Hello my endurance athletic old friends. 

Welcome to episode 5-481.

https://shows.acast.com/runrunlive/episodes/5-481-marine-corps-marathon

How are we on this fine fall day?  Up here in New England we have set the clocks back and it is now officially dark at 4:30ish, which makes me want to stab myself in the eye with an olive fork… Is there such a thing as an olive fork? 

We like to tell ourselves up, with puritanical zeal, and righteous fury, that all this lack of sunlight and crappy weather makes us harder and more able to transverse this fickle world filled with chaos. 

We say things like, “I was doing hill repeats in the freezing rain,” – wearing that suffering like holy stigmata. 

But, what if it’s all a lie?  What if all the adversity just makes us grumpy and hard to live with?

I don’t know – but I do know the best policy is to take it one day at a time, do what you can and embrace what the universe brings you because time is short!

Those of you new to the RunRunLive podcast may be thinking “Chris, what the hell are you on about?”

And to you I would say “Just stick with it and it will eventually all make sense!”  And, I’d be lying, because I have no intention to, and frankly, lack the ability to make sense most of the time, so I guess, my advice would be, “You’ll get used to it…”

Like a wart in an uncomfortable place. 

I started this podcast In 2007 as a interview-based podcast to share.  Share what?  Well, originally, to share all the tribal knowledge I had accumulated as an amateur athlete.  I figured that what I had learned, starting from scratch at 30 years old, embracing the sport and getting addicted in a sense, would be valuable to others.

Frankly I thought I had found the solution to all my life challenges.  Out of shape?  Go for a run.  Overweight? Go for a run.  Stressed out? Go for a run? 

And by studying, learning from the old-timers and immersing myself in the culture I really thought I had the answers. 

As we progressed through the years of the podcast I met new people and tried new things and, much to my surprise, got semi-internet famous.  And this is where I am forced to remind everyone that being internet famous is not the same thing as being famous. 

In the background I raised my kids and put them through school and stayed married.  I worked and traveled and tried my best to live the adventure. 

My running advice gave way to the other forms of advice indicative of the mid-career searcher type – business and self-helpy type stuff. 

I even managed to blend in some of my creative endeavors, knowing that I’m a jaded author as well.

And sundry other diversions. 

Here’s the truth.  Most podcasts never make it past 10 episodes.  Why?  First because the creators have poor expectations. 

They think it’s a commercial project, which it isn’t.  You’re not going to make any money and you’re not going to get famous.  Or they think it’s easy.  Which it isn’t.  Or they think they have a endless well of ideas, which they don’t. 

We are currently at somewhere around 500 episodes because I never had those expectations.  I focused on the simple goal of consistency.  And, you may have figured it out by now, my brain is wired in a wonderful way.  I never run out of things to say.  My brain is like a box of demented, rabid weasels all trying to get out at the same time. 

Some of you were on the ride with me.  Through injury and success.  Through constant reinvention and searching. 

And here we are again. 

I’m working on reinventing myself. 

I don’t have the desire or bandwidth to do interviews anymore. 

Instead I’m going to let a few of those weasels out of the box every once in a while to run around and bite unwary people. 

Today we have a wonderful show for you.

I am going to talk about my Marine Corps Marathon. 

And then I think I’ll talk a bit about my dog Ollie .

Finally I’ll ruminate on the training.  Because I’m still learning. 

So, you ready to have some fun?  Let’s go for a run!

On with the show!

The 2023 Marine Corps Marathon

Where to start?  

I’ve read a lot of bad race reports.  My least favorite race report format is the stream-of-consciousness-linear format. 

You know what I’m talking about. 

I woke up at 8:37, went to the expo, picked up my number, met joe, bought some Gu, went back to the hotel, laid out my blue shirt, not my red shirt… Droning on and on like some super non-interesting Bloomsday.

My second least favorite race report is the “I had a bad race and I’m going to blame everyone else” format.  It goes something like “Let me tell you how these stupid race directors ruined my weekend by not having the right type of rehydration fluid on the course, and my Garmin said 26.4, so they must have measured the course wrong…”  Wah, Wah, Wah… Don’t we have enough negativity in the world?  If you’re going to drown us with insufferable complaining, at least try to make it interesting.

My advice is always to write down, in bullet form, everything you can remember and what struck you soon after the race, then wait a few days to write it up. 

