If Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body…

…then I’m going to be a superhero by the time I recover from this marathon!

I saw a lady during the marathon wearing a shirt with the “Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body” slogan on it.  It’s crossed my mind more than a few times in these post-marathon days.  It’s better than thinking something like “pain is what you feel right before you die” or something equally cheery.

I will preface this post by saying that I don’t have a great deal of experience with pain, especially the severe variety.  I had a difficult recovery from Charlotte’s birth and had Jeremy naturally, but I think that childbirth is a different kind of pain.  I’ve also had a couple of uncomfortable outpatient surgical procedures, but that pain cleared up with ibuprofen and a few days’ time.

And by Wednesday, my body was feeling significantly recovered enough that I was considering running again.  But, boy, those 48 hours immediately following the race were brutal!

Initially, the damage to my person seemed minimal.  My left knee ached but not too badly.  My right calf was very sore, and I had some unexpected blisters from running eight miles in wet shoes and socks.  I hadn’t appeared to do any additional damage to my toenails, which is an ongoing problem of mine when I run long distances.  So, I enjoyed my hot shower after the race, we loaded up our stuff, and we headed home.

The discomfort started on the two-hour car ride home.  I started to stiffen up, and my knee started throbbing in earnest.  I had taken ibuprofen both before the race and in the hotel after, but I was already counting down to when I could take some more!

On Sunday night, I was so stiff that I could hardly move around or stand up from a seated position.  I took some more ibuprofen before bed but woke up around midnight because of pain in my knee.  I hobbled out to the kitchen and put ice packs on both my knees for about 20 minutes before falling back into bed.

At 4:00 a.m., I woke up again.  My knee had gone from hurting when I bent it to hurting when I moved it.  Even rolling over in bed sent nauseating waves of pain through my whole body.  I staggered into the bathroom to try to get some more ibuprofen and nearly fainted.  I staggered back to bed and woke Jeff up.

I’m very blessed to have the husband that I do.  Not only did he watch the kids during the hours I spent running and racing, but he also took very good care of me on this particular night!  He brought me the ibuprofen that I had spilled in the bathroom and prepared more ice packs for my knees.  I moaned at one point, “Why would anyone ever do this more than once?” and Jeff reminded me that I didn’t have to!  He also reminded me that it was probably normal to be feeling this bad and that I would be OK.

I finally fell back asleep.

Jeff took Monday off work, at my request, because I knew that I would probably not be moving very well.  I was right, and I was mighty glad to have him at home that day!

Monday was a stiff and painful day.  While Sunday was the day of joint and toe pain, Monday was when the muscle pain kicked in.  My back, my abs, my arms, my legs…nearly every muscle in my body hurt.  The older two kids and I had dental appointments that afternoon, and the dentist’s chair was almost too much!  I kept on the ibuprofen, which helped with swelling and pain, and on the ice, which just felt nice.

On Tuesday, my knee still hurt but nothing as it had on Sunday and Monday.  Stairs were still a challenge, but I could finally bend my left leg without seeing stars.  I cut back on the ibuprofen and actually felt OK.

On Wednesday, I woke up with barely a twinge in my knee.  I still felt it when I walked, but it was more like the “regular” knee pain I had after my long training runs.  And by Thursday, I knew it was time to get back in the saddle, so I took a 3.5-mile run.

So, what’s the point of this post?  I have a few observations!

1.  The human body is an amazing piece of God’s work and has an even more amazing capacity to heal itself.  On Sunday night, I swore to myself that I would never run another marathon, and I wasn’t certain that I would ever run again, period.  While I’m still non-committal about the marathon, I believe that running shorter distances is back in my future!

2.  Perhaps running a marathon and childbirth are somewhat alike.  You have to forget the pain before you sign up to do it again!  I also find the human body amazing in the way that it can forget pain.  It’s a wonderful survival mechanism.

3.  Today, I would have to say that the pain is worth the accomplishment.  I don’t know how much I believed that at 4:00 Monday morning, but I do believe it now.

Woo-hoo!  I did it!

Mission: Accomplished (Afterword)

Both of our families were waiting at the finish line, and we spent a few minutes celebrating.

We got the thermal blankets as soon as we finished.  The race volunteers were literally tearing them off of what looked like giant boxes of aluminum foil.  After a few minutes, I was mighty glad to have it in my rain- and sweat-soaked clothes.  It was maybe in the mid-fifties at the end of the race.

