I’m back in LA. I awoke at 6:30am this morning, stopped at the little coffeeshop off the casino in the Venetian for a triple-shot espresso and a toasted bagel, hopped in my car and drove straight back here, going directly into work without so much as stopping home to shower or drop off my overnight bag. Another double-shot helped me get through the day, but I’m quite exhausted. I anticipate going to sleep as soon as I’ve finished penning this blog entry.
Here goes!
I awoke yesterday at about 8:30am. I tried to get as much sleep as possible but I was tossing and turning all night. Had I slept through the night I would have gotten 10 hours of sleep, but with all the wake-ups and re-sleeps I probably got closer to eight hours of sleep. Still, that’s pretty impressive considering my brain was completely consumed with thoughts of the marathon. It was literally every thought I had for the previous twenty-four hours. My only solace was that I read a blog entry written by a running coach that said pre-race anxiety is healthy because it proves you’re focused and thinking about everything you need to do to succeed. That barely calmed my nerves. My friend Peter called and said he was going to try to make it to the finish line to watch me cross it. I told him I’d give him my mom’s number so they could meet up and wait together. I then told my mom not to answer if Peter called, because I didn’t want him to show up only to have me not finish the race. Was I confident? Not at all.
Breakfast was at the Grand Lux, where I had a yogurt, a very small serving of scrambled eggs, one strip of bacon and a bagel with butter. I also stole another bagel and some peanut butter to consume a few hours before the marathon. I spent the next couple hours watching football and pacing around my hotel room. Shortly after 1:00pm it was time to get ready.
Since my palm-holder water bottle contained a small zipper compartment that could hold Tylenol, extra bandaids, lip balm and pain reliever cream I elected to wear my newest and most-comfortable running shorts. My first dilemma was whether or not to wear my older or newer running shoes (the old pair probably has 400 miles or so on them, the new pair 250-300). I elected to go with the old pair because I’ve run with them in Los Angeles, New Jersey, and India. They’re my first pair of running shoes! We’ve formed an emotional bond! Of course, I’ve been running in the new ones exclusively for the past month or so, so I wondered how my feet and legs would respond to sneakers I hadn’t worn for several weeks.
My second dilemma was whether to run with my old iPod or my new iPod. Once again, I elected to go with the old one because it’s the only one I’ve used during my 18-week training schedule. I put on my lone non-cotton running t-shirt and a cheap sweatsuit I picked up to wear until the starting gun sounded. I had an Adidas headband my sister gave me. My mom kept ahold of a bag with a second cheap sweatsuit, a wool cap, some gatorade, water, a banana, and anything else I would need to help me recover. I went over all the details multiple times. I bandaid-ed my nipples. I anti-chafed my crotch longer and more intensely than ever before. I made sure my toenails were clipped a few days early. I ate my bagel with peanut butter, washed it down with a gatorade and popped two Tylenol. Then we headed to the shuttle that would take us from the Venetian to Mandalay Bay.
We got to Mandalay Bay shortly after 2pm. We wandered around for what felt like an eternity looking for the starting line and the corrals. When we found them, we walked back inside to where a large number of runners had congregated. I started to stretch. I watched the runners around me stretch, waited a few minutes and then mimicked what I’d seen them do. I considered drinking a bottle of 5-hour energy liquid but elected not to. At 3:30 I hugged my mom and headed out to the corrals. She promised to head over to the finish line at the 4-hour mark and wait there for 30 minutes. If she didn’t see me cross the finish line, the plan was to meet at the family reunion area under the “E” sign, as we figured it would be less populated than the “L” sign.
I found my way to corral number six and looked around for the pacer with the 4:00 hour sign. The pacers are professional runners who have been paced to run marathons at exact times, so if you sign up to run with one (and keep up) you can be assured to come in at whatever time they do. I didn’t sign up to run with a pacer but figured if I followed close enough behind I could pretty much run with the team.
