Two races. I DNSed two races this weekend. I’m not too happy about it either.
Back in July, I started kicking around the idea of doing a second fall marathon this year. I didn’t want to commit to it at the time, but it was an idea I had in the back of my head. I figured there’d be two circumstances in which I would actually do it. The first was if I didn’t like how training was going for Chicago Marathon and wanted to push my goal race back. I would run Chicago easy as a training run and then focus on the second marathon as my goal race. The second scenario was if and my recovery both went well.
Enter Philadelphia Marathon.
I ran Philly in 2011 as my first marathon. It was a great experience and it’s less than two hours away. The great thing about Philly is registration stays open until 11⁄1, less than three weeks before the race. And it rarely, if ever, sells out. It’s perfect for a last minute marathon! This sounded great to me. I could wait and see how Chicago recovery went for three weeks and then make a decision. Even better, they moved the half marathon to the day before the marathon for the first time this year—rather than running both races together, as they always have in the past. This opened up the option of doing the Rocky Challenge, both the marathon and the half marathon. I really liked this idea, to be honest. I’ve done Goofy Challenge three times and Dopey Challenge once (I’m doing it a second time in January) so I’m no stranger to running a half marathon and marathon on back-to-back days. Anyway, I went ahead and booked a hotel room for the weekend in Philly just so I’d be covered. It was a refundable room so there was no risk to do so.
As we all know, Chicago went fucking amazingly. I didn’t go into it perfectly healthy, but recovery went well enough and, after a lot of back-and-forth, I decided to go for it. And by “it,” I mean the Rocky Challenge. I registered on Halloween.
The next couple weeks went okay. Running wasn’t going as well as I would’ve liked, but it wasn’t anything I was worried about either. Then, all of a sudden, I woke up last Sunday morning and my left ankle and arch hurt like hell. Walking hurt. WTF! I know from experience that pain in my foot and ankle is almost always due to tight calves so I went to work trying to loosen them up. I went to my scheduled physical therapy appointment and her focus on down there. I only did one three-mile run during the week and it didn’t feel great. I was not happy.
In reality, I likely didn’t do anything to cause it. However, since the election, I’ve been tense. Just stressed and tense like all hell. The kind where your whole body is constantly clenched. My teeth have been tightly clenched 24⁄7 since the 8th. I just can’t seem to get it out. I could feel this tenseness and tightness in my runs. I never felt like I was loosening up. And I especially felt it in my 13-miler the day before the pain started. This was the likely cause of the pain.
So I went into the weekend playing it by ear. Friday night, I decided I would run the half and I set out all my stuff for the race. While the marathon was more important to me, the half felt like a way to at least make sure I salvaged something from the weekend. When I woke up Saturday morning, I went through my routine of getting ready for the race. As I was about to head out the door to the start, things just didn’t feel right. My foot didn’t feel right and the decision to run felt wrong. I decided to take the DNS and try again the next day for the marathon. I got back in bed.
After another couple hours of sleep, I got back up and jogged the .9 miles to the starting line with the wife for the 8k (her race for the weekend). My foot felt kinda eh. I could have gone either way with it. I still didn’t know what to do. The rest of the day continued like this. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either.
Come 8pm, I had to decide what I was going to do. I knew I could go out there and run the race and likely finish. But at what cost? Was it worth turning this into a full-on injury? Risking Dopey and being miserable in Disney because of it? Honestly, it wasn’t. And I knew that. Plus, the weather was a major factor. For the half marathon, it was amazing weather—calm wind and nice temps. But overnight, everything changed. The temperature dropped into the mid to upper 30s and the wind kicked up to 20mph—and was predicted to get much worse from there during the race. Oof. If I ran, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Was this really a race experience I was worth taking the risk for? What if I did have to DNF out there in the cold? Ugh.
I decided to take another DNS. This was the smart decision. But I was disappointed. I’ve been intensely depressed since the election and this really drove me deeper into it. Not to mention how pissed I was about the money. I was pissed I even registered for both races and paid for the hotel for the weekend. It was a $1,000 I didn’t really need to waste.
And, of course, I woke up in the morning and my ankle felt okay. Good enough to run a marathon on, I thought.
In the end, the weekend wasn’t a complete loss. We met up with a ton of friends we hadn’t seen in a while and ate at a bunch of great restaurants. It’s just never fun to DNS a race. And it’s even less fun to DNS two races in the same weekend.
Life goes on. I’m bummed, but I’ll live. It wasn’t a goal race, it was only ever just a cherry on top.