Introduction

At the end of each racing season, I like to conduct a thorough, scientific review of my performances. In 2017, I competed in two Olympic distance triathlons, a Half Ironman, and a ten mile run. These data points, plus a litany of training swims, runs, rides and authoritative-sounding articles on active.com inform my review. Here are the results:

Bruh, compared to everything else, you suck at bike riding

Like really–it’s bad.

And also kinda swimming (wetsuits are your crutch)

Yeah heat is a death sentence

Running pretty okay



Action items:

Spend more time on da bike

Build lower body strength through lifting, spinning, and #1

Increase volume in swims, diversity in runs.

Sweet jesus do something about your flexibility



So what did I do? I SIGNED UP FOR A MARATHON. LOL. LETS DO THIS.

Training

A major part of signing up for this trot through hell was to see how my majority ice cream body would respond to running gallons of miles. Before starting this quest for early arthritis, I had never run more than a half marathon. If I was going to spend some hard-earned Chipotle money on a marathon, then I was going to fucking commit to some BADASS training plan that I could PUT ON THE FRIDGE to IMPRESS MY FRIENDS.

I would describe my effort as disjointed but admirable. I loosely followed Hal’s Intermediate 2 plan. In this case, loose can be equated to the Trump Administration’s attitude towards executive privilege: connected merely in name. I took non-trivial breaks for Christmas, and two ski trips in December/February. Putting my body through alcohol and altitude is something I’ve been training for my whole life but, unfortunately, it paid no dividends for this race.

I made sure I hit the 20 mile mark in training, was running about 3 times per week, and doing lots of cross training. In retrospect, I didn’t quite lean in to this race as maybe I should have. Despite all that, I showed up to the starting line with more irrational confidence than I could carry and a race goal of averaging 8:00 per/mile, and finishing under 3:30. What information did I use to come to this lofty, arbitrary goal? IDK, but if there are dudes out there #Breaking2, I should be able to break three and a half.

the path to insta glory and also a shorter life

This epic, like any good one, had three acts. It will go down like the plot of Interstellar: you really wanted it to be great, it was full of ambition and maybe even some promise, but when you REALLY think about it, it’s just long and stupid.

FOR THOSE WHO DONT LIKE WORDS–HERE’S A GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE RACE

race analysis: real talk edition

Act 1: 🤘

After posing for my photo shoot and also warming up, I made my way up to corral #1, and found the pacers for 3:30. For those who don’t know, many running races have dudes who run the pace required to finish at a certain time. This allows runners to not have to worry about their own pace, and instead just follow these sign-holding bros.

I had never used a pacer before, and found the experience to be transcendent.

These guys tell me when there are hills coming up, help me get GU’s, do their fucking jobs, and are humble about the whole thing? Whoa, if only there were some way to alter the time-space continuum and make pacers triathlon feasible. Also can we be friends and hang out and stuff?

After feeling nervous about my plan to stick to this pace before the race, I couldn’t have felt any better about it during the first 8 miles. We had that shit in cruise. Calvert Hill, which feels like Everest every time I run it during training, was a speedbump. I felt like a god. The sun was shining and there were insta likes were imminent. WCGW?

oh he scared

Act 2: 🤔

As we rolled through AdMo and Columbia Heights, I could feel mortality creeping in. We went up and down some kind hills and never went slower than 7:50 per mile. The pacers were crushing it, but our group suffered a few casualties. My ego absorbed these poor mortals and used them for fuel like that evil thing in Fifth Element. As for more tangible nutrition, I ate a GU around mile 9 (I also had one before the race, plus 3 cups of coffee, a banana, and cereal for you nutrition stalkers) which seemed to help.

yeah lady and I can’t dance whats your point

A word on the “Rock N Roll” angle of this race. I mean, if y’all aren’t gonna book people who can sing better than me, maybe just shelf the musicians and think about a rebrand. Seriously, they had me thinking about how much those poor bastards didn’t get paid to stand in the back of a pickup truck for three hours and freeze as a disengaged and pissed off audience cycles through.

ROCK N ROLL MARATHON SERIES: MUSICAL ACTS SO BAD THEY MAKE YOU FEEL GUILTY FOR RUNNING.

Fuck. Honestly–drop this crap and invest in some more portajohns. The standout performance was, without question, the Howard U drumline. I really hope they got paid.

“Ha-ha-ha-helllllp”

Act 3: 😭

Around mile 15, as our group passed Nationals Stadium, I was still deliriously thinking I was going to finish at this pace. I was getting tired, but the body was holding up, and if I could hang on until the last series of hills (around mile 22), I would be able to will myself to the finish line. YOU TRAINED FOR THIS BRO. LFG.



Coming down the bridge off on the South-East end of the Potomac, I could feel my left quad starting to tighten up. I kept cracking away as the pain started to escalate through miles 16, 17, and 18, until my other quad got in on the action, and I was forced to slow down. I was dropped like a bad habit from the pace group between miles 19 and 20.

Seeing the pacing team disappear into a future of internet glory was a gut punch, but the next hour was a demoralizing, soul crushing, march of death. Every step was like getting dead-legged. And then getting your dead-leg re-dead-legged. I was undead, and then forced to back to life, only to be killed again, thousands of times. It was a dumpster fire visible from space. If there were medical professionals around, it would have been malpractice to let me continue.

This is what “the wall” feels like in a marathon, I guess. Whoever advertised it as such wasn’t doing anyone any favors by masking the truth. If anyone knows who came up with this term, leave their contact info in the comments. Thx.



Conclusion

“find your next race…” fuk off

In other hilarious and also sad news, I took a wrong turn at the finish line and crossed with all of the fine folks who ran the HALF marathon. These people, which I of course tore down in my mind for being weak, are obviously much smarter than me, and also much more plentiful. Literally no one was crossing the marathon finish line when I was, while there were hundreds of half-ers cracking the line. Maybe I thought one of them would carry me? The reasoning remains unclear, but unfortunately this meant that my insta-boyfriend, who had suffered through 4 months of training and a long, cold morning in March, didn’t get to see me finish. I feel legitimately sorry that this happened. Sorry Lindsay–you came ready to play, I did not.

lol kill me

Will I do another one? Jesus Christ now I know how Elizabeth Warren feels talking about a 2020 POTUS run. I don’t know. Probably not. Sure, I’d like to get another crack at finishing the race without melting down, but the sacrifices of training are so, so real. The distance is as arbitrarily long as it is stupid. What’s the point? I didn’t exactly blow the doors off of anyone, so the small chance that this might be “my best distance” would be hard to justify. There’s probably just as much glory and social media fame to be had from crushing olympic tri’s and shorter running races. In the end, that’s all that really matters, so why put my body through this meat grinder again?

SO I CAN FEAST.

the clear plastic bottle with the blue top is tums so nbd. my body remains my temple.

And also because it was kind of fun? I set a very ambitious goal time for my first marathon, and failed to achieve it, but am nonetheless happy that I tried. It’s better to fuck up trying to be a hero than to succeed at being a coward–and in that warped reality I can PR every time. But it might take some serious coercing to get me back at the starting line for a 26.2.

Next race is the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler on 09 April. Me and Double Dinner Dan Paltiel are on #Mission69, which is of course a goal time of under 70 minutes, not whatever you were thinking.