I queued up The Coast Is Never Clear by Beulah and finished stretching while a bearded American Idol finalist sang “God Bless America”. The elite runners took off, and the corrals moved up a spot. I tore my sweats off and tried to psych myself up without overexerting myself. 60 seconds later the next group ran. A few minutes later it was my group. Everyone around me started bouncing on the tips of their toes in unison. It was totally surreal. When the timer ran down and they dropped the cord on our group, I hit the Play button on my 4.5-hour marathon playlist and broke out into a slow jog.
It took a few hundred yards to find a semblance of separation from the pack. Within the first mile I felt the beginning of a cramp in my left side and pain in my right shin. I tried my hardest not to think about it as the crowd turned left onto the street that bisects the Luxor and Mandalay Bay. We ran west, in a roundabout way, down Dean Martin Drive, over I-15, further west around various blocks, north and south of Hacienda Avenue. It was cold outside. My right hand was somewhat covered by the water bottle’s palm-strap, but my left hand was left open, and my fingers swelled slightly. It took maybe four minutes for the first wave of runners to leave the course to relieve themselves. No one seemed bothered by people squatting or pulling their pants down wherever you looked. It was wild. It reminded me of India.
The shin pain and mild cramping disappeared after Mile 3. And, in the first ironic stroke of luck of the night, 47-minutes into the marathon — one-minute and thirty-six seconds into “Yonkers” by Tyler, The Creator…my iPod died. I had to run the remainder of the marathon without the playlist I spent hours constructing over the course of the previous week. Oh, cruel fate.
West of the strip it’s cold. At the start of the race temperatures hovered around 48 degrees. The nighttime low was 32 degrees. At mile 8 I encountered my first GU station…and let me tell you, that stuff tastes horrible. Like, nauseatingly horrible in a way that shellacs your tongue and sticks to your tastebuds for so much longer than it should. No amount of water can wash it down. So, so gross.
Mile 13, the last block or two before we hit The Strip, was a really cool feeling. I figured if I could make it to Mile 13 without incident I would be in okay shape. There were still a lot of bodies to weave in and out of, but I was running faster than a 10-minute mile and the 4:00 pace runner was still within my sight. I wasn’t even with her, but I was near her and far ahead of the 4:10 pace runner.
Once we hit The Strip, once we turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard, the marathon turned into an utter shit-show. There were 6,000 runners registered for the full 26.2 mile marathon. There were 38,000 runners registered to run the 13.1 half-marathon. The half-marathoners only ran the latter part of the course (up the strip, around downtown, and down the strip). They started their race an hour after we began hours. Even with a 60-minute head-start, The Strip was completely packed with runners. The crush of bodies and the lights of the hotels and resorts made me forget all about the cold. As officials and local police officers on bicycles attempted to keep marathoners to one side of the road and half-marathoners to the other side, I tried my best to keep up my pace without knocking into other competitors. The line at the toilets on the boulevard swelled. The spectators increased exponentially. Some handed out salt packets. Others held up signs saying “RUN BITCHES!” and “IF RUNNING A MARATHON WE’RE EASY WE’D BE THERE WITH YOU”. Kids taunted us by flaunting their beers. Others reached out their hands to offer high fives. The amount of support that was given to the runners was incredible. One report said 100,000 people came out to watch the marathon. I’d go so far as to say I didn’t run a single block without seeing at least a handful of people who shouted words of encouragement. It was really amazing and uplifting. Once I hit The Strip I was happy my iPod was dead.
Running past Excalibur, New York New York, Monte Carlo, The Bellagio, Caesars and the Mirage, I was distracted by the lights and the insanity of Vegas at night. We hit mile 14, 15, 16. I was feeling good! I was still ahead of my pace, even though I’d lost sight of the 4:00 girl. At mile 17 I was feeling slightly less than good. We left Las Vegas Boulevard and hit S. Main Street and then descended into an area of downtown that felt a bit seedy. 4th Street, 6th Street, Fremont Street, 9th Street. As I looked for mile markers and clocks I worried my pace was slowing. They seemed to be growing further apart from each other. On 9th Street I hit mile 20.
