Kevin Green mug
Progress sports editor Kevin Green
I went to Duluth, Minnesota, looking for a personal best in the marathon.
Instead, I came home with a science lesson.
For months, everything pointed toward Grandma’s Marathon being the race where I finally lowered the 3-hour, 49-minute personal best I set on the same course three years ago.
Advertisement
Training had gone according to plan. Long runs were completed. Marathon-pace workouts clicked. Fitness indicators suggested I was capable of finishing somewhere in the 3:43 to 3:46 range.
Then race day arrived.
Almost immediately, I knew something wasn’t right.
It wasn’t because the weather was bad. Quite the opposite.
The thermometer sat in the low 50s as the race began along the North Shore of Lake Superior. After spending months training through Oklahoma heat and humidity, I expected those conditions to feel refreshing.
Instead, I felt strangely warm from the opening miles.
Even more concerning, I struggled to hit paces that should have been among the easiest of the entire race. My plan was intentionally conservative, reaching the halfway point around 1:51 before gradually building effort over the second half.
Advertisement
Instead, I crossed halfway in 1:55.
It wasn’t panic that slowed me. It wasn’t a reckless start. It simply felt like my body was asking far more of me than it should have.
My heart rate also climbed quicker than I expected for the paces I was running. Every mile felt like I was pushing through conditions that didn’t exist.
I knew something was off.
The one-minute walk breaks I had planned through aid stations probably kept me moving longer than I otherwise would have. They allowed me to regroup, drink and mentally reset before returning to running.
Eventually, however, I couldn’t return to the pace I needed.
Advertisement
The second half became a battle against heavy legs, nausea and side stitches. As my stomach deteriorated, so did my ability to take in fluids and energy gels.
The less I could fuel, the worse my legs became. The worse my legs became, the harder it was to keep moving.
I wound up walking a majority of the final 4 miles, finishing in 4:30:22, more than 45 minutes slower than my goal.
One bright spot came late in the race when I crossed paths with two fellow Oklahomans — one from Cleveland and another from Oklahoma City.
They recognized my Route 66 Marathon singlet and, of course, the Oklahoma headband I wore throughout the race. For a few moments, the conversation served as a welcome distraction from the increasingly difficult task at hand.
Advertisement
It was a reminder that no matter where you race, runners have a way of finding one another.
As difficult as those closing miles became, there was one landmark I couldn’t wait to reach.
Around Mile 24 sits a large video board that plays encouraging messages submitted by runners’ friends and family. I knew my wife, Kelsey, and our daughter, Ivy, had recorded one for me.
By that point in the race, I desperately needed to see their faces. I kept telling myself to just make it to the screen.
Then I got there. Nothing.
The video board had malfunctioned and never displayed a single message for any runner throughout the marathon.
Advertisement
No shout-out.
No Kelsey.
No Ivy.
As silly as it may sound, I was crushed.
So I did the next best thing. I pulled out my phone, put in my headphones and called them.
Hearing their voices carried me through the final miles in a way a video never could.
Afterward, I did what most runners do after a disappointing marathon. I searched for answers.
That is when I came across an article from Runners Connect that stopped me in my tracks.
The article tells the story of marathoner Debra Hexsel, who entered the Boston Marathon in excellent shape before struggling almost immediately after beginning a course of antibiotics just days before the race.
Advertisement
Her coach recognized something wasn’t right because the performance simply didn’t match the fitness she had built.
Reading through the article felt eerily familiar.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been dealing with an infection in my left big toe. I spent one week taking Bactrim before my doctor switched me to clindamycin for the final two weeks leading into Grandma’s. I was still taking clindamycin on race morning.
The article outlined several common effects antibiotics can have on endurance athletes.
One was increased sensitivity to heat and dehydration.
Despite racing in temperatures around 50 degrees, I never felt cool. I felt warm almost from the beginning, a sensation that simply didn’t make sense given the conditions.
Advertisement
Another symptom was slower pace at the same effort. That might have been the biggest red flag of the entire day.
My training suggested one thing. My body delivered another.
Finally came gastrointestinal issues, including stomach upset, nausea and difficulty absorbing fluids. That lined up almost perfectly with what unfolded over the final miles.
Does that prove antibiotics ruined my marathon?
No.
Marathons are far too complicated to pin on one variable.
There are countless factors that determine how 26.2 miles unfold, from pacing and fueling to sleep, stress and simple bad luck.
But I also don’t think it is wise to ignore what my body had been telling me during the taper.
Advertisement
For days leading into the race, I noticed unusual fatigue.
My arms felt heavy. Easy runs required more effort than normal. Looking back, those were warning signs I explained away as taper nerves.
Maybe they weren’t.
The irony is that antibiotics are designed to help us get healthy. For most people, they do exactly that.
But endurance athletes aren’t asking their bodies to do ordinary things. They’re asking them to perform at an exceptionally high level for hours at a time while processing medication, fighting infection and absorbing nutrition under physical stress.
That changes the equation.
Advertisement
As runners, we spend countless hours obsessing over mileage, workouts, heart rate zones, shoes, hydration strategies and nutrition. Yet many of us rarely stop to consider how an illness, or even the medication used to treat it, might influence race-day performance.
That is a lesson I won’t forget.
The disappointment of Grandma’s Marathon will linger for a while. You don’t spend months chasing a goal without feeling the sting when it slips away.
But eventually, that disappointment will fade. The lesson won’t.
Sometimes the most important training variable isn’t the workout you completed or the pace you held. Sometimes it is simply recognizing that your body is fighting a battle you can’t see.
And no matter how fit you are, you can’t expect it to fight two battles at once.
Comments
Advertisement