Don't do as the Romans do.
Arriving early in the morning, the clock was ticking on some sightseeing. Tim, who had not been to Rome, needed to see some spots, so we struck out on foot. A massive line at the Colessuem awaited, and once in (despite it being self-guided), we were stuck behind a thousand people. Basically learning nothing (by skipping the audioguide), we moved on to the Forum, another long line awaited, and after determining that it would be a couple of hours to get in, we skipped it, going to the expo instead. This was no better, as a long queue at Circus Maximus awaited. Taking our spot at the back, soon the line fishtailed, spreading out from the end all the way back to the beginning, and in the other direction, as far as we could see up the stairs and into the neighborhood. Pathetic organization caused a massive delay, and by the time we finally collected our bibs, we had little interest in the rest of the expo, desperately fighting our way through the narrow hallways. Once out on the street again, we followed the hordes to spots like Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps before calling it quits (and skipping Vatican City).
After Dublin in October, I took the next 6-7 weeks completely off, trying to heal my shin for good. Some stretching and strength training thrown in, the progress was slow, even with custom-made insoles. At first, I started back with 5k runs every other day. Then, at the start of January, I strung 2 and 3-day efforts together, keeping the miles low but getting out there. Once we returned to work, I began joining Tim on runs after school and on the weekends. The pace at the run club was beyond my fitness, and I struggled on the longer runs, but you have to start somewhere. Hitting 5 days a week and a weekend of 16/10 k, progress started to resume, but I needed the two days per week off to recover, and the intense cold and snow of winter had been frustrating. Once I inched up the miles, the shin flared up again, getting angry with the increased workload. The anger was mutual, as this injury never seemed to end. Desperate not to run my third marathon in a row on no training, I battled through, and a strange thing happened; just when I was convinced that one more run would put me over the injury edge for good, it started to improve. Gradually, the pain went from intense to manageable, and then slight, before not being a factor on the run and just feeling it a bit after. Tim and I continued to build, and I peaked at 25K on Saturday and a hilly trail 10K on Sunday. Just when I finally started to get over this injury, I would be stopping. The decision was made earlier to skip a serious effort at the Edinburgh Marathon in May, convinced that I had not done enough work to run fast enough (to qualify for NYC) and did not want to waste the money suffering through a race.
The chaos of the day before mirrored race day. We walked past the start line and proceeded another mile to the corral entrance, only to walk that distance back. Numerous people pushed past where we had established our position, and many more jumped into the wrong corral. While a A seed, I dropped back to C to run with Tim, and we saw many people open gates or simply walk right past the volunteers who were doing a poor job checking numbers. We even saw several significant others in the corrals, dressed in street clothes, just hanging out with runners. Nearly everyone was videoing everything, which I must say was new to me; while I have seen plenty of phones in the corrals and some on course before, up front, this is rare. Here, it was out of control to the point where people just stopped walking to snap a shot. During the run, we saw way too many people having video and voice calls in the race! One must remember that when trying to capture the moment, they shouldn't forget to live it.
Tim and I got through halfway mostly by making fun of these people and the absurdity of it all. Loads of people (more than I was used to up front) blew up very early, making for a long day out there. But the phone behavior still got to me. We cruised through Vatican City, and all was well for a while, keeping a pace slightly faster than we had agreed upon, but feeling great nonetheless; my shin pain was gone, and I was holding up despite the lack of significant training. Around 24k or so, I started to experience a lull, probably needing more fuel than I was taking. While it bounced back for me soon enough, Tim started to decline. We backed off the pace for 3-4k, hoping he would recover, but despite my encouragement to stay with me, eventually he pulled to the side at 30k or so. Knowing that my knees and legs would respond very poorly to starting and stopping, I bade him farewell and turned to the finish. From here, I gradually dropped the pace until I was running firm (for me at this point, though far slower than previous quality marathons). It felt great to be in full stride again, and a new challenge emerged. With no particular goal in mind, it just became a test of self. Going past the Spanish Steps, the cobbles on the road were pronounced, and footing was poor, making for some leg discomfort. Keeping a faster pace was also harder during these sections. But what really got me were the people crossing the street. They would run across at poor times and narrowly miss runners. As the race goes on, we runners lose the ability to react quickly; tired minds and legs do not have the jump and to brake or change direction after 35K is almost impossible. Around 39k, the route moved into narrow streets, marred with cobbles, and this is where the riskiest crossings occurred, with old people trying to make it, or a young child in tow, hanging off the hand of a parent. With a shout, I chastized the worst of them and pushed on. One very long downhill came, and I heard a shout from behind me, asking me to move over. A younger girl went charging past and said, let's go! No, thank you, as why she was pushing past at this place was a mystery to me when, running that pace, she should have been done earlier. Where I lost my patience was when she asked me to move out of her way, like she was on a PR bid, only to have her pull out a phone, take a video selfie going across the kilometer mark, and shoot a panorama. Just pathetic.
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| Fun and games when things are going well. |
The race finished with a stiff uphill and then downhill into Circus Maximus. This capped a great run, as my previous two runs had been torture, and I had little training for this one. My legs never felt sore, and I never ran out of gas. Sitting down was not the best decision, but soon I saw Tim towering over the crowd, and I rose to join him. We made our way through the medals, but Tim was in the hurt locker. He needed frequent stops to bend over and try to recover his strength. Cognizant of the long walk back to the hotel and the trip to the airport, I pushed him on, not able to risk missing my flight, as I was off to a week-long university tour in the Netherlands. Right at the edge of the Colosseum, Tim popped, and whatever fluids he had came out. A bit of relief came, and he was able to move a bit better after that, but when we were in the hotel, he looked very poor. We had to do the right thing and take an Uber as neither of us wanted to walk a kilometer to the metro and then stand - seatless - on a train for an hour. We rode in silence until Tim declared he was "gonna barf," and we made an emergency stop for him to expel on the side of the road. Things improved once we were resting in the lounge.
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| Putting on a good face back in the hotel. |
There have not been too many marathons where I could take the pace down at the end, finish in control, and have no soreness after (and in the days after). This perfect trifecta of accomplishment came on very little training and a single long run of 25K. This shouldn't be a rationale for training less; rather, I want to get back into a routine, to be a runner again (not just someone who runs), to feel in control of my path.
