Where to begin??? Ok, well I woke up saturday March 18th to lots of birthday wishes. I packed and then walked next door to one of the many hair places in my town and treated myself to a hair wash which is really an excuse to get cool water on my head and a 20 minute fabulous head massage. For 50 cents it's not too much of a splurge, but simply a nice way to start your birthday.
Then biked over to the van stop. Locked up my bike (Jeeda and Wendy had the key and picked it up later) and got on the van to bkk. After about 20 minutes I realized I had to pee pretty badly, but wouldn't get a stop for another hour and a half. I managed a pit stop when we luckily stopped for something else, but after another hour I was seriously worried I'd pee myself before the next stop in 30 mins. I didn't. But damn was it painful. No one can say I wasn't hydrating well!!
Made it to bkk and treated myself to a taxi ride- another birthday/pre-marathon splurge. The hotel was the Amari Watergate and it's SO nice. Even by American standards. MUCH nicer than the $4 guesthouses I usually stay in on my PC salary.
Kate, a good PC friend, was with me and we chilled out then went to a really nice mall to relax in some A/C and distract ourselves from the big run the next day (kate ran the half marathon) at 'Broke Back Mountain.' Unfortunately the web had listed the wrong time, so we ended up walking around the mall AMAZING american like grocery store. Kate was on a mission to get Green food dye so we could celebrate ST. Patty's day after the marathon (both of us had been dry for a while leading up to the race). We also went crazy on lots of food that looked good that we were going to get for after the marathon. Treats we NEVER get in our town like salsa and tortila chips, Praline chocolate, organic sea salt chips, and Pepridge farm Chessman cookies. Man were we having fun looking at all this food we love and never get to see. But I think we wenta little crazy because we somehow decided it would be a GRAND idea to get brownie mix for the next day. No oven? No problem. We wanted to eat it raw anyway.
THEN (on the way to the bathroom-again) I saw the most gorgeous cakes in display cases. I picked out a praline mouse cake w HUGE strawberries on top. And had a great time joking with the ladies about what to write on top. I decided on ทารา เรเชล which is Tara and Rachel in Thai. Tara is one of my best friends in Thailand and by some kismic connection we have the same b-day.
Since we had a DVD player in our room at the swanky hotel we decided to go the plaza that has EVERY imaginable DVD for 100 baht. Another cab ride.... I was living in style last weekend!! We got 'Broke Back Mountain' then decided we just wantd something cheezy and fun so we got the chick flick where Sarah Jessica Parker is an uptight woman meeting the hippy family of her boy. Bedtime was 8 pm.
Moments later the alarm went off at 2:30!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On the bus by 3:15. At the marathon sight by 4:40. Last minute 'good luck' phone calls. Pee. Stretch. There was a ceremony where the monks were doing blessings, but we just sort of watched from a distance. I saw a woman wearing Loomis Chaifee shorts so we chatted w her for a while.
By 5:25 I was pouring glasses of ice water on myself to try to start w a cool temp and save my body energy from sweating. I really wasn't too nervous. I expected to be chatting w more people at the start line, but only a few little comments here and there. I was asking some thais if they were nervous. They did have a monk religiously spraying us with water for blessing. It was a nice start before the gong! And GO!!!
It was tough to hold myself back and watch what seemed like everyone pass me.... But as I checked my gage watch I was going faster than I felt. I had to really restrain myself to hold back.
It was still total darkness when we left the temple grounds through the huge glittery gate. After 200 yards the fans were gone. Altho about 10 times throughout the course there were groups of people sitting on the road or in a pavilion on the side playing thai music on traditional instraments. One house even had thai puppetry set up for us as we ran by. So the runner became fans for each other. Except the thais aren't big on cheering. But I usually got a response when I yelled out "Gang Mak" or "Yeaum."
I had Jeeda and Wendy print เรโชล สู๊สู๊สู๊ which best translates to 'Rachel Fight Fight Fight' and is the sporting cheer of choice. And on the back we wrote เรโชล ไปไหน which means 'Rachel, where are you going?" But in Thailand it's the greeting most often used and translates best as 'What's up?' A couple times I heard people reading my shirt from behind and would respond with the thai for 'I'm going running.' Never got anyone to cheer outright for me. In fact they had a little trouble saying my name at all. It was a little bit of an inside joke with myself because when I go out for a run I always get people asking me where I'm going and it took me a while not to think the Thais were crazy for asking me this.
So the forcast was for 100% humidity the first few hours of my marathon with a 'Realfeel' feel of 114 for the day. So I was pouring water on myself as much as possible to stay cool. Icecubes in the sportsbra too! I think this certainly helped my core temp, but it did a bad number on my shoe pace monitor.
