Short form: Wyoming – CHECK!
Long form:
If I hadn’t already bought the plane tickets and had my sister coming, I would have stayed home. Some injuries to my feet (completely unrelated to running) have kept me off them for weeks. I had barely run at all since San Francisco last month. But, it was my sister’s birthday and she was flying in and it was Wyoming… I still regret not going to Texas when Mary was sick. Not sure bundling her up for a long car ride would have been a good idea, but I wonder if there could have been a better solution than the one I chose at the time.
So, with trepidation, I packed my bags on Friday morning and headed to the airport. In the back of my mind, I thought my experience with previous marathons might just pull me through. Muscle memory and all that.
It wasn’t a long flight to Salt Lake City and when we got there we didn’t have too much trouble finding the rent-a-car counter. The young man behind the counter told me with a tinge of disgust, the same way I talk about palm kernal oil, that we had a Chevy Cobalt. The implication was obvious – I should upgrade. I had no idea what a Cobalt was, but I just wanted the cheapest.
The drive over was uneventful. I felt like we climbed to a higher elevation coming out of Salt Lake City and never went down again. Green River, Wyoming sits at just over 6,000 feet. Turns out, our hotel is at mile 2 (and 24) of the marathon course, so my sister and I decided to drive the course. It is on the Wild Horse Loop and we thought we might see some wild horses. From the hotel, it is pretty much uphill until past mile 5. There is a 1200 foot elevation gain in this marathon and I suspect 1100 of it is between mile 2 and 5. It was dusty. There was no shade. Despite the 6:30 start, I suspected this run would be hot. It’s a good thing I am from Phoenix and accustomed to this, I thought.
At the “expo” – which was just a packet pick up – we got really cool race shirts/jackets. It is a bright yellow that will be easy to see on those cold dark morning runs in the winter. This is a very nice shirt, especially for such a low priced marathon. Then we went to the art fair and shrimp boil. I don’t think shrimp is the best pre-race meal, but it was the thing to do. I like getting the local flavor out of the marathon experience. We met other Maniacs and 50 Staters and it was fun. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and I slept better than I have in weeks.
Race morning I got up and got dressed, still unsure of what the day would hold. Could I make it all 26.2 miles? My foot was not quite healed. I hadn’t run. Doubts filled my head. I showed up anyway. It wasn’t too cool a morning, although it had been predicted that it would be 50 at the start, it didn’t feel that cold to me. I left my gloves and sweatshirt in the car. I brought along Bruce’s iPod because I couldn’t find mine and I thought I might be alone out there for a long time. I wanted something to listen to. There was a line painted on the road, someone shouted “GO!” and we were off. 140 marathoners, a bunch of half-marathoners and some running the 10K.
In the first mile, we passed a house where two women were standing inside looking out the window at us. Each had a beer in her hand. I thanked God I was on the outside of that window. Then we climbed up and over a bridge that took us over the railroad tracks in the Union Pacific yard. The bridge appeared to be made of concrete and steel, but it bounced like the bridge at Tom Sawyer’s Island and I was scared I would lose my footing.
My first mile was 9:15. Was this a sustainable pace? Too fast? Too slow? My breathing was still getting adjusted to the altitude. I was unsure what the next mile would hold. At mile 2 the pavement ended and the uphill began. I was trading places with some women who were running then walking, running then walking. I decided that I would walk from mile 3 to mile 4. I put in the ear buds and turned on the iPod. This was not my music mix, but I thought it would be interesting. Eric Clapton was first, followed by Surfin’ USA. I removed the iPod.
I started talking to a woman from the Genome Project at Washington University in St Louis. I told her about Girls Have IT Day and asked her if they had outreach. She said yes and told me about their summer intern program for high school students. I have to remember to look that up. This woman was sponsored by Anhauser-Busch to come out here and give out their energy drink at the finish. She’s run a bunch of marathons, but today was only doing the half as she was targeting Disney in January. I enjoyed talking to her. Along the way, we’d started running again. I wondered if I would just turn around with her at the half turn around or if I could really go 26.2 miles.
