Turned out I'd partially torn my Achilles tendon while messing around with Kekai, swimming through an undersea arch in July 2016. I'd kicked a coral head above my head (didn't realize I'd floated up so high). It hurt enough that I put off the start of marathon training until August, but at that point decided that I'd better just run through it (it only really hurt for the first 3 miles plus while running up the crater walls); lots of ice and I was fine. Saw the Dr. the week after the race and he decided that if I'd been able to train for a marathon on it, it couldn't really be that bad. At the beginning of this month, they finally sent me to an orthopedist who had me immobilized in a cast within 15 minutes of walking in her door.
I did it! For many years now, I've been saying that the year I turn 50, I'll run a marathon. Well, this was the magic year, the Honolulu Marathon was run two days after my birthday, and so I started training this summer and did it last Sunday, December 11, 2016. There were several reasons to run: 1. My dad did it when he turned 50 2. Gotta do something to celebrate that milestone 3. My Mom is the 3rd (that we know of) in her lineage to carry Hereditary Spastic Paraplasia (HSP). Her father and his mother both appeared to have it and she and her half-brother were both diagnosed with it. That means it affects about half the offspring of the affected individual and I have a 50% chance of also carrying it. The good news is that symptoms don't show up until later in life (between 55-60 years for my mom), so I figure, might as well live life as if it's coming and do all the things I can now. Here are some photos of the day: The race was pretty crazy. I figured I'd be over 5 hours so started in that part of the lineup. But everyone else starts way ahead of their projected time, so I spent most of the race weaving in and out of slower participants. Some, like the five women who'd tied themselves together, were really hard to get by. Others (like the guy playing Christmas carols on a tuba that was decoated to look like Big Bird -- he took turns walking while blowing then jogging with the tuba bouncing overhead) were inspiring. By the end of the race, my watch said I'd run 27 miles (the course is only 26.2 miles), so there was quite a bit of weaving around that I had to do. And then, at 10k, just as it was starting to thin out and I had almost hit a normal stride, I realized that I needed to pee. Waiting for a portapotty put me behind a good number of the people I'd spent the last 7 miles passing. And right after that we started up Diamond Head where the race went from 4 lanes to 2 and most people started walking. I ran most of that part in the mud on the side of the road so that I could get by all the walkers. The best part was that right after I crested and was starting back down the other side, the top runners started coming through in the lanes on the other side of the road. Despite the fact that they were running uphill and only had a mile or two left, they looked like they were expending as much effort as water flowing downhill. Beautiful runners. Oh yeah, this was 1.5 hours into the race and I still had 18 or so miles to go. Just on the other side of Diamond Head, the sun started to be a problem. It was low on the horizon and felt like someone was drilling into my head. Massive headache by the end of the race. Other than my potty break, I didn't stop. Even at the water tables, I was darting in, throwing it back in 2-3 slugs and keeping going. But at Mile 17, that fell apart. There were so many people at the table (I think this is the point where a lot of people plain run out of steam) that I could grab a cup and keep going: I had to force my way into the scrum and then couldn't easily get out. At that point, I decided it was fair to walk the water stations, so I grabbed a cup of ice, combined it with my water and walked until I'd finished sipping down to the last ice cube. Around Mile 20, I was so hot that I decided it was OK to walk the worst sun areas so I started speed walking though the sun, then jogging again when I got to dappled shade. I think it was probably a good idea, but it was always a mind game to start to run again. The other runners were awesome. Lots of Japanese tourists (these massive tours take people to the run and take care of them before, during and after). A lot of them dressed for the occassion: I saw several brides, Pocahantas (running in little strappy leather sandals!), and a lot of other costumed runners. Darth Vader was my savior. He was dressed all in black with a giant plastic helmet. I caught up with him in the hot, hot lowlands of Hawaii Kai and he kept me going because I figured if he could run it with that helmet, I couldn't possibly be as hot as I thought I was (I did find it funny that the next day the paper interviewed the top runners and #1 & #3 for the women both said that the heat made it hard for them on this race -- considering that they finished over 3 hours ahead of me, I figure I was a heat-tolerant super-star). Honolulu residents were also super-cool. There were at least 3 houses and one park where groups were playing music: everything from a rock-a-billy band to a single guy playing Hawaiian songs on his steel string. So very awesome. And at two points there were people handing out beer! I couldn't have had any without crawling under a tree and calling it quits, but it was super-nice nonetheless (and a lot of runners are more tolerant beer drinkers than I and took them up on the cold frothy brew) I was pretty much wasted after the run. I couldn't even eat anything except a banana for 5 hours (at which point we went out for Korean BBQ which did wonders for my energy level), but, amazingly, I woke up on Monday feeling great and not sore at all. We took the early bird flight back to Hilo, had a big Ken's breakfast, got the kids to school, I went for a swim, then put in a full day at the office. Crazy. So, 50 years, 1 marathon. We'll see how I celebrate my 100th. (below, a few photos from the trails I used for my training runs. Despite running up crater walls, I was quite a bit faster in my solo Volcano trainings, too crowded in Honolulu to hit my own pace) |
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