Cal.E. and Lucia are still getting to know each other better, so I will just go straight to chapter sixteen of "Beyond the Thirteenth Mile; The Iron Man Chronicles.
CHAPTER 16:
THE JACKET
Run Course; mile fifteen: The medical aid station is at this mile marker. The participants can gather their “special needs” bags here since we cannot carry meds on the course.
I had better just go ahead and take my asthma rescue inhaler, whether I need it or not. This is my last chance to use it. I will not get another opportunity to pass by this aid station.
I feel okay. I can breathe, but this inhaler may improve that. Since I have a medical diagnosis of asthma, this is not cheating.
That volunteer was sure surprised that I could finish this race with the possibility of having an asthma attack. He had been holding my bag for most of the marathon. I guess he did not peek inside to see what was in the bag. It is probably against the rules.
This is definitely a harder race than that fifty-kilometer run I did as a tuneup for this race. I would NOT need the jacket I earned for finishing that race today. It is VERY warm…
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It's not much of a jacket as jackets go. In fact, it says on the label to keep it away from open flames, because the material is flammable. Of all of my "trophies" though, this one is, perhaps, my favorite one to date. Not because of the material of which it is made, but because of what it represents; finishing a 50-kilometer (31-mile) trail run. My time was as slow as I thought it could possibly be, six hours and twenty-two minutes. I had originally thought that I could possibly have finished about an hour faster, especially since the weather conditions were ideal for running the morning of the race. The temperatures were in the high forties, and a cloud cover kept the sun from being much of a problem. A dense fog, however, had delayed the start of the run by about fifteen minutes. The weather still held out.
A trail run takes a different mentality than a marathon-one is bound to see people carrying backpacks and camelbacks filled with food, water, and sports drinks. The different sizes and shapes of the competitors are also interesting to see. Both the average weight and the average age of a trail runner tend to run higher than that of a mid-pack marathon runner.
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I started in the middle of the pack. This being my first trail run, I had not realized that it was nearly impossible to pass anyone for the first five to six miles. This is because the path is only wide enough for one person at a time to get through. Once the path widened, I was able to run about a nine-minute-per- mile pace. This is a tad slower than my usual pace, but a good one for a trail run. I kept this pace until around mile 14 or 15 (trail runs do not have clearly marked mile markers, for obvious reasons), when my right foot found a tree root, and with brutal force. My right knee, the one that had been surgically repaired when I was nineteen years old, slipped out of place, just as it had at the last water stop on the 30-kilometer run the year before. That time, I was only one-half of a mile from the finish line, so I had decided not to risk taking my knee brace off and not being able to finish the race. Instead, I drug my right extremity over the finish line and over to a light pole, which I leaned against while stretching my leg and putting my damaged joint back in the right position. This time, my knee was hyper-extended, and I wasn't quite halfway through the run, leaving me with a conundrum (whether or not to risk taking off my knee brace in the middle of the woods, with little help in sight). I opted to leave the knee brace in place and see how far I could run (or, probably walk).
There are two really neat things about a trail run. One is that the course is very forgiving since it is made out of trampled dirt. The other is that there is a very generous time limit (12 hours for the 50-mile run and ten hours for the fifty-kilometer run). I knew that I had time to walk the whole course in under ten hours, (I can walk pretty fast), but walking isn't really what I enjoy doing. I had no choice at this particular time, though. Walking on one good leg was hard enough, but running was impossible. So, I walked, and I walked, and I walked some more, getting a chance to get to know some of the other competitors along the way (especially the others that were struggling).
A fireman who had opted for sandals around mile twenty (because his feet were too swollen to wear his running shoes anymore) struck up a conversation with me, and we talked until the last rest stop. At that point, one of the volunteers told us that we had a little less than three miles to the finish line. Being very tired of walking, I decided to see how my knee would hold up. I know I looked more like a duck than a deer as I started to '’run" but my pride had been gone for several hours. I drug my right leg up the last hill and across the finish line, grabbing a concerned Nicole for support as I gathered my "trophy" from one of the volunteers.
My knee healed faster and better than I had ever hoped it would, allowing me to start to train again after only resting it for a little over a week. This was about as long as I had planned on resting before resuming my training.
These two incidents did, however, convince me to spend $150 on a new knee brace, one made out of magnetic material. My hope was that the new knee brace would help me train for and complete my next marathon with a minimum of complications.
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