How what started out as an achievable 4:00:00 goal personal best marathon run eventually devolved into a run of survival, despair, self-doubt and godawful pain by mile 23…but with a little help from some Road Angels, I finished it anyway.

 

Six Months of Training

Training for the 2016 Los Angeles Marathon began in September 2015 with Coach Jimmy Dean Freeman when my wife Kim and I were selected to be mentors for Team NutriBullet 2016.  This would be my third successive Los Angeles marathon with Team NutriBullet, fourth marathon in total, and fifth endurance run overall (I ran the Leona Divide 50k in 2015), all within the last three years.  I knew exactly what I was getting into and most certainly understood the uncertainties of any given race day.

Jimmy Dean Freeman is excellent at emphasizing how runners must adapt during any given endurance run and how they must keep a “What can I do right now” mentality because dream races have a tendency to turn into nightmares if one doesn’t manage them well.  This is a mental check-in strategy where you need to determine if you need to fuel up, drink up, puke out or hit the closest porta-potty and, um, unload.  I’ve heard a rumor that all of these can happen at the same time.

Originally, there were around 125 Team NutriBullet marathon athletes in training this season, but by race day there were only around 107 ready to run.  The team attrition was due to combinations of personal and professional demands, lack of training commitment and various illnesses and injuries.

Personally, I was enjoying the best training season to date and I firmly believe that this was due to the combination of Coach Jimmy Dean Freeman’s epic running and professional coaching experiences, Coach Nicole Sedmak‘s painful but loving strength training classes, whipping our cores into impenetrable abs of steel, and TRIO’s High Performance Coach Gareth Thomas’ heart rate training methodology.

All of my pre-marathon races this season were personal bests, shaving, trimming and cutting significant time off  my 5k, 10k, and half-marathon race times.  I was feeling healthy, pain-free and confident of my marathon goal time this year.  I was putting in the time and effort required to be at peak performance including the optional weekly Wednesday Night Warrior Workouts (#WNWW), coached by Jimmy Dean Freeman, which were mostly a mix of hill-repeats and speed work like Yasso 800’s, plus I was also cross-training on my road bike during run rest days.

Sh!t Happens

It turns out that at the end of the half-marathon race I did something that would haunt me for the rest of my training.  I was running to the finish line as fast as I could, thanks to the encouragement of Jimmy Dean Freeman at around mile 12.5, something like “Don’t look at your watch!” and “I want to see those heels way up!”  The splits on my watch indicated that I was running at a sick (really: I felt like puking) 6:29 pace, and once I crossed the finish line, instead of decelerating into a walking pace like I should have, I did an abrupt stop to catch my breath when I felt a little pain shoot up from my right lower calf.  It hurt, but I was able to walk it off.  I assumed it was maybe a minor pulled muscle issue, but I was wrong; it was my Achilles.

From this point forward, I was an injured runner trying to recover.  The marathon was still a little over four weeks out which, at the time, seemed like enough time to fully recover, so I enthusiastically engaged in recovery mode therapy as prescribed by Coach Nicole and Chandra (Channy Chan Chan) Farnham; Epsom salt soaks, hot/cold packs and stretching.  During this time, I was not able to fully participate in the training runs and was only able to get in a little over 14-miles on the longest run.  But I was healing, albeit slowly, and the pain was fading so I was cautiously optimistic about the upcoming marathon.

February 14, 2016 Los Angeles Marathon, Dodger Stadium

This was to be the most unusual Valentine’s day I have ever experienced.  I was as prepared as I was going to be and felt that I would still be able to achieve the 4-hour time goal.  Colin Sapire, the CEO of Capital Brands, the parent company of NutriBullet and sponsor of Team NutriBullet, generously reserved the Ketle One Baseline Club space at Dodger Stadium, allowing the runners to have a private place to meet, prepare, and discuss the race before the starting gun at 6:55.  It also had a private bathroom which seemed to make everyone on the team really happy.

