I had a plan in place for this summer. It included a couple of shorter races, namely the Door County Half marathon and the Blue Mounds trail run, to be followed by the Maritime Marathon in June. The marathon was the big one. My "A" race, and the one I would primarily focus my training efforts on. The goal was to improve my BQ time, so that come September when it came time to register, I wouldn't be on the outside looking in. The idea of having to train for and race another marathon just to improve my time by a few minutes seems silly to me, but if that's what I have to do then so be it.
Everything was going according to plan. I used my momentum from finally qualifying last October at the Whistlestop Marathon to jumpstart my training this spring, and training was going well. I kept trying to fight the feeling, and pull myself back down to earth a little bit, but my confidence was at an all time high. Times were getting faster, runs were getting easier: my body responded every time I pushed it. I felt ready, and was looking forward to the June marathon. About 4 weeks out from the marathon, I had just finished my last long run of 20 miles, and was looking forward to a taper and a few easier weeks leading into the marathon. After the long run, I took my typical 3 days off, followed by a few days of short, easy runs. Exactly 3 weeks out from the marathon, I started an interval session, which included a warm up, some 2 mile repeats, followed by a cool down. Pretty standard stuff, something I've done many times while preparing for the marathon. I completed my 20 minute easy warm up, and stopped to do some light stretching before I started my repeats. The first repeat went well, it felt good to open up the pace a little bit after running at an easy pace for the past week. Around five minutes into my second repeat, without warning, I felt a shooting pain in my right calf. (My mind went to the movie Forrest Gump when Forrest is running through the jungle and he gets shot in the buttocks and he says "something bit me!")(My mind is weird that way) It stopped me dead in my tracks. It wasn't a horrible pain, but I knew something was wrong. I tried to stretch it out and walk for a little bit, but it felt different than a cramp. I tried to jog, but it still hurt, so I called it a night. Unfortunately for me, I was about two miles from home, so I had a nice long walk to think about my plan of action. Thankfully it wasn't the middle of January!
When I got home, I did a little research on my problem in an attempt to self diagnose my injury. If I had a calf strain, a simple calf raise would hurt. But it didn't. If I had a soleus strain, a calf raise followed by a bend at the knee would cause pain. Ding ding ding. That was it. The remedy was what most runners hate to hear: rest. And ice. So that's what I did, around the clock. After the first week of rehab, I could still feel the calf was a little sore, so I decided to give it some more time to heal. My wife was asking me everyday how the leg was feeling and what my thoughts were on the marathon, and I told her I have no idea. My thought process went like this: running a marathon is hard enough to do when a runner is completely healthy, and I knew that if I had any chance of running the marathon (and pushing the pace for a PR, for that matter!) I needed to be 100% healthy. So I decided to give it another week of rest.
Exactly one week out from the marathon, I needed to know, one way or the other, how the leg was feeling. I decided to go for a short, easy run, just to test it out. If it still hurt, I was ready to pull the plug on the marathon. If it felt good and I didn't have any pain or discomfort, then, as I told my wife, we'll think about running the marathon. The run went well, no pain. I ran the next two nights, increasing my distance and running a little faster pace each night, and again my leg felt back to normal. But I found myself in a strange place days out from a big race. Normally I would be at the apex of my training, both physically and mentally. But going into this race, I was not where I wanted to be. Having the two weeks off, I knew I wasn't in the perfect running condition, which in turn threw off my confidence. In a matter of two weeks, I'd gone from feeling unstoppable and in the best running shape of my life to wondering if I even wanted to run the race I'd spent months preparing for. Again, physically and mentally, it's not where I wanted to be days before the marathon.
In the end I decided to run the marathon, telling my wife/cheering section "we'll just see how it goes". If I felt good, I'd keep going. If I felt any pain or discomfort in the leg, or if I was falling behind on my split times and therefore not have a chance at a PR, I would stop running and call it a day. In the back of my mind, I knew I didn't need to PR today. There would be time to qualify again and improve my time before mid September when I had to submit my qualifying time. What I didn't want to happen, or couldn't afford to happen, was to decide to run the marathon, push my body in an effort to PR and wind up getting hurt. In that instance, an injury would set me back (in terms of training), making a fall marathon almost impossible. Driving to the race, my wife and I set a goal: leave the race today healthy. Whatever happened beyond that, I was willing to accept.
Starting the race, I quickly fell into a groove and everything was going according to plan. My wife, who was like my personal water station, met me every 3 or 4 miles with a Gu and shot of gatorade. At the halfway point, I looked down at my watch to see I was right where I wanted to be. Almost to the second. So game on. But by mile 16, the fatigue started to hit me. The legs felt fine, but I felt that I was expelling too much energy to keep up with my split times. I told my wife, who met me at mile 16, that we'd see how the next 4 miles went and then make a decision on the rest of the race. Again, what I didn't want to happen was to push the pace and injure myself. At mile 20, the fatigue was worse. I again checked my pace, and I was about 30 seconds faster than where I wanted to be. The question was whether or not I had it in me to hold the pace (and push it for the last few miles). Fatigue, both mental and physical, is a given when running a marathon. That I know. But with how I felt, I knew I didn't have it in me to push the pace for another six miles. I was out of gas. Walking through the aid station at mile 20 with my wife, I told her that if we were at mile 23, I could muster the energy and dig down to race towards the finish. But I didn't have the 6 miles in me. The competitive side of me told me to "screw it, just keep going", while the coach in me told me to save it for another day. My wife and I both agreed that if I stopped now and saved my legs, I could resume training within days and leave healthy (which was the goal!), verses finishing the marathon and risking injury and/or delaying my training for a fall race. It was a hard decision, one that I have thought about many times since then, but I decided to drop out and head home. My wife and I looked at the positives: I just had a great training run and walked away feeling good.
Will my gamble pay off this fall? We'll have to wait and see.