Fear the Crab

I managed to finish the Great Aloha Run without collapsing into a fluid pile of twitching muscles and blistered feet. The official time recorded was 1:51:37, which averages into a 13:43 mile. I placed 9453 overall out of over 27,000+ entrants, 5528/10903 in my gender group, and 644/1125 in my age bracket.

I am pleasantly stoked to have that time. Even though I indicated back in December that I’d participate in the free training sessions, eventually I stopped going because I just couldn’t wake up in time. Maile and I continued to train, but we never really stretched our limits to the full 8 miles on continual jog. For Maile that didn’t matter too much, because she planned to walk the entire way with her Office, like a group social. This was true of most participants in the run, a great number going so far as to design custom T-shirts to commemorate the event.

However, I had decided to try and jog the whole way. This was more of a personal goal, to see if I could really do it. I think it was around Mile #2 that I started to feel a bit winded, a little ache around the knees, and some side pain. If I had to label it, I’d call the condition “mild discomfort” and nothing that would prevent me from pushing further. I did start to wonder when the first aid station would appear, so I could rehydrate (I forgot to bring my own water bottle).

The first aid station turned out to be at Mile #3, and the water was quite welcome. Drank half the cup, doused the rest over my head, and I kept jogging. During this time I began an internal debate as to whether or not I will switch between running and walking. If I choose to do so, it’d save some wear and tear on my body and enable me to rest up a bit so I could continue. What I ultimately decided was to wait until Mile #4 and see how I felt.

Mile #4 turned into Mile #5 pretty quickly. Maybe I was in a zone. Or maybe I had numbed myself into a state where I could ignore the discomfort, which had maintained a constant and tolerable threshold. I could see the second aid station up ahead, shortly before the Mile #6 marker, and I would revisit the decision then.

I could see Aloha Stadium at Mile #6, the end location of the entire race. It looked so tiny in the distance, it was almost disheartening. But, Mile #6 was the start of the straightaway to the finish line, and something inside me switched from reason to pride. I was so close to the end, it would be a shame to “give up” and walk the rest of the way. I think if my body were in worse shape I would not have made such a decision, but my discomfort had not increased and I felt I could continue my current pace.

As the remaining distance shrank, my excitement and confidence grew. I started to ignore the aches and kept my pace, pausing only to get water at Mile #7 and make a temporary pit stop at the portable toilets (blech). The finish line at Aloha Stadium was still a welcome relief, and I took comfort in the fact that I made my goal of jogging the whole thing and didn’t give up.

Maile arrived about 35 minutes later.

One thing I noticed in this run was that I had to constantly navigate around the walkers ahead of me. I expected this, because based on my entry form, I was grouped with pure walkers towards the back of the starting crowd. I figure my placement was because I had entered a predicted completion time of 4 hours, since I really didn’t know how long it would actually take.

I still expected to eventually come out ahead of the walkers and fall into pace with other runners, but that never happened. It seemed there were groups of walkers all throughout the course, and I felt like a “jogger playing Frogger” while trying to avoid getting boxed in. At first I was really surprised there were that many walkers in the group, but I realized after a while that many of them were also attempting to jog and would get far ahead before they slowed down. People were pretty good at making enough space for the faster runners, though, so there were few collisions and other problems.

Still, given my race results, I now have a baseline for next year, and hopefully will be placed further up front to avoid a majority of the walkers. I think I can still expect some crowds ahead of me, though. And I’ll definitely bring more water.

Edit: “Torsteins Kvæði” by Týr helped me keep my cadence and guided me through the entire course on continual repeat. It’s my de facto standard for running music, my own little chariot of Faroese fire: