You Have To Be MAD To Do The Mad Marathon

We just got back from the Mad Marathon in Waitsville, VT...this post will probably be a little scattered and all over the place as that is what life feels like right now...

We hit the road for my sisters at about 10am Thursday.  We had a few stops to make first then we would get on the highway.  One stop was to be the bank.  We started a savings account when we started the adoption process for Hsin that was meant to “pay” me while I was on unpaid FMLA leave when she got home.  Well, we learned how to live without the money that is automatically taken from my check each pay and put in this account, so it is now the “vacation/travel/marathon” account.  But since it is a savings account, it kinda makes it hard to pay for stuff from it.  We wanted to switch it to a checking account so we can put trips on the “points” card, then pay off that card from this account.  So we arrive at the bank and Hsin keeps talking about lollipops.  I swear this kid can remember something like a lollipop from a bank she has been to once about 9 months ago, but can’t remember to not pee her pants J  Anyway, we wait our turn, sit down in front of the nice TD Bank lady and ask her to switch the account from savings to checking, and she asks for my license.  Well, THANK FREAKING GOD we made this stop, because I DIDN’T HAVE MY FREAKING WALLET.  Yeah, that would have sucked when we arrived at the airport at 5am the next morning.  So…

We head back home to locate my wallet.  Switching purses and diaper bags has to be one of the sh*ttiest parts of being a woman!

Wallet located, back in the car, and back to the bank.  All goes smoothly and we hit the road for my sisters.  We arrive around dinner time, all pack into their Tahoe and head out for some spaghetti dinner.  Carb load later, bring the kiddo’s back to the sis’s house, pee one last time and we hit the road for our hotel.  We planned to stay closer to the airport since we had a 7am flight and didn’t want to have to worry about traffic in the morning.

Ok…so arriving at the hotel was a WEIRD experience.  We got off an exit and seriously, we were IN Taipei, Taiwan.  The streets were packed with people at 10pm, scooters were everywhere, and all the stores and restaurants were strictly signed in Chinese.    There was one weird sighting too, an older Chinese woman, maybe about 60’s or 70’s, pushing a stroller (remember it is at 10pm) with a little girl with a blond ponytail in it.  I mean, I am used to seeing blond people with little Asian girls, I mean heck, other than the fact I am a brunette, that is me every day of my life…but when do you see the opposite.  An Asian woman, in an ALL Asian neighborhood with a little blond girl at 10pm.  All I can say is there has to be a story there…I just don’t know what that story is.

We check into our hotel and proceed to the closet that they call our room.  The hotel from the staff to the lobby to the hallways ALL feel like being in Taiwan again.  It is flippin weird.  The room is clearly a deathtrap.  The ironing board won’t stay open (yes we iron t-shirts for an early morning flight…don’t judge us and our OCD ways), the closet hanging bar collapses as soon as we breathe on it and all those little hook thingys come crashing down on the floor and our suitcases won’t even fit through the section between the TV stand and the wall.  Oh well, in a few hours we will be up and leaving anyway.

3:30am comes and we are up, dressed and to the airport in minutes.  Check in, through security and sitting at our gate with like 3 hours to spare.  The flight leaves on time and we land in Vermont.

HOLY CRAP is Vermont beautiful.  As we drive down the highway, beautiful mountain views, farms and forests are everywhere.  The air even smells cleaner.  We arrive at our “bed & breakfast” or lodge and a stately woman greets us.  She asks us “can I help you” with a strange attitude.  I can tell by his body language that Paul is thinking the same thing as me…”uh lady, it is July in Vermont, there is a marathon in your town with a total population of like 300 people in 2 days…who the F*CK do you think we are and what do you think we are here for”.  That is not however what he says. 

My lovely, polite husband says: “we are here to check in, we are here for the marathon”. 

Lodge Lady:  “well check in isn’t until 3.  It isn’t 3”.

My inner voice:  “Are you f*ing serious.  I got up at 3:30 this morning in freaking Taiwan, flew here, drove like an hour…I don’t even know what country I am in right now let alone what time it is…all I know is that I need a shower and I am really hungry.

Paul:  Is there any chance our room is ready?

Lodge Lady (huffing and puffing): uh, well, I don’t know, I will have to check but you know…industry standard is check in at 3pm.

Mine AND Paul’s inner voice:  ”industry standard…seriously.  Did you just say that?  I am not in the industry, but I did PAY YOU FOR A ROOM, and during your off season.  Just check if it’s ready”.

Lodge Lady:  walks off to check if our inconvenient arrival can be accommodated.

Ends up…our room was just fine.  OK lady, cool it.  Really?  Again, its July in Vermont.  It’s not like somebody just checked out this morning and you needed time to get the room ready.  We are the only people you have been expecting for the last few months so get off your damn high horse.

