Here's my Portland Marathon race report. I write race reports after major races to commemorate the day, track what went right, and remember what went wrong. Because let me tell you this about running 26.2 miles: No matter how many times I remind myself “you need to remember this for your race report or to tell Kevin” I only remember about 1/2 of all those things if I’m lucky. Four hours (or more or less) is a long time to spend inside my head trying to stay motivated, and it’s impossible to keep up the positive self-talk and also remember all the things I see along the way.
(Oh, by the way, my race reports are notoriously long but again, I write them primarily for myself, so excuse me for being wordy.) So here goes.
I had pretty low expectations due to my bad leg so I wasn't really nervous. Truthfully, marathons and half marathons don't make me nervous anymore—nothing beats the nerves I get before a half-ironman triathlon. Running-only races are a piece of cake in comparison, though I suppose when I do toe the starting line fully prepared to qualify for Boston, things will be a little different. (I’ve been reading a lot lately that people are clamoring for faster times for women to qualify for Boston, which would totally suck because, while I think I have a 3:50 (and possibly a 3:45) in me, I don’t think any amount of training in the world would get me faster than that, and certainly not into 3:30 territory. But I’ll worry about that if it happens.)
Despite the lack of nerves, I slept crappy on Friday night and woke up with a horrible headache. I picked Erin up at the ferry at 9:30 for the drive south to Portland; we made it in three hours and arrived just in time for lunch. We parked in the garage next to our hotel so we didn’t have to pay valet fees, and ventured off into the rain in search of lunch, which we found in a mall downtown. Half a sandwich and a cup of soup, plus a cookie. Yum! After lunch we headed back out into the rain to the race expo. With over 14,000 people doing the various races (reportedly 10,400ish folks doing the full and 3,000+ doing the half), I was pleasantly surprised that it only took a minute to pick up our bibs. I loved that they had our names, and mine was even spelled right! In retrospect I kinda wish it said “Ericka Erika Erica” though.
We poked around the downstairs part of the expo (I was disappointed at the lack of freebies—Seattle's expo has way more schwag and goodies), though I did buy another rain poncho so Erin could have the one I brought with me. We headed upstairs to get our schwag bag and wander around the vendor area. Unfortunately the schwag bag was schwag-free, but it did have an extra technical shirt which was a nice surprise. Erin bought a cute pink plaid
SPIbelt (flat belly not included with purchase). I think I may order one of these for myself, pretty handy. After that we called it good, and went back out into the rain to do a bit of tax-free shopping. Sadly, all I ended up with was a pair of black work pants and this picture for Gina:
We wandered into the rain again to check into our hotel, where the mean lady behind the counter denied us late check out. Whatevs, mean lady! Nice room, though, with very comfy beds and nice linens. I looked at the race magazine to get all the race-time details figured out, because it was all very complicated (my biggest race before this one was 1/4 the size, and Newport was 1/10 the size!), and then it was time to head to our 5 pm dinner reservation at Mamma Mia's. We walked, past all of Portland’s famed food trucks. Kevin and I need to take a trip back for a food and drink weekend, I think. Anyway, thank goodness we thought ahead and made a reservation, because they were turning tons of people away at the door. I saw some others from our group there, too, and said hi. Good food, but our waiter was kind of a creep for not mentioning that when I ordered "meatballs" for my spaghetti (plural, as they were described on the menu), I was going to pay $3.95 each for two baseball-sized meatballs. I ate one, and the other went to the compost pile. His tip was reduced as a result. But otherwise it was a good meal. By the time we were done with dinner, the rain had stopped! I was feeling optimistic that this was going to carry on through the race.
Back at the hotel, we spent the rest of the evening getting our race gear ready, packing up so we could check out before the race (thanks again, mean lady!), and just relaxing. By 8:30 I was falling asleep over my book, so hit the lights....aaaaaaand slept like crap. We were on the street side of the hotel, and there were people out there hollering what seemed like all night. Erin says she heard people slamming doors in the hotel too, thankfully I missed that. Soon enough, my alarm rang at 5 and it was time to get up. And it wasn't raining! Hallelujah. Not much to do except get dressed, eat a piece of toast courtesy of my traveling race toaster, have some coffee, and wait. And then the rain started.
We checked out of the hotel, put all our crap in the car, put on our rain ponchos, and walked over to the Marriott to meet up with Cheryl and the group, then headed to the start in a very steady rain. It was still very dark outside (especially for being in the middle of a city) and warm, too (near 60 degrees?). Around 6:30 we parted ways with the group to head toward the B wave corral. Somehow we missed the Porta-Potties for our corral, so we went to the C corral ones instead. There were four. Four!! After about 10 minutes we weren't liking our chances of getting to the front of the line in time to pee, so we copied some other inventive souls (both male and female) and committed what is presumably some sort of civil infraction in the City of Portland. Sorry, dumpsters, but I'm sure you've seen worse. At least it was dark! That business completed, we went back to our B corral to await the start.
