the melbourne marathon.

"I've learned that finishing a marathon isn't just an athletic achievement. It's a state of mind; a state of mind that says anything is possible." - John Hanc

"The difference between the mile and the marathon is the difference between burning your fingers with a match and being slowly roasted over hot coals." - Hal Higdon

About six months ago, I decided to register for my first full marathon. I'd already completed a half marathon in Seattle, and wanted a big goal to accomplish for the year (this was before I got accepted into grad school, haha...). The Melbourne Marathon festival looked like a fun race to be a part of, and the date was far enough in advance for proper training. I started gradually building up my weekly mileage (kilometrege?) and registered for the Run Melbourne half marathon as a mid-training goal. 

Everything was going surprisingly well, until about a month prior to the race. A few days after my 18-mile training run, my body started rebelling, and I had to scale back my running adventures to avoid excessive injury. I did a bit of cross-training (signing up for some free trials at nearby gyms... memberships are expensive!), only ran every few days, and the final week of my taper was a quitting-cold-turkey event - far from ideal. But I had already completed every long training run, and decided it would be a shame to not at least try running the marathon.

I set three sensible goals for myself:

1. Finish! <-- most important

2. Beat Katie Holmes' time of 5:29:58 (because who doesn't love a celebrity controversy?)

3. Run fast enough to beat the "slow marathoner" cutoff, where the race marshals would start directing participants to a separate area, where they would run four laps around the finishing grounds to make up the lost distance at the end. Apparently this was a new thing they decided to do this year for traffic purposes. No shame in being slow and steady, but if there was a weird cutoff like that, I wanted to at least try to beat it.

obligatory pre-race gear-gathering snapshot

Because we don't own a car, we're always at the mercy of public transit, which doesn't run early on weekends. Walking from our apartment to the Melbourne Cricket Grounds would take over an hour, and I didn't want to exhaust my legs before even reaching the start line. Fortunately, the marathon website had information about the Night Rider bus (a mode of transportation that drunk people use to get home safely on the weekends). Apparently the bus would be making an extra stop at the MCG, which was perfect, even though it would put us at the start area an hour and a half early.

Ben and I woke up at 4am-ish and caught the Night Rider bus with no problem. There were other marathoners on board, so I knew we were in the right place. However, once we reached Federation Square, one of them asked the bus driver when we would be arriving at the MCG, to which the driver replied, "What? No, I'm not going there, traffic will be awful! But you guys are runners, yes? You should have no problem walking." Ugh. The 1.4 kilometre walk from Fed Square to the Rod Laver arena wasn't ideal, but served as a good warm-up for me - and at least we had plenty of time to get there.

Once Ben and I found the starting area, I got to work - making sure my shoes were tied, tucking my energy gels into pockets and my waistband, pulling on my knee sleeves, testing my Garmin GPS watch. I used a Sharpie to write some cheesy inspirational phrases on my left hand, and asked Ben to write a nice message on my right hand.

having Ben's handwritten encouragements on my hand helped get me through some tough moments! 

Ben asked me how I felt. "A little nervous," I admitted, "but more curious, you know? Training was horrible, and I've never run over 20 miles before. Who knows what will happen? I'm looking forward to having my own marathon story!"

heading into the race corral

pre-race jitters!

There was a lot of positive energy at the starting line - announcers getting us pumped up, loud music, a teenage girl singing the Australian national anthem. And before we knew it, the gun went off at 7am and the Melbourne Marathon had begun!

The weather was very warm, hitting over 80 degrees fahrenheit by mid morning. It was the kind of day one should spend enjoying cold drinks on a porch, and not so much running for hours on end - but I'll take sunshine and blue skies any day.

The Melbourne Marathon had over 30,000 participants in five events this year - there were runners of all distances, and multiple event signs everywhere. And of course, the roads were probably traffic nightmares. I felt legitimately bad for drivers that had places to be - but they had been warned!