My longest training run was 20 miles, so I fully intended to hit a wall at that moment. It didn’t quite happen. My right shin was sore, but I didn’t feel exhausted. Near the water station back on 6th Street someone had handed out a few packets of salt while yelling to eat them if you started to cramp up. I tried my best to rip two packets open and pour them into my mouth in stride but I missed horribly and poured the salt almost directly into my eyes. Classic. I didn’t want to use up the last remnants of my water bottle rinsing salt from my eyes so I just kept running. At the next water station, a few hundred yards shy of Mile 21 I slowed down to grab a few dixie cups. I used one to clear my eyes, and poured the remaining two into my empty water bottle. When I hit Mile 21 I was back on The Strip. Way off in the distance I could see the top of Mandalay Bay. Honestly, at that moment I thought for the very first time I I was going to finish the race. I started to smile.
I immediately stopped smiling and promised myself that I would not do that until at least Mile 24. Of course, I’d also promised myself that I would stop and walk and stretch my legs at Miles 13 and 20, and I never did. So I kept cracking a smile as I ran, no matter how hard I tried to stop myself.
At mile 22 I hit my first wall. Trying to get out of the way of slower runners I tried to hop up onto the curb and I stumbled a little bit. That was when I first noticed how weak my legs had grown. Just after the Mile 22 marker there was a GU station. I grabbed two packets of vanilla GU and forced myself to consume every last drop of the sticky, disgusting jelly stuff. With each mouthful of GU I took a sip of water to wash it down. By the time I had drawn even with Circus Circus I was feeling a bit better.
A few minutes later I thought, “Oh man, I missed the Mile 23 sign! The next one I see is going to be Mile 24!” And this, of course, was not the case. My pace had just slowed so much that it took me a lot longer to reach the Mile 23 marker. The 4:10 pace runner was now even with me. I don’t know what happened, but he dropped back, and eventually turned his sign upside down, effectively quitting the race and giving up on his pace. I had no way of knowing where I was until the 4:15 pace runner overtook me. When she was maybe five feet in front of me another runner collided with her and she went down to the ground. Again I lost track of my pace.
At Mile 24 I hit another wall. I had just passed the Venetian, and Mandalay Bay seemed closer than ever (yet so far away). As soon as I passed by the mile marker I screamed to myself, “2.2 miles. That’s just down and up the hill” (note: from my front door to the bottom of my street is exactly one mile downhill). The crowd alongside the course grew larger as I passed Harrah’s, the Flamingo, Bally’s, Paris and Planet Hollywood. My legs were almost numb. I just kept telling myself, “Don’t pass out in front of all these people. Don’t pass out in front of all these people. That would be so embarrassing.”
When I hit Mile 25, just about even with the Monte Carlo, I actually laughed aloud. I also started to choke up a bit. The reality was sinking in. More people screamed their support. More hands were outstretched to high five me. The spectators switched from general positive remarks to personal words of encouragement. Instead of complimenting the runners as a whole, they connected with individuals, calling us out by bib number or shirt color.
The first time I ever visited Vegas, in 2003, I stayed at the Monte Carlo with my friend Matt. On our second night in town we walked from the hotel down to Mandalay Bay. I remember passing over the fake Brooklyn Bridge in front of New York New York, and then using the series of walkways that connect Excalibur to the Luxor to Mandalay. Running down The Strip, passing these same hotels, I tried to calculate how long it would take compared to what I remembered from one drunken night eight years ago. Before I knew it, I was passing over Hacienda Avenue and I saw the Mile 26 marker.