By 4.81 miles it died. I wish I could convey to you the true misery of this situation. I have been using this mechanism to pace myself on runs for more than the past 2 years. A marathon is all about pace. Holding back energy at the beginning and knowing when to start releasing it so you'l have enough power to get to the end. Well, I was sort of running blindly. I have been so relyant on this watch that I don't have a personal gauge for my speed.
Well it died and I spent 10 minutes being pissed. Thinking what miserable timing. Thinking about all the things I should have done, but didn't, to prevent this from happening. I was not happy.
Then I thought: Rachel, you're not going to make a personal record on this marathon, you knew that from the beginning, so what are you going to be proud of at the end? Your mental strenth. You need to change your attitude, accept the adverse condition, and enjoy this run in the beautiful Thailand countryside.
And I am utmostly proud to say 'I did just that!'
I gave myself an attitde check and started enjoying the gorgeous coconut trees and rice fields i was running through. Started thanking the officals by the side of the road. Cheering for other runners. Asking if they were tired, etc. I had fun listening to the 2gb Ipod Mike lent me because it was so light. But once the Cake song "She's going the distance... She's going for speed...." came on I pretty much had that on repeat.
Not to say it was all a piece of cake. Turns out I didn't pace perfectly and was dragging my feet with about 5 miles to go. I had been reading about mantra to get yourself though the tough parts of running. Here's what i did: I looked at the fake tatoo of a tiger on my inner fore-arm and would grrrr because I'm such a bad-ass (hehe). I told myself I am doing something less than 1% of 1% of people have done. "This is it. This is your marathon. This is what you've trained for. You're here. ENJOY" "I trained ALL by myself with out friends to run with, without other runner around to motivate, I got out there on the roads and did those long runs by myself. I was 100% my own motivation. It all came from within me. That's amazing." and at the end when I was desperate I imagined giants of my dad and brother and their hands were pushing be from behind. My mom was blowing cool air on the back of my neck and Jen was telling me how proud of me she is.
David thinks I was hallucinating....
At about the 35km mark (7 to go) I realized everyone was walking. But I wouldn't let myself do it. Even tho I was shuffling my feet. I was only going to walk on my designated walk breaks- every 6th minute. I ran strong and kept passing people. I guess they had trouble pacing too. Slowly I passed people. And at the 1km mark I was saying those mantras and convinced I was going finish strong when I heard cheering.
There standing on the side of the road were Jon and Noah!!! Two FABULOUS friends from Peace Corps. They had gotten up an an upgodly hour and sat on a miserable local bus that stopped all the time for over 2 hours to cheer me on!! They had on their running shoes and they got on either side of me and race along side of me. What amazing friends they are. Noah even had thai prayer jasmine flowers to give me.
The race was really well organized and they had great water stands every 2.5 km. And at the end they had much appreciated signs counting down 500m, 400m, 300m, 200m, 100m. FINISH LINE. Sweet victory...
Kate was there snapping picts. And they all took me over to the shade. Kate fielded lots of congrats calls from our friends. They helped me unlace. ...massaged me and didn't even complain about how sweaty I was. Untill I saw the free massages and went over to let the professionals deal with my sweatyness.
I was chatting away with the people massaging me as they were locals and filling me in on local stuff, when Jon came over saying "Rachel Bobruff... Rachel Bobruff. They're calling your name over there. You placed!" Turns out I came in 4th for women 20-29!!!
So after my stage acceptance I did photos, but was too tired for autographs... I ate a much derserved ice cream and we slowly made our way to the bus and back to the hotel. I sat on a bag of ice the whole way.
Jon, Noah, Kate and I had a pizza party by the pool. And just chilled till friends started tricking in...Loads of people were in town for a training so we ended up with 30 or 40 or people hanging out by the pool. Kate got to make her green beer...I got to drink out of my trophy. We ate the yummy cake. We ordered more pizza. We ate the chips and salsa. We swam. We did head stand contests. We made sycronized swimming routines. We played chicken.
We motivated to dancing and someone in my head convinced me it would be a good idea to join. In my heels. That person must have been drunk. hehe. We had a blast. A great way to end a fabulous marathon/birthday/ st.paddys celebration. Of course I wore my metal too.
Kate and I got home by 2 and decided we should make it a full 24 hours... Finally we watched 'Broke Back mountain' (or at least the first 10 mins of it).
WOW. A full-on, life-filled day.
Thank you SO much for all your love and support on my marathon and the months leading up to it. Thinking about all my fabulous friends was certainly motivating on my marathon. I felt like such a lucky girl.
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