My Colorado Half-Marathon experience

Dang. The alarm goes off, but I'm awake already, anticipating this unnatural series of tasks for days. It's 4:20 AM, and that joke was just about the only thing I was smiling at. The rest of the focus was on getting my race clothes on, padding to the fridge while guarding my eyes from all this GOD DAMNED LIGHT. Thinking about stubbing my toe on purpose. Hard. WHY am I doing this, again?

Twenty minutes later I'm pouring Gatorade into a saucepan and heating it up, because I think it'll deliver the sweet electrolytes that I'll need to continue standing upright until Dean gets here at 5:15am. Stretch this, exercise that. Meg and I exchange dumb looks. Guh. Tucker, our dog, is thrilled that we're all awake despite looking ten kinds of confused and tired. He's extra snuggly in the morning which makes stretching almost impossible. And I'd really rather just let him bury his giant white face in my outstretched arms than focus on the fact that, in about two hours, I'm going to start running, and I won't stop for what seems like forever.

Months earlier, friends convinced us to run in the Fort Collins Turkey Trot, a Thanksgiving morning race that goes for four miles. That run totally absolved me from any guilt at gorging myself for the rest of the day. So I had a nice association with running. I surprised myself, running the entire thing without any training. And if you never run, four miles seems substantial. Hooray indeed. So, when friends upped the ante with a little 'you guys should do the Colorado Half with us', Meg was all 'We're totally in!'. Very little thought went into this, but I am very happy she made this call. I wouldn't have done so alone.

Our training harmlessly began in February. It was never more than 50 degrees, and usually there was some kind of moisture, but it was always bearable. Thirty minutes here, four miles there. Lose a pound here, notice a new muscle there...it was all very exciting. Proudly we'd cross another 50-minute run off our little fridge-bound calendar. And then numbers started climbing. 6 miles. 7. We started trying to convince ourselves that skiing for a day was like running 7 miles. Or that if we skipped a day it wouldn't kill us. A friend told us that all she did to prepare for her half marathons in the past was to run 5 miles four days each week. So we tried that, until Tucker plowed into my knee at full speed (a little 'joke' of his), knocking me down and pretty much rendering me incapable of running more than 3 miles without what I call 'red-flag' pain. For a month. At this time, Meg also experienced problems running, and our commitment to this race was in jeopardy. You look at the training schedule and you don't see a bunch of 3 milers leading up to the race, you see frikkin 10's and 12's. I hammered through menu after menu of Egoscue exercises (this great stuff I'm into for pain relief and functional strength...egoscue.com if you're interested), gradually getting my knee in a better place. Meg and I decided to try some PED's (Aleve), which worked pretty well. Made it 7 miles with no discomfort about ten days before the race. So I decided to quit while I was ahead and just focus on strength and so on, while doing 3-5 miles three more times before the big day.

To Tucker's delight, Deano walks in as planned at 5:15. This sends my dog into such a frenzy that you just can't resist being psyched. Dean is ever resilient and positive, so he starts with all his cheerleading. 'You guys FIRED UP?!...How you feelin'? Ready to ROCK this?!' There is an energy to Dean this morning of his trying to convince himself that this is a good idea, and we're all right there. Dean: I brought extra underwear. Meg: In case you shit your pants? Ten high-fives. Sun's coming up. When we sit in the car we're all 'Holy hell, here goes'. Dean: FUCK YES!

We meet up with Toni and Dan (the original halfers) in line in old town, to bus our way up Poudre Canyon, roughly 13 miles outside of this cutesy little pedestrian area where literally thousands of racers will end up around 9am. It's 5:30 now. More talk of 'can you believe we're doing this? Jesus I feel terrible. Ooh, bagels!' So we're standing in a line of three thousand or so people, everyone's all jumping up and down and trying to stay comfortable. There are like twenty buses lined up all over, and the smell is insulting. There are cardboard boxes with bagels in them, just sitting there all over the place, and so no matter what flavor they are, they taste like burning tires. Glorious burning tires.

Also, keep in mind, who shits at 5am? That's right, nobody. The race committee is way ahead of us though, having lined up no fewer than a hundred porto-potties at the drop off point (heh)up the canyon, so when we get off the buses at 6am (a more reasonable time to poop, don't you think? Yes, you do!), we are hit NOT with the much more favorable odor of diesel exhaust, but what you would imagine 3,000 colons might smell like. I'll hold for applause.

So then we've got another 45 minutes to kill. All us runners are meeting eyes, looking down, jumping around, and admiring the scenery. Poudre Canyon is truly magnificent and only a few minutes out of Fort Collins. They give you this 'high energy' goo, which tastes like raw soda syrup, and once you stop shaking, it gives you what you need to succeed! or something.

The racemaster corrals us to the start, and the first marathoners pass our mob. It boggles my mind that these soldiers have run 13 miles ALREADY. TOTAL props to anyone who has run a marathon. He yells 'GO!' into his bullhorn, and we're off. And I have to pee. Before I know it, we're 2 miles in and waiting at a porto. There are maybe fifty people behind us as we leave the potty. So we canter off, down the canyon, feeling pretty awesome about life and our knees. For now.