At this point the road split into two. Marathoners were instructed to move to the left, Half-Marathoners were to move to the right. The road split into two. Guard rails appeared on both sides. The lanes began to narrow. Two tenths of a mile to the finish line. I could hear music blaring from the Mandalay Bay parking lot. Laser lights were flashing all around me. When I saw the finish line I giggled. I had to focus as hard as I could to keep my legs moving, but my thoughts were jarred when I heard a voice on my left scream, “YEEEEEAHHH!! GO EVAN!!!” Startled, I turned and recognized Peter. As I ran the last hundred or two hundred yards towards the finish line I could see him in my periphery running along with me. Somewhere between a steady run and a sprint (or whatever felt like a “sprint” after 26.1 tiring miles) I approached the finish line.
The minute I crossed the line (the clock read 4:27:30) I wanted to collapse in a heap. I knew I had to keep moving my legs but the way the area was laid out there was a huge number of people being herded towards a very tiny passageway, and it nearly forced you to stop moving. Two girls fell to the ground immediately upon coming to a stop, and medics were called to their attention. I knew i needed to keep my forward momentum in order to stay upright so I pushed through the crowd as best I could. I missed getting my aluminum wrap to keep my body heat regulated because I wanted to just get out of the damned clusterfuck at the finish line.
I pushed my way through everyone waiting to receive their medals. I pushed my way through everyone waiting to have their photographs taken. I must have looked so mad in my photo. I just wanted to keep moving. When I made it into the parking lot, in between the gear check and the family reunion zone, I found a small table where bananas and pretzels were being given away. I grabbed one of each and tore into them. I started to make my way towards the “E” sign in the family reunion area. When I got there I couldn’t find my mom, but after circling the zone twice I noticed her. I came up behind her and threw my arms around her. I think my first words were, “I fucking did it, mom!” and then I started weeping. She, of course, cried too. My sister was already on the phone with her, so I took the phone from her hand and tried my best to string a few sentences together. It was like the end of a Rocky movie. I promised to call her back later. Peter arrived just in time to see us crying and quickly scolded me for not accepting the aluminum wrap. I grabbed the sweats from my mom’s bag, tore the pants at the seams to fit them over my shoes, pulled the wool cap over my head and shoveled the Gatorade, banana, Snickers bar and peanut butter crackers that were awaiting me into my mouth. Peter made sure to tell me that a Katy Perry song was playing as I crossed the finish line. “California Girls”. I hadn’t noticed, but chuckled at the thought of me running to a Katy Perry song.
The three of us began to walk through the parking lot back into the hotel. I called my father to inform him of my success. Peter offered to drive us back to our hotel so that we wouldn’t have to wait with scores of runners for a shuttle. I cannot describe the soreness in my legs, but I managed to not only get through the hotel but up a few flights of stairs to the top deck of the parking lot. There’s a photo of me an the elevator at Mandalay Bay, clad in sweats and wearing my medal, and I’m beaming. I felt invincible. So what if the Kenyan dude who won the race finished almost 2 full hours ahead of me. At that moment I felt more accomplished than I have maybe at any other moment in my life.
All told my unadjusted finish time was 4:23:31. I finished 2,105th out of 6,000 runners. I finished 177th among males aged 25-29. Maybe there were only 178 people in my age group, but that low number sounds impressive to me. I walked only a couple hundred yards of the 26.2 mile course, long enough to grab a cup or two of water and drink the entire thing without spilling all over myself mid-stride once or twice along the way. My body held up remarkably well.
Since the Strip was still half-closed to allow the remaining Half-Marathoners to finish (the Full Marathon had a 4:30 time limit) we could only make right turns on the street. So instead of going back to the Venetian we went directly to the Mirage across the street. Dinner was at the Carnegie Deli. We ordered two Woody Allen’s (about three pounds of pastrami and corned beef), an order of fries, and a potato pancake. I drank more water. I ate an obscene amount of food. It wasn’t until the bill came that I realized I hadn’t peed in almost five hours, but I’d consumed several liters of water.
