My Life, As Told Between (Baby Cakes') Naps

The LA Marathon was yesterday. Of the three marathons I’ve done, this was far and away my worse one yet. I think part of it was that I’d eaten too early the day before and was starving even before the race started (despite my friend’s thoughtfulness in sharing her boiled eggs!). I then ate too much during the run in an effort make up for it, but it didn’t digest in time to give me any extra energy – just an upset stomach!

“Hitting the wall” is when you’ve burned through your body’s fuel and it feels like you can’t put one foot in front of the other anymore. In a marathon, this often hits around mile 20 because your body can only store a certain amount of calories to burn (or something like that, but more complicated). Although I generally find the last 6 miles of a 26 mile run difficult, I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never really “hit the wall,” at least not like yesterday. Yesterday, I felt like the wall fell on me around mile 15.

The new downhill course also did a number on my toes. I lost feeling in some of them relatively early on in the race. Combined with my waning energy, upset stomach and the unexpected heat, it was all I could do to keep running. Rather than enjoying the race, I spent much of it focused on just finishing. One. Step. At. A. Time. I finished in 05:23:17 and while I’m happy that I was able to finish the marathon without taking any extra walk breaks, I’m disappointed that I finished 33 minutes slower then my time last year and 48 minutes slower than my goal time.

I guess I’ve learned some lessons for the next race though (either San Diego in June, Long Beach in October or SF in October). And I was fortunate in that I finished without getting sick or needing an IV drip, which happened to some of the runners because of the heat. In any case, I’m giving myself one more day of semi-indulgence before I get back on my diet and attempt to destroy Fat Mikey (as I’ve taken to calling my belly)!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Running, Weighty Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.