We both lined up behind the 3:50 pace lizard, in the off chance one or both of us had a crazy good race and could get our BQ. Not likely, but you gotta dream, right? As we waited for the start, we couldn't believe the downpour that was backlit by the race lights—I really wish I had a camera at that point, because it looked like so many vertical white streamers falling from the sky instead of just plain rain. Before we knew it the gun went off for the A wave, and just a couple minutes later we were off and running, through lots of deep puddles and running water.
I stuck with the pace group for the first two miles or so, and very early on I had a few misty-eyed moments imagining a BQ might be possible after all and just how that would feel. But although my leg felt good, my heart rate was way higher than my race-pace heart rate should have been. I knew that even if the leg held out for 25 more miles, there was no way I could sustain a heart rate approaching 95% of my max for another three and a half hours. So I slowed down and watched my BQ dream run away from me—for this race, anyway. If you're keeping track, here's what I've learned so far in writing this: I probably went out too fast for my fitness level, and, somewhere in the mile or so, I made another tactical error in throwing my poncho away rather than looping it under my race pack for possible later use. It was warm, I was warm, and I didn't think I'd need it. I also had a long-sleeved shirt I figured I could use if need be.
One problem with dropping out of the 3:50 pace group early on was that I didn't have an accurate gauge of my pace. I didn't wear my GPS unit, so I had to just run by heart rate and wait for the 4:00 pace group to come up behind me. I was surprised to find that from about mile 3 on, I was hitting 9:00 miles pretty consistently and feeling good, so thought I might be able to pull out another 4-hour marathon despite the bum leg. I was eating at 30-minute intervals as I do when training or racing, though the rain made me only go for my honey flask, because messing with my pack in the rain is just a pain in the ass. I moved onto the out-and-back part of the course, where I saw the lead male run by—he was smokin' the course, rain or no rain. Then the rest of the leaders and front-of-the-packers began to go by, and I kept myself busy watching them. I tucked in behind two gals running about my pace, until one of them slipped on a white painted traffic indicator and fell to the ground on her knee, breaking her fall with her wrist. I think she was okay (two dude runners rushed to her aid from both her left and her right, which was awesome—I'm always amazed when people are so selfless during races), but unfortunately that was the last I saw of her or her friend. I kept moving forward, still hitting the 9:00s. Near the turnaround, I started to look for Erin, because I didn't know if she was ahead or behind me (we were separated pretty much at the start again, just like Newport). It was fun to see all the super fast pace groups go by in the other direction, and how serious they looked. I wondered if I looked that serious even though I did not look that fast. Eventually, I also saw the 3:50 pacers go by and wished them well, though I did not wish I was with them still! I know when the time is right I'll be able to hit that pace no problem, but that was not the time.
After the turnaround, I looked for Erin's [she says pink, I say red] hat in earnest. And then there she was! High fives, then on I went. I think I first stretched my leg/hip around mile 11, but it wasn't really bothering me too much, just tight and in need of loosening up. As we peeled off to continue on the marathon course (where the half-marathoners headed back to the finish, lucky dogs), I was still keeping up with my 9:00 minute/miles. I saw Seujan run by me around mile 12 (I didn’t even see her face but I know what the back of Seujan looks like because that’s all I ever see of her) and said hi. She looked really strong and pulled away quickly (turns out she BQ'd again, I could learn some things from her for sure). Sometime in the next mile or so, the 4-hour pace group reached me (they were still technically a couple minutes behind me in time because they started several minutes after our wave). I decided to try to hang with them, and stuck to their red lizard like glue. I asked one of the pacers how long after the B wave they started, and the lead lizard holder said it was a couple of minutes. I managed to hang with them for a mile, but shortly before mile 14, I knew I was going to have to start run/walking because my hip and leg were starting to really stiffen up and hurt. Thankfully it was past the halfway mark, but mentally, 12 more miles of run/walk was really not doing much for my motivation. So I let the 4-hour group take off as well, and started to run 9 minutes/walk 1 minute. I was hydrating well, and once I realized this was not going to be a 4-hour race, I decided using the porta-potty was a good idea. Back out on the course, I was still eating, but I think I was starting to fall off my regularly scheduled regimen of every 30 minutes because I wasn’t concerned about time anymore but survival. I think I had some of the course gummy bears on the out and back, though. I saw a girl puking at the side of the road, and thanked my luck stars at least I didn’t have that problem. But sometime in the next couple miles, I started to get cold. I put on my long-sleeved shirt, but the arms were soaking wet; still, for a while, it kept me warm. I had to keep removing my gloves and wringing them out (over the course of the race, I probably wrung out at least a thermos full of water just to give you an idea). I was so wet, my hands were pruning up inside the gloves. The course started up the only big hill toward the
St. John’s Bridge (roughly miles 16-17.5), and I decided to walk the hill. Once on the bridge I started running again, mostly because at that height, the winds were really blowing and lowering my core temp even more. I had goosebumps on my arms by then and started to get worried that I wouldn’t even be able to finish: Could my body stay that cold for 9 miles when I knew I would be walking a lot of those miles? It was a beautiful bridge and view, I just wish it would have been a crisp cool fall morning instead of a monsoon!
