This race report is coming almost a year after this race happened, and I am not exactly sure why it took me this long write about it. It was a marathon PR – 3:14:06 and good enough for 8th woman, 4th in my apparently more competitive age group (as compared to 30-39). But it was a rough build up and and even rougher aftermath, an aftermath that I’m still reckoning with.
I wasn’t originally registered for Wobegon in 2024. Instead, I was registered for Eau Claire. I was also trying for an epic summer, where I hoped to race and had paid for a half-Ironman and a full-Ironman races to come alter than summer. To prepare, I had left my previous coach, who focused on run coaching only and transitioned to a new coach. I was feeling pretty good heading into Eau Claire, except I think I verged into overtraining, and I was ready to taper two weeks before my actual taper started. As the Eau Claire Marathon neared, I started obsessively checking the weather reports – as one does, and it looked like terrible weather was going to hit on or around marathon day. I went back and forth on whether I should race, but I didn’t want to get all the way to Eau Claire, pay for a hotel reservation, and have the race be cancelled. If I’m being honest with myself, though, I also wasn’t in the mental state to race. I simply wasn’t ready for it, and I forfeited my race registration fee and spent a weekend feeling sorry for myself. I also did a stupid hard treadmill run instead, where I took the incline to max incline and pushed, hard.
The weekend passed, and the Eau Claire Marathon happened. The weather cleared for the race, and it looked to be, from all accounts, a beautiful race. I decided that I needed to use my fitness before I turned my focus to triathlons, so I reached out to the race director at Wobegon and begged a late entry into the race. She gracefully agreed, and I settled on Wobegon. I’d already tapered for Eau Claire, and my then coach did workouts two to three weeks in advance, so I cobbled together a kind of taper to get me to Wobegon. Ironically, the weather for Wobegon started looking bad, too, and come race day, it was way worse than Eau Claire would have been. But that is life, and by this point, I accepted that it was what it was and readied to race.
Because this was a week later than I’d planned, I had to head alone to Wobegon. Because Wobegon is a point-to-point race, racers have to drive out to the Holdingsford High School for the start, and if you don’t have a ride, you have to take a bus from the finish, and those buses leave bananas early. I like to arrive at the start about 15 minutes before the start (ah, small races!) to maximize sleep and my fueling. To make matters worse, it was wet and raining, and I grumpily boarded the bus to the start, where I’d have to sit in halls of the high school and wait for the start. Luckily, a good friend boarded my bus shortly after I did, so I had company on the long ride to the start. Once I arrived at the high school, I found a quiet place to sit and sat to wait it out.
I didn’t know what to expect from this race. Because it had been a long winter, I had done almost all of my run training on a treadmill. I run for time because treadmill miles aren’t real and because it is better for me to focus on time and not pace, as how long it will take to run, say, 10 miles, could vary by as much at 15 minutes depending on how I’m feeling. But how my treadmill pace related to my outside pace was unclear. I had also peaked about a month before the race, and once I’d decided not to do Eau Claire, I had ramped my training back up. But I felt like I needed to get this race over with so I could move on. I wanted a pr, sure, but I wasn’t sure I was physically or mentally capable of it.
Sitting on the floor of the high school prior to the Wobegon marathon, I tried to degrumpify. Even though I’d been so grateful that my friend was on the same bus as me to the start, I now felt like the effort to talk to people pre-race would be too much for me, so even though I knew many people racing, I found a dark hallway to sit and wait. I’m writing this a year later, and so I’m not proud of the dark cloud that engulfed me and has put a cloud over this entire race and what came after. I just wanted to get this race over with, check a box, and move on to Ironman training.
I sat and waited for it to be about 20 minutes before the race, then I did about five minutes of drills and headed to the atrium the school for the anthem and start announcements. I ate half of a honey stinger waffle 15 minutes before the start and then walked with everyone to the start, which was on the high school track. It had been raining or drizzling for hours, but the precipitation was almost done, for which I was grateful. I lined up toward the start, and when the start gun went off, I started with the 3:15 group. From the beginning, the 3:15 pace felt hard. I struggled to keep up with a runner in the same pace group as me, and felt dread about the race ahead. I tried to stick with the pace group for a while, but then I gave it up at about the mile mark and get them go. Every inch of the first five miles were hard, and I just told myself I had to endure through them. And that I’d probably have to endure for all of the miles for the rest of the day.
Around mile 5 or six, I had to use the restroom (#1, for the curious), and after that stop, it was like my previous legs had been encased in cement blocks and now they had been set free. The heaviness evaporated. I felt like I was flying, and I easily caught the 3:30 pace group and kept moving. I don’t like to talk in shorter races – anything below a 50k – so I lurked with the 3:20 (maybe?) group before I pushed past them and kept moving along. The Wobegon course is beautiful, and the rain had made everything green and lush. I felt this good until mile 22 or so.
