Anatomy of a Race Gone Wrong

Two weeks after the California International Marathon, held annually on the first Sunday in December, I received an exciting email from the marketing team for the Eugene Marathon. They wanted to know if I was interested in working with them to promote the race and participate in the event.

My reply was an immediate, “Hell Yeah!”

This gave me opportunity to visit Tracktown, USA for the first time, including the new Hayward Field, and do a proper marathon build. The marathon has been my athletics achilles heal and I was ready to finally, mercifully, run it well.

Over the following three months my training was everything I could have hoped for. Nearly a dozen two hour runs. Plenty of marathon-paced miles. Pristine injury luck. Everything was falling into place. There was the occasional bad day, of course, but on the whole it was an exciting training cycle that primed me for a racing breakthrough. I had that feeling even more strongly on race morning as I waited for the starting gun to fire.

That breakthrough never came.

By end of the first mile I noticed my legs weren’t as energetic as I hoped. At mile two I was starting to panic. I was gassed despite running exactly the pace I had trained to run. I took a three minute walk break to reset myself. I was in disbelief but I worked to stay positive. After running again, my body quickly revolted and I fell way off pace. Just before mile four it became clear that I had a decision to make: Either walk/run the rest of the way or stop and walk back to the start.

I was gob smacked by this choice. Why? How? What was going on? I had started conservatively but it didn’t’ matter. My mind was swirling with every self-defeating thought that had ever found purchase in my runner’s mind.

I didn’t have the heart to spend the next six hours trudging to the finish. I slowly made my way through the crowd of runners to the side of the road, turned around, and slowly walked back to Hayward Field. My race was over.

I spend the rest of that race, day, and week focused on one thing: What happened?

At first I assumed that I was sick. The symptoms must have been biding their time before they erupted later in the week. By Wednesday I could put that hypothesis to bed as I felt great.

Maybe there was something wrong with my bloodwork? I took an InsideTracker test to find out. Turns out, the only thing wrong was my cholesterol. A huge sigh of relief washed over me as the more serious reasons could be dismissed. Not only was I healthy, my bloodwork was better than ever. My training had done the job perfectly and it was a great thing to know for the future. But did the future include a marathon after another disappointment?

Ultimately, it appears that the culprit was the same as it has always been. Me.

My best guess for what went wrong was how I scheduled the weekend. I spent my time laughing and tell stories with friends and doing live shows for the race. I was swept up in the energy of the weekend. Not merely swept up in that tide, I tried to increase that level by sharing my excitement with everyone I met.

It was one of the best experiences of my professional and running careers but it came at a cost. I should have known better. The mental, emotional, and physical energy I expended on Friday and Saturday borrowed from what I needed on Sunday. It was a trade that I will not be making in the future. Yes, at another marathon - which I am determined to get right.

I would like to give huge THANK YOU to InsideTracker for helping me figure out what is going right and wrong with my body. You can save 25% off all of there offerings by using code RAMBLINGRUNNER at checkout. Believe me, it’s worth it.

www.insidetracker.com