Given that the very first marathon famously ended in the demise of the messenger who ran it, my general thought is that any marathon not ending in death should be viewed as a dazzling success.

That being said, I think the marathon I ran a week ago felt wonderful even beyond that metric. It was my first marathon (and my second ever race, the first one being a Turkey Trot 5k I ran in high school with my friend Andrew’s family), and not only didn’t I die, I also finished uninjured, stupendously happy, and only a little bit hobbling.

Some notes for my future self, in case I decide to go for a comparatively long run again:

• OK. The big one, though it is unlikely to be forgotten — make very very sure that your resting place the night before has bedding and is closed to the elements. 34 degrees is cold, and a yoga mat is not a proper replacement for a comforter.
• In terms of food, I ate two pieces of nutella-on-toast around an hour before the race, and then had one gu five minutes before start and again at the first mile marker after every multiple of thirty minutes. This worked well: no GI discomfort and no wall from loss of glycogen.
• In terms of caffeine, I reduced coffee to 1 cup/day, and no coffee after 10am, in the week before the race. Had two cups on race-day morning, as well as whatever was in the gu. This also worked! (energized, no GI issues) though if I had been in a calmer time of life, a longer period of cutting back on caffeine would probably have worked better.
• In terms of water, my goal had been 250ml every half hour. Not only was this probably not enough water as a goal, I also didn’t hit it. I had only had about 75% as much water as I intended by the half-marathon point, and noticed I had stopped sweating a few miles after that, a pretty obvious indicator of dehydration. After that, I had at least two cups of water at every water station, buuut I shouldn’t have gotten to that point.
• I also overheated, contributing to the above. It was maybe 40 in the morning, so I chose an athletic longsleeve instead of a singlet. Comfy, but as the day warmed up I must have been pouring sweat. Didn’t notice the overheating until I noticed the dehydration, and after that I tossed some water in my face (shockingly helpful!) and later took off my shirt (enormously, incredibly, unfathomably helpful). I’m not quite able to assess how much damage this did, nor am I confident about what a better plan would have been, but it definitely contributed to the
• Cramping! My best guess on splits is around 9:10 miles for the first 22 miles, followed by one 11-ish minute mile, followed by three very very difficult miles. During these last three miles, each more than 20 minutes, I would run for a bit, then my quads would start cramping and/or seize up, I would hobble it off, and then, a few minutes later, go through the same process again. This was unnnnpleasant and turned what would have been a purely triumphant race end into one that was an exercise in willpower. Partly, this is because my roommate and I had been planning on running the Providence Marathon but were forced to switch to the Sugarloaf Marathon a late notice due to a race cancellation. Prov is more-or-less flat; Sugarloaf ends with 16 consecutive miles of downhill. I hadn’t trained hills because I hadn’t been planning or running hills; my quads were not ready for it; they let me know. But also, and possibly moreso, I think the cramping was caused by the overheating and dehydration. Those are definitely the focus points if I want to run a marathon where running feels great until the very end.
• Other than my quads, the main muscle things I noticed were that my abductors and adductors were tired/sore afterwards (stabilization muscles – I think an important thing to specifically train if I’m going to do another big run) and that my traps were killing me. That was actually my largest source of discomfort both during and post-race, and I think comes down to posture and holding tension in my shoulders. How to relax that tension more while running, especially running with a backpack?

But also! 22 miles of feeling great is a pretty dope accomplishment, at least for me. Both on its own, and in the context of returning from injury.

The timeline on that:

• Got a protruding disc (L4/L5) in mid-Feb of 2022, accompanied by a chronic pain which grew in intensity and frequency until I was in constant pain and barely able to walk.
• Sought medical help in mid-late March of that year, and PT was able to bring my pain down to the level of daily, but constant, by the time I started CPE in June.
• The first hike I went on was in late July of that year (Mt. Bradbury, 0.3 miles from base to summit), and in August I tried running again. 1 minute on, 1 minute off was fine; Increasing to 2 minutes on, 1 minute off set me back about two months in terms of pain.
• I didn’t try running again until March of last year, when I went for an ill-advised run after being very upset about something, and, not having substantial negative effects the next day, started running for 20 minutes, three times a week.
• I kept that level until June of 2023, when I started increasing by 15 minutes/week, getting back to my pre-injury baseline on Jan 20 of this year, just shy of two years after my initial injury.
• Then started training for the Marathon haha

My friend Maddy teased me over coffee the other day, saying that a marathon is never just a marathon. On the one hand, this was just a marathon. It was special because it was 26.2 miles, and because it I ran it with my roommate, and because my dad used to run marathons, and because it’s fun to run outside. But Maddy is certainly right in that the Marathon is also a bit of a milestone, for me, in terms of a return to health. I have pain, but it is indescribably milder and rarer, and gets increasingly so each day. I can run, largely without worry or preoccupation, and for a long time, and do things I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to do. And that is nice!