12.21.08 - Jacksonville Marathon

Well, this pretty much sums up the day in Jacksonville...

I’m not even sure where to start…I had pretty big hopes and dreams for this race. I was coming off a not so good last marathon in Nashville - a PR, but not a good race. I tried to take the lessons from Nashville, a solid tri season and a good 12 weeks or so of marathon training and go down to Jax and qualify for Boston. The day held different plans for me...

This trip started with a lunch break in Columbia, SC with our new friends, Slick and Donna Douglass. The Douglass’ are the FCA Endurance Huddle Leaders for South Carolina. Starting back in the summer, Nick and I decided we wanted to start up a huddle in the Charlotte area as there wasn’t one in the whole state of NC. Nick began communicating with them, then we first met at the SC Half in September.

We shared a great meal and were able to get a ton of insight and feedback on huddle leadership. We also got to hear about their plans to go to Kenya after Slick’s retirement from the Air Force next year (both Slick and Donna are former fighter pilots and currently still on active duty at an Air Force base near Columbia.) These certainly are some great folks. It’s great to know them and now have them in our lives.

We jumped back in the car and proceed to Jacksonville. A pretty uneventful drive for the most part. We sampled our iPod playlists for the race. Unlike previous races, Jacksonville was an iPod legal event. Nowhere on the website or any of the information in the race packet mentioned no headphones. Given the fact that this race was likely to be the least supported of any I’d run thus far, we decided to give it a shot. About half of the field had the same idea as just about every other person on the course had their little ear buds in their ears. It felt a little non-runner elitist, like there should be something wrong with it, but what the hey. Mine shorted out at mile 20 because of all of the water I was dumping on my head. A lot shorted out at mile 20…

We arrived, checked in and headed to dinner to meet up with friends of Nick and Kalyana’s from their days in LA. They were also kind enough to pick up our race packets for us as we were running late getting into town because of our lunch. We headed back to the hotel and bedded down for the night. I think that was the earliest I had been to bed before a marathon. And the most sleep I ever got before a race, which was nice. Not really helpful the next day as it turns out, but nice.

On to race day, as there is plenty to talk about. We arrived at the race site around 6:15. This was a fairly small event. 2500 total runners between the half and full. Race central was The Bolles School, which was a high school, I think. A really nice one. I would guess a year there cost more than my entire college education. The campus was certainly nicer. I don’t know too many high schools that play football in a stadium with a weather-system track and a Division I caliber rubberized turf football field. But it was nice to lay down on after the race.

We eased up to the starting line in the dark. The sun was just starting to come up at race time. I met a couple of folks at the line that were shooting for the same 3:15 goal - Rebecca, a 30-year old from Lakeland, FL and Dean, a 38-year old from Cincinnati. The announcer kept giving time updates to the start of the race, but I guess I missed the last couple of them because we were standing there and all of a sudden, this cannon goes off. Literally, a cannon. It scared me to death. I think I crossed the starting mat with my heart rate up around 180 because of that thing. But anyway, we were off, easing our way down San Jose Blvd.

My plan for this race was to run the first 20 miles at a 7:15 pace, or 3:10 marathon, then account for some fade toward the end. This was pretty much Rebecca and Dean’s plan as well. Rebecca left us. She was going more like a 7:05. Dean and I stuck together for the first 12 miles or so. The reviews of this race were pretty much dead on. This was a flat, shaded course through a completely residential area with little to no crowd support. Allyson and Kalyana were about half of the crowd support. They got an earful from an unhappy neighborhood resident near the half way point. She stuck her head over the fence and chewed them out about their cowbell. A guy standing nearby told her to call the police, then said ‘oh wait, here he is standing right beside me.’

I really don’t remember much of the first half. Other than it went by pretty quick and the pace was fast. Dean dropped back a tad and I hooked up around mile 10 with some guys looking to hit around 3:10. I ran with them for a couple of miles and probably shouldn’t have because they were dipping down close to the 7:00 flat range. I lost them around the halfway point. I also had a first time race experience just after the halfway point. We were in a secluded park area and I had to tinkle. No porta pots in sight. I slid to the side of the road and went…as I was running. It actually worked just fine.

