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On race day, I woke up at 3am to thunder and lightning. When it was time to head down to Fair Park, the storm had stopped but the rain continued on.

Luckily, my sister-in-law brought disposable ponchos with her, and she had enough for all of us. It was 42* at the start, with a wind chill of 37*.

It only stopped raining for about 5 minutes at mile 25.

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My brother sagged for the relay team, and got this picture out of the car while he passed runners at mile 20 on Garland Road.

The picture really sums up the gloom of the whole race.

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So back to the beginning of this post.

I will never do this race again.

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We’d heard horrors about the traffic, and apparently they improved it this year. My brother dropped us off as close as he could get, and we still had to walk quite a way in the freezing cold rain. We got to a building with a restroom line longer than any line I’ve seen in my life. Somehow, we found some downstairs restroom that only took about 10 minutes.

My dad, sister-in-law, and boyfriend peeled off pretty quickly because they had to catch their relay shuttles to the transition points. My mom ran the first leg so she started with me.

Mom and I walked over to the corral area and it was a mess. It was very narrow so not everyone could get in. There were only a couple of entrances into the corral, so if you weren’t in the corral that was right at the entrance, it wasn’t possible to get forward or backward to your corral. Some people were jumping the fence. It was stupid.

The starting line was as lame as they come. It was just a banner strung across the road against the miserable back drop of Fair Park.

photo: dallas morning news

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The national anthem was supposed to be at 7:50, wheelchair start at 7:55 and runners at 8:00. So….we heard the wheelchairs go off. Everyone started talking  – we all thought they skipped the anthem because we would have heard it.

Then a few minutes later, someone started singing. She sounded as miserable as we felt.

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The beginning and end of the course are very ugly. It’s along Haskell which is sortof industrial and run down. But once we got into downtown, it was nice. There were lots of spectators and we heard church bells.

The puddles were ridiculous. I sloshed right through them even when everyone went around them, not even thinking that there might be holes in the bottom. I was lucky. My boyfriend talked to one guy who rolled his ankle in one.

(I’m wondering if this is how I hurt my ankle and just didn’t realize it.)

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The streets were too narrow for 13,000 runners. I had to fight through people all the way to the split at mile 9, when it finally thinned out.

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Ok so I made it to the starting line pain free. I’ve been in treatment for 6 weeks for a hip flexor/IT issue. I felt great at the start!

But around mile 3, I started having a pain in my left ankle.

It was nothing I’d felt before, so I figured it would go away quickly. Looking back, maybe I did it going through a puddle and didn’t realize it. Later, everything from the knee down hurt. (Eventually, everything from the hips down hurt!)

I started to look for a med tent.

I saw a banner at mile 7 so I crossed to the right side of the road. There was a tent but not medical. I asked the guys if they were the med tent, and they said it was across the street.

(I thought “are you effing kidding me?” and that might have slipped out of my mouth.)

So now I had to cross the traffic you can see in that picture above to get to the med tent.

I felt like a schmuck getting in all those people’s way, but I did the best I could.

I approached the tent and there were 3 people huddled under it facing in. I said “Excuse me. Are you guys medical?” They just looked at each other. One woman said “Well, I’m medical.” (wtf)

I asked if she had tylenol or advil. She said “hmmm, I’m not sure.” I glanced at my watch to see how much time I was losing. Then she turned around and rummaged through a box and said “oh, here’s some.”

Worst med tent ever. I thanked her.

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At this point, I already couldn’t unbend the fingers on my right hand, so tearing open the package was not working. I asked a spectator to help me, and she did.

About the spectators and volunteers…

photo: dallas morning news

I couldn’t believe how many people were standing out there in the cold rain for us. I thought they must be colder than we were because they just stood there for hours! It is always humbling to see the support people that make a marathon happen, but it was even more so in this weather.

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I really had to pick up the pace in mile 8 to make up for my stop. I still wasn’t able to get that mile down to the right time. But for the first 12 miles, everything was pretty much on track to make my 4:15 goal time.

Mile 1 – 10:09

Mile 2 – 9:46

Mile 3 – 9:44

Mile 4 – 9:47

Mile 5 – 9:43

Mile 6 – 9:47

Mile 7 – 9:44

Mile 8 – 10:22

Mile 9 – 9:51

Mile 10 – 9:47

Mile 11 – 9:42

Mile 12 – 9:40

photo: dallas morning news

Mile 12 culminated in this hill. Once you reach the top, you can see the lake for the first time, and then it’s 8 miles around the lake.

I really don’t know what happened, but I fell apart at the half way mark and never recovered. I was hurting so bad. My ankles and calves. In mile 13, I took off my right glove and my hand was red and swollen. I couldn’t unbend my fingers, and I got tingles all up my arm when I tried.

