Not Phiddipedes yet

(Geneva, Switz.) - Slowly, gingerly, I made my way down my stairs. My every step bringing sharp shooting pains through my legs and an ugly twisted grimace to my face. My knuckles go white clutching the bannister. The poor older couple coming up the stairs decides to wait below and give me room as I make my way slowly down past them. I am obviously sick or injured or perhaps even a little permanently crippled as evinced by my gangly stiff legged lurch from stair to stair....

...The Geneva marathon was harder than I thought it was going to be.

I'd have it in my head for some time to do a marathon. And for the last year I'd had it in my head to do the Geneva one. And I'd had it in my head for the last 6 months to really start training for it. Which brings me to 5 weeks ago, where I thought if I was going to do this thing I needed to add to my 2x per week and do a kamikaze crash training program. So I started running about 4 times a week. In retrospect I shoulda taken the whole thing more seriously, but what is done is done. I shoulda done some more long runs. Lots of 1.5 hour ones and a few 2h. ones. Instead my standard one was about 45 min.

So all things considered I think it went fine. I had an ambitious - considering my training - goal of about 3h 20m. But if I went under 3h 30m I was going to be happy. The first half was easy, almost pleasant even. I hit the halfway point and was on a 3h 16m pace. And then the wheels fell off. Breathing fine. Overall energy levels fine. Legs...oh oh. Absolute agony. In 500m I went from great to them almost not working. Weird.

I slogged through the last half in more pain then I have ever been in any other athletic even ever (except for that time when I was 11 and I ran in a puddle of blood in a 1600m with a pin from a new pair of socks stuck into a toe). I thought that if stopped too suddenly I would fall over and almost did a few times. Again everything was fine except for my legs... and oh yeah... bloody nipples. Almost 3.5 hours of constant rubbing of my chest on my running singlet caused my nipples to start to bleed, which then soaked through said singlet and left two long stigmata like streaks on the front. As I went slower and slower and realized my 3h 20m was slipping away, I watched my clock and still figured a 3h 30m was possible. At 10K I needed to just put away 5 min. 1ks and I would close but OK. Still at 5K it I needed to do 5 min. 1Ks and I would close but OK. At 2k close but OK. At 1K I thought I am going to be just under my mark to do the 42K. At at the end! 3h 30m 2 s! Arrgggghhh!!!! What happened?! The metric system had happened. A marathon is not 42k, but 42.195K and that last 195m was that minute that I thought I had in hand.

I stopped and sat down and the couldn't stand up for an hour and half. People brought me food, and looked at me weird with my red stigmata, blotchy face, and the fact that I was planted like a tree, but I actually couldn't get up. Nothing. Nada. No Mas. What a weird feeling. They just didn't work. I wasn't worried, but it was weird. Finally, finally I was able to climb up the cyclone fencing to my feet and wobble off to find my way home, but only straight legged walking. If I bend my legs, I fall - BOOM - like a sack of sacked stuff.

And now after two days I am feeling better, but as I intimated above, I am still having problems with stairs.