I think.
Maybe.
About the “happy” part, I mean, not the finishing. I did
finish. I’m not sure if I’m happy about
that, though.
Here’s what happened…
Race Day, Part One: Packet
Pick-up/Expo and Dinner
A childhood friend and the gal who got me into running Disney in the
first place, Nancy, also ran the race and graciously shared her villa at
Saratoga Springs Resort with me. So on
race day morning, I made the drive form home to WDW, found Nancy and unloaded
my car before we set off for the expo. Let
me tell ya – shopping the expo is a lot more fun with a girlfriend than with a
kid! It was great to verbally work out
race jitters and excitement with each other as we wandered about and did some
shopping. I felt like the size and scale
of the expo was a bit smaller and more manageable than that of the 2012
Princess Half-Marathon weekend, which was great; I get overwhelmed by too much
noise and visual stimulation, plus I didn’t want to spend too much time on my
feet before the race, right?
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| Ooo, skeery... oh, and have I mentioned that I'm blonde now? |
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| Yet another giant, man-shaped, scratchy race shirt. But... it glows in the dark. of my drawer. where it'll stay forever. |
After a quick lunch at Wide World of Sports (WWOS) complex, we went
back to the villa with every intention of napping until 5pm. I. could. not. sleep. Too excited, too nervous about my knee
situation, too amped up with adrenaline.
It was a relief when my alarm went off at 5pm. FINALLY, I could get dressed in my race
outfit and feel like we were getting somewhere.
Of course, we still had 5 hours until the start…
Since we weren’t staying at an official race host resort, and neither
of us was excited by the prospect of traversing the big, dark WWOS parking lot
(where anyone driving to the race would need to park, then take a shuttle bus
to the start at Hollywood Studios), at 3am, we chose to make the very short
drive to Port Orleans Riverside (which was
a host resort with buses to the race start), park there, eat dinner, then
take a bus to the race. This worked out
terrifically! I had a yummy plate of pasta
around 6pm, along with lots and lots of Nuun-infused water. At shortly after 7pm, we got on the bus
outside the resort lobby and were off to the race!
Race Day, Part Two: The Race!
I was really, really impressed with the pre-race staging area. There seemed to be ample room to move around
with 12,000 or so of our fellow racers and their families, plenty of
porta-potties, and lots of good music playing to get us pumped up. Maybe a little too pumped up. At risk of
sounding judgmental, I was shocked by how many racers were dancing up a storm
before the race. Nancy and I sat there
watching them, wondering aloud how anyone could possibly muster the energy to
run 10 hot, humid miles after an hour of dancing?! And by “hot” and “humid,” I mean HOT and
HUMID. Honestly, it was business as
usual for me; it felt no different than any of my training runs all summer
long, save for the lack of scorching sun on top of it all. But I can’t imagine how awful it must have
felt to anyone not acclimated to our delightful Florida climate in
September. I sat for a good hour, saving
my legs and feet, eating a small snack, and downing more water.
We chose to get into our respective corrals (A for Nancy – way to go! –
and C for me) before instructed to do so, and I’m glad we did; we avoided the
mass of humanity moving into their corrals and I was able to use a porta-potty
with minimal waiting. This, I must point
out, Disney got so, so right – porta-potties in EVERY CORRAL! Oh, how I hope they’ll do the same for future
races, because it was ever-so appreciated.
I have to admit that waiting alone in my corral was lonely. I didn’t want to waste my iPhone’s battery,
so I didn’t have that for distraction, and it was past my usual bedtime; I was
getting sleepy. I was thankful when, at
9:30pm, the call came to exit the corrals into the road at their other ends,
from where we, staying in our corral groups, walked down the road to the
starting line.
Before long, the fireworks went off for the first group of wheelchair
racers, then for the second group, then for A corral, and B corral. We C folks moved up and I stuck to the far
left side of the road, from where I could lean out to my left a bit and see
what was ahead… I was a bit in front of the halfway point of our corral and the
starting line was actually the toll booths for the Studios parking lot.