I grabbed some free food to start replacing the 3000-plus calories that I burned during the race.  I would later eat a bowlful of pad thai noodles, a salad, a Steak-n-Shake guacamole burger, and a bowl of spaghetti before I went to bed that night.

And, then, since I was shivering and body pain had begun setting in, we walked (well, I hobbled) back to the car to return to the hotel for my hot shower.  After lunch at a great little place called Noodles, we headed back home.

The Quad Cities Marathon was in the books!

I would like to say a few more words about this marathon, as a few of you out there might be interested in running it one day.

1.  It’s a very well-done race.  There were water and Gatorade aid stations at least every two miles, and there were four GU stops, which made it nice as far as what I needed to carry with me.  Spaced out further along in the race, there were candy and fruit, Vaseline, a wet sponge, and a dry towel.  The volunteers were terrific.

2.  The hardest part of the race, aside from the rain which is not always going to happen, was running up on to the bridges.  The inclines are steep, and a couple of them are fairly lengthy.  The ones early in the race are not terrible, but the one crossing off Arsenal Island between Miles 19 and 20 is like a bad joke.  And the inclines back down off the bridges are hard on the knees.

3.  It’s a fairly easy race for family members to navigate.  Jeff decided to meet us in two places, mostly because lugging two kids and a toddler around alone is not fun, but he had mapped out a couple more that would have worked, too.  As none of the bridges close during the race, it’s not bad scooting back and forth around the course.

4.  There are lots of clocks on the course, and mats mark the first 10K, the half, the 20-mile, and the last 10K, which are kind of cool splits to have.

All in all, if you are looking for a smaller, well-done marathon, on a relatively quick, flat course, the QC Marathon would suit you just fine!

Mission: Accomplished (Part Two)

I think I ended my last post with “…and we were off!”

That might be overstating the case a bit.  This is what the starting area looked like forward from where we were standing.  (By the way, I have to thank Mike Fiedler for many of these pictures.  He carried a camera during the race and snapped away while he ran.)

We were all jam-packed in a very narrow space.  Right before the cannon boomed, a woman muttering something about not being lined up in the right spot elbowed her way past me and anyone else who got in her way.  Normally, runners are very polite and friendly, at least those back where I tend to line up.  I was tempted to yell after her, “Hey, it’s not my fault you weren’t paying attention and couldn’t get your butt in the right spot,” but I refrained.

When we did hear the boom of the cannon, we all sort of lurched forward.  But we walked for about two minutes and were finally able to break into a nice easy jog when we crossed the starting line to fire up our timing chips. 

I know that it’s nothing like, say, the Chicago Marathon, when it often take 20 minutes to a half hour to cross the start, but it is a bit deflating.  It’s even more deflating when the friendly announcer reports, “I thought you all might like to know that the leader has just reached the half-mile mark!”

Thanks, buddy.  That’s exactly what I want to know when I’m just now turning on my watch!   But here’s a picture of the leader, a Kenyan gentleman named Jynocel Basweti, when he passed Jeff around Mile 3.  This guy finished the marathon in 2:18:40, which averages out to a 5:18/mile pace.  Holy smokes!  We caught a glimpse of him and the police car that he was following across the Mississippi River when we were about Mile 9.  Incredible!

In any case, we were finally off, and, thankfully, the road widened for a bit, so we weren’t stepping on people’s heels.  However, within a mile of the start, we ran up our first bridge, which happened to be the Interstate-74 suspension bridge that crosses the river.  The road was not closed to traffic; runners were crammed into one lane, while cars were still using the other lane.  Only a line of orange cones separated us.

Originally, I had thought I’d rather be on the car side of the swinging bridge than the water side, but I changed my mind and stuck to the outside of the lane!  Of course, some moronic runners were trying to pass on the bridge and were darting out onto the traffic side of the cones.  I’m really surprised that I didn’t hear a single car horn blown the entire time I was on the bridge.  I’d’ve been tempted to honk at some people.

By the time we reached the other side of the bridge, it was swinging pretty well.  I was glad to be back on solid ground.