I lost Dean shortly after that as well. He had to make a real pit stop. You know, not the kind you can do when you are still running. I next saw the girls at mile 18 and the fatigue had started to settle in, though I was still very much on pace at this point, evidence by the timing board in the next picture.

All of the timing boards and mile markers along the course appeared to be about .1-.2 miles off. A 3:15 pace at mile 18 would be a 2:13:58. Obviosuly I wasn’t too far off at this point, especially given the sign placements. You can also see my shoes both looked normal at this point.

Then mile 20… I started feeling a sharp pain on my Achilles in my right shoe. It actually felt like I had maybe a small rock or glass shard or something in my shoe. The pain started, then increased significantly over a short period of time. I finally thought I’ve got to slow down/stop and get whatever is in there out. I slowed and looked down and there was blood. Not good. Ends up it was a bad blister gone awry.

There wasn’t much I could do at this point except keep running. My pace had definitely started to lag, which I had planned on. Around mile 21 and change, the heel was really hurting. Additionally, I had started compensating for the pain with my stride and other stuff was starting to hurt. I made it to the water stop at mile 22 and stopped to ask for a Band-Aid. All I got was a paper towel. I wiped it off, stuff the paper towel in my shoe and tried to push to the next water stop. I made it to 23 and same request for a Band-Aid. I got a wet wipe. The wipe lasted about a quarter of a mile.

At this point, I was reduced to walking in my sock with shoe in hand. I walked pretty much all of mile 23 until I couldn’t take the pain from my hips and knees having only one shoe on. I applied another paper towel at the 24 water stop and hobbled to 25 where, finally, I got a Band-Aid. At this point, I was committed to running to the finish line, whether it was with a Band-Aid on or in my socks. Seriously, if they hadn’t had a Band-Aid, I was going to carry my shoes to the finish and run in my socks.

They doctored me up and I was on my way. I was able to run about 98% of the last mile, pausing only slightly to adjust my foot in my shoe. I entered the stadium at Bolles School for the finish. Allyson was waiting on the far side of the track. She obviously knew something was wrong, however it wasn’t until I got right up to her and pointed out the shoe that she knew. I ran around the track and met her at the finish where I crossed in 3:43:18.

The real action happened after the race. I was pretty wet from dumping water on my head, so wanted to get out of my wet clothes. I grabbed my dry stuff and headed to the bathroom and grabbed the first empty stall (the stall doors were like the old time saloon doors that swung both ways. This is important later…) A guy came in shortly after and took the stall next to me. The far one already occupied. Another guy came in and was waiting for a stall. I was wrapping up when I hear this loud crash. I stepped out of the stall to find the guy that was waiting passed out cold at the feet of the guy sitting on the toilet in the stall next to me.

The guy waiting blacked out and fell straight through the swinging doors practically into the guy’s lap. Needless to say, we were both speechless. I reached down and wrapped my arms around the passed out guy to try and drag him out of the stall. He came to and didn’t know what happened. I helped him out of the stall so the other guy could, you know, finish his business. I sat him up and got the paramedics. Not sure what ended up happening to him, but it was a weird moment to say the least. Pulling a passed out guy from the feet of a guy taking a dump sounds more like a college frat house, not a marathon.

I went back out to the field to pause for a photo moment with Nick and the wives. We ‘licked our wounds’ from the race and hobbled half way back to the car before the girls offered to bring the car to us. We humbly accepted. As we waited, we ran in to Rebecca from the starting line. This was her first marathon. She finished in 3:14. I looked up Dean and he finished in 3:34. We loaded up and back to the hotel. Other than walking to dinner with Allyson, I stayed on the bed from about 1:30 that afternoon until about 7:30 the next morning.

I have 7 weeks until Myrtle Beach and a lot of healing and work to do between now and then. Had I not encountered the bloody blister, I believe I would have still been short of Boston. There wasn’t much I could do about the blister, except wear the socks I should have that were sitting in my bag back in the room. I don’t know what I was thinking. Not very smart on my part. Overall, I had a good time with Allyson and the Whites. The part of the race that was going well was a blast. Just need to figure out how to piece it together injury free for 26.2. Back to the drawing board…

Official results 163rd overall
Race photos