Earlier this month, on February 3rd, I completed my goal of running a marathon. It’s always been one of those ‘I wish I could’ things in my life, but I am so happy and proud to say that I have ran one.
It wasn’t the smoothest marathon either, not by a long shot…
First obstacle was training time. A typical training schedule lasts 18 weeks. I went to Japan over thanksgiving and into early december, so I had to compress my training schedule into 8 weeks, since I didn’t want to run over thanksgiving break. I’ll be honest, I ran a half marathon on October 7th last year, but didn’t run anytime after that. So December 8th would be my first run since, almost a 2 month break, and I had till Feb 3rd to run more than I ever did in my life. Let the (compressed) training begin.
Next obstacle was that on Feb 2nd, my good friends Kurt and Cynthia got married! Definitely not an obstacle by any means, I’m super happy for them, but it was hard in regards to my marathon. Generally you want to be well rested the night before a run, full of carbs and water. I was enjoying my time, drinking (limited to 2 beers tho), and dancing. While you can’t argue that dancing at a wedding is a bad idea, ever, this case might have been an exception not to, but I did anyways. The wedding itself was over 2 hours away, which leads into my next obstacle.
Sleep.
A night before a marathon, you’d think a person would be in bed at around 9pm at the latest, considering the run starts at 6:30 A.M., so a wake up around 5AM is in order: Shower, coffee, (s)fillintheblank, then run. The wedding I attended was in Palm Desert and I live in Huntington Beach, so after rallying a crew of drunks and driving them home, I got home around 12:30 AM. By the time I got in bed, head on pillow ready to sleep, it was 1AM. I guess 4 hours will have to do…
The next obstacle was waking up, considering I had only 4.5 hours sleep. It was around 530 AM that I woke up, but since the race was close, I figured 1 hour prep would be good. I went on my way around 6AM to get to the race, only to run into my next obstacle…
I forgot my bib. This was completely on me, perhaps it was due to lack of sleep, but right when I was at the race start I realized I forgot my bib. I frantically made a u-turn and drove back to my house, picked up my bib, then tokyo drifted and made a race back to the race. Basically I was fast and furious. By the time I got back to the race start, it was around 7AM, 30 minutes after the race had started.
Now I had to park, and what a challenge it was. Considering that there are thousands of runners for both the full and half marathon, I had to park nearly 2 miles away. I had a moment where I hit my steering wheel, yelling, but I realized I needed to calm down and just preserve my energy. After parking, I had the difficult decision: Wait for one of the shuttles or run to the start. Considering traffic was ridiculous and the shuttles were slow, I ran to the start line. Nearly 2 miles. Oh lord have mercy.
And I’ll save you the trouble of more reading, but I ran off course around 1.5 miles, so that sucked. bad.
But I did it.
Goal Complete.
I want thank my girlfriend Kala, who has been there every step of the way with me. She was even on her bike, literally right next to me feeding me gatorade and energy chews while I ran the final 6.2 miles. I could not have done it without her. Kala, if you’re reading this, I love you so much.
Good Job James!! SO proud of you 🙂