Ben was able to track me with an online app, which was pretty cool. It worked well in the beginning, but then something went wrong and it started putting me way ahead of my actual progress ("No offence," Ben later told me, "but I didn't really think you were running that fast..."). Oh well!

I'm one of those people who can't enjoy running without music. For races above 5k, I always make specific playlists, assembling songs with purpose, lining them up with potential milestones. I usually choose upbeat, motivational pop songs, hoping they might push me to run faster - but for my marathon, I knew that pacing would be crucial. All of my marathon-running friends had given me one piece of advice: DO NOT start the race too fast, otherwise you'll end up paying for it during the last miles.

So I split my mix into two parts.

I titled the first part "you can,"and purposely used mellower songs that wouldn't push me to run too fast - but not just any songs. I wanted to travel back in time. I wanted to forget about myself in the moment, running to the soundtrack of old songs from middle school mix tapes, high school mix cds, songs by "indie" musicians introduced to me in college. I wanted to retrace my steps from the suburbs of Jersey to the Great Lakes of Michigan, the bars and beaches of South Florida to my outdoor adventures in Washington State (I've lived in a lot of places). I used songs by bands of the 90's and 00's, from musicians I knew personally, broadway musicals, movie soundtracks, anything and everything. I wanted to remember significant life events - good memories, and bad stuff too. Especially the bad stuff: irrational decisions, heartbreak, mistakes, misunderstandings. I wanted to remind myself of how far I had come, how far I had yet to go in life, and how both significant and insignificant running this marathon would be in comparison to everything else I hoped to accomplish.

And most of all, I wanted to remember that no matter what happened, I was running my first marathon, in Australia, with the love of my life waiting for me at the finish line. I have been very blessed in my life. And I am also kind of crazy.

The second playlist was titled "you will," filled with an hour's worth of my usual inspirational running jams: Katy Perry's "Roar," All-American Rejects' "Move Along," Kelly Clarkson's "What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger)," among other "you can do it!" anthems, hoping they would propel me forward during the hour I would need them the most.

songs from my marathon playlist

Because of my training, I had no idea what to expect for a personal marathon pace, so I started with a very slow jog. It was tempting to go out strong and proud during the first few miles. It was even tougher getting passed by everyone and their mother; and then people dressed in elaborate costumes, like an adorable pair of neon-green squid-people; and then finally, a runner in a full Spider-Man suit, clutching a Spider-Man plush toy and carrying a giant backpacking backpack. I was definitely crawling, but I kept telling myself not to push it - I hadn't run at all in over a week, and if I wanted to finish, I needed to pace myself like a sloth.

The first 20k went surprisingly well, for what it was. Minimal pain, all limbs functioning properly. I'm actually doing this! I thought to myself, and by the time I had reached the half marathon point, things weren't too bad. Finishing seemed like an actual reality now, so I started thinking about a new goal: trying for a sub-5 hour time (according to the Runner's World race time predictor, a sub-4:30 would have been a reasonable goal - but it doesn't factor in sub-par training!). I was on-track for most of the race - but of course, the strugglefest had yet to begin.

They say that a marathon is split into two parts: the first twenty miles, and the last six. They're not wrong. By mile 21, my bonus and very reachable goal of making a sub-5 hour marathon was slipping away with each kilometre, each water stop, each step. It was so frustrating, being this close to the finish and feeling like a giant lead robot. How was this possible? Even my Garmin was dying - apparently it's not made to last over 4+ hours. "Warning! Low battery!" it kept flashing. You're telling me, I thought wryly. And the kilometre markers weren't helping. Sure, 42.2 km sounds a lot more impressive than 26.2 mi., but running past numbers in the 30's was not helping my mental state. Plus, I'm a stubborn American - I wanted my milestones in miles!

Ben and I had agreed to meet up at kilometre marker 35, but because my tracker wasn't working properly, we ended up missing each other, as he wanted to be certain he'd catch me at the finish line. Which was fine, as I was pretty sure that if I stopped and saw someone I knew, I would not be in any mood to continue. I high-fived children, waved at babies, walked through water stops, dumped cups of it over my head (it was HOT).

At 38 km, my speed had significantly decreased, making my starting-line "crawling pace" look like a full-on Olympic sprint in comparison. This isn't racing, I thought to myself in disgust. This wasn't running, or even jogging. I was absolutely certain that I was bouncing up and down in the same place, like someone in desperate need of a toilet. It was outright embarrassing. The only way I could tell I was still actually moving forward was because I was passing people - devastated, exhausted marathoners who were trudging along on the sidelines. "Keep going, we're almost there!" I tried to grunt with encouragement, even though I knew it was all a lie. There was no finish line - it was a giant scam, a hoax, an elaborate labyrinth of torture. The course kept twisting and turning into unrecognisable locations... were we even still in Australia? After marker 40, the kilometre signs were gone, and we were in no-man's land. Bounce, bounce, bounce. Pain, pain, pain.

I couldn't believe I had actually paid money to do this.

As we neared the supposed finish line, and after my watch hit the 5-hour mark, I took more and more five-second walk breaks. When I wasn't walking, I was slow-jogging at a snail's pace, horrified at how little my body was responding to my mind, especially this close to the end of a race!

"Run! RUN!" said my mind. "It's really not rocket science!"
"@##!@$#@!" said my body. "!@%$#!@!!"
"Almost there, you're doing great, good on ya!" screamed the fantastic people on the sidelines, smiling and cheering. God bless them all. And the volunteers. Really, everyone was so amazingly positive, encouraging, reminding me that I was indeed moving forward, almost there...

And I did get there, eventually. As I turned the corner and saw the magical red posts of salvation, I managed to feign some kind of cartoonish running stride, like something from the opening credits of Baywatch. I figured, I should at least look decent for the cameras.

don't hassle the Hoff.

I crossed the finish line in 5 hours, 3 minutes and 27 seconds, legs and hips burning and throbbing. A kind volunteer placed a medal around my neck, and after some searching, Ben and I found each other - and the celebratory afternoon began.

"stretching" aka trying not to cramp

close-up of the bling.

pace band, Garmin stats (forgot to stop the timer per usual!), self-encouragement

5:03:27 is not a very fast time, and most people in the 3k, 5k, 10k, half and full marathon events were already done. By the time I had finished stretching and debriefing my body, there were no freebies or samples left - not even an apple! I was glad I had brought my own post-race banana from home. I guess it's all the more incentive to finish faster in the future...

So, I did it! I'm officially a marathoner. I beat my three goals and didn't fall apart during the race. I definitely have my very own marathon story, and it was a positive experience. A HUGE thank you to the Melbourne Marathon staff for putting together an amazing event; to all the volunteers for remaining positive, encouraging, and very very helpful; to all the people cheering along the city streets, holding up signs that made us laugh and smile, handing out jellybeans and spraying us with much-needed cold water; to all my friends and fellow marathoners back in the States, offering words of wisdom and advice, cheering me on from afar; and especially to Ben, who was cautiously supportive all throughout my training, who woke up with me at the crack of dawn and spent hours carrying my stuff, tracking me, documenting everything in pictures, and taking care of me for the rest of the day.

Finishing a marathon is definitely "a state of mind that says anything is possible." All throughout grade school and college, I could not continuously run one mile in gym class. I was not athletic, and was never really encouraged to try. But sometimes it's fun to prove yourself wrong, to do something you've never done before, to dream big. If you're thinking about doing one, I highly encourage it.  Definitely run a few shorter races beforehand, do your research, and use your brain when you train. It'll take a lot of time, a lot of effort, and probably a lot of pain - but if you really want it, you too can have your very own marathon story.

Will I run another one in the future? Maybe. Once my legs forgive me. Hopefully with more adequate training, and definitely a bit faster. But even if this is my one and only 26.2/42.2 - I'm a very, very happy girl.

:)

CK