Anywho…we shower and  get a nice relaxed lunch, pick up our packets and explore the town a bit.  We put in a reservation for kayaks for the next day, chill in the room and find a good Italian restaurant for dinner.  Lovely.

Saturday morning we wake up, and eat breakfast at our lodge with some of the other runners who have arrived throughout the day and night.  We then head out to go kayaking.  My city boy husband is a freaking RIOT when we first get in the boats.  In his defense, I have had a little bit of experience with kayaks since my Dad has one, and we used to go canoeing a lot as a kid.  I also was a dancer for most of my childhood, so balance is kinda my thing (speed however is not).  I get in my boat, dry as can be and shove off the landing into the lake.  Paul actually makes fun of me for getting in the boat with most of it on the ground and only a little in the water.  He then finds out why I did that.  You can “stand” on ground.  You cannot however “stand” on water.  Who knew?  So his boat pitches sideways and he lands in the water.  He spends the next 5 minutes draining the boat of all the water that is now in it, and try number two is successful.  We are on the lake.  And Paul is NOT comfortable.  Let me just tell you how nice it was to be BETTER than him at something athletic.  I’m not trying to be jerk off here…but Paul runs a 3ish hour marathon, and my PR for a half is 2 ½ hours.  So I pretty much SUCK next to him when it comes to running and that is something we do like EVERYDAY.  This one experience of kayaking was my one moment to shine.  And I ROCKED it.  I was bone dry from start to finish of our 4 hour or so lake excursion.  The lake was beautiful, surrounded on all sides my mountains and dense forests.  We saw a buzzard on a cliff checking us out, and we ate PBJ sandwiches on our own private lake beach and I peed in the woods or just about in public about 6 times (I really need to teach Hsin how to pee in the woods).

Dinner that night was at our lodge and with all the other guests who were running the race the next morning.  Talk started as most conversations with runners….Where have you run, what races have you done, what was your favorite, least favorite, farthest distance, how long have you been running, etc.  Then someone said they had driven the course.  They said that the elevation chart posted on the races website was not even close to accurate.  They said that one of the roads had a posted sign that the incline was so steep that trucks of a certain size were not permitted to climb it.  Well that is just what a slow as sh*t runner wants to hear now isn’t it?  Awesome.  Now I could go to bed, bell full of spaghetti knowing that I was going to be even SLOWER than my usual slow self in the morning’s race.

Sunday morning we wake up at the crack of dawn.  Shower, get all our gear together and head over at an obscenely early hour at the start line.  Paul has this thing with being VERY early to everything.  I get it, but it is a little annoying sometime.  We did get a great parking spot, and I was able to pee in an actual porta potty twice before the line got crazy.  Then I just peed in some nice person’s driveway.

Not a mile into the race I had to pee again.  I used to not pee at all during races and I swear I am now a gold medalist at peeing on sides of roads and trails.  Right after my pee stop and the race turns straight uphill.  Hundreds of people around and in front of me immediately slow to a walk.  Not even a speed walk, but a WALK walk.  This was where I decided what my goal for the race was going to be.  I know my time would suck.  There was no reason to even have a time goal at all.  So I chose to RUN the whole race, no walking even with all the hills.  That would be my accomplishment.  So I ran, although I am sure to anyone actually WATCHING me it looked more like some strange, bouncy walk…but to me, I was running.  And HOLY SH*T was it painful and tiring.

The race ended up being about 85% steep and long uphill, 10% steep and long downhill and 5% flat.  The uphills were so long you usually couldn’t see the top.  I believe that miles 4.5-8 were one continuous uphill.  The grade of the hills was so steep going up and down that it was almost difficult to keep balance from either leaning forward or backwards.  Quads and knees burning, it was a torture course.  I heard a few runners lamenting that they thought the race director was into S&M because only that type of person could have picked this course AND pegged it as “rolling hills”.  I encountered this poor soul on the almost 4 mile uphill after mile 5 and he begged me to tell him when the course would stop going uphill.  I said “sorry honey, but I’m right here with you”.  He said he was from Vegas.  Poor thing…God bless him he didn’t know what an incline was let alone “rolling hills” in the mountains of Vermont.  He was signed up for the full too…so he had a LONG way to go.

Paul described people he passed along the course for the full as in a “death march”, “dragging” and some that just plain “broke his heart”.  There were people who had picked this as their first marathon or first half.  Yeah, I am pretty sure that will also be there last!!!

The course was beautiful as they promised.  Just hard as hell!

Finish time 2:49…only 8 minutes slower than my previous worst.  Given the conditions, I was actually pretty pleased with my finish.

Slow as sh*t runner signing off.  Preparing for the hubs 24 hour ultra this weekend.  I will be pacing him for 2 laps which will be my first ever distance longer than a half.  I will be pacing him at night so that my slow pace is actually an asset to him J  Only time that will ever happen!!!