Monday, June 18, 2012

Eric's Guest post!

Kara suggested that my husband, Eric, do a guest post with his Baltimore Ten Miler experience (she noticed that based on his Facebook statuses, it might be an interesting post). I've really wanted him to do a guest post for a long time, since his pictures tend to get such positive feedback. As expected, he protested like crazy when I brought it up, but I pulled the birthday card, so he has been basically forced into it. He freaked out that he would "come up with a post that everyone hated", so I suggested an interview format to help calm his nerves.


Here it is, straight from his mouth (typed by me, verbatim). 





Alyssa: Tell us the events leading up to the race.


Eric: I had to work Thursday night, and didn't get home until 3am. I had a full day of cleaning and things that needed to be done, so I woke up at 8 or 9 Friday. I was up early, went to the chiropractor, went to Home Depot to get all the stuff to clean and organize the house, bought a safe, so all our documents are now safe. Once I cleaned and organized the observatory and the bathroom, I began vacuuming. I had to be at work at 4:30, I got done cleaning about 3:30, so that meant no nap. No proper nutrition. I went to work, I bought two 1.5 liters of water and a foot long sub. I had to work cashier, so I couldn't get any other sustenance. So, um, I drank all the water, I ate the sub. Nothing exciting really happened except a guy told me "F-you" because he didn't understand what a cover charge was. He got mad because he paid cover and he thought he should get a free drink. Other than that, uneventful night.


So at the end of the night, I was counting the cash, and I thought I was $200 over, and the manager counted, and said I was $80 short. While I was finishing up all the other stuff, he came to me and said I was $20 over, but that's still a write up. 


Really old picture, all I could find of him in his work uniform.



So when I finally got home, about 3 in the morning, I was too wired to sleep, so I made a little playlist, so I laid down about 4:30, which gave me about an hour of sleep. I woke up, picked up my running outfit, which was my usual vibrant self, my highlighter yellow shirt. 


We got in the car, I had my protein shake and two pieces of toast, I took a little half hour nap.


Once we arrived, I took my 5 hour energy. Then we began the mile walk to the start line, it was a good warm up for me, considering the fact I hadn't trained for this run. After checking our bags and going to the porto potties, I said goodbye to my lovely, beautiful, supportive, best woman on the planet, wife (I swear, these are his words!) oh and did I mention sexy? I went back to my start, as always, I had trouble trying to figure out when to start my Runkeeper app so that it gives me an accurate reading. And as always, I started it way too early, and I ended it way too late. 

As I started my descent into these ten miles, I was having a little bit of chest pains, a little bit of issues breathing, that lasted for about a mile, maybe a mile and a half. Then I started to feel my stride, I was feeling pretty good. About three miles in, I saw my twin brother, another black guy wearing my exact highlighter yellow shirt. We yoyo'd for about a half mile. Then he ate my dust.

I felt pretty good as I went through mile 4. I saw Ashley and my other friend Adam who runs at a ridiculous pace. I felt pretty good, then it happened. And by it, I mean Lake Montebello. I think the mix of not getting enough sleep or proper nutrition combined with treacherous Lake Montebello conspired to have my body shut down. 

After mile 5, it became a mixture of run, walk, limp, the process repeated itself for the last five miles. As I got to mile 9 and the last water station all the people who were cheering, I couldn't really hear what they were saying, but it looked like they were cheering for me, I'm not sure because I was rocking out to my playlist. They did help me get through the last mile. That, and the Final Countdown, by Europe. As I came around the turn to see the finish line, I had cramps in both my quads, both my calves, but I still persevered to run that last 50 yards. 


Even though the picture doesn't show it, I was in a hell of a lot of pain. There was many times during this run that I thought about quitting, and walking the whole way, but all I could think of is, if I quit, I won't earn the white jacket. And really, that's the only reason I ran this race, or I run at all, is for stuff.

Alyssa: Anything else?

Eric: I can't think of anything. I really don't want to relive those miles 6-10, so they went pretty fast, but in reality, they were pretty slow. It was by far my worst running experience ever. And I will never do a race again without training. And if I need to, I will quit my job, because I will not work the night before a race again.

If you want a little interesting tidbit, my time in this race was 2:20 and my fastest half marathon was 2:45, so that should tell you how terrible of a race it was. I finished 329 out of 333 in my age group. I did not have negative splits.

I guess really just the one question was all he needed! The "never doing a race without training thing" is on the internets now, so it's official. Might as well be written in blood.

12 comments:

  1. Loved it!!! Go Eric! I can't wait until he starts training for GORUCK! And if you don't know what GORUCK is, Google it!! Or look at a previous post!

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  2. Love the guest post by Eric! It's always neat to hear about a race from a guy's point of view I think.

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  3. I think Eric's account of his day of cleaning should earn him Husband of the Year. I regret not seeing your apartment's "observatory" in December. I like Eric's highlighter yellow shirt.

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  4. Hahah, this cracked me up :) He is seriously my hero for running on that little of sleep! I can't even make coffee on an hour of sleep, so nice work, Eric! :)

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  5. oh eric - i'm so sad that you had a bad experience, but so proud of you for pushing through. speaking of training - i know dan really wants you to do the half marathon training group with him...so this will serve as my peer pressure to both you and alyssa - come join us!!!!

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    1. Eric- def do the 1/2 training group with me this summer. i need someone else to suffer with me.

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  6. I know it shouldn't, but this post made me laugh. Poor Eric! What an awful race experience! I'm still impressed he made it to the start line after work, much less to the finish line.

    And now you can remind him to train with this post!

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  7. The critical part of this post is knowing that your important documents are in fact, now safely in a safe. Phew!

    So Eric is all signed up to do the 25K option at Rosaryville too, right? Time to get training!

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  8. I'm with Kara, thank God your documents are safe!

    I wish there was a picture of Eric's twin.

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  9. Can't wait until I get interviewed about my 3 mile, 50 minute walk along the canal.

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  10. The pictures are the best part of this post. And I second Kari on Eric's twin. That was an exciting picture to wake up to in my newsfeed this morning.

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  11. This is amazing. When he said "IT HAPPENED" at Mile 5 my first thought was "he shit himself". Glad that didn't happen!

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Thanks for commenting! Comments make me probably more happy than they should.