50/50 (3 page)
We found a break in the crowd, and there stood my family: Julie, the kids, and my parents. Topher took hold of a microphone and began reading aloud from a prepared text as I put an arm around Julie’s waist, Alexandria produced a bouquet of flowers, and Nicholas offered up a velvet-covered ring box. Julie’s face took on a stunned expression as her eyes darted from Topher’s robe to the flowers to the ring box and finally my face. Then they filled with tears. Surprise, Julie! We were renewing our wedding vows.
Attracted by the words of Topher’s heartfelt sermon as they rang out from the PA system, a crowd of hundreds formed around us. Moments after the “I do’s” had been exchanged, as though it’d been choreographed, the race announcer’s voice called out, “Five minutes to race start!”
In marathon running, few things are more important than starting on the right foot. Physically and mentally, you have to be in the game. You can’t really control what happens after eighteen or twenty miles. That’s when the real suffering begins, and it’s always worse than expected, even if you’ve run many marathons before. You just have to push through it with all the strength you have in your body and mind.
You can, however, control the first part of a marathon, and if you’re wise you will control it in ways that make the last part—well, not easier, but better. You can resist the urge to start too fast, make sure you drink enough fluids, run the tangents, and so forth.
The surprise wedding reenactment I laid on Julie this morning was my way of starting this marathon of marathons on the right foot. The Endurance 50 was conceived as a dream family vacation, but it had become something different. Julie hadn’t been able to take a leave from her practice as a dentist, so the rest of us would see her mostly on weekends. But her inability to come along for the full journey hadn’t stopped Julie from playing a hero’s role in planning the family side of the adventure. She had worked tirelessly for months on end. One night I stumbled home from a run at 1:30
AM
to find her on the phone with Travelocity, arranging flights, car rentals, and hotel stays for my parents and the kids. Her generous heart deserved to be honored—publicly—and now it had been.
Upon hearing the announcer’s five-minute notice, the crowd quickly began moving toward the starting line. My entire family exchanged one last hug. Topher whipped off his gown to expose the running gear he wore underneath. The two of us made our way to the starting chute, saying little. The gun went off, the crowd surged forward, and my five-year-old dream took one step into reality, and then another, and another.
Topher and I found a comfortable groove at a slightly sub-four-hour marathon pace. The first miles followed flat roads that passed through the historic section of St. Charles. The air was warm, wet, and still. Soon it would be hot, wet, and still.
A number of the runners in our vicinity spotted me and sidled up to offer and receive encouragement. Five miles into the race, a lanky boy of twelve or thirteen years found a slot on my shoulder.
“Are you Dean?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m Dean,” I confirmed.
“I’m John,” said the boy. He told me he was running the one-loop half-marathon that was being held on the same course as the marathon, which covered the same loop twice. John added that I was an inspiration to him, and he had come here with his mother in the hope of meeting me. I felt a rush of inspiration from the boy as his words sank in.
“You’re doing great!” I said. Topher seconded that opinion. And he
was
doing great—for a while. John was all smiles as we passed by his mother at the ten-mile mark. She hollered and held up a sign that read
GO TEAM DEAN!
But the sun’s rays were becoming mercilessly intense. John had never run so far before, and it appeared he was pushing harder than his natural pace to stay alongside us.
At eleven miles, his breathing was labored and his shoes clomped heavily on the road. At twelve miles, he was hunchbacked and grunting with effort.
“You can do it!” we yelled.
With a quarter mile left to the finish, John began weaving, and his stride fell apart completely. He was no longer running but lurching forward like a man on fire.
“Come on! You can do it!” we shouted.
With only one hundred yards to go, John stopped abruptly in the middle of the road and sent a cone-shaped torrent of vomit shooting to the ground with the force of a fire hose.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you want to sit down for a minute?”
“Go ahead. I’ll walk,” John finally managed as several concerned spectators gathered around him to provide support. Topher and I resumed running, and I silently wondered whether we had just committed some form of child abuse.