At the other end of the bridge, we took a right and started heading back south to Portland along a bluff above the river, edged by great neighborhoods and houses. One great thing about the course was the support, and all the dogs! Some of the dogs looked so happy to be out with their humans (the happiest creatures out there that day), and others looked like sad, drowned rats who would rather be in front of a fire. After the bridge I saw a girl holding the cutest golden retriever puppy like a baby, and bouncing it up and down in her arms. Soooo cute.
So basically from the bridge on I was just slogging it out in survival mode. I stopped frequently to stretch, retie my shoelaces, stretch, and start jogging again. At this point, I really was cold, and I knew to keep warm I had to run more, but my leg hurt so much that wasn’t really possible. The most painful part was going from a walk break back to running, which was always accompanied by the limp at its worst. Two times, two different guys passed me as I made the transition, looked at me with sympathy and what I took as admiration for my stick-to-it-iveness as they said “good job!” I was very thankful when folks bothered to motivate me in such crummy conditions. Later, I limped up behind a runner with a handwritten sign pinned to his back that said “Autistic Runner” and was very moved by that. We all have our obstacles; mine was temporary, and here was this guy doing something I imagine was not at all easy for him (not that a marathon is easy for anyone). I love those moments in a race when you see something you know won’t fall out of your head—for me there aren’t many, and this was one.
I had been maintaining a decent run/walk combo from the bridge to about mile 20, but then it really fell off. I kept doing the math of how much longer I would be out there, cold, and when I could get my space blanket. I thought of what I would do at the finish (cross, get space blanket, get race t-shirt, strip off wet shirts & replace with dry race t-shirt) to keep me going. But I never really thought about quitting—just worried that I would have to stop because I was hypothermic! (Oh, btw, I’m a wee bit of a hypochondriac but I really was that cold so that wasn’t the crazy talking.) At mile 24 I think, I was heading up a hill and heard “I like to move it move it” (a.k.a the Lemur Song) that Erin had Facebooked about before the race and had my first laugh in a long time. Rounded a corner by a brewery and they were handing out tiiiiiiny cups of beer. Bleccch! No thanks. Hit the porta-potties again to pee and warm up, I kid you not. Any porta-potty in a storm, I say. I think I had more gummy bears. By then I knew even if I walked the rest, I was almost done. Across the Broadway bridge and with one mile to go I was like, “no way in hell am I walking anymore” so I “ran” it in the rest of the way. Crossed the finish line with a chip time of 4:50:13, and although it was my worst marathon time of the three, I was still incredibly proud that I toughed it out and finished what I started, even when I figured going in it probably wouldn’t be a great day. Some pretty nifty (though not very impressive) stats are available here:
Ericka's Not Very Impressive Race Results
All things considered (and two weeks later), I can say that even if it wasn’t a great race, it was still a good race. It was mentally very tough because of the rain and the pain, but I didn’t give up even though I did slow down. I’m proud that I ran two marathons in six months, my fastest ever and my slowest ever. I’m happy that I have a break in training now to heal what ails me and get back to it. I’m happy Kevin has started running again and I look forward to running with him, one of my favorite things to do together. And I look forward to my next marathon.
After crossing the finish line, I gathered the race rewards for my efforts (Portland Marathon Finisher Shirt, I can’t wait to wear you running!), and limped back toward the hotel. As I passed the Marriott, Cheryl was waiting outside and we commiserated about the horrible conditions. She had an iPad and was able to tell me Erin had finished just a few minutes later, so I knew she would be coming shortly. I went to Peet’s to get some coffee to warm me up, with my space blanket still wrapped around me for dear life, and as I left, a cute (dry) little girl said “congratulations!” and I thought yes, congratulations indeed.
I saw Erin walking by on her way to the car, where we gathered our dry clothes, snuck back into the hotel bathrooms and did bird baths with baby wipes and changed into dry clothes. The nice thing about a soaking wet marathon is you’re not sticky and salty, it’s almost like stepping out of a shower! (When I changed I did find out my foot had been bleeding for I don’t know how long (enough to turn my shoe rusty with blood on the outside!) because I have one toe on my right foot that always digs into the other. So note to self, trim that toenail next to nothing next time!) We got out of dodge and headed into Vancouver in search of food—wow, “downtown” Vancouver is weird!—ate what turned out to be the perfect post-race food, and started the drive home. The drive home that was absolutely sunny and beautiful the whole way. Ridiculous!
