MY FIRST MARATHON part 1

I ran the 2010 Las Vegas Rock n Roll Marathon. I ran the full marathon which is 26.2 miles. You don't really realize how long that is till mile 25. It was my first marathon. I ran the course in a pair of Vibram Five Finger Sport Treks. Those are the shoes with the toes for those who have not heard of them. The Sport Treks have a bit of rugged tread on the bottom. They are zero drop and no padding. I have been running the VFF's for the last year and I figured I better not change anything before the day of the marathon.

I learned a lot about running, marathons and myself during this experience. One thing is that I brought to much to run with. I had my iPhone, 2 Gu's, 2 small containers of brown rice syrup and some fruit jerky. I know realize I didn't need any of that. They passed out salt within the first mile, which saved my ass later in the race. They also had Cytomax and water stations what felt like every mile. They had two Gu stations, one at about mile 6 and one at the end, about mile 18. They just lay them out on the table and you can take as many as you need. Water, Gu, and salt got me through the whole marathon. I wore one throw away tee shirt and I did just that. About mile 5 I tossed it. I really didn't need the shirt. I wasn't sure how long I would take to warm up. I didn't wear a hat. I wore sunglasses, I always wear sunglasses when I run.

Me and my running partner parked at a hotel across the I15 freeway and walked across the overpass. We fumbled our way to the bag check in and the gun went off. We looked at each other like one of us should have answer. We didn't. We worked our way to the the corrals only to see about 28,000 people who were not running so we realized everything was fine. We were in different corrals so we looked for our assigned corrals. We soon decided it was too much drama. We just jumped in corral 17 which was mine and started the race about 20 minutes after the gun. The beginning of the marathon was like running down Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras trying to find your drunk friend who disappeared in the crowd. There were so many people. The sides of The Las Vegas Strip were sprinkled with people holding signs and cheering. I felt like I had a good pace. In the back of my mind though, I was thinking I should be going faster. I didn't know. I didn't know anything about pacing. Most people write the splits on their arm in order to know how fast to pace from mile to mile. It wouldn't help in this marathon because the mile markers only displayed the total time from the gun. It didn't help us either because we didn't start at the gun so we could only guess what our time was.

I only made one bathroom stop at about mile 6. It felt like about 8 minutes in line. From there everything was fine till mile 18. Before mile 18 the Cytomax, Gu and sporadic cover bands rocking "Jenny I got your number" got me through. Then it happened. My left thigh started to lock up. I started to swing it back and forth while hopped on one leg. I started downing salt packets as fast as I could. I thought about snorting them. Anything to get my leg to work. Finally it did and I kept going.

Then, like a lighthouse in the Bering Strait I saw mile 25 and screamed. I was home free. Then it happened again. This time both legs locked up. I started to yell NO! NOT AGAIN!. I started downing salt again. The only thing I could think to do is run backwards. It worked. It changed the angle enough to allow me to keep moving and still give my legs a short break to loosen. My thighs decided to heed my curses and I turned around to make it to the finish line. About 50 feet before the finish line my Wife and 2 year old were cheering me on. It gave me a second wind and I sprinted across the finish line. Well at least it felt like sprinting to me. It probably looked like a slow motion reply to the rest of the world. I gave a guttural yell as I crossed the finish line. It was a great experience.

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You just gotta explain the blisters. Yikes!You didn't mention them in your report, or did I miss something?Did you not feel them? What's the other stuff there behind and beside the blisters...old blisters?
 
I am going to cover the aftermath in part 2 of the post. To sum it up, I didn't even know I had the blisters till I got home. They look a lot worse then they felt. The bottoms of my feet were fine. It was just the sides where the VFFs rubbed my foot. The other marks are old calluses that show the progression of improving my form. I have worked out a pretty good mid-foot strike over the last year, but the calluses remain from my old pattern. For my next trick I want to try completely barefoot.
 

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