Look at your list and find the most interesting thing, find the hook that will grab your readers by the throat.  Start with that. 

The example I use is “I was lying face down in the grass throwing up.”  See?  That’s a good sentence.  That’s a good way to start.

Ready? Let’s go.

2023 Marine Corps Marathon – once more into the breach.

I was crying at the start.  Not full on crying, but weepy overcome-by-emotion crying. 

It wasn’t an artifice.  I wasn’t weepy because I thought I should be weepy.  I was weepy because I was emotionally overcome by the fact that I was back standing in the corral at the start of a marathon. 

And I think that’s what defined this race.  The fact that I got to the start. 

I could leave the race report right there and you’d have most of the significant weight of it. 

I got to the start. 

Ok, I guess we’re done.  Did you like my race report?  Was it everything you wanted?  No? 

Kinda needy aint yah?

OK – so a quick review and scene setting to get us all in the same place. 

What made this starting line so emotional.  (And, since we’re friends an all, I get weepy all the time, so that’s not super special.  I’ve gotten weepy at marathon starts before.  When the sun is coming up on a crisp morning and someone is belting out the national anthem – it’s designed to pull on your heart strings.)

What made this start significant is 6 months or so earlier I had resigned myself to the evidence that I was done running marathons, and maybe done running all together. 

In the spring of 2020, with the apocalypse raging, I went out for a hill workout.  I was training for Boston.  Something popped in my left knee.  And that began a slow, chronic spiral down into inactivity. 

By the beginning of 2023 I was running Zero miles.  I was still fighting the good fight with biking and weightlifting, but I was losing the battle of the waistline. 

It was 3 years and the knee still flared up any time I tried to run on it.

So that was my starting point when I was dared to sign up for MCM in April.  Which gave me a scant 6 months to climb out of that well and into marathon shape.

I like having goals and this seemed like a good one.  My old coach volunteered to train me. 

We got to work. 

And, I’ll circle back around to this training cycle at some point, because I learned a lot, but let’s suffice it to say that by October I had enough fitness to get to the starting line. 

My wife and I drove down to DC on Friday and drove back on Monday.  One of the things I regret, or would have done differently over the years, is to budget in those extra buffer days around the race.

I was always parachuting in for the race and then hopping, well usually limping onto a plane after the race.  I should have given myself more time to smell the roses. 

My youngest Daughter Teresa and her husband live in DC so that made it into a nice weeken of visiting. 

And this is the point in our RunRunLive relationship where I can give you a big reveal and tell a story.

Back when I started podcasting about my running, my wife Yvonne said, do what you want but don’t talk about me or the kids on your podcast because the internet is all psychopaths and axe murderers.  (she wasn’t wrong)

And over the years, I never did.  Those were my rules when I started.  My guardrails.  Don’t talk about the family.  I added my own commonsense rules of no politics, religion. 

So here’s the big reveal… My social media handle has always been CYKTRussell.  Those are the first initials of my family.  Chris, Yvonne, Katie and Teresa. 

My kids are all grown up now.  Out of the nest.  Off the payroll.  They can fend for themselves. 

We drove down Friday.  On Saturday Teresa and I went to the Expo to pick up my number.  Good thing we went early, because when we left the line to get in wrapped around the building.  For some reason MCM always has a problem with this. 

After that we went and walked around the National Arboretum.  DC is full of cool parks and museums to play tourist at. 

Yvonne and I had a hotel In Crystal City and being the seat-of-the-pants guy that I am I still hadn’t figured out how to get to the start line in the morning. 

I was starting to stress over busses and trains when I actually read the race information and realized there was a shuttle bus to the start and back from the finish from Crystal City. 

The place to catch this bus was only a block or so from the hotel. I walked over there and sure enough there was the shuttle stop, clearly marked and set up. 

Piece of cake.  No logistics in the morning. 

I walked around a bit, bought a coffee at Starbucks for the morning, a couple cliff bars and a bottle of Gatorade. 

Had a sandwich and a beer with Yvonne, laid out my kit, set the alarm and went to bed. 

I slept great.  I had no stress about the race.  I wasn’t racing.  I was just looking to finish.  Just show up, do my thing and try not to die.

In the week before the race the weather forecast had started to stabilize on a predicted warm day.  Not really warm, just warmer than optimal.  No biggie, really, I wasn’t racing and a little sweat wouldn’t’ kill me. 

