Cowtown Marathon Recap. Marathon Finish #7!

Cowtown Marathon 

By: Cheryl Serna 

Cheryl on her way to the finish! 

Yesterday I ran the 2018 Cowtown Marathon in 3:20:28. It was my second fastest marathon finish time, and I qualified for the Boston Marathon for the third time with it. I was also able to walk away from it without any major injury. I am happy with that. Although, it just wasn't my day. I was hoping to run 3:10, and was on pace to run that, until I must have hit the wall in the second half, and really slowed down after mile 21. It was painful. I also ran this race on literally no sleep the night before the race (not intentional). There were a few factors that probably prevented me from running the race I wanted, and I will think about them and learn from them, but I am not going to dwell on them. I have to let this go and move forward. With that, I thought about this quote:

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” - Johnny Cash

This race was a stepping stone, and although it was difficult, I won't let it take away my energy and persistence to keep trying, to keep moving, to keep pushing forward. It's easy to blame a bad race on anything and everything, like the weather, a difficult course with hills, fueling and hydration mistakes, life stressors during training, lack of sleep, etc. But it comes down to accepting that the only person preventing me from succeeding in my goals is myself, and I have to own up to that and understand that I am not perfect and am only human.

Here's a recap of the race, on how I felt throughout, and what I learned, and what I can use as a tool to improve in future races.

Miles 1-10: By mile 2, I was tired (again, no sleep the night before). It felt like that time I stayed up all night before an organic chemistry final exam in college, and took the exam on no sleep and regretted it. Felt like I was a running zombie on cruise control. Although I was on my goal pace, I felt like it was more of a struggle than it should have been. My Garmin was also off from the mile markers, probably because of tangent running. The half marathon and marathon started together, so that made it difficult for me to pace myself. Around mile 9, there was the big infamous Main Street hill that slowly rises up to downtown Fort Worth. I slowed way down on that to be conservative, but maybe I slowed down too much. Lots of old bricks we ran over through the historic Stockyards. Lots of turns.

Miles 11-15: Still lots of turns. Speed humps and speed bumps. Potholes. Most of this race had us running on the right side of the road the entire time, and that hurt me in the end, considering I have probably done about 95% of my training on the left side of the road (facing traffic). So the right side of the road really hurt me...my left calf muscle started cramping considerably, my left Achilles was starting to ache, and left gluteal muscle started to ache. This makes sense, because of my running biomechanics historically...I have always severely over pronated on my left leg, and have been told by several people that my left leg is shorter than my right leg.

Miles 16-21: This is where things started to get tough...was running low on energy, and was just so tired. I spotted my coach around mile 16, and told him that I was tired. But I wonder how much of it was mental, and me saying it out loud made me think I was confirming a belief I had set in my head. I had one energy gel with me and slowly consumed it starting at mile 16. But maybe it wasn't enough. Mile 21 hit me like a ton of bricks. My quad muscles had nothing left in them after so many hills, and maybe not enough fuel. I started to cry in this race here. Emotions hit me that I wasn't going to achieve my goal, and all I thought was how many people were tracking me and how I was letting them down.

Miles 22-26.2: The most painful, both physically and mentally, 35-40 minutes of my life so far this year. At one point I completely stopped, hands on my knees, and just cried and started accepting my fate. The temperature was climbing, the humidity was getting me, and now any slight downhill resulted in shattering pain that rippled through all of my leg muscles with each impactful step. The 3:15 pace group passed me, along with a group of 3-4 women, and that was hard on me. All of the hard things that have hit me in the last few months came back to haunt me. A close family member's illness. A friend's suicide. All of the sacrifice and time I spent running to train for this marathon. Each mile became a slow crawl, and I started to contemplate dropping out. But, I stayed with it and crossed the finish line. I was exhausted and an emotional mess.

But the marathon is a teacher, a tool, and your best friend even though you had a bad day. It teaches you that you can go a little further, that you can push against whatever barrier you place in front of yourself, and that you can finish the damned thing despite the odds and the hardships and the setbacks. It is a tool that you use frequently enough that it dulls and then you re-sharpen it. It is the hammer that you pound into the nail to just dig a little deeper, to cement your dreams and eventually turn them into reality.