Marathon Report - The Preamble

It's over. This is probably going to be painfully boring for anybody else reading, but I'm going to do my best to relate my Saint George Marathon '08 experience (you know for posterity).

THE EXPO: It really started Friday at the expo/packet pick up. It was at the St. George convention center which took forever to get to because of all the marathon traffic. We walked in and it was pretty much like you would expect. A bunch of booths giving out mostly random stuff. I went straight back to the packet pick up. They had it really well organized and before I knew it this nice older lady was looking through a box for my packet. She said it wasn't there so I needed to go to the "problem" booth. "Oh great" I thought as my mind raced through what could have possibly gone wrong. I walk up to the table and and the lady takes one look at me and says "weight division". At first I was relieved that there was nothing major wrong, then I was a little offended, especially after so many people recently have been saying I look really thin. Anyway I step on the scale to make it official because they won't take your word for it, I was just fat enough to pass and was on my way. We wandered around the expo for a while and I was able to pick up some new flavors of "magic beans". I tried some gross Cliff products and looked at some of the vintage SGM t-shirts then we were off, back to the condo.

THE SHORT NIGHT: We got back to the condo and had a sweet pasta dinner made by my awesome wife. I was planning on getting up at about 4:15 am so I thought I could get to sleep by 9:00 and get a decent 7 hours of sleep. So at about 9:00 I wandered back to bed and by about 9:30 I was asleep. Then I woke up at 12:30AM to the sound of my daughter crying and my wife getting up to see what was wrong. When I looked at the clock I was really hoping it was going to say at least 2:30 and was really pissed when there was a one in front of that two. Then the long part of the night began. Between Drew getting up and waking Elle up, my Mother snoring in the living room and just being juiced for the marathon I couldn't get back to sleep. By 2:30 I decided if I didn't get to sleep right away I may as well try to make the early 4:00 am bus and be eligible for "earlybird" prizes. So at 3:15 I got up and my sweet wife told me how bad she felt that I didn't get any sleep. It doesn't sound like much, but I was just so relieved she was more worried about me than pissed off at me for dragging her to St. George and making her go through a sleepless night. I ate my breakfast, got my stuff together, got in the car and headed to the buses.

THE LONG BUS RIDE: On my way to the buses I found myself walking next to another "early riser". I asked if he planned on waking up this early of if he just couldn't sleep. He indicated the later and I was glad to hear that I wasn't the only one attempting to run 26.2 miles on less than a handful of hours of sleep. In fact, on the bus it sounded like most of the folks were fellow insomniacs. The guy who sat next to me on the bus was a "veteran" marathoner but this was his first SGM. He was from Ogden and had qualified for and run Boston. He shared some cool stories of previous marathons and about how when he ran Boston two years ago the weather was cold, rainy, and windy. Turns out he perfectly foreshadowed this years SGM. We swapped a few more running stories but spent most of the time in silence. I overheard the girl in front of me talking about living in Austin, the people behind me were overwhelmingly pessimistic about the whole thing and there were a couple of hyper high school age kids sitting across from me. I had heard the bus ride would feel long, but holy crap. That bus just kept going and going, even when I saw the lights in the sky that marked the starting line it seemed like forever until we got there. When we pulled up there were a bunch of American flags whipping in the wind and of course they were blowing the wrong way. This was when I got my first realization that the weather was not going to cooperate.

THE COLD DARK WAIT: The starting area was set up pretty cool. They had a bunch of lights, some speakers and an aid station right when you get off the bus. The song that was blaring was Black-eyed-peas "lets get it started in here". There was a huge line of porta-poties and another huge double line of about 3 foot high stacks of wood flanking both sides of the road we were about to run on. I hadn't had my morning constitution yet so I made my way to one of the porta-poties and took care of business as well as grabbed a few feet of TP for any "emergencies" I may have later in the day. I then made my way to one of the recently lit fires and sat down on the dirt next to it because it seemed like the thing to do not because I was feeling cold. I knew it would be nippy so I wore a long sleeve shirt, texas hoodie, beanie, and gloves. I started in on my pre-race meal plan and noticed the guy sitting next to me had a Red Sox hat. Since I went to bed early I didn't catch the end of the game. I was happy to hear the Sox won with a home run off K-rod and that was the last conversation I had until the end of the race almost 7 hours later. The rest of the starting line wait was a blurr. More and more people showed up, every once in a while a dude with an announcer voice would get on the PA and spout some random stuff. After a while I didn't notice the wind anymore, but then the rain started. At first I thought something was leaking out of my bag onto my legs, but then I realized it was rain. It was really light at first but picked up to a steady drizzle. I put on one of the trash bags they were giving away as makeshift raincoats. I headed into the bushes a couple of times to relieve myself. I was thinking it would be a good idea to sit on the pot to make sure I didn't have any more constitution to take care of, but the lines were too long and the race was starting in like 15 min. I took off my hoodie, beanie, and gloves and put them in my bag and onto the clothing uhaul. I set up at the starting area between the 4:00 and 3:50 pace groups and got my watch ready for the start.