Fun Exploits and Adventures

This race gives good swag!

The Bear Flag Inn

My new favorite place to stay greeted us with gobs of Daffodils, Chickens roaming the countryside and amazing-smelling Daphne by the front steps. The innkeepers were instantly our “new best friends”. The Calistoga B & B owners all got together and provided their racing “inn-mates” (ha ha ha) with a pre-race pasta feed. Now, I know a number of you have experienced various versions of the pre-race pasta feed, and to quote the napa marathon volunteer describing the offical pasta dinner to a potential diner, “it’s not about the food”. This one was quite different!

I am now going to go on about the food

Ok, something like 7 different homemade pasta dishes- two kinds of spaghetti, puttanesca, two kinds of

Who doesn't love Chickens running amok?

lasagne, two kinds of mac and cheese, fettucine, maybe something I forgot, 5 kinds of homebaked cookies, salad (ok, had to have some greenery), a selction of local wines, local beer from a keg and of course calistoga water, both sparkling and flat. This was at no additional cost to those of us staying at the Inn (making it taste even better), and they generously allowed us to smuggle Stacey in. We ate too much and enjoyed the engaging speaker (a race director from Victoria, B.C.).

Weather Report

The rain started after 8pm, and alternated downpour and sprinkle throughout the night. Our heater came on by itself, so we had some interesting noises to hear, but even the foldout bed was comfortable and I did sleep. I have proof of this because of the series of dreams that I had of different versions of this scenario:

Soggy me, running in a bag

*The alarm goes off and I start getting ready before Claire wakes up*

Five or so versions of the morning starting and things going wrong, or extra people in the room or something. When I really did wake up, it went completely differently from my dreams, and it all went perfectly well.

Race Day

The rain continued as it had through the night, which was convenient because now we knew how to dress. We’d stopped to get plastic rain ponchos on the way up thinking they’d be disposable, but let me tell you these things are GOLD! I’m totally keeping mine.

We were served possibly the best breakfast I’ve ever had before a race: oatmeal, tea, toast, fresh fruit and a poached egg.

My Third Marathon

Claire and I step in a puddle

There, I’m done describing food. We made friends with some other runners at breakfast and Claire got one of them to drive us to the start line. He was very nice and good looking and all that and got us to the start just in time to drop off our special needs bags. We found Stacey, who had stashed her car at the finish line and bussed in with the masses. We got in line for the porta-potties but then the gun went off, so we turned to the right and just started running!

Grey skies, slick roads, brightly colored jackets, some umbrellas, but mostly plastic slickers were the scene. We were chatty and met new people easily. Alot of first-time marathoners there!

The first 10 miles were very fun, and I felt good. Most of this time I ran with Claire and Stacey, and we picked up another pacer at the start. By the 10 mile mark, I had fallen off the “pace train” and that was the end of running with the group for me.

The rest of the race was alot of pain and suffering. My theory is that I hadn’t quite recovered from having been sick. I did train for this race, but it did not feel like it. Ow ow ow. I kept my heart rate between 85 and 90%, which is normally a fairly good clip, but around mile 15 I noticed that even though I was running, I could barely keep up with another racer who was walking (not even race walking, just normal), and my heart rate was 90%.

Keeping Going

Since I wasn’t having the race of my life, I reconsidered finishing at every mile marker. Everyone around me was worried about making the 17 mile time cutoff. I made the cutoff with time to spare. ok, so I’ll keep going then. Let’s see if I can make it to 20 miles. It seems like forever, but look, there’s the sign.

The gang at mile 10... the adventure continues...

Well, there’s no place to sit and wait for the bus (and it’s still raining anyway) so I’ll try to finish. it’s jsut a 10k left. After what seemed like 2 miles later, there was a sign that said 20.7 miles. You’re kidding. Every mile after that was interminable. The landscape, which was generally green and beautiful, was at this part of the course a vanishing point which never seemed to end. I attempted to pace with a runner who was doing run/walk intervals but now my muscles were so gone that I could not control my legs for a walking pace. Slow trudge it is! On my own for the most part now, I definately struggled to keep a positive attitude, but whenever another person came up, it was very easy to be cheery.

Eventually I came across the finish line, and Stacey and Claire waved me in. I wobbled in the direction of hot soup which was the right thing to serve on such a stormy day!

The post-race slapstick comedy routine

Runners in the mist

I planted myself in cafeteria and shared race epilogues with my fellow finishers. Stacey and Claire went to get the car. Ok, well I guess Claire went to get Stacey’s car, but came back some time later without the car and without her shoes. “Is your car at the church?” “No” “Well, that’s where my shoes are” “Um, Okay…”  Stacey goes to get the car. I get up from my chair and I am fused into a permanent sitting position. It takes a full minute to get to a standing position. I  lurch out to the parking lot.

We changed clothes in the car, which “seemed like a good idea at the time”. Normally it takes an amount of coordination to do that, and of course we didn’t have any at that point, so we’re sticking to the clothes, unable to work buttons and laughing uncontrollably.

Goals

Well, I didn’t remotely make my time goal, and I’m kind of mentally throwing out this finsh time so I don’t mar my precious statistics. (which is funny because me doing a marathon at ANY pace is a huge accomplishment).

Here are some things that I learned from this experience:

• Please allow more time to recover from illness before attempting a 26 mile run. You will be happy you did.
• Plastic rain ponchos will save your life.
• Apparently I won’t stop a race unless I am forced to do so. I swear I’m not a glutton for punishment or anything.
• I’d rather be cycling.

Here are some race highlights:

• The landscape was really very pretty. I wanted to stop and paint. Well eventually, I just wanted to stop, but the colors were deep and intense: bright green grass and hills with smatterings of yellow daffofils and mustard. Bits of lupines poked through and the grape vines drew picturesque lines across the fields.
• The runners and supporters were all out and happy despite the rain. A special shout out  to all the runners I paced with, and all the supporters who don’t know me from a hole in the ground, but said some very very very nice things that I appreciate very much.
• The man in the red shirt who I saw alot because he was more interested in taking pictures of the landscape than finishing the race quickly.
• I passed a girl who was lurching on two cramped up legs. She was also freezing (no poncho). Some people drove by and handed her a jacket, even though they didn’t know her and she couldn’t return it.
• Probably there are more, but are you still reading this?

The end of my story

Because our fabulous innkeepers let us check out AFTER the race, we went back there for hot showers. (it was a clawfoot tub so they had a metal railing on the wall. I was cracking up because I COULD NOT get into the tub without it!) They also gave us commemoritive wine glasses.

As per tradition, we stopped at a burger joint on the way out of town. Because this is the Napa Valley, it was a gourmet burger joint with a wine list and fresh made everything. My story ends with the best Chocolate shake ever, and beautiful, beautiful fries.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 8:49 pm and is filed under Marathon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.