Liz Gonzales, one of the fellow Team NutriBullet mentors, had the same time goal as I did and so we decided to pace each other for the race.  It is a good run strategy to pair-up with someone that has a similar time goal because it helps keep you mentally engaged.  We left Ketle One and met up in the B corral along with some of the other Team NutriBullet members.

After the national anthem was sung and Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti bragged about the City of Los Angeles and welcomed all of the athletes to the event, it was go time!

Liz and I were doing great; keeping fueled up and cooled off, killing our splits far into mile 15 when I had to pull off the course to fix a shoe issue to prevent a blister on the ball of my foot from some rubbing that was going on.  I encouraged Liz to continue and that I would catch up to her, but by the time I got to mile 17 my Achilles began to throb, forcing me to slow down and ultimately reevaluate my run strategy.  From this point forward it was a monumental mental and physical challenge to complete the race.

 

I had to adjust my pace and gait to compensate for my Achilles pain which started a domino effect on my other leg muscles, forcing me to stop and stretch to fight off the oncoming cramping in my quads and hamstrings.  I have never experienced this kind of cramping in a run and was introduced to an entirely new level of discomfort!  My pace went from around a 9:10 to a 10:30 to an 11:30 mile and further descended into…walking.

 

At this point in the race, I knew that my goal time of 4:00:00 was technically out of reach, but mentally, I was telling myself that I just needed to come in sub 4:45:11 for a PR.  But as the run continued and time slipped away, even this secondary goal became seriously questionable, so I started having thoughts like “I wonder if salt pills would have saved me?” Although I have never used them and didn’t have any anyway.  “Why the hell did you sign up for this again?” crept into my mind too, and “You can’t wimp out, you idiot; you’re a fucking mentor and have to set an example!” and “I wonder how hard it would be to get Uber over here in west LA.”  I was totally deflated and honestly felt like quitting, however, I am not a quitter by nature so I fought on.

Survival Mode in No Mans Land

Moving forward slowly is still moving forward and as I painfully progressed along the route I had to take walk breaks, and now my revised strategy was to walk a quarter mile and then run as far as I could and repeat.  All the while I kept checking my watch and becoming more and more pessimistic about beating my old record.  I began to tell myself that all I really needed to do was finish the marathon; forget about the time.  And although I was actively looking for them, I hadn’t see any of my teammates for a very long time and so I starting feeling a little dejected.  Mile 19 at Century City felt and looked like this to me:

At mile 21 along Wilshire Boulevard near the VA, I was taking a walk break on the uphill when one of my fellow teammates, Carly Taylor (Road Angel #1) came from behind and checked in with me, which, in hindsight was a big boost.  I knew it was exactly 3:40 into the race because at this stage of the run I was obsessing over the time.  We commiserated for a bit and she said that she felt nauseous and wanted to barf and I shared with her my present state of physical suffering.  I then asked Carly if she happened to have any salt pills (which, like I said, I have never tried before, but by now I had become desperate for anything that may help) and thankfully she had some.  So, down the hatch one went and I was hopeful that it would kick in within the next half-hour or so.  Carly went on ahead and I started to trot when the slight downhill to Barrington came into my view.

At mile 23, I heard someone calling my name from behind me, and it was Tara Bopp (Road Angel #2) from last year’s team!  Man, it was a great mental boost to see her, and we started talking about the race and how we were feeling and soon realized that we were both basically in the same mode of degradation, and that her knee was really bothering her and it hurt more for her to walk than run and maybe she tore something.  I expressed my concern for this and suggested that she should check-in with the upcoming aid station for an evaluation to prevent a serious injury, so she did.  I’m not sure if she got back out and finished or not, but I hope she is okay.

By the time I was near mile 24 and around 4:25 into the run, I knew then that I would actually finish the race, but I also knew that I had a very narrow window to beat my previous race time and at the moment was slogging it out at a 13+ minute recovery walking pace.  I had just started to trot again when I heard my teammates Annie and George Gleason and Coach Kelley Puckett (Road Angel #3) yelling and cheering along the sideline.  Another welcome boost!