The Wobegon course turns at about the halfway mark, and I remembered it being into the wind in 2023. I don’t think it was this year, but if it was, I was flying. In the retrospect that only almost a year can give, I can recognize that I made the same mistake in 2024 as I did in 2023, but in 2023 my partner had run out to meet me with a water bottle, so I only went a few miles without water. This year, I think I finished my water bottle around mile 20 or 22, but no one was there to restock me, so I ran without water except for trying to drink about of the water stop cups. I also stopped fueling – this was when I still fueled with waffles – now I use Maurten gels, so it makes sense that around mile 22 I started a death march. I think, had I thought about my water plans beforehand and if I kept fueling, and fueled enough throughout, I wouldn’t have hit the death march around mile 22. Either way, the last few miles of the marathon were rough, but I finished as strong as I could. In a time that would have won last year, I finished 2024 year in 8th place, 4th in my age group. But it was hard to celebrate. By the time I arrived back at the hotel, my body, specifically my stomach, was in complete rebellion.
At the finish of the marathon, I was pretty happy about my time but sad that a winning time for last year was an 8th place time for this year. But that is life – and for marathons, this is why you run for times not finishing places. It also still isn’t that fast of a time, or so I told myself. I drove myself back to the hotel, feeling sorry for myself because I was alone at a finish line. At about five minutes from the hotel, I started to get terrible cramping – like gut turmoil on a level that I had never felt before. I remember exactly where I was – at a stoplight – and what I was listening too – Andrew Huberman talking to Ronda Patrick about, among other things, the health benefits of saunas. I felt like I was going to pass out, and I somehow made it to the hotel and up to my hotel room. When I got there, I was too sick to even get to the shower, and I laid on the floor of the hotel room completely unable to move. I had to move or risk paying for another night in the hotel if I didn’t make check out time, so I dragged myself to the shower and managed to wash everything. I was so sick that I had to stop several times – I just sat on the floor of the hotel shower, unable to move.
I made it through the shower at the hotel after the marathon but barely. My stomach was so sick. In retrospect, I think this was caused by a combination of the marathon effort, not fueling and drinking enough at the end, and not fueling and drinking enough throughout. I felt like I was dying, and I crawled to the bed, then back to the toilet where I dry heaved and eventually black vomit came up. It looked and felt like I was throwing up black coffee grounds. I crawled back to bed, scared – throwing up black coffee grounds was what they always warned people about – and I was genuinely worried that I was dying.
I crawled around the hotel room, as I was able – pausing when it got too hard – to try to pack up to leave. I remember making it from the bed to the couch, and then I spent thirty minutes lying on the ground next to my purse on the couch, too sick to move. I had to get out of the room by hotel checkout time, so I kept forcing myself to move. As I checked out, I purchased a Diet Pepsi. In the past, a Diet Pepsi (or, a Zevia cream soda, strangely) is the only thing that will calm my stomach after a run, but this was unlike anything I’d had before. I purchased one from the hotel front desk, but this time, it only seemed to make it worse. I’m not sure if part of the problem was bloating, so the soda made the bloating worse, but I was in a painful daze as I tried to drive. I made it about 45 minutes toward home, before I pulled off the freeway to the side of the road. I must have slept for 20 or so minutes on the side of the road. It felt so rotten and lonely, and I was still scared by the black vomit. After I woke up, though, I felt more manageably human, and I was able to drive the rest of the way home.
After my nap on the side of the road I felt a little better, and I was able to drink some of the Diet Pepsi, although I don’t this was a good plan, since I think the carbonation was making it rougher on my stomach. When I got home, I still felt pretty bad. After I got home from the Wobegon marathon, I was still feeling super weak. I could barely get my suitcase back into the house. I was grateful to be feeling a little better and finally hungry. I ate a don lee chipotle black bean burger (rip, Costco bring them back). Still hungry, I ate another one. I was finally feeling human again, and I did some light yoga and settled in for a quiet night.
Post Wobegon, my coach had programmed a two hour bike ride on my schedule for Sunday (the race was Saturday). This is when I was still training for an Ironman, and the marathon was the first race on my list of already paid for races culminating in a 100-mile race. I can’t remember if my knee was already feeling rough, but regardless, there is no way I should have been on that bike the next morning for two hours. By the time I got off, I was hobbling, but as I got ready to go out to the lake for Mother’s day brunch, I didn’t know that things were bad. I just thought it was normal post-marathon soreness.
But it wasn’t. I couldn’t go down the stairs the normal way for a week after the marathon, and despite multiple PT visits, I wasn’t able to run a step for almost a month. Almost a year later, I still haven’t been able to ride my bike without pain for longer than an hour. If I can make it healthily to my race next week (today is April 6), it will be my first race since then, which means I forfeited thousands of dollars in race fees. I still haven’t registered for the race next weekend, as I am scared that I wont be able to race and will lose yet more money.
Bottom line, I am still unpacking the last year, trying to figure out why I still can’t bike but can run for hours and hours, and trying to rebuild faith that I am strong, healthy, and resilient. I may run Wobegon this year, and while I don’t love a long bus ride to the start, there isn’t a race I recommend more than the Wobegon Marathon. It’s incredible, well-organized, and beautiful.
Someday, I will talk about the past year, what happened, what I learned, and where things go from here. And, maybe, someday, I’ll talk about how I was able to bike again. Because I believe I will figure that out, too. For now, it has been a hard year, but I am hopeful.
ultrarungal 