10

Three years, three humbling experiences. The Kalamazoo Marathon has my number. Inexperience, overconfidence, fear, so far have been the results, what will this year bring? Some friends refuse to do it. Others ask me why I continue to do it. Not even sure how to answer. It's not a rivalry, because it's completely one sided at the moment. The course is awful, the only miles I like are the first five. The weather, is always warming up at the worst possible time. It might be simply be because this is my city.

Two days after I committed to doing this race again, I mean officially by signing up and paying money to force myself, I found out the course had changed. They actually managed to make it more difficult, as if that's been the reason for my struggles, yeah, it's been too easy. So much of running is mental and I have to be honest, this is where I checked out. I can't say it's the whole reason I cut back my training, but it definitely played a factor. There is just something about this course that feels like kryponite to me. Even training runs on it, when the mileage is less, mentally it messes with my psyche now and easy runs end up stirring up memories resulting in bad times.

Lack of training, how does Murphy's Law get me? Why of course by giving me the lowest temperatures for this race since I've been doing it! Figures! Whoooosh! Went the start of the gun this year. While I got some reprieve with the temps, the wind was out in force.

The early miles were uneventful. My head was stuck thinking about the course changes and knowing that whole section would be where this race would be either be successful or turn into the nightmare.  At one point I got snapped out my runner's haze coming out of campus where a dad gave his daughter a "shadow hug" as we ran under the bridge. That was kind of cool and made me smile.

Instead of the long, boring, stretch in the scorching sun like years past, the solution to the road maintenance is sending us uphill through a neighborhood only to be dumped on the road that I'm convinced finishes me off every year with more hills, making us run it twice out and back. Then add to the mix, wtf is up with this wind which is blowing directly at us running out. I'd like to say this was my superior strategy, for this long stretch of road, I tucked in behind a clump of runners and I pretended they were my windbreaker.  While already in my head, I was convinced the wind would be in my face both directions, there were a few spots (while I'm still not convinced they equaled out) where I could actually feel the wind pushing me. That was a nice surprise. An even nicer surprise was the energy boost seeing the other runners in the out and back section. Giving and receiving words of encouragement, completely a different feeling than crowd support.  So, the section that I dreaded the most, turned out to be more positive than negative.

The ending is always a struggle, regardless. This time, by mile 20 I was still flirting with a PR on what I consider the hardest marathon course I've done. I knew a PR wasn't going to happen based on the remaining hills, but that was still moral victory enough.  At this point, my feet were sore and while a PR wasn't going to happen, a PR for the marathon that always beats me to a pulp was. This is where I decided I could take it easy the rest of the way and didn't see the point to doing anything dumb and pushing too hard.  CT was all smiles when I first saw her down the stretch, I think even she was surprised to see me this early on my nemesis. With her smile, I even felt like I was safe from having to ride home in the trunk (for once).          

Three years, marathon number 10 goes in the books as a success. Doubt there will ever be a day when it gets easy, but today I won because I'm still standing (actually, I'm not my calves were cramping something awful once I finished...but that was temporary). Will I train more next year? Probably not. Will I do it again? Probably. Will it feel as one sided as it has before? Lets just say it's a rivalry. Kalamazoo had my number, but it's now a number for me as well, #10.