And yes, this is one of those stories that can be filed under the broad heading of "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Hawk, whose names is Rich, is the friend who helped me to fulfill a desire to climb Longs Peak in Colorado a few years ago. Since that time I have wanted to get back out there and climb it again or some other 14,000 foot peak in Colorado. We had kicked the idea around for awhile but never had the time and the money at the same time. Then came July 10 last year. Uh oh.
I learned that having a heart attack can potentially put a crimp in your mountaineering plans. So I had a long talk with my doctor and explained to him that although it's easy to be misled by my sophistication, at heart I'm a mountain man and that's where I belong.
Strangely enough, he thought it would be ok. He told me not to do it for the rest of 2009, but if I kept up my rehab work there was no reason not to take a shot at it in '10. Cool beans. Just need someone to go with me.
So when my concerned com padre Rich comes to visit his broken hearted buddy in the hospital, I hit him with the scheme I have already cooked up. My big plan is to make the one year anniversary of my heart attack a cause to celebrate and get high....like 14,259 feet worth. It's a brilliant plan. This will be the inspiration I need to pursue my rehab with zeal and determination. We will be like Mallory and Irvin...well, bad example, but you get the idea. This will be a great buddy trip.
Hawk says no thanks.
Bummer. It seems that the memory of his extended bought of elevation sickness on the mountain that day has stuck with him. I tell him not to be a wimp. It was just a pounding headache and nausea and loss of appetite and dehydration. Nothing that was imminently life threatening. Besides, he was almost ok by the time we got back to the hotel. And, this wasn't going to be about him...this was my triumphant return to health. He had to join me. As my bomb partner and brother in arms, he really had no choice in the matter.
The next day he called me with a counter proposal. He agreed to attempt the climb again (if we properly acclimatized) under one condition.
I should have seen it coming. Hawk is a really intelligent guy. Way ahead of me on the crossword quotient scale. He had done a little research to see what I might be physically capable of with the proper rehab and training. He is also a competitive marathon runner. These two facts should have bumped into each other in my brain and alerted me to their potential, but sadly...no.
You can probably see the next part coming a mile away. Or 26 miles away (I did not).
His plan called for me to join him in running a marathon to, you know, get tuned up for the mountain climbing. Swell.
For those of you who are uninitiated, a marathon is 26 miles and 285 yards long. Entirely too long, too hard, just plain stupid to consider. Of course I accepted.
So allow me to lay this out, just as much for myself to see if I could pinpoint the exact moment of my insanity, as for you to follow along. Here I lie (or is it lay?) in a hospital bed in cardiac intensive care two days removed from heart surgery. I'm 42. I'm an asthmatic. I'm over weight. I will have some pretty restrictive limitations placed on me for a considerable time once I can escape this joint. My diet is about to change drastically. Currently, my allowable exercise is to take two laps around the nurses station on the cardiac floor. And, oh yes, I don't run. Perfect. Let's do a marathon. Nope. Not impulsive at all.
The first day at home I was able to walk to my next door neighbor's driveway and back. Spectacular. But we kept plugging away and after a couple weeks I was walking around the block. Soon enough I was in a rehab program ("Hi, my name is Jim and I agreed to run a marathon...") and beginning to exercise and test the new plumbing out a little. So far so good. I went back to full duty at work and started to jog at rehab. Finally I graduated from rehab and was sent out to exercise on my own.
I revealed my running plan to my doc in January and he told me to go for it. My only restriction was to keep my heart rate down. The way to do this is to wear a heart monitor when running and stop running when you get it too high (about 173 or so). So I ran and walked. On January 11, half a year out from the heart attack, I ran a half marathon on a treadmill at the gym. Cool. The only problem, I mean besides that marathons are stupid, was that I was really slow. I am not the fleetest of foot in the best of times (mountain men don't have to be fast..just burly), and with the whole walk/run thing I was downright pokey.
After I did the 13.1 mile run, Hawk started to believe I might actually take a real shot at this thing. So he sat down and did a bunch of research and wrote a training plan for me. It was 16 weeks long and would cover 448 miles culminating in a marathon. He also found the race. Rockford on May 16.
