I ran my second half marathon in the beginning of this month and it was an adventure. It was on June 2 and was in Fontana, California. We got there bright and early in the morning and parked by the Fontana city council building. Along the road there was a line of yellow school buses and we loaded up in the buses and were driven up to the top of a little mountain. At the top we were at a nice tree covered little campground area and it was about 60 degrees. There my Dad and I waited, and waited...and waited some more. After about 1 and a half hours after we arrived via school bus we lined up the gun was fired. It is important to note that this particular race drops in elevation by about 2000 ft so my 6'5'' father took his long legs and left me in the dust.
At the start I was keeping about a 9:30 mile pace for the first 4 miles then slowed down to a 9:45 mile for the next two miles. The format of this race was very nice, every two miles they handed out water bottles, instead of cups, which was an improvement upon the previous races that I have run, and every four miles they had Gatorade. Those options made the race a lot more tolerable on my body as a whole.
In come the problems. Half marathon number one brought in a challenge, in that I injured my foot just 5 days before the race. I had a limp on race day, but it was almost healed. Needless to say the injury came back but finished, and in fact beat my goal in January. This race day was different, I started with 2 challenges, one was that I had not properly trained. After my first injury, 2 weeks off from running I never really got back in the saddle, so I ran, then didn't, then ran, then didn't. I was in shape enough to run the race, but not to do very well. Problem 2 was that around April, to prevent my Vibrams from stinking up our house we bought some socks called Injinji's which are made specifically for Vibram shoes. I started running with those socks and decided that I wanted to race in them...bad, bad idea.
I get into mile 5 and the heels of my feet are getting some pretty bad hot spots. The socks made the shoes tighter and the downhill made my feet slide around on the socks, which friction in turn caused blisters. Before I got to mile 6 I knew I had blisters, but I was still running better that a 10 minute mile pace so I figured I just have to keep this up and I will be home in 80 minutes. The pain just got worse and worse. By mile 8 I had blisters on both my heels and on both my fore feet, just under my big toes.
I had my own water bottle so every water station I would slow down and have someone fill up my bottle, which would last perfect for the next two miles, but by mile 8 slowing down hurt worse than staying at my then 10:15 mile pace. When I would slow down I could feel the fluids squishing around in the blisters. From mile 8 on I kept thinking that the blisters would pop soon and then I would be good to finish, but they never did, and the pain just kept getting worse and worse.
On top of the blister pain was the heat. I mentioned that the weather was great, it warmed up to high 70's maybe touching the 80's by the end of the race, but my body was so hot, I was sweating like crazy and continually pouring water on my head. When I run I usually don't start sweating a lot until I finish, then the water works come on, and I get dripping wet but ever since that race I have been sweating continually whenever I work out, It was kind of distracting having the threat of sweat drip into my eyes. (luckily that only happened maybe 2 or 3 times...it burns.)
Mile 10 comes and my run has dropped to an 11:30-12:00 minute mile, the pain on my feet is excruciating, and I am feeling like death is a great option, but I know they only give medals to finishers and I need my medal. My pace and form may be horrible, and the pain may be similar to the pain that those tribes man felt in the Temple of Doom as they were having their hearts pulled from their chests but it was race day, and I had a finish line to cross.
As for the rest of my body, I could have kept running, my lungs were great, my muscles were feeling strong, it was just my feet, those feet that felt as tender as an inspired love song, that kept me from keeping a good pace. It was the words of Bruce Jenner, which I was reminded of on my way to the race that morning, that kept me going. "Feet don't fail me now."
My pace never got much worse than a 12-12:30 mile, but I slowed down dramatically for the last 3 miles of the race. I came hobbling in at the 2:29:00 mark, passed the finish line, turned in my timing chip, got my medal, free post run food and cold water, found Jolynn and said "I have some blisters I need to get these shoes off." At this point I figured my blisters were pretty bad, some white quarter sized blisters on each foot. Boy was I surprised when I saw two blood blisters covering the bottom of my feet, much larger than what I expected. What is worse is that after all the pain my body went through to get to that finish line, it just stopped working when I sat down. I actually almost fell asleep. When it was time to leave I needed help wobbling to the car and started to get some cold sweats and almost passed out. I was in bad shape. We headed straight home, instead of going out to breakfast with my Dad's friends because of my situation. Got to my Grandfather's house, hot tubbed, showered and napped and was good to go, all back to normal. We even did a YouTube worthy blister popping, that covered a few paper towels with blood and within 3 days I was able to run again. The official finishing time was 2:28:47.
The two morals of the story are that blisters are way better than actual injuries because the pain goes away a lot faster, and you never quit on race day.
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