Of course, I panicked and thought I was getting frostbite. So I spent a good 20 minutes worried.

At mile 14,  I started to think that getting the wet gloves off my hands might be a good idea. I took them off and carried them for a while just in case I was wrong and needed to put them back on.

I dropped them around mile 15 and pushed my arm sleeves down to my wrists, which were also soaked.

Mile 13 – 10:19

Mile 14 – 10:08

Mile 15 – 11:42

When I dropped my gloves, I stopped to stretch my IT bands. They were both tightening at this point and I thought I should try to take care of it before it got worse.

Mile 16 – 10:43

Mile 17 – 11:16

BEST PART OF THE RACE!

At mile 16.5, I got to see Ken because the relay transition was right on the course and he was there waiting for my sister-in-law. There was a steep hill right before transition, and I almost walked up it, but I didn’t want him to see me walking.

I saw his face in the crowd and he had his hands out. I stopped to kiss him, and I peeled off my arm sleeves so he could send them back with my sister-in-law.

I told him everything hurt, but I didn’t start crying like I usually do when I see him on a hard run.

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I was off again. But I wasn’t moving very fast.

Mile 18 – 10:38

Mile 19 – 10:37

He passed me at this point because once he started his leg, he averaged a 7:40 pace for 10 miles.

We had the worst part of the weather on this section of course. We were coming around the end of the lake, and the rain was blowing sideways from the lake. It was the hardest it had rained the whole way.

I think after I saw him, I was done. It was SO.FREAKING.HARD.

I couldn’t get my body to move any faster, it hurt so bad.

I was fine with the rain, my breathing was easy. I didn’t feel labored at all. But my legs wouldn’t go.

Mile 20 – 11:48

Mile 21 – 11:44

photo: dallas morning news

They call this the Dolly Parton Hills because it’s 2 steep hills right after each other. I only saw one unless I was in denial over the other one?

You can only see one of the guys in this picture, but there are men at the water stop dressed as Dolly Parton.

When I got to this point, I walked. Besides stopping a few times to stretch, it was the first time in the race I had walked, and after that, I feel like I did as much walking as running.

It was right here that the 4:30 pace team passed me.

I was devastated because 4:30 was my “B goal”.

4:30 is a 10:18 pace, and at this point, I was 30 seconds a mile slower than my “A goal” which I had trained for and thought I was capable of.

For a few seconds, I tried to fall in behind them, but I just couldn’t keep up. My legs were not moving!

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I kinda gave up here. I tried walking to stretch out my legs. It didn’t hurt any less than running, so I would start running again. It didn’t feel like I was moving at all.

Believe it or not, this is a smile.

I spent the next hour running and walking and just hoping I finished under 5 hours.

Mile 22 – 12:00

Mile 23 – 11:46

In mile 24, it stopped raining and I took off my poncho. I was tired of it, as silly as it sounds, I didn’t want to cross the finish line wearing it.

Mile 24 – 12:16

Mile 25 – 12:22

Mile 26 – 11:23

.29 – 10:13

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The finish line was around a blind corner. That was dumb. I didn’t know where it was because I thought it was going to be the same as the starting line. I felt lost.

My family saw me before I saw them because I could hear my mom.

But we turned a corner and I saw all the spectators.

Typically I can pick up the pace by about 2min/mile at the end of any run – even a 20 miler.

The one thing that makes me feel better about my finish time is that I could only pick up my feet fast enough to average 10:13 for the last .29 miles. I knew I had pushed my body about as far as I could on that day.

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I also think I kept my form tighter than I ever have in a marathon. I think my body is much stronger this time, and that also makes me feel better about my disappointing finish.

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So there it is.

4:39:21

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I’m so disappointed with my performance.

It was worse than either of my 20 milers.

It hurt worse than anything I’ve ever done in my life.

It was harder than both of my other marathons put together.

And it was only a 6 minute PR.

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I really don’t even feel proud of my medal, although I am trying.

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What went wrong in this race?

I still don’t have an answer.

The weather? The course?

I’m driving myself crazy trying to think what I could have done differently to have a better outcome. I can’t find it. I didn’t go out too fast – my hydration and nutrition were ideal – I don’t know.

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Now I just want a do-over. The bad thing about marathons is that you can just find one the next weekend and try again. My coach wants me to wait a year to do another one and just focus on improving my half and 5K times.

I’m training for Disney’s Princess Half Marathon with Team In Training, and I’m happy to be back with the TEAM. So hopefully, I’ll soon get over this marathon, take it for what it is – a PR on a bad day. And look forward to some good races in the spring.

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