So I dutifully set out to become a runner. My longest run prior to getting sick had been a 5 miler on the last day of the police academy sometime in September of 1991. I was 24 years old back then. Before this was over, I would learn to love the 5 milers because they were my short runs during the week. I learned a ton! I learned how my body responded to different runs, surfaces, weather and fuel. I had some long training runs of 14, 16, 18 and, near the end, a 20 miler. I found that I really enjoy running from 4 to 9 miles. My body responds well to that distance and I could be done in less than 2 hours. I found out that it's possible to have 5 large muscles in your legs cramp at the same time while 6 miles from home on an 18 miler and still be able to gut it out and finish the distance. Good grief, I was turning into a distance runner.
About half way through this I started telling people what I was up to. I wanted to create a situation where it would be humiliating to back out of this race.I received alot of support and encouragement. I also sensed that a few people thought I was being unnecessarily reckless.Others figured I had no chance. My wife was awesome through all this ridiculousness. I would leave the house on Saturday morning and be gone for as long as 4 and a half hours. Completely selfish. But she recognized that for some reason I needed to do this or something like it to get rid of some stuff.
I also learned that a long run in the woods is a great time to talk to God and get your head straight about important things.
So May 16th came. Amy and I head out at 5:30 to go meet Hawk near the starting line at 6:30. The race starts at 7.
We probably should have gotten the clothes thing straightened out. How embarrassing. And no, that's not our weight on the bib placard ( Hawks at least 140).
I had three ascending goals going into the race. First, I wanted, above everything else to just finish the complete distance. It really didn't matter if it took 6 hours or 10 or 12....although they start closing the course down in 6. My second goal was to pass someone so I wouldn't be in last place. And my last goal was to make it in 6 hours. Of course Hawk was lookin for a 3:30.
So 7:00 rolls around, the countdown begins, and Amy and I get all choked up as the gun goes off and I start moving out. The beginning of the race was really cool. Very fun, lots of people all around. People on the side of the streets cheering...very uplifting. I saw Michelle, Hawks wife at mile 3. I had a fan! There were about 1500 total runners in the race. Somewhere around 400 of us were there for the marathon and the rest for the half marathon. It stayed fun for me all the way through the first half. At the 13 mile marker, the street was divided by cones and signs directing the half marathoners to the finish line. Bummer. All my new pals took a right turn and headed for their finish line. I took the left turn, up the hill of course, with about 7 other runners. I don't know about the other guys, but I was contemplating that for all the effort we just expended, I had to do it all over again. 13 miles down, 13 miles to go.
I was still feeling good and still had my secret weapon coming up in a little while. I knew that I would be ok for at least through 15. So I just enjoyed running alone for awhile. I prayed alot over the next few miles. Mostly to be thankful to actually be doing what I was doing. And to ask for a little help to finish what I started.
At mile 16 I employed my strategic secret weapon. My brother. I knew that I usually started to come apart sometime after 18, so I asked Chris to join me to the finish. He thought doing 10 miles with me was a nice round number so it was settled. Seeing him gave me a big mental boost. He told me he was proud of me and would make sure I got to the finish even if he had to carry me. Rock on, let's scoot.
The reality of being in a marathon finally really clobbered be at mile 20. It had gotten warm on the street and I was having some minor cramps until 20 when I got a dousy. I had to lay down on the side of the road and try to stretch it as best I could. Not great. That's kind of how it went the rest of the way. It seemed that I owned two cramps, a big ugly one and a little nagging one. They kept moving around, but never went away....until, like Wednesday night.
We pressed on through 22, 23, 24, 25...we managed to pass a few runners along the way and finally saw the 26 mile sign. It was the prettiest sign all day. Once I could get there, all that was left was a short hill, a right turn and 75 yards across the bridge to the finish. I told Chris to make sure I ran the rest of the way. He told me how much he had enjoyed helping me and that he was proud. Little brat made me cry again. Finally, we turned the corner and headed onto the bridge. I turned to tell Chris how cool this was-but he was gone. He has stopped and gone to the side of the road to let me finish by myself. What a classy guy.
As I got closer, I could see Amy and Hawk yelling for me so I picked it up as fast as I could and finished what we started. There must have been some kind of weird wind at the finish line, cause we all got something in our eyes at the same time.
It was an awesome experience. I'm happy that we did it. I'm proud that I finished it. And I am grateful to God for giving me the strength to do this. When Amy came up to me at the finish, she said "It was 10 months and 6 days ago that we were in the hospital having heart surgery. I can't believe where we are standing right now". Now how cool is that?
For the record, I met two of my goals. I finished the race. I was 336th out of 342 finishers. My official time was 6:02:33.
Hawk finished two and half hours before me, and came back to the end to watch me finish. What a classy guy.
Thanks for reading.
Jim