Just after Mile 2, we ran the first, last, and only hill on this course.  I don’t know if it was because it was early in the race or because our training runs had hills much worse than this, but we handily sped up it and congratulated ourselves on a job well done.  In retrospect, it’s a little funny how proud I was of this only two miles into the race!

At the top of the hill, Jeff, Charlotte, Elijah, and Jeremy were waiting for us.  Jeff snapped these pictures of me as I ran by.  Mike is in the yellow shirt with the camera!

We kept a pretty steady sub-10-minute-mile pace for about the first fourteen miles.  Jeff, the kids, and my dad caught up with us again between Miles 9 and 10, right before we ran up the second bridge to cross back over into Rock Island, Illinois.

Just after Mile 13, we crossed over to Arsenal Island, where we would spend the next seven miles.  Between Miles 14 and 15, the rain started.  Gentle sprinkles turned into a gully washer, during which time Mike took no pictures (!), and we got absolutely soaked…clothes, hair, shoes, socks.  Ick, and ick again.

My visor kept water from running down my face, but that was the only saving grace during the rain and windy chill that dogged us until Mile 21, when Mike started taking pictures again.  Our fastest mile after the rain started was a 10:06, and most hovered closer to 10:30.

To make matters worse, around Mile 11, Mike spiked a really bad headache, almost migraine in its intensity.  Needless to say, this race was absolutely merciless for him.  He had 15 miles of misery, but he kept at it anyway, mile after miserable mile.

When we finally got off the island, we were at Mile 20.  The good news was that we only had a 10K left to run.  The bad news was that we only had a 10K left to run.  Mile 20 and Mile 26 intersect at the end of the bridge back to the mainland.

Yep.  We were watching people sprint toward the finish when we still had at least an hour’s worth of running to do!  On top of that, the final 10K is an out-and-back, which means that every step of the first half, save one quarter mile turnaround loop, we were watching people pass the other way who were literally miles ahead of us!

Just before Mile 23, we hit the Wall.  Har, har.  A little distance runner’s humor come to life.

And then, WE were the ones running toward the finish and passing people going the other way who were miles behind US!  I think I even managed to smile at a few of them.

And, then, we passed Mile 25.

And, then, Mile 26!

At this point, I was so excited to be this close to the finish line that I just took off.  The closer I got to the finish line, the bigger the crowds got, and they were all cheering.  I ran off and left Mike (not very nice, I know), who was still snapping pictures, and I managed to sprint to the finish.  I was the only person crossing the line, so the announcer even said my name!

It was totally awesome.  I can’t even begin to describe what it felt like to cross that finish line.

Mike came in about 20 seconds later, an incredible example of gutting it out.  This race about killed him, but he finished!

Mission:  Accomplished!

Mission: Accomplished (Part One)

Well, I did it…the Quad Cities Marathon is history!

Here are the quick facts.

1.  I finished in 4:27:02.  As my goal was to finish in under 4:30, I was very happy with my time.  My official clock time was also under 4:30, which was an added bonus!

2. I finished solidly in the middle of the pack:  24th out of 43 in my age group, 114th out of 238 female runners, and 402nd out of 656 total runners.

Here is Part One of the story.

I ran with my running group at 7:15 on Saturday morning before heading to Elijah’s soccer game at 9:00.  After three ties and a loss, his team finally scored a victory!  Then, we packed up and headed over to watch about an hour of a tae kwon do test, as the kids have a friend who was getting his black belt that day.  At 1:00, we hit the road for the Quad Cities.

For those of you not from around here, the Quad Cities consists of, as one might guess, four cities at the natural Mississippi River boundary between Illinois and Iowa.  Moline and Rock Island are in Illinois, and Bettendorf and Davenport are in Iowa.  There is also Arsenal Island right in the middle of the four cities, which has a military installation, a golf course, and a visitors’ center.  The QC Marathon touts “4 cities, 3 bridges, 2 states, and 1 island, all along the mighty Mississippi River.”

Yep, that about sums it up.

We arrived in the Quad Cities around 3:00 and went to our hotel in Bettendorf, Iowa.  While the room was tiny and dated, it offered a shuttle bus to the race, a nice pool, a big hot breakfast (which Jeff and the kids would enjoy), and, upon request, a 2:00 p.m. late checkout, so that I could get a shower after the race.  It was also across a couple of parking lots from the three-mile marker of the course, which meant that Jeff and the kids could easily walk over to cheer me on!

