Supersize Me: What I Learned from My First Marathon and the Benefits of Feed Stations

Fourteen years ago I ran my first marathon…and I was totally unprepared. I remember the day before the race perfectly. I drove up to Steamboat with a bunch of my running friends to do the half marathon. I had run a gazillion half marathons by that point and had run a minimum of 50 miles a week for years but had never crossed the threshold into the full marathon.

However, when we went to pick up our packets there were 2 tables set up side by side. One was for the half marathon and one for the full. I remember standing in front of the tables thinking I would be totally flaking out if I just did the half. Forget the concept of going full out for a half marathon. In my head choosing to do the half when there was a full was akin to not finishing the race at all. Not an option.

So, in a moment of shear confidence I asked if I could upgrade to the full. With a tone of surprise and a little “adda girl” in their voice they said yes and added this little nugget, “Most people at this point have asked if they can do the half instead of the full”, which of course just fed my need (my ego) to do the whole thing even more. So I gave them a check for the difference and walked out to the car with my marathon race packet, a big old smile on my face and a building pit in my stomach.

When I sat down in the back seat I heard the sound of a very loud voice in my head saying, “Holy crap, can I do this?” Slightly uncomfortable does not adequately describe how I was feeling. I’m knew I wasn’t going to be okay with “just finishing” and coming in last was not in my game plan so I knew that in the next 12 hours I was going to have to figure out a way to ensure I made it to that start line with my legs, lungs, and dignity all in good shape.

After a really cold and long bus ride to the start line at 8,000 feet I felt pretty good, though you can bet that I was wishing the entire ride up that I had opted for the half instead. In any case I plopped myself on the start line and when the gun went off made my way, with 300 other runners, along the path.

The Wall

It was a beautiful course, the day was perfect, smiling faces all around and by mile 10 I was convinced I had made the best move possible. I felt fabulous and knew at mile 13.1 I was still going to be wanting more, which I did, but not for long. Like most people who run marathons understand there is often something very special waiting for you around mile 17 or 18. Something you’ve heard about and maybe even worried about but could not possibly understand until you got there.

There I was. The wall.

My first sign that I had crossed into the valley of death was when I no longer saw anyone else around me, the road looked fuzzy and I ran for almost an entire mile with my eyes closed. I was basically taking a nap while in motion – again, something you can’t believe until you find yourself doing it too.

I was starving and thirsty and because this is a pretty small race (only 300 in the marathon) they didn’t have water and food stations every mile. And because I am total bonehead about stuff like this the salad I ate the night before was not helping me on the reserves front. At this point I was rulking (run walking) with emphasis on the walking, wondering how the hell I was going to get through it or at least out of it without being embarrassed by an unsightly sag wagon.

I was in tears but then through the sweat I saw this shiny object on the road about 50 yards ahead. If you have spent any time on a race course you’re familiar with the unmistakeable mylar wrapper which houses The PowerBar. I prayed with every step that it wasn’t empty and when I dragged my sorry ass up to the spot I saw the most beautiful thing in the world. A half eaten banana PowerPar with big old teeth marks right down the center. I imagined the person whose teeth it might have been for about a half a second and ate that thing faster than Mr. Fox in The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Amazed at how much energy that gave me I got back to running and made it to the next feed station where I downed a PB & J and an orange and felt the life come back into my legs. Then I hit another wall around mile 22 and even my walking pretty much sucked at that point.

Then, as I was contemplating my utter lameness, a friend and her husband pulled up on their bikes to offer some support. I cried big tears when I saw them and they pretty much got me from mile 22 to mile 25. I finished the next 1.2 miles on my own and worked my way through the shoot feeling more overwhelmed than I had imagined. My time was God awful as far as I was concerned but when they put that finisher’s medal on me you would have thought I had just done the Ironman.

But, like everything in life, our end points rarely, if ever, provide the completion, victory, lesson, or success we had envisioned and for the most part, those perceived end points are far less interesting and provocative than the moments we experience right before we hit them. That was true for me in so many ways that day and it bore itself out in the days following as well.

When I think about that day I remember the bus ride up and the guy who sat next to me and reminded me that I wouldn’t have been on that bus if I didn’t know I could do it. I remember how I felt at mile 13, how I felt when I saw that PowerPar wrapper and what happened to my body when I ate it. I remember my friends showing up at the perfect time and the fact that they had the good sense not to say a thing about running but instead distract me with the plans for their wedding. And, I remember the feeling of walking through the shoot knowing I did what I set out to do and that my worries about what place I would be in or how much I would have to walk were completely silly and made no difference in the big picture.

I thought that day was going to be about impressing my family, my friends, and myself or about proving I could run 26.2 miles or that I was good enough to do it without training for it or a million other things it wasn’t about.

In the end it was about understanding this:

If you want to feel those big feelings, if you want to blow your own mind, if you want to do something you have never done before, you have to say yes even when it feels really scary to do it. A little bit of stress around something like this can be a very good thing. (I would argue that most people have heard this and may know it on some level but very few act on it on a consistent basis because it’s really really hard and far more comfortable to do what feels good.)

This is true when it comes to sports, weight loss, your business, your career and even love. You have to be willing to suck, to fail, to look crazy stupid and to keep going in spite of it.

I didn’t leave that lesson in Steamboat with me. I took it with me when I said yes to countless other races after that (my next marathon is coming up May 9th so stay tuned if you want a training buddy), when I said yes to training for an Ironman, when I decided to have a baby, go to graduate school…again, start a business and change careers a bazillion times. I have been known to conveniently forget it when things just feel too flippin hard or I just want to give up but just like in a race when there are  feed stations at regular intervals, I have my friends, family and half-eaten PowerBars to keep me going.

We all need a feed station. Who’s manning yours?

Tagged as: career change, goals, marathon training, running