Some inspiration I am
, I thought.
The carnage spread among the marathon runners on the second loop. By now the temperature was in excess of eighty degrees. Topher and I began passing struggling runners at the rate of two or three per mile. These poor folks had not started on the right foot. Many of them had come here with time goals that were no longer realistic in the conditions, but had refused to adjust their pace. Now they were paying the price.
How to Avoid Sickness During a Race
• Eat your pre-race meal at least an hour beforehand.
• Avoid milk and lactose, as well as highly fibrous foods, for at least twenty-four hours prior.
• Consume easily digested foods such as instant oatmeal, bananas, and energy bars in your pre-race meal. If you eat your pre-race meal within an hour of the race, it should contain no more than five hundred calories.
• Don’t drink too much fluid during the run. Let your thirst guide your drinking rate. Drink only water or a sports drink such as Accelerade.
• Train properly for the race so your body is accustomed to the level of exertion that will be called for. For example, complete at least one training run of twenty miles or more before running a full marathon.
“This is kind of brutal,” Topher said.
“Yeah, man, it’s toasty out here. I feel sorry for these people.”
We crossed the finish line ten minutes faster than planned—perhaps a little too fast, given what still lay in front of me.
I spent the next two hours giving interviews, smiling for photos, signing books and posters, and chatting with fellow runners. At one point, I looked up from my seat to find John the twelve-year-old runner and his mother standing before me. He looked as good as new.
“Did you finish?” I asked hopefully.
“Piece of cake,” he replied. He was beaming from ear to ear.
As I signed his well-worn copy of my book, John told me excitedly about his future race plans. It’s a funny thing: If you’re truly born to run, erupting within sight of the finish line can be as likely to hook you on the sport as winning the race.
QUICK TAKE:
Raw ginger is a wonderful digestive aid for minor upset stomach and nausea. Try pickled ginger and ginger chews for a gentler response, or use freshly cut gingerroot if you’re seeking stronger relief. Use it either before you run to prevent problems, or during a run at the first sign of trouble.
Moments after John and his mother bid me farewell, I felt raindrops against my skin. At first, it was just a misty sprinkle, but within fifteen minutes it was pouring buckets.
The crowd scattered. The Endurance 50 crew sprang into action, scrambling like a retreating army to disassemble and pack away everything before it got drenched. The festival area began to look more and more like a battlefield. Strewn everywhere were saturated posters, soggy half-eaten food scraps, and debris spilled from overflowing trash cans. A humid fog rose from the soaking hot pavement. The crew worked in gloomy silence. The banter and laughter that had punctuated their cooperative efforts only yesterday were not to be heard.
When the tedious job was completed at last, Topher bid us a hasty farewell. He would catch an evening flight back to Europe. Julie gave me one last hug. She too was heading for the airport. My parents and the kids climbed inside their small rented RV to follow the tour bus on a three-hundred-mile drive to Memphis, site of tomorrow’s marathon.
Inevitably, a healthy sampling of wetness and filth created by the recent deluge was tracked onto the bus. A dank stench now filled our cramped quarters. The windows clouded over with condensation. Everything inside our mobile locker room became damp and slimy, and the floorboards were a slippery hazard.
After the Marathon
Given our travel requirements, my typical post-marathon routine during the Endurance 50 was not ideal for recovery. Here’s what you
should
do after finishing a marathon:
• Drink plenty of water to rehydrate your body. Drink enough so that your urine is consistently clear or pale yellow in color.
• Eat a nice hearty meal containing protein to repair your muscles, as well as carbohydrate to replenish your depleted muscle fuel stores. Examples include fish with rice pilaf, a turkey wrap, and pasta with meat sauce.
• Immerse your legs in an ice bath for ten minutes to reduce swelling and muscle pain. I do this regularly at home, but it wasn’t practical during the Endurance 50.
