Dallas Marathon Weekend 12/10-12/12/21

Lead-up / Training

I tapered 21, 14, 9 miles the last three Sundays respectively, and didn’t run at all during the weeks. Probably not ideal training, but I felt like I needed the extra rest. Overall my training was meh because I had transitioned to marathon training off of all my cycling this summer so quickly, with no real down time. I put my training log for the last month at the very end of this post. Based on my training times, I felt like my goal of 4:24 to beat my Philadelphia marathon time was very achievable. I also had a B goal of 4:15, if things went perfectly.

Friday 12/10/2021

I landed in Dallas at about 10PM. I took a 25 minute Uber from the airport to my hotel which was in downtown Dallas right across the street from the marathon start and finish line. When I went inside the hotel, I immediately felt like I was in the wrong place, and thought I was in a club. The lighting was very clubby, and the bar was front and center, and there were lots of people milling about with drinks. After standing there awkwardly for some time while considering leaving and looking outside for a different place, I finally spied a tiny front desk tucked away in the corner. I checked in. Back by the elevators there were “Welcome Runners” signs. Everything, including all the windows, was covered in the BMW sponsorship. By the end of the weekend I had had enough BMW for the rest of my life because it was in my face every second. There was a sign posted on the elevator saying that Dallas county had a mask mandate. Surprising!

Arriving to my room, I see that the hotel rooms are vibing with the lobby… very “cool” and different than the standard boiler plate hotel room. The wall opposite the bed was half exposed brick and half window. I was on the 7th floor with a decent view of downtown, but mostly overlooking a parking lot.

I quickly dropped my luggage in my hotel room and then went out to explore. I would not be able to check out the city at night tomorrow because I would be in bed by 9 PM so tonight was the night to do my exploring of the city. I also wanted to get some Gatorade and snacks so I found a CVS in my area and used that to guide me in a direction in the hopes of stumbling across something fun or interesting on the way. This happened to work out perfectly because I walked right in to a very cool place, the AT&T Discovery District. It was similar to Lawn on D, with the outdoor bar, lawn games, and live music, but to a larger scale, and everything was decorated for Christmas so it was extra nice. Something else cool about it was that you didn’t have to go “in” anywhere and nothing was fenced off, it simply existed in the middle of some downtown buildings. It was 70 degrees this night, so it was just perfