The Detroit Free Press Full Marathon. Is A Thing I Ran.

today was one of the more surreal experiences of my life. i suppose i haven't done that many surreal things, so.

the first thing to say is that if you decide you have to run a marathon, i highly encourage you to find a crew member: someone supportive, unquestioning and easygoing who will drive you to detroit, come to dinner with you in ypsilanti (yes! maria! see below why), stay overnight, get up at the insane hour necessary, walk you to the start, hang out on the course for 4+ hours, give you your water bottle at mile 10 when you need it, take it away for you at kilometre 40 when you don't want any other things in your hands ever, and collect you afterwards with a bag of warm socks and many celebratory noises... well, or someone who will provide analogous services. anyway: i chose my dad, and he performed all tasks with aplomb. he also did not make me listen to a single bad country music song on our drive from toronto! so, really i had won before i even began.

right now i feel like i recall the event in great detail, but i suspect they aren't all going to be important details in even a week. so i will try to be brief. and fail.

- i thought it'd be nice to have dinner in ann arbor with my dad the night before, because i lived there for a year and was going to show him around a bit, but just before we left detroit i happened to realize from the internet that there was a University of Michigan football game happening in Ann Arbor? and if you don't know about such things, which would be reasonable, let's just say you don't want to be leaving Ann Arbor on the highway at the same time as the 110,000 other people leaving the stadium do so. (THAT IS NOT AN EXAGGERATED NUMBER. LOOK IT UP.) so instead we drove past some stuff, and then i said... let's ... leave. and so we ate in nearby ypsilanti and it was just great.

- you will recall that every other morning i have run first thing, it's been pretty icky, right? like even friday morning, my very last pre-race run, i got up at the totally not-early-time of 8:30, and i did my 3 miles, and it wasn't till the end that i felt like i was maybe running normally. and i secretly thought: this 7am start time is actually going to be worse than i even advertised. and yet! ... today, i got up at 5:15 (i know), and i ate and coffeed (yes i brought my own kettle and aeropress coffee making system to this event, shut up) and so on, and we walked the 20 minutes to the start, and when we got moving at 7am (i got across the starting line at like 7:12), i had no trouble running at all. it felt totally easy, like i was running at 6pm. i guess adrenaline is a thing? but i didn't feel pumped up. i just felt ... pretty calm and ready, actually.

- as for mental state: i felt really quite shockingly under control for the first 11 miles. mile 11 i thought 'oh my god 15 more miles, surely this will kill me' and then i stuffed that down with ONE MILE AT A TIME, LADY and kept going. mile 13, the half marathoners left us, i had a twinge of WTF AM I DOING, and then got on board again. miles 14-16 i knew would be lonely, and they were (the only part of the course where you feel like you're just running down a street that demonstrates detroit's disaster of a post-apocalypse economy), and i turned on my music which definitely helped, and then miles 16-19 were good again. miles 20-22 felt sloggy, but doable; started wanting to walk but didn't (judicious application of more motivational music.) mile 23 started to feel like i was playing a sick joke on myself, but i knew my dad was waiting at the 40k mark so i told myself i just had to make it to 40k, somewhere between mile 24 and 25, and then it would only be 2k. seeing him my brain said YES DO THE THING, and then i turned the corner where you see the hilariously steep mile up to mile 25, and i told myself BY DO THE THING I MEAN WALK UP THIS HILL and so i walked, and that felt wise but not a defeat, and so when i got the mile 25 sign the hill was not quite over but i started running again, and though my brain really really wanted to, i never walked again. my legs were tired, but honestly they were no more tired at mile 25 then they were at mile 16, so i knew it was my head that wanted to stop and i suggested we just wait a bit. the last half mile, i turned off my music and i ran up this last goddamn hill SERIOUSLY? COULD WE NOT HAVE THIS HILL NOW PLEASE? I WAS LYING ABOUT THE LEGS FROM MILE 16 and i turned left and the finish line was two blocks away and i sped up, just a very little but i did it, and i passed a few people and i WON. ... no, wait, i mean i finished.

about 20 steps from the the finish i thought: huh. wow. i did this. i kind of don't feel anything, but i did it. ... and that felt just fine.

- this marathon seems to me a good compromise: between excited spectators and chill spectators (i kind of like a mix of both, and i liked the sign that said 'hurry! the kenyans are drinking all the beer'; between urban grit, art deco buildings, sunrise from high above the river on the Ambassador Bridge, Belle Island park in the middle of the detroit river, the actually pretty urban detroit waterfront (?!) -- and also the craziness of running through two border crossings meant only for cars, complete with underwater tunnel mile (pro tip: it's humid down there), and the novelty of border guards with megapho nes yelling out support and encouragement to thousands of sweaty people who haven't declared anything. the scenery was really quite varied, and actually i really liked almost all of it. even Windsor! i really liked Windsor! ... it's not a pretty town, i'm sorry to say. but the course was well thought out and the spectators were pretty cool, considering it was like not yet 8am on a sunday morning, and they were out offering orange slices and playing rock and roll on their lawns. meanwhile at miles 16-18, i counted four different houses with people offering us shots of beer, from kegs or bottles. party in the D, they know what they're doing.

- one additionally terrific thing this race does: before every water/gatorade stop, of which there are TONS, they have a sign telling you it's coming up, and on each sign they tell you how far the next one is. i want to hug whoever came up with and followed through with that plan.

- as for my physical state? you know: really, not bad at all . i'm fairly shocked, to tell you the truth. at about mile 23.5 or so, i felt my right knee say: hey, you know, you sometimes have IT band problems, remember? yeah, so, you can't go any faster than this and you might want to actually go slower. i was more careful with form after that, and it mostly stopped hurting in the last two miles due presumably to adrenaline, and now it's definitely sore. there has been ice. but when i crossed the finish line, i didn't cramp, i didn't sob, i just smiled at people and got a medal and a space cape and stuff. and then i walked for ages to get out of the shute crazy area, and then more ages to meet up with my dad (because we were on opposite sides of the runners at this point) and then additional ages back to the hotel ... and i was really ok. eventually we met up with my other half, and i drove us 90 minutes home (other half is coming off a doom migraine) and it was only when we got here that i really wanted to ice my knee. i know i'll be creaky as shit tomorrow, and i would not advise you to look at my right pinky toe if you don't like blisters, but the general effect is not tragic in any way. considering i ran 10k farther than i ever have, this seems faintly absurd.

- oh, i should tell you how i did! you maybe remember my goal was 4:20 or 4:30? nailed it! chip time: 4:25:24. i spent most of the race just ahead or behind of the 10:07/mile pacer, and indeed my overall pace was 10:07 exactly. the internet tells me i came in 99th out of the 310 women aged 30-34, and 1862nd in a field of 6100 or so.

... does that strike you as really quite high in the standings? who are all these 5+hour marathoners? like, more power to them, but i would not have thought i was above average at that pace! at any rate, i feel like i was totally right to be as conservative as i was -- presumably i could have run faster, and hated it way more, instead of only hating some bits of it briefly. also i might have hurt myself in the middle, the worst, or hurt myself but run through it so as to create long lasting injury, the double worst, or i might have made it to the end in one piece and then collapsed, vomited, or experienced whatever other horrible things happen to those people who say they 'leave it all out on the course'. ... i left some of it for myself, which i like because now i can still use it.

- in conclusion. ... are you going to ask me if i'm running another marathon? here's a good idea: don't do that.

it went so well that i can imagine thinking it's a good idea to run another one. BUT I DOUBT IT IS. ... i know myself, and i could easily imagine thinking i should do another one, train better, run it faster... yeah, no, buttercup, bring it down a notch. enough of this for a while. i'm running 15k of a 30k relay in march, and i'll probably run a half in february and/or a hilly 10 miler on boxing day, but right now i am going to focus on eating like a person who doesn't run 16 miles on the weekend, and get back some arm muscles, and stuff like that. i like the idea of running a trail half marathon at the end of next summer (there's a September one in Edmonton where I'll be living again), which i was once signed up for but then had double retinal surgery instead (a surprise lateral move, i think you'll agree).

so! i did it. i have a whacking huge medal, which i could see using as a brass knuckles substitute sometime if ever i'm in a dark alley with my race medals, and a pretty cool shirt, and a bottle of Detroit Mercy Hospital hand sanitizer. and a sore right knee. and a pretty big smile.

it was a pretty good day.