Mile 6. Small groups of REALLY cool people are collected at turns, playing cowbells and cheering, holding up posters. I can't express my gratitude strongly enough to these people. Most of them were there in support of someone in their lives, but they were also cheering for me and Meg, and it meant a LOT. Meg has a tendency to speed up a little bit whenever we pass one of these groups, which didn't piss me off until mile 9 or so. I think she just wants to be in front of me because she's got an uncontrollable competitive streak, like look at me, I'm faster than him. Whatever, it kind of makes me want to give her a good shake.

Anyway, we take a sharp right and pass a few cheering sweethearts, but that slowly fades as I look ahead and see a hill that was bigger than any we trained on. This is where I had my big epiphany. I didn't want to run any more. Boredom, often my first saboteur, creeps in, and I'm all 'no!'. Get fired up! I eventually get to facing my core issue, which has been my reluctance to dig in and bring the A game. I can convince myself to 'save it for when it matters'. But I've been saving it since maybe junior year of high school, like 15 years ago. I'm on the precipice of marriage, hoping to have a family sometime reasonably soon, and I am WAY out of the practice of bringing my A game. I don't even know if I can access my A game anymore...that gland seems to have dried up and only I am to blame.

Let me introduce, now, my co-star in this, Meg. Meg has her dial set to 'A game' about half the time. Her first year of Grad school? 4.0. Her previously crippling fear of public speaking? Engaged and dissolved. Precious few people face their core issues like this, and these are the people whose legacy is unquestionably positive. This is how I want to be, and the wanting had to translate into action right now, halfway up this hill. Booyeah. I get to the top of the hill, and there's a water station, people dressed as clowns, cheering like crazy. Okay, maybe I was hallucinating, and there was more to that goo than I know. Whatever, I was high as hell and had concluded that I must now practice this A game thing for the rest of the race.

Soon we pass mile 8. This is significant because we never went more than 8 miles during our training. Each step was a new record. And our knees were starting to bark. Since that porto at mile 2, we have been passing people, which does good things for your mind too. Around mile 10, a particular douchebag yells out 'ON YOUR LEFT' as we're crossing this narrow little bridge. We get over to the right. With the kind of tone that makes you want to neck-punch the closest person, he goes 'ON YOUR LEFT, THAT'S WHAT THAT MEANS, MOVE OVER!'. I go 'Take it easy, pal', and he waves goodbye as he passes. I swear to you I almost took out a lifetime of frustration on this man. For the next mile I'm imagining knocking him down in the street and giving him a foot bath. And not the nice kind. I'm all fired up, and start to lose Meg a little, and she's like what's the deal? I explain my feelings about this guy, and whatever, it gets me to mile 11 pretty confidently.

Meg's poor knee is all kinds of upset, but again, she's all business at this point so there will be no stopping her. My knee ain't great, and I'm running out of strength. We commiserate about how weak we feel, but how excited we are for the finish (which is less than 2 miles away!!!). We confirm that we want to cross the finish line holding hands. Cute, right? We run through Lee Martinez park, on a paved trail, towards Old Town Fort Collins. We can hear some music in the distance, and soon we see the best person all day. This 8 year old girl is banging a stick on this metal gate, just going nuts, saying things like 'THE FINISH IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER!!! IT'S RIGHT THERE!!! YOU'RE ALMOST DONE!!! YAY!!!". It's true, there's the gauntlet, probably a thousand supporters, a guy reading names over the loudspeaker, and this huge blue FINISH sign. A few of Meg's friends are there, cheering for us...AND SHE'S OFF! Without any regard for all of the things we literally just said. 'I'm out of strength, I can't go any faster, I'm in so much pain, I'm all done'. And I let her have it (in a reasonably good-natured way). 'SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!' She's like two steps ahead, and delirious. You ever see a four year old in a crowd? Just a blank half-smile, gawking. We find each other's hands and she says 'I just saw friends, I get excited!' And I say 'I'm sick of your excuses!, 'it's my friends, I get excited, we're going downhill'...just slow down goddammit, I literally have nothing left!! GET OVER YOURSELF!!!' Yes, things get dramatic at the end of an early morning half marathon. For SURE.

We finished together, at 2:20:27. Would have been sooner if we hadn't porto'd it at mile 2, but whatever. My stats: 899th out of 1281, 67th out of 77 dudes ages 30-34 who finished. Sick! When I ran cross country in high school (junior year only), I finished dead last in the 3-mile course...technically I did beat two people, one of whom was bitten by a dog during the race, and another who passed out and had to be taken away in an ambulance. Come to think of it, over the years I may have made two people out of one story, doubling my achievement.

The rest of the day I was ass-bound to the couch, hobbling and unable to bear any weight on my right knee. Did I mention that my knee didn't hurt until Meg's 'Sprint to the finish' took more than I had to give? In a word, yes, I blame her.

A few days hence, I sit here, with no pain to speak of. And we're going to sign up for the 'Other Half' in Moab, UT this October. Gotta blend that A game into my routine! Bring your cowbells!