Notes
Well it was bound to happen eventually--my first marathon DNF. Still not clear on how things went so wrong. Granted I had not been taking care of my foot the way I know I need to but after Boston went so well, I thought I could manage it.
The left foot was painful even early. Even still, the first 10 miles or so of this race were really fun. Dan and Austin were pacing Amanda and planning to drop at 15 or 16. Alex, EJ and I joined the pacing crew and we were having a blast. But my foot was just there letting me know it was going to be a problem. It really started to bother me around 12-13 miles during a few of the sharp turns and little ups and downs on that part of the course. I let EJ, Alex and the SISU crew go a bit.
After the halfway mark when things flattened out again I picked it up again and caught up to the group around 14, but things just didn't feel right. On battery hill I dropped back a bit again. Around 16, my right hip, which had been getting tight, started to really hurt. Now I had zero good legs. And it was taking a lot more effort to keep pace than it should have ... shit we were going slower than the first half of Boston. My stride was not smooth at all, just really choppy and labored.
At about 17 that hip tightened up so bad I couldn't really stride at all, I was basically shuffling. There was no way I was doing that for 9 more miles and probably doing permanent damage in the process, so I called it quits right there. I walked about another quarter mile just to make sure it wasn't going to loosen up but it definitely wasn't. And stopping to walk made it clear how much my foot was hurting. I shuffled back to the turn before EJ, Alex and Amanda came around the block so I could hand EJ my last Gu as I knew he had forgotten his.
Then I began the long, painful, 2-mile walk back to Waterfront Park. My foot was really throbbing and the pain was radiating to my whole leg. I tried to cheer for the people I knew but mostly I just put my head down and tried to march toward the hoopla at the finish. It took a while.
I tried to make the best of the rest of the day. Good friends, my family, and a beautiful afternoon and night in Burlington. We had a great dinner on Church Street then walked down to Waterfront Park and got ice cream and looked at the boats and the Adirondacks on the other side of the lake. Just an amazing night.
As we were getting ready to walk back to our car I walked out onto the middle of that green space where the finish line had been just a few hours earlier. Everything was gone but you could still see the beaten path made but the runners and the trampled grass where the spectators had lined the finish chute. I stood about where the finish line had been and looked back at that green straightaway and remembered.
This one will be hard to shake off.