Back in January 2010, I had ACL surgery. So much of 2010 was recovering from that and getting my legs back to functioning well. I did a bunch of bike rides in the summer, and started doing longer rides. I did a half marathon trail run and had a lot of fun. But always thought that I would never do a marathon, because, well that's for crazy people and it would surely be hard on my body. But then I did a 24 hour endurance bike ride, and some other endurance events, and thought hmm... maybe I should give this marathon thing a try.
So I made up my mind, talked with Tempo Multisport, and got set up with a training program, that at that point was about 18 weeks. Before I started my training I was in Germany and got hit with a bad staph infection on my calf that sent me to the hospital there for a few days. The doctor there said that my leg would take 8 weeks to heal. So I thought that my plan to run a marathon in the spring was done. But then when I saw a doctor in Austin he said that I could run while my leg healed. And so there I was running around, doing tempo runs, sprints, and starting out my long run while carrying around a wound vac on my back.
The next hurdle came when I was training in Toronto Canada running in the snow. I didn't want to run on the treadmill because I wanted to get used to running outside and the impact on my knees. But I think I pushed too hard to keep my pace when running in the snow, which resulted in a lot of slipping of my foot. This caused me to shorten my stride, in turn giving me some IT band issues and knee problems.
One of my conditions to myself in doing this was that my left knee, the one that I had my ACL surgery, couldn't have any knee pain. If I had knee pain with that knee, I was going to call it quits, because it was just so much work to go through the surgery and I didn't want to undo all the work that the doctors had done to fix up my knee.
This time the knee issues were on the IT band on my RIGHT knee, so I kept going. I didn't know if I could keep going with these IT band issues though. I thought that I might have to call it quits. But before I did that I talked with Tammy from Tempo Multisport and she recommended I go see an ART specialist. And that helped a lot. There were also a few times where I couldn't do all of my long run, but needed to run, bike for a bit to get my knee warmed up, and then run again.
At the first hint of pain from my right knee Tammy put me on a new program where I do 2 long runs back to back, rather than one really long run. And based on my results I'm happy to say that it worked wonderfully for me and probably was one of the defining factors that actually allowed me to come back from the IT band issues while training in time for the marathon.
So needless to say there was a lot of work and challenges to work through to even get to the start of the race. I once heard Bart Yasso say that it's the getting to the starting line of the race that's the hardest thing to do. I completely understood that when I was standing at the start of the Austin Marathon. At that point, all the hard work is done, you can't cram for a marathon, and I felt that I could just enjoy myself. And that's just what I did.
The race was loads of fun! There were 40 bands playing at the side of the road and tons of people cheering us along. The time running seemed to go by so quickly. The first 8 miles went by before I knew it. My plan was to go slowly up hills since that was always when my IT band issues flared up. It also worked out well because the first 1/3 of the race felt like it was the hottest (probably 78F). But after that the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up and I was able to cool down. It was challenging going uphill from mile 12-19.5, but I just had tons of motivation stored up and lots of excitement from the race, that I could draw on to get me through that.
Then it was pretty well all downhill from there. I wasn't able to speed up as much as I had hoped in that area, but it was lots of fun being able to pick up the pace a bit. The last 3 miles were the most fun I felt. Because I knew the race was done, I couldn't do anything there to shave off time to get below 4 hours, and I wanted to really enjoy the experience and soak things in. There were two brutal hills to go up just about 800 meters from the finish line. But after that it was to the finish line! I was able to do it in 4:14 which I was very happy with given it was my first one, all my challenges before the race, and it was hot and a challenging course!
The thing that surprised me most was that I wasn't really sore afterwards. Sure my legs were tired, but not sore. And everything that was sore in training and giving me issues, wasn't a problem at all during the race! Two days after ther marathon I was cycling and swimming, and after 3 days I had no signs of soreness at all from doing the marathon!
Many many thanks to Tammy from Tempo Multisport for all of her wonderful coaching, it wouldn't have been possible without her great training and adjustments for my hurdles. Family and friends that provided support and guidance. And of course the doctors that did my ACL surgery, and all the doctors that dealt with my staph infection surgery! It wouldn't have been possibly with any one of those parts not being there!
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