Kelley ran up to me to essentially give me a welfare check.  We chatted about topics like the various degrees of pain and suffering, and whether salt pills were good or bad, late race strategies when your original plans got blown-up and her recent 100k run experience and the next thing I knew I was running a 10-minute pace.  At this time, I spotted Coach Josh Spector ahead of me pacing I Run With Camera, (although I didn’t see his camera at the time) Ijaz Afzal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mental Boosts

Ijaz is a friend and an experienced runner and I knew that he had set a race goal somewhere close to mine, so I assumed that he was now in the same boat to hell that I was in, but I also remembered what Coach Jimmy said about late race strategies, like, “In the second half of the race don’t be a wimp!” but specifically, the part about picking out a “rabbit” and becoming a “Cold-blooded motherfucking assassin!”  Sorry, not sorry, Ijaz!

So, I picked up my pace a little so I could get within earshot of Ijaz when I yelled out to him, “I’m a cold-blooded motherfucking assassin and you’re my rabbit!” and then I passed the two of them.  Kelley was still pacing me and laughed a little, and by now my pace was sub 10 and now I knew I truly had a chance to come in below 4:45:11, so I kept up the pace even though by now I was suffering mightily.

Miraculously, I was now beginning to feel a little bit better both physically and mentally and don’t know for sure whether it was Coach Kelley changing my focus or the salt pill kicking in or finding my rabbit- it was most likely a combination of all three- and the next thing I heard from Kelley was “Better watch out!” and Josh and Ijaz were slowly, stealthily passing me up without saying a word and apparently I had now become Ijaz’s rabbit!  Now. It’s. War!

End Game

Coach Kelley peeled off after running about a half-mile with me and I checked my watch again and realized that I needed to keep a minimum 9:50 pace for the remainder of the race to PR, so I set my sights on my rabbit Ijaz again and dug deep and pushed hard.  I passed Ijaz just before the turn from San Vicente to Ocean Avenue and didn’t look back.  I started picking off other rabbits too, one-by-one, on my way to the finish line, which actually seemed like it was not getting any closer at all, and by this time I started to feel slightly nauseated and close to being gassed out.

I crossed the finish line at an unofficial time of 4:44:00 flat; 0:01:11 faster than my previous marathon best.  I couldn’t believe it at first, and kept checking to make sure that I wasn’t miscalculating something in my present state of delirium, but it was true!  My last split was actually a blistering, to me anyway, 8:50 pace.  I was done and I was spent and I was ready to celebrate with my wife, my son Dillon and my awesome teammates- woo-hoo!!

Post Race Notes

• I couldn’t have pulled this run off without the excellent coaching from Jimmy Dean Freeman (for those not in-the-know; there is no relation)
• My body is really, really angry with me today
• I’m hella hungry on the magnitude of eating double, Double-Doubles, which is mathematically something like two to the fourth power and definitely a mega-calorie bomb that Coach Nicole would not encourage consuming
• What started out as a well trained, well executed run devolved into a survival-mode don’t-die run, but I somehow survived and managed a PR anyway
• Not hitting your goal time doesn’t mean you “lost” the race, so you should really keep running.  Or walking.  Or both…
• Never, ever quit even when your common sense tries to tell you to, unless, of course, your legs fall off or something equally severe happens
• Never underestimate the power of Road Angels, which will now be the name of my next batch of whiskey
• I don’t consider myself a masochist, but apparently, endurance runners are masochists by default
• The previous bullet point doesn’t mean I’m kinky
• My running friends and Team NutriBullet coaches and teammates helped me survive and keep moving forward on this run; for this, I’m eternally grateful
• I’ll consider trying salt pills as a regular part of my long distance runs, you know, just in case
• Colin Sapire: thanks to his vision and support and love of running, Team NutriBullet has built a strong running community legacy which has brought many people together that have forged friendships that will endure a lifetime
• Yes, I am already planning more endurance runs, but this fact still does not make me an actual masochist