We were meeting the Fiedler family over at the expo center in Moline, Illinois, to pick up race packets and then going out to supper with them.  We had originally planned to eat at the Olive Garden (a nice place to ingest lots of pre-race carbs), but OG does not take reservations or do call-ahead seating on Friday or Saturday nights.  So, I called another Italian place, Biaggi’s, on the off chance it might take reservations and have something available.

I got lucky.  Biaggi’s could seat  nine people at either 4:45 or 8:30.  After a quick call to the Fiedlers to make sure the switch was OK, I snatched up the 4:45 slot.  Supper was now assured to be done in a timely manner with no waiting and a relatively early end.

Next, we headed over to the expo center for packet pickup.  We stood in three different lines to pick up our numbers and timing chips, get our race shirts, and then get the chips activated.  Then, we checked out the vendor booths for a little bit (I bought a headband that says “26.2” on it) before heading over to Biaggi’s in Davenport, Iowa.

Yep, we managed to visit three of the four Quad Cities the night before the race!

We enjoyed a great dinner at Biaggi’s with Mike, with whom I had trained for this race, and Robin and their boys.  Great food, great service…I think that Biaggi’s beats Olive Garden hands down!

After supper, we still had some daylight, so we drove a little bit of the course.  It is relatively flat but does have one hill between miles two and three, so I wanted to check that out.  (It was barely a hill…we trained on worse.)  A lot of roads were closed already and much of the course was on a paved walking/biking trail along the river, so we shortly headed back to the hotel.

Jeff opted to stay in the room and put Jeremy down, as Jeff was still pretty jetlagged from just getting back from Thailand the day before.  I took my Kindle and sat with the kids at the pool for an hour and a half.  By 8:30, we were all in the room, and, by 9:30, we were all in bed. 

Next thing I knew, it was race morning!  Mike picked me up at 6:00 a.m., so as to avoid my having to depend on the shuttle and because his hotel was only two blocks from the starting line.  So, I ate my yogurt, banana, and Clif bar over at the Moline Stoney Creek Inn and hung out in the lobby while Mike went to roust his family to watch the start of the race.

While I was waiting, my dad called.  He had come to visit on Friday and then spent Saturday night at our house while we came to the Quad Cities.  On Sunday morning, he drove up to watch the race and made it to the starting line shortly after 7:00.  When the Fiedlers came down, we headed over there and met up with him.  We had time to take a picture, and then we made our way over to the starting area for people who were planning to run the race at our anticipated pace.

There were four races lining up in the same place:  the marathon, the half marathon, the 5K, and the one-mile walk.  So, it was pretty crowded down there, which helped cut some of the windy coldness.  The weather forecast was not promising, but at least it wasn’t raining right at the start!  The mayor of each city and the general in charge of Arsenal Island all said a few words, a 12-year-old sang the national anthem, the race director wished us luck, and BOOM!  Someone shot a cannon, and we were off!

Rock and Roll

Wow.  I think that this weekend must have been the kickoff for fall running/swimming/biking events across the country…at least the parts of the country where I have Facebook friends.  Great job to everyone out there who participated today!

I ran the Morton Pumpkin Festival 10K this morning.  It was a final training run for my marathon next weekend, and I ended up with a personal best time for a 10K, coming in under 55 minutes.  The sky was overcast, and the temperature was in the mid-50’s'; add to that a flat course, and the combination was good for a fast time. 

As my runs this week up to today had been crummy, it was good to get in one good one.  The most I’m supposed to do this week is a few miles of jogging, which, after weeks and weeks of LOTS of miles, doesn’t seem like enough.  But I understand that my body needs this plateau time to build up for a strong race.

Charlotte also ran today in the 2-mile Pumpkin Festival race.  She averaged 8.5-minute miles, which I thought was pretty quick with absolutely no training.  Unfortunately, her running has taken a backseat to mine right now, as she neither has the desire nor would it be healthy for her run the mileage I have been doing!  But maybe she’ll pick it back up once this marathon gets done.

I confirmed our hotel reservation in Bettendorf, Iowa, this afternoon, where we will head next Saturday when soccer gets done.  I can hardly believe that race weekend is almost here!