For kit I had my Brooks baggy shorts, my Squannacook singlet and, for the first time in a road marathon, a vest.  I had trained in the vest, and found it convenient for carrying things.  It has two front pockets for 750 ml bottles and you can put a bigger bladder in the back as well. 

For most of my training I just used one front pocket for the squishy bottle and used the other one for my phone.  Sometimes I’d throw the second bottle in the back, but I never used the full bladder. 

Since I wasn’t racing and I knew the course was well supported, I just took the one bottle.  Seeing the warm forecast I threw some Endurolytes in too.  And a small tube of lube. 

That was it.  I wore the old pair of Hoka Cliftons (that I’ll talk about in a bit). But basically it was the same set up I used for a long run on the rail trail. 

I have run Marine Corps twice before.  Once in 2009, where I went out way too fast and crashed, and again in 2014 “the year of 13 marathons”.  I knew what to expect. 

It’s a big race – 50,000 runners.  There are lots of first timers and back of the packers. 

It’s got pros and cons. 

Sunday I rolled out of bed early, grabbed my coffee and my stuff, and walked down to the bus stop, hopped on the bus and was dropped in the massive holding area at the start. 

I found a patch of grass and relaxed, did some yoga, talked to some people, and took some pictures. 

I was an hour early. 

Eventually we all started moving as a herd up the highway to the start. 

People had different bib colors and I’m assuming these had some correlation to pace or corral but other than suggested paces there was not sorting of runners at the start.  Just one big wave.

We had the announcements, the fly-overs and the weeping and were off. 

I walked all the way to the starting line.  Why waste energy?  In this big a crowd there was no profit in trying to run. 

The first few miles we were packed in like sardines.  It made no difference to me.  I just jogged along with the herd.  But, If you waned to run some other pace you would have struggled. 

There are some significant hills in the first few miles.  You don’t’ realize it because you’re packed in, but they are there.  The challenge on hills with a big pack and lots of rookie runners is that they slow way down on the up hills and the pacing random. 

I was just jogging and chatting and coaching, but I’m sure there was a lot of energy wasted in this stop and go traffic jam in the early miles. 

I also, because of the bad knee, had not trained on any hills.  Zero hills.  And, while it didn’t impact me in the moment, I would feel it in my quads let in the race.

On the positive side, my knee was fine. 

I was planning to take a walk break every 10 minutes or so, but with the crowd I missed a some of them. 

It was warm.  Sneaky warm.  It wasn’t hot, like full-sun-soaked-with-sweat-hot.  Just a bit warm and sticky.  I was eating some dates I had brought with me and taking the Endurolytes every so often to stay ahead of it. 

I heard after the race that people thought it was really hot and humid.  I think it peaked out at 77 degrees.  I heard they were carting people off the course from heat exhaustion and that they shortened the course for the back-of-the-pack. 

But honestly, I wasn’t working hard enough that I was ever soaked or uncomfortable. 

But eventually it snuck up on me.  Somewhere in the middle miles I realized I was thirsty and my bottle was empty. For the rest of the race I was playing catch up.  Filling my bottle at every water stop and taking a cup of water and a cup of Nuun on top of that. 

It was somewhere around the half marathon that I started getting tired and working in more walk breaks.  It’s disheartening to look at your watch and realize that at the pace you’re going you’ve got another 2 hours of running!

I just didn’t have enough training. 

By the time we got to the bridge over to Crystal City I was just grinding, fighting it all the way, walking a lot.  I’ve spent enough time in the suffer cave in my life that it wasn’t emotionally terrible, it wasn’t an ‘end-of-the-world’ scenario.  It was what it was and I worked through it for the last 6 miles, walk running and trying to take in the sights and sounds. 

Some of the highlights from the course.

I talked to a lot of first timers.  It was fun to be out there and mingling with my people again. 

The disabled athletes, specifically the people pushing wheelchairs, were mixed up in the big pack with everyone else.  Which was hard for them on such a packed course.  But, they had the name of the athlete on a flag on the chair so you could call them out by name when you passed – which was cool. 

There was some group from Massachusetts that was carrying big state flags ion the course – which was cool for me.