The first 5 miles of the course took us out of Hollywood Studios and
out-and-back on Osceola Parkway before turning into the WWOS complex. I knew I had to walk every other quarter-mile
stretch to save my knee, but waited to see what the crowd did before deciding
whether to start with a quarter-mile walk, or start running first – we mostly
had to walk through the start line, but then the crowd picked up to a jog, so I
did, too. A funny thing with IT Band
Syndrome (ITBS) is that going uphill
is fine, but the downhill kills. So I ran up the ramp to Osceola Parkway and
started my walk on the downhill. And
that, folks, is just annoying as hell, to not take advantage of gravity and gain
some speed on the downhill. People were
flying past me as I slowly walked down, hugging the inside of the curve like it
was my long-lost lover. But once we hit
the flats again, I was back to running and felt great! I was warm, but nowhere near overheated, felt
perfectly hydrated, and as strong as an elite athlete. There was a decided lack of themeing along
those stretches of highway, but it didn’t bother me in the least as I found my
happy pace, alternating quarter-mile stretches of walking and run-walk
intervals. I was passing other racers
left and right, which is always good for the runner’s psyche, right?
Passing the marker for Mile 3, I allowed myself to wonder, “Maybe I
finally beat ITBS into submission – maybe I’ll nail this race after all!” All of my training seemed to be paying off
and I felt the best I’ve ever felt while running.
At 3.25, I felt a familiar tightening in my left leg. At 3.5, it felt like an ice pick was jammed
into the outside of my knee by the end of every 1-minute run interval. ITBS struck again. Still, I was able to run 50 seconds at a time
without pain, so “Maybe,” I bargained
with my body, “if I skip every other run
interval and only run 45 seconds at a time when I do run, I won’t have to walk
the rest of the race…” It worked for
a while, but by Mile 5, I was down to running 30 or so seconds every 5
minutes. And it HURT. Piercing,
excruciating, sob-inducing pain. I’d put
the pain level on 11. Out of 10. But, magically, the pain went away when I
switched to a walk. I knew what I had to
do.
Only halfway through the race, I was hobbled to a walk and, truthfully,
I should have parked my fanny on the side of the road, cheered for my fellow
racers, and hitched a ride on the sag wagon when the sweepers eventually came
through. The experts say often that
distance running is a huge mental game; that it takes some serious mental
strength to veto the bad thoughts sent by our brains, telling us to quit. I, strangely, found myself in the exact
opposite position: my mental toughness wasn’t tough enough to pull the plug and
save myself from further pain. My brain was insistent: “You trained for this. You’ve already done the distance. Don’t quit now – earn that medal!”
The crowd around me was almost exclusively walkers at that point; I’d
been passed by the runners I’d passed earlier.
We all walked down the dark, creepy dirt path that was decorated with
the occasional skeleton in a cage and large, fake bug. I’d put the decorating on par with a stroll
through Michael’s craft store this time of year. Definitely not up to Disney standards.
As we entered WWOS, every field was lit and, coming in from the dark, I
felt a bit of renewed energy. By the
time we entered the baseball stadium to run the bases, I picked it up and
pulled off a sad, limpy jog for the photogs along the diamond. But the pain from that was so debilitating, I
crawled to a slow walk as we exited WWOS.
Pulling off the course to stretch my leg, I looked back, almost hoping
to see the sweeper so I could end the agony, knowing that I’d done all I
could. Nope. Not a sweeper in sight. With a sigh, I started walking again, head
down in defeat. We were back on a dark
stretch of highway again for a couple miles and the crowd around me was quiet
and subdued, all of us inwardly-focused on our individual ailments. It was rough, rough going as we climbed the
ramp back to Hollywood Studios.
And that’s when I got mad.