Jeff leaves for Thailand tomorrow morning.  Nope, he wasn’t supposed to have had to go again, but that’s becoming par for the course lately.  This is the “trip between races.”  He was here for the 10K this morning and will be back Friday.  Poor guy.  He really doesn’t get much rest!

And that’s about all that’s been happening.  We did have a little adventure on the way home from small group last night:  a car that we think had just turned out of a bar didn’t manage to cross over to the correct side of a four-lane highway.  There’s nothing like seeing headlights coming toward you in a lane where that is not supposed to be happening.  Jeff blew his horn at the person, and we think we saw him pull over.  At least, we hope that’s what he did.  Yikes.

Have a great weekend!

We Remember

Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

I was at our first house in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  Charlotte was 14 months old, and we had just found out that we were expecting Elijah.  Jeff was working at Nissan and called me sometime after 9:00 to ask if I had the TV on.

I spent the remainder of the day, in between times of taking care of my baby, watching the devastation unfold.

Often, when we speak of 9-11, what we remember is this century’s equivalent to the JFK assassination or my generation’s Challenger explosion.  We remember exactly where we were and what we were doing, and I think that’s normal.  We are, after all, most immediately concerned with ourselves and those closest to us.

However, the stories of heroism in the midst of the 9-11 tragedy have also really stuck with me.  I remember Todd Beamer and actually looked up today what was going on with his widow, Lisa, whose book I read a couple years later.  (She remarried a couple years ago.)  I saw a photo in our county’s free newspaper memorial edition of a firefighter running through a tunnel to get to Ground Zero who perished shortly thereafter.  I listened to bits of different memorial services, in which people were reading names, including those of people they had personally lost.

As we don’t really have a TV, I haven’t been watching the extensive coverage leading up to today.  But I’ve found that even the little bit that I have read and seen via internet is more than enough to bring the horror of that day flooding back.  I’ve been surprised at how strong the memories are, not like something ten years past.

So, while this post is still littered with the first-person pronoun, I hope that my remembrance of today becomes less and less of where I was and what I was doing and more and more about the bigger picture.  I hope that I can put into practice Psalm 46:10, which our pastor read this morning in his words about 9-11:  “Be still, and know that I am God.”  I hope that I can always believe that God cares about what’s going on down here, even when it’s something as horrific as the events of 10 years ago. 

May God bless America.

Is It Really September?

As we finished Week 4 of school today, it really is.

A friend recently reminded me of the old saying, “The days are long, but the years are short.”  I’m experiencing this in an alarming way the older my children get and the closer I get to 40.  But, before I get maudlin, here’s an update.

On the home front, we have settled pretty well into our school routine, Jeremy notwithstanding.  Some days, he naps; others, he plays contentedly by himself; and, still others, he screams and climbs on the table and pulls on papers and books in a valiant attempt to be the center of attention. 

Charlotte and Elijah are coping remarkably well.  Charlotte can even do her spelling and writing while he crawls up on her chair and hugs her from behind.  Elijah spends a lot of time yelling back at him to “PLEASE BE QUIET!”  Elijah has some concentration issues if there is too much background noise, which is basically the constant state of affairs with a 17-month-old.

(Thedaysarelongtheyearsareshort.  Thedaysarelongtheyearsareshort.)

What helps this year is that Charlotte and Elijah really like what we are studying and the stuff they get to do, now that they’ve moved on up to the 6th and 4th grades.  This includes a lot more computer time doing research, practicing typing, and reviewing French.  It also includes some fun projects, like making Maori carvings in soap and learning Australian children’s games.  Tomorrow, Elijah will make a traditional New Zealand dessert to share (who’d have thought there was such a thing), and Charlotte will show us a Maori stick game using sticks she made out of newspaper. They selected these projects themselves, and I would bang my head against a wall having to do most any of them.  But they seem to be enjoying themselves!

Jeff got back from Japan last Friday and, so far, doesn’t have anymore trips scheduled.  Of course, that could change anytime, but c’est la vie.

I ran 22 miles last weekend, my last long run before the race on September 25.  I will run 13 on Saturday and then a 10K the next weekend.  As I shared before, I will be mighty glad to have this Bucket List event firmly behind me.

And those are our current events.  I hope that your school years and autumns have gotten off to a great start!  We are very much enjoying the cooler weather here after the scorcher summer.

Have a good one!