Marathon Fail

Before I ran a marathon, I failed to run a marathon.

I've written about my marathon, and it remains one of my favorite blog entries. But I had only just started blogging at the time and I don't think I've ever written about my failed marathon. It was kind of heartbreaking for me. I thought I had done everything right. I had read books and Runner's World articles and online marathon training guides. I'd chosen a local marathon that was timed so that my peak training could happen in the spring. I mapped out four months worth of daily runs, with increasing long runs on Saturdays, and I transcribed my training plan onto a color-coordinated chart that I taped to the side of my bookshelf. I followed my plan religiously.

Every other Saturday I would wake up knowing that I was scheduled to run farther that day than I had ever run in my life. I opted out of Friday night social activities on those weekends so that I could go to bed early and get plenty of sleep, then wake up and be out the door at the crack of daylight (but I usually got very little sleep). I would carefully map out running routes that would loop just a couple miles farther than the last long run - out along Canyon Road, down to Will's Pit Stop and the Provo River Trail, up into Orem, back via University Parkway. After each long run I would spend the rest of the day exhausted and aching, barely able to walk. That was also when I first started having a really hard time fasting on fast Sundays. It hadn't occurred to me when I mapped out my runs that my body might rebel against running 15 miles and then going without food the very next day.

But I stuck with it. I may have spent my weekends tired and aching and hungry, but there was something really exciting about being able to say I had just run farther than I had ever run in my entire life, and to be able to say it every two weeks. That's not something I've been able to say even once in the nearly seven years since my successful marathon. I have no ambitions to run farther than 26.2 miles, so I may never be able to say it again.

The other time I didn't run a marathon.

But this was not my successful marathon. Six weeks or so before the marathon date, I set off on my third to last long run. I planned to run 19 miles, and I felt confident because I'd run 18 two weeks before that. But a couple miles from home my knee started hurting so much that I couldn't run another step. I hobbled down the hill to Shop-Ko and called my roommate for a ride home. I was disappointed, but not worried. I'd had knee pain before and I knew how to manage it. I ran with a knee brace that week, and a week later I set out for another Saturday run and my ankle started hurting. By Monday I couldn't put weight on my ankle without pain. I wrapped it in an Ace bandage, cross-trained for a week, and then set out for a run the following Saturday, but this time I finished the run with a shooting pain in my hip. It was the hip pain that finally did me in. By the end of the weekend I could barely walk or sit or stand, let alone run. I went to the BYU Health Center, where my doctor referred me to the physical therapist, who assured me that I'd be back up to my full running strength by the marathon date.

I wasn't. A week before the marathon I could run barely two miles before my sciatic nerve* forced me to stop. I had already broken the news of my injury to my parents, who had arranged to come to Utah to watch me cross the finish line. The night before I was supposed to run my marathon, I cried, because I had done everything right as best I knew how and I had failed and there was nothing I could do about it.

This is one of my favorite life stories. Of course you already know that it has a happy ending, because the following May I crossed the finish line at the Ogden marathon. But I attribute that success partly (maybe largely) to my initial failure. I don't think I trained better the second time around, but I definitely trained differently. I listened to my body. I mapped out a rough timeline, but not a schedule, and I didn't worry about sticking to it. I ran long runs when I felt like running long runs, and didn't when I didn't. I never once went to bed knowing that I would get up the next morning and run for 15, or 17, or 19 miles, because I never felt like I had to. I didn't miss out on social activities, I got more sleep, and sometimes I did run 15, or 17, or 19 miles.

I certainly carried some baggage from my failure with me. A week before my marathon I panicked because I thought my hip was going to fail on me again, or that I just simply wouldn't be able to finish, and I felt certain that I would let down my family and friends and (worse) myself once again. But other than that week of panic, the effect of my failure was mostly positive. I was better prepared for success, both physically and psychologically. And while I wasn't getting the same I've-never-run-this-far-in-my-life! high every other week, I was enjoying the process a lot more. I was absolutely not doing everything by the book. Instead I was doing what I had learned from experience worked best for me at that time in my life.

I like finding grand narratives in my life. Life can be chaotic and sometimes the grand narrative is just not there (or maybe just not visible in this life). But when I do find them, I try to use them to understand things in my life that don't seem to have that grand narrative yet. This is one I've pondered many time since. I'd like to say that I've been pondering it lately because it reflects other aspects of my life, and maybe I could find some analogy if I thought about it, but it's nothing so grand. It's just that a few weeks ago I decided that this is the year to finally run my second marathon. I'm only now feeling comfortable enough with the decision to let other people in on it, but I've already picked a marathon and begun running long runs and pumping myself up. And it means I've been thinking a lot about what went wrong the first time, and what went right the second time, and what might go better the third time.

That leaves me without a really good ending to the story. Instead I'll just end by directing you (if you're interested) to the new additions to my book blog: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.




* This was not my physical therapist's diagnosis. He never was able to figure out what was wrong. I diagnosed myself several years later when my sister and I visited the Our Body: The Universe Within exhibit at the Detroit Science Center. The sciatic nerve on one of the bodies was labeled, and when I saw it I got excited and said to my sister, "That's it! That's where I was hurting!" I had long suspected the sciatic nerve, but none of the descriptions on running injury websites quite fit my symptoms. I may still have been wrong, but I felt validated.