They had Cliff Blocks as the on-course nutrition, and sports beans – but they handed the whole sleeve to the athlete so the road was covered with these Cliff blocks like the tesserae of some broken Roman candy mosaic. 

Late in the race they were handing out maple syrup packets.  I can’t imagine a universe where I’m craving a warm shot of maple syrup on a hot day late in the race!

In front of the Capital we got to tell our congress jokes, like “We’re working harder then they are.” And “At least we’re getting something done…” yuckity yuck.  The runners taking pictures semed to be from other countries. 

People love this course, and, yeah, I can see it on the macro level, it hooks in all the sights and monuments, but, at the micro level there is a lot of cement and a lot of lumpy road and a lot of highway running.  My feet were pretty sore after. 

But that may have been from trying to get too much out of the old Cliftons.  I hadn’t been running much, so I never bought new shoes for this cycle.  Those old soldiers probably had 750 miles on them.  A tactical mistake, maybe, but right in line with my not really giving a hoot about the race performance.

I was treated to this interesting interaction in animated Spanish between two runners.  This lady was shoving something into the hands of another man and speaking at him in machine-gun-fire Spanish that I couldn’t Grok and the man was saying “Tenga! Tenga! Tenga!” which I think translates to “Got it!”

I decided that if I ever made a movie of this race with Quentin Tarantino, it would have this scene in it. 

There was another lady I was running near who was really mad about something.  She was grinding along cursing the universe.  Different strokes I guess.

There was a guy in the last mile that was playing inspirational sermons on his phone and looked really intent. 

There was a lady in the crowd with a sign that said “Run like a mad dog!” which I appreciated!

There were lots of marines in the race.  You could tell by the way they carried themselves. 

Towards the end things started to get pretty grim.  The sun came out.  There were casualties along the sides of the road.  People on stretchers.  People trying to stretch out cramps. 

There were lots of EMT types stationed along the course.  In general, it is a very well supported race.

It was a casting call for the walking dead in the final mile. 

My head was starting to get fuzzy and the tunnel vision was coming on.  My quads were strobing and I was afraid something was going to lock up on me.  But, nothing bad happened and I just walked a lot and finally climbed the little hill up to the Iwo Jima monument to get my medal. 

My watch said 26.77 miles – so clearly the course was measured wrong! 

Just kidding. 

There is a lot of walking in this race.  They walk you ½ mile to get to the start and then send you on another long walk at the finish. 

Since I had my phone with me I could take pictures and send texts and relax a bit in the grass while I drank some water and ate some watermelon. 

I met Dave Foss over at the beer tent and he joined us for dinner with my family. 

Yvonne and I got up early Monday and drove back. 

My quads were a bit sore the next day and my hips were cranky, but the knee was fine and I recovered quickly. 

At the end of the day I ran the race I trained for.  Which is typically what happens.  If you want a different result you need to have a different training effort. 

That’s the way it works.

It wasn’t a great race.  Frankly it was the second slowest marathon I’ve ever run.  But, at the same time it was a significant milestone. 

I was able to complete a training cycle. 

I was able to get to the starting line.

And I was able to grind out the distance. 

Goals achieved. 

I can use this fitness a stepping stone and maybe, if I feel like it, put a proper training cycle in. 

But, honestly, where my head is at right now, I’d rather enjoy 10 more years of running in the woods with my dog than killing myself to take 30 minutes off a road marathon finishing time. 

You can have worthy goals that aren’t 10X what you’ve done before.  It’s ok. 

I really enjoyed the training.  The race was a bit of a grind, but I’ll take it. 

I run in the shadow of previous versions of myself. 

And that gives me strength. 

Outro:

I really appreciate the outpouring of love and support from everyone when I dropped that last episode.  I had no idea my feeble ramblings had such a formative impact on so many people. 

I’m humbled by that. 

I don’t know what’s next, but I’m thrilled to be considering what’s next. 

I’ve signed up for the local 5K turkey trot – that’s my next outing. 

I’m going to try to keep the training consistent to keep the fitness I’ve clawed back. 

After that I’ve got a team for the Mill Cities Relay in December. 

And, if I’m not mistaken, I signed up for the Napa Valley Marathon in the spring. 

Good to be talking to you-all again.  Reach out to me and say hi. 

Tell Hoka they need to sponsor me. 

Keep getting up.  Keep moving forward.  Reach for the next rung.

And I’ll see you out there.