The Marathon

Yep. I actually did it. I ran a marathon. Here's how it went down...

So.... Myself and 2 friends arrived in Istanbul Saturday morning. We went straight to our hostel, cleaned up a bit, and headed out to the marathon Expo. It was kind of a disaster trying to find the shuttle pick up spot and wandered around the whole Sultanahmet area for about an hour before finally seeing a small shuttle with a little sign in the window that said "Marathon Expo". So we get on with a group of Italians and wait for another 30 minutes or so before finally driving the 15 minutes to the expo center. We picked up our race number and bags and t-shirts, ate some pasta, bought some cheap running clothes, then headed back to the hostel to prepare for the race the next day. 

5 am, the alarm goes off. Outside we hear the ominous rattlings of thunder, and see some too-close-for-comfort lightning. Great. So we suit up, carb up, and head out into the rain back to the pick up spot, which luckily was only about 5 minutes from our hostel. We get up there and there is not another soul in sight. Strange. We finally find some sort of night guard person and between the little Turkish we've learned and the little English he knows, we eventually realize that in our blur of preparations and anxieties, we forgot to reset our clocks to Turkey time. We were up 3 hours early. Whoops! SO! back to the hostel for a little extra sleep, then back out to the shuttle pick up at the REAL time, where we saw many other people waiting, and felt much more at ease. By this time, the rain had cleared up, and it turned out to be a beautiful day. Perfect for a marathon!

Well, at least we weren't late!

Then the race... it was harder than I expected. I hadn't trained as well as I should have, but was still pretty confident in my ability to conquer this beast. The first few miles went pretty well. At this time I was still feeling that adrenaline and excitement resulting from a huge group of people all running together, being cheered on by people along the streets, and the feeling of doing something awesome. It was fun! And, I'm not gonna lie, I got a little emotional over it a few times. What can ya do?? 

A beautiful day for running from Asia to Europe.

But, around mile 9, the excitement and adrenaline wore off and the exhaustion started setting in. It was too early to be tired! No good! I think one problem was that, because we woke up and ate so early, I was already drained of carbs/energy by this time. I started getting faint, and found myself spotting ambulances - just in case. Then, around mile 10, there was a water/food station with apples and sugar cubes. I popped the sugary goodness in my mouth, and was good to go. The faintness went away and I didn't have any more troubles with that for the rest of the race. 

Unfortunately, it was also about this time that the 15km racers switched paths and I suddenly found myself very alone on the course. This is also about the time that the course became very boring. Bad combination. We turned onto a long highway with nothing very interesting to look at. The first half had been near the city center and along small streets with cute shops, lots of people, bridges, the sea nearby, beautiful mosques and buildings...  Now - there was nothing but department stores off in the distance and not much else. I started passing up a few people around miles 15-17, and this made me feel better because, unlike these people, I wasn't slowing down but staying (slow and) steady. 

You develop an odd relationship with your favorite pair of running shoes after logging hundreds of miles on them. We love our shoes!

Then mile 23. Only 3.2 more to go. Traffic had opened along the road after 5 hours and 30 minutes. I was expecting this. But we were told we could finish the race running along the sidewalks, and that was what I planned to do. Unfortunately, the "ambulance people" had other plans for us. They came along and started picking up us slow people. I was devastated. I'd come so far and got SOO close! And now they're making me stop!? But what could I do? I was too mentally and physically drained by then to try to fight it. There was a nice looking Russian lady in there, so at least I'd have someone to talk to. 

And boy did we talk. Her name was Lubov ( very common Russian name) and she had run 142 marathons in her life. This was her 18th of the year. She told me that she had finished every single one of them - albeit slowly - and she'd be darned if these "dogs" didn't let her finish this one!! We stopped to pick up another woman - an American who was NOT happy about being picked up, but the Turkish people didn't understand her, and she didn't understand them (and all along my new Russian friend was demanding that I "Translate! Translate!" and loving the soap opera unfolding before us), but she eventually joined us and we, together, got very emotional over the fact that we were so close, and not allowed to finish.

But Lubov would not stand for it! She popped her head into the cabin of the ambulance and started yelling her nearly exhausted lungs out, saying "This is not fair! You are cheating us! You are dogs! This is not fair!" Finally, they couldn't take it anymore. The woman driving abruptly stopped the car, and the woman in the passenger seat jumped out, opened the door and yelled at us to get out - which we did, gladly. 

And then... I was lost. We'd only driven about a kilometer, but the course had been taken down and I had no idea where to go. Luckily, this other American woman had been in Istanbul for 3 weeks and had been training on the course and said from that point it usually only took her about 10 minutes to power-walk to the finish. So I followed her lead until I could see roughly where the finish was. I lost her at some point, but just kept going - not because I thought I'd actually get a time. I had already settled on the idea of having a big ol' DNF (did not finish) printed next to my name. But, I needed to find my friends and pick up my bag that I'd left with my post-race clothes and shoes. Finally, just a few hundred meters from the finish, a man sees that I'm holding my number (which I had removed from my shirt, because I was ashamed of walking through that crowd as a non-finisher, and just wanted to get it over with, hoping that people wouldn't notice me as I walked up the hill to the finish line). He starts gesturing me to show the number, and nudging a man next to him with a stop watch around his neck. Say what!? He looked at my number, quickly found me in his bundle of papers, and wrote a time down. Then a man said to me "You want medal?" Uhh, yeah I want my freakin' medal! "Wait. We take." I found out then that they had run out of finishers bags, and we had to wait for someone to bring them to a group of about 10 of us who had finished after they ran out. I started chatting with people around there, including Lubov's husband who had finished just before us and was pleasantly surprised to find a young woman who spoke Russian, and a woman who had served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan a few years ago. 

"Ok, bye guys! See you in 6 hours!" Holly exclaimed, as hundreds of runners breezed quickly past her.

I finally got my medal, my race bag, and found my friends, and we slowly made our way down to our hostel. When we got back to our room, I was the first to shower and get cleaned up. I was feeling alright right after the race - tired, obviously, but not in a lot of pain. Until a couple hours later, when I started feeling so sick to my stomach I didn't even want to move. I laid on my bed around 7:00 and figured I'd wait for the other girls to clean up and get ready and we'd go find some food. I heard them get up from a "nap" around 10:00 to go out, but I was still feeling so sick I couldn't even muster the strength to speak. I eventually got up and went to the bathroom to try to make myself throw up, thinking that'd ease the pain, but nothing happened. So I practically crawled back to bed and fell back asleep. 

Luckily, I was feeling much better by the next morning. I was sore, but nothing so bad that a couple ibuprofen couldn't dull. 

Denise, me, and Hannah. I couldn't have (wouldn't have!) done it without them!

I feel really good about having finished this marathon, even if I was the 232nd of 234 women to finish. At least I wasn't one of the ones that DIDN'T finish, and I wasn't disqualified, and I showed up! There's a whole page of people who didn't even make it to the starting line! Now, would I ever run another marathon? I don't think so. A half marathon, yeah - I can do that. But another full one? No. I think I'm good with saying I ran a marathon in Istanbul, Turkey, which crossed the Asian/European continental divide (cooooool!), and I trained while living in a little village in Kazakhstan. Oh yeah, also, I have a weird heart thing (premature ventricular contractions, or something like that. I just found out about it this when I saw my doctors in June). Running is not easy for me. It hurts, and it's hard work, but I did it! Despite the mental and physical barriers, I ran a marathon! So, basically, I'm amazing.  

So. Yep. I ran a marathon. 

And then, the fun began...

Stay tuned!