Really, really mad. I had trained for that race! And I’d hydrated properly and felt fantastic,
apart from my stupid knee. I wasn’t
sick, my heart rate wasn’t even reaching the point of aerobic, let along
anaerobic. And a “little” lousy pain was
keeping me from reaching my goal of finishing strong?! No sir-ee. Winding through Hollywood Studios, I did the
stupidest thing possible at that point: I ignored the pain tearing through my
leg and ran my way through the finish line.
I was strong, fierce and every bit the Badass Mother Runner my race
shirt advertised.
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| My version of a finisher's photo. |
Dumb, dumb, dumb. That last run
did nothing to help my final time and left me unable to bend my knee at all
without intense pain. I got my medal,
skipped the finisher’s photo, grabbed the food and water someone handed me,
took a bag of ice from the medical tent and, in a daze, slowly limped to the
spot Nancy and I had designated to meet after the race. I sat on a ledge, icing my knee and trying
not to cry until Nancy appeared, haloed in light from a spotlight behind her
and carrying an ice-cold Corona, complete with lime wedge. Exactly what I needed – a beer and a friend
to make me smile!
Eventually, the ice, beer and an Aleve got my pain under control and I
retrieved my bag of fresh clothing (thanks a bunch, Disney, for making us go
down, and then back up, a bazillion STAIRS to get our bags after running 10
miles), so we could enjoy the after-party.
We had a great time riding Star Tours and the Tower of Terror, and
taking a picture with Lord Vader.
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| Getting whacked in the face with our heavy, glow-y medals. |
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At 3am, after killing yourself to run 10 miles in 80-degrees and 89% humidity and downing a beer or two, "using the force" with Vader sounds really badass.
|
By
3am, the adrenaline wore off, fatigue set in, and we boarded a bus back to Port
Orleans, where we got in my car and drove back to our villa. We spent the next day showing off our awesome medals and slowly making
our way around the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot. It was the perfect recovery day – small,
frequent bites to eat, slow walking to stretch the legs, and a fun friend with
whom to chat.
The Aftermath
So I’ve had a few days to digest my race and I’m still finding it hard
to feel good about finishing. I think,
had I never before run that far, maybe I could be satisfied with finishing in
2:42:07. But knowing that I’ve already
done the distance in training, and that I did it in 2:13:55, makes it tough to
celebrate. Had I quit when the pain hit,
at 3 miles, I’d still have received the cool medal, I’d have had more time and
energy to enjoy the party with my friend, and, most importantly, I’d have done
no further damage to my knee. I’m now
off running altogether for a while to let the inflammation go down and then I’ll
be starting from scratch. I can’t
honestly think of anything about the race that was worth doing myself in like
this.
And that’s a big part of my disappointment: bad enough that my body let
me down – Disney let me down, too.
Leading up to the race, I kept telling myself that, even if I had to walk
a lot of it, the incredible entertainment that Disney routinely throws into its
races would keep me distracted from my slow pace. I didn’t want to stop for pictures, but I’d have
enjoyed seeing others do so and would have gotten a kick out of some performers
doing their thing on the sides of the road… but there were only a couple of
photo ops along the course and they were of the jump-in-take-a-pic-jump-out
variety; not much to look at as a passer-by.
No characters at the start or finish, either. The lack of entertainment coupled with not
being able to perform as I knew I could when uninjured made for a whole lot of
frustration.
I hope that my feelings about my own performance aren’t confused with
my appreciation for the efforts of everyone else who took on the Tower of
Terror 10-Miler, though. I think every
person who finished that race was amazing!
And maybe I am, too. I might just
need a little more time to process it all.
So… now what?
Now, I heal, strengthen, and start running in teeny-tiny distances that
don’t hurt, hopefully building back up in time for the Princess Half-Marathon
in February. I’ll change my habit of
running always with the road slanting down on my left, which seems to have been
the catalyst for ITBS in the first place.
I’ll admire the 10M sticker on my car, knowing that I can go the distance, even if not as I’d
envisioned doing it. And I’ll wear my “I
did it!” race shirt with pride. But I’ll
never, ever run injured like that again.