• Hit the sack early and sleep as long as necessary to wake up feeling fully rested.
• Try to run—okay, hobble—the next day for at least twenty minutes to work out the stiffness.
“Well, this is pretty,” I said to English with forced levity as I stepped aboard the bus. He grunted affirmation.
After we began rolling, I felt the exhaustion come on. It was not the muscular depletion I was accustomed to feeling after a hard run but the brain-centered fatigue that one feels at the end of one’s wedding day, after twelve straight hours of meeting, greeting, gabbing, smiling, solving small crises and being on stage. The marathon had taken a little out of me, but the post-race festivities had taken most of what remained. I wondered how the heck I could possibly keep this thing together all the way to New York, our final destination forty-nine days in the future.
How to Officially Run Fifty Consecutive Marathons
How is it possible to run fifty official marathons in fifty days in fifty states when most marathons take place on the weekends? Our solution was to involve the race directors of all the marathons whose sanctioned courses we chose to officially run. Sure, it required a ton of work and became a massive, painstaking undertaking, but it was the only legitimate way to accomplish the goal of running fifty marathons in fifty states in fifty days. It took us many months to get all the logistics in place, but it was the right decision.
We knew that many of the marathon course maps posted on the Internet were either incomplete or followed routes that were not passable on foot except on race day. Without the help of the race directors, we wouldn’t be certain we ran their actual marathon. Anyone could question our credibility. We had gone the extra mile in every other phase of planning the Endurance 50; none of us was willing to compromise here.
From all this planning, hard work, and forethought, we now had an official starting line, a mechanism for following the sanctioned course, an official finish line, and an official race clock. Without all this in place, someone could legitimately debate the validity of the accomplishment. We had taken the extra measures to ensure we had the certification to prove each marathon. Done any other way, I couldn’t have slept at night.
We also wanted potential participants to be able to sign up for the Endurance 50 marathons just as they would any other marathon. So interested runners could go to the Endurance 50 Web site and register on an
Active.com
page just like they would for any other running event. They were sent an official entrant’s packet prior to the marathon, and they were entered in the system and cross-referenced upon sign-in at the marathon start. To all appearances, this was just like every other race.
Did we start on the right foot after all?
I asked myself. The surest way to experience a disastrous marathon is to run before you’re ready—before you’ve done the hard training that’s necessary to prepare your body to go the distance. The chaos of today’s post-race autograph frenzy, the unexpected brutality of packing up and leaving in a monsoon, and the dispirited looks I now saw on the faces of Koop, Hopps (now bald-headed), and Dave, our rock-and-roll tour manager, suggested we might very well have bitten off more than we could chew. Enduring forty-nine more days of this seemed highly improbable.
Moments later, I caught myself making emergency contingency plans. We could return the sponsors’ money, ditch the tour bus, and finish this thing on the small scale it maybe should have started on. But I realized this vision was an idle fantasy. Forget the sponsors—how could I disappoint the dozens more Johns out there waiting to have an experience like his (minus the hurling, I hoped)? No way. The Endurance 50 would have to be all or nothing.
Quit your whining, Karno,
I told myself.
It’s going to take a lot more than a bumpy start to stop this expedition.
On the long drive that night, I read an e-mail that lifted my spirits and reaffirmed my commitment to keep going, not to mention providing a good belly laugh. It was in reference to the surprise renewal of my wedding vows with Julie. It went like this:
Message to Dean Karnazes
Dude, you suck. You’ve now set the bar so high that none of us will be able to rival that. My wife keeps asking me what my plans are for the next marathon. I know
exactly
what she’s getting at!
Good luck Karno. Just, please, for the sake of all of us guys out here, don’t pull anything like that again.
Thank You for Your Support
Day 2
September 18, 2006
St. Jude Memphis Marathon
Memphis, Tennessee
Elevation: 778'
Weather: 78 degrees; heavy rain showers
Time: 4:19:58
Net calories burned: 6,374