Impending humiliation can be a powerful motivator in marathons

I ran my first full marathon (26.2 miles) yesterday when I completed the 10th Annual BankTrust First Light Marathon in Mobile.

I didn’t break any land speed records in the attempt, but I did meet two of the three goals that I set out to accomplish – I had fun, and I finished the race.

I did not, however, run the race at my intended pace. I crossed the finish line in five hours, 27 minutes and 18 seconds, that is, I ran the race at a 12.5-minute per mile pace. I set out to keep an 11-minute per mile pace.

I did OK and felt good for first 10 or 11 miles. I was slightly ahead of pace, and felt like I could run all the way to Texas without letting up. However, around the tenth mile, the course took us over Interstate 65 on Dauphin Street, and we begin to encounter the first of numerous steep hills along the route. The next 10 miles or so sucked the life out of me.

I lost pace at this point and began to experience significant pain in my calves. At the same time, all of those folks that I’d passed since the start seemed to stream back ahead of me, never to be seen again.

Eventually, I made it out of the hills, having run through the campuses at Spring Hill College and the University of South Alabama, even passed the National Guard Armory on Museum Street, where I set for and returned from Iraq back in 2003 and 2004.

The route took us back out on to Springhill Avenue, and that’s when thing’s got really interesting. After all of those hills, I began to wonder if I would even be able to finish the race. My calves were destroyed, burning, and I felt that they could at any moment begin to cramp uncontrollably. I knew that if I reached that point, I’d be worthless, unable to continue and finish the race. I imagined myself twitching in the grass, being checked out by one of the many ambulance crews who were working the race for the City of Mobile.

I slowed my pace even more, and my thoughts were dominated by the impending humiliation I would feel if I couldn’t finish. More than a few people, especially my co-workers and family, knew that I was running the marathon, and I could just picture them not seeing my name among the official finishers in Monday morning’s Mobile Press-Register. Worse yet, my wife and five-year-old daughter were waiting for me at the finish line. What would daddy say to his daughter if he wasn’t man enough to finish a race he’d been training for since the first week of September?

I refused to give up and focused on the simplest of distance running principles – just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Suddenly, without warning, about the time I crossed over the railroad tracks on Springhill Avenue, the pain in my calves disappeared. Was it a dump of endorphins, those mystical, natural painkillers that are known mostly for producing “jogger’s high”? Whatever it was, I was thankful, and I began to pick up the pace.

I the end, I crossed the finish line after nearly five and a half hours of running. The race started at 7:30 a.m., and I crossed the finished line a few minutes before 1 p.m. Officially, I finished 390th out of 471 runners in the full marathon. I didn’t win, but I did meet two of my most important goals – I finished, and I had fun.