Mom and I walked across the street to our hotel. Well, I mostly limped. I couldn’t observe myself walking, but I imagine I must have looked like Frankenstein. We encountered some Half-Marathoners along the way and talked about how insane the crowd was. At some point there was 44,000 people running together! That’s ridiculous! Back in the hotel we got to the room as quickly as possible. I raced into the bathroom, disrobed, and filled the jacuzzi with scalding hot water. I surveyed the damage: a couple blisters on my left foot but nothing major. All toenails were intact. No bloody nipples. No chafed crotch. No split lips. I hopped into the jacuzzi. Yes, I added bubbles for optimal spa-like conditions. Sweet relief. No pain. I closed my eyes. I drank another Gatorade.
By the time I crawled into bed it was midnight. I was out like a light the moment my head hit the pillow. I remember Die Hard 2 was on TV.
It’s been a shade over 24 hours since then. Here I am. All smiles.
***
My mom sounded absolutely baffled when I first told her I registered to run the Las Vegas Marathon. Then she started crying. Then I said I wanted her to come to meet me at the finish line and she sounded mad, like I was forcing her to spend money on a stupid pipe dream I wouldn’t see through to the end. Then she cried again. In India she told me not to run because I was on vacation. I ran anyway. In Vegas when I was freaking out and claiming I wouldn’t finish the race she told me the exact time I would finish in, and she was eerily accurate. She was awesome. I’m so happy she was there and grateful for her support.
My dad and sister, even from a distance, were equally supportive and loving. My dad’s technological ineptitude provided a brief respite from stress the night before the race. All my friends in LA were great, especially my roommates, who continued to give me shit about not drinking or drugging or staying out late with them right up until the last day of my training schedule.
Peter planted the seed in my head about running the marathon in Vegas during the spring of 2011 because he’s done it three times and I was becoming more serious about my new hobby. His advice for handling race day was invaluable.
Corey hooked us up with a free suite at the Venetian. He was a lifesaver. Between the fight, rodeo and marathon, this was one of the most profitable and busy weekends in Vegas history. One person said 160,000 people came to town in two days. We didn’t have to worry about accommodations, and the suite was one of the nicest hotel rooms I’ve ever had.
Nicci convinced me to wake up early one morning and hike Runyon Canyon, which started me on the path to regular exercise and, eventually, running laps around Echo Park Lake. I still remember the first time I finished a 3-mile run, feeling like I was going to throw up, huffing and puffing as I walked back to my apartment.
Katie shared her own marathon experiences with me, and freaked the hell out of me about how my goddamned toenails were doomed to fall off my feet and how I was definitely going to shit my pants and maybe die before I crossed the finish line.
Marika helped with late-night Gchat conversations detailing her marathon training trials and tribulations, and took an interest in my own process. She told me to “Trust your training,” and it helped me so much. I kept saying that to myself as I came down the home stretch. As tired as I was, I trusted that my body could endure the unknown post-20-miles miles, and it worked.
Sam and Bruce were dicks who reminded me of all the horrible things that could possibly befall me, and offered me money if I didn’t run a marathon.
Thank you everyone who reminded me to hydrate, kept me well-fed and carbo-loaded, cooked me dinner, kept me company, massaged my legs, told me I was insane, told me I wasn’t insane, e-mailed me videos of people shitting themselves or passing out or bleeding or cramping.
Thank you everyone who did as little as to ask how a morning run went, ask me how training was going, offer a tidbit of advice, share a memory of theirs, wish me luck, send me love, text, call, e-mail in the weeks, days and hours before I hit the starting line. Thank you.
Fucking hell, I can’t believe I actually did what I set out to achieve. I’ve never felt happier, stronger or healthier. I’ve never been more proud of myself. I’ve never felt better about myself. My joy right now is incommunicable. I’m still giddy.
No, I don’t have any plans to run another marathon. Not anytime soon. But who knows, come next year I might feel differently about it. For now, though, I’m content to sleep in on most days and maybe run a few miles on the weekends. To keep myself in fine fettle. Just in case.
Spiritualized – Let It Flow
