I did my first half marathon yesterday at the annual Gold Coast Marathon weekend. All I can say is, what a train wreck. Following on from finishing it, I must admit I was devastated. I went into a state of depression for about 2 – 3 hours. Its the day after now tough so I thought I’d write about it.
Firstly, as per the entries in this blog, along with all my other training, I have been doing a lot of running for the half marathon. This included weekly stock runs of about 8.5kms, fartlec sessions and hill runs, and in the last 6 – 8 weeks, longer runs once a week. Our longest run was in Melbourne on 20th Jun and I ran about 17km with Moana, along the beach. So I had done a fair bit of work.
The week before the race is a tapering week. I did my last longer run on Sunday – 1 hour and 20 minutes. Then I had a swim on Monday, a ski paddle Tuesday a 6km run on Thursday and that was it. Diet the week before was carb loading. Lots of pastas, potatoes, rice, along with wholemeal breads and cereals, fruit and vegies. I noticed around Wednesday I had a bit of an irritated throat. Nothing serious and it never got worse. The dry, scratchy feeling was with me most of the week though. Also, on the Thursday before, at one point I noticed it felt like I had something yuk in my lungs. You know, the kind of feeling you get when you are in a dusty environment for a day and the next morning, feel like you need to cough the dust out. I only felt this way for half an hour or so and then didn’t feel it again.
The night before we had the life saving club’s annual dinner. It was an Asian theme so rice meals were on the go. It was cold though and I didn’t have a jacket on. I had a little bit of a sore throat and a dry cough when I left. I had been having echinacea and vitamin C in the preceding few days, so I threw some more down before going to bed at 10pm.
Race day. The usual 4am start, get down to the starting line, the gun goes off and off we go. The start pace where we started was slow. It was impossible to get to the 1 km mark within 6 minutes. I really need to get up further in the pack next time. I make the mistake of starting too far back every time. Kilometer 2, 3 and 4 I managed to peg back the time a bit, then at the 4km mark, the wheels started falling off. At about 4kms, my chest started feeling super heavy. It felt like it had really expanded and I could not get any breath in. This was a concern as through all my training, I never had an issue with my cardio or breathing, it was always leg strength that was the issue. Then I started to cough up flem. It felt like there was so much crap in my lungs and it had to come up. I continued coughing up this crap right till the end of the day – my throat was raw by when I went to bed last night.
By 7kms, to be honest, I was ready to pull out. I was so close to quitting and giving up. I’d been chatting to Rob, the mate I was running with, and I told him I was done. I kept going though, just trying to make it to each km marker. I walked through all the drink stations from that point, laboring to get my breath back.
From about the 13km mark, I started walking in longer stretches, this continued the be the pattern for the rest of the race. I think towards the end I was probably walking about 50% and running about 50%. I managed to finish, in 2 hours 21 minutes and 8 seconds. Having finished, I wandered around the finish area in a daze, I felt bewildered and confused. This lasted about 5 – 10 minutes. I felt like I’d failed, achieved nothing and was unworthy to even wear the finishers t-shirt I just picked up. I didn’t even want to look at the finishers medal. I did not feel like I earned it. I did not feel like I finished the half marathon. That was followed by about 2 – 3 hours of depression. At stages I was close to tears. All I could see was failure -
Now that most of the emotion has gone out of it, I have to bring some perspective to it. Clearly an illness of some kind has played a part. I have to recognise
- I was ready to pull out before even completing the distance of the “stock run” I was doing right from the start of my training – something clearly was not right.
- I experienced that chest heaviness and constant coughing up of flem, which I never experienced in any training session
- the depression I felt after the race, which I believe may have been another symptom, brought on by exhaustion
were symptom of something making it clear that I was not in a healthy state. In retrospect, there were warning signs leading up to the race, but because they did not develop into a full blown illness, I ignored them. Also, the cold of the Annual SLSC dinner would not have helped – I think a lesson learned – never go out the night before a big event, even if going out means no drinking and early to bed, as it did on Saturday night.
Today, I still feel a lot of disappointment. Its not a feeling of failure so much as it is deep disappointment that after all the training and work, I did not go into the race healthy enough to give it my best. To be honest, I am gutted – the thought of being so close to quitting so early in the race, when I’d been so much stronger in training, really fills me with frustration and disappointment. I guess all athletes have their bad days. I guess it means more to me as this was my first half marathon ever and it is a bad day from so few events, rather than one bad day out of many.
Moving forward, I think I need to get my mind in a place where it recognises I got through the race despite an illness, despite wanting to pull out and quit so early, and recognise that is an achievement in itself. Then I need to move forward, motivate myself for the next event.