About mile 6, now on rolling dirt road, we passed some guys who were talking about San Francisco. They were Maniacs and I adjusted my pace to talk to them. They were from the Seattle area and Denver. Denver had run San Francisco and I enjoyed talking to him about our experiences. It sounds like we had a similar experience, but Denver has run many more marathons than I have, so this was not his first time at SF. We ran a little faster than Seattle, so he dropped back. We weren’t setting any speed records, but I enjoyed having someone to talk to and this wasn’t my day for speed records.
The half turn around came and went. We were 1/4 of the way through the marathon and my watch said 1:15. This was going to be a long day, I thought, but it was all ok. I was ready for a long day. Denver and I stopped at every aid station and chatted with the volunteers. They weren’t handing out cups like they do at other races, but they were setting them on the table for us to pick up. It was conducive to chatting.
A woman driving a car and ringing a cow bell was cheering for Val, whoever that was. Her car had “Go Val Go” written in the dust. Then I saw a man with “Go Val Go” on the back of his shirt. Denver and I told him how much we enjoyed his cheering squad. He ignored us. He was wearing ear buds and I could hear the music blaring. I told Denver that he couldn’t hear us because his music was too loud. We would find out later that he was indeed hard of hearing and had left his hearing aids out for the marathon. His one woman cheering squad told us that’s why she used a cow bell – so he could hear her.
Denver asked if my sister was behind us or in front of us. I said she was way in front of us and we’d probably be seeing her soon. I suspected that she would already be at the turn around. The first woman to come past us looked tired and she was sweating profusely. My sister was not too far back and she looked fresh and ready to go. I thought “She’s right where she wants to be.”
At the half turn around, Denver remarked on the buffet. There were chips, M&Ms, fruit and all sorts of stuff. Two hours and thirty-five minutes had passed since the start. He’d been encouraging me to go on without him every time he had to stop and walk, but I was enjoying our run together and I thought it was helping me not get injured. I have trouble setting appropriate limits for myself. This was good. I thought I might leave him at mile 16 and run in, but at mile 16 I was feeling nauseous and I didn’t want to run ahead. I just wanted to finish.
We saw what people told us were wild horses, but they could have been anything they were so far away. A sheriff rolled by in a pickup and shouted something to us. We both said something like “OK!” and then simultaneously turned to each other and asked “What did he say?”
Somewhere along the way I learned that Denver’s name was Craig. We stopped and read the signs at the overlooks. I don’t think Craig minded the break and I had promised myself the day before on our course tour that I would stop and read them. We saw bands of white and brown in the distant hills. The signs told us that the brown was oil shale and Craig worried out loud about the folly of extracting the oil.
He saw the sheriff at the side of the road and stopped to ask what he had said. Turns out there was a big rattlesnake in our way. We missed it.
One hot dusty mile after another we made progress to the end. I was tired, but nothing felt injured. The blood I had anticipated to be pouring out of my left toe was not. All was well. I think I talked too much. Part of me was just focused on telling stories to fill the time and focus on something besides any pain or tiredness I felt. In retrospect, I should have asked more questions.
At the finish, I saw my sister with a nice award hanging around her neck. Turns out she finished second, but the woman who beat her got a rolling aid station at mile 18. For the last 8 miles of the race, where my sister had anticipated wearing her down by making her rush through the quaint aid stations, the rival had aid handed to her out the window of an SUV and she didn’t need to stop. We debate over whether she knows this is against USATF rules or not. My sister is prone to giving her the benefit of the doubt. I just say she cheated.
That afternoon my sister and I went to get moose burgers (well, she was going to have one, I was going to have the veggie option) but it turns out I was duped. The moose burgers were made of beef. We washed the car because we didn’t want the car rental company knowing we drove on a dirt road and there appeared to be a horse shoe nail in the front tire. And we attempted to climb up the hill to the giant GR on the hillside, but there were signs warning us of a $200 fine for doing so. Thankfully (because I was wearing flip flops) we stayed on the valley floor.
The horse shoe nail was a rock. We had a nice little run this morning and everything was working. I’m set for running with my team tomorrow. And our plane was on time. All in all, a very nice road trip. A very nice finishers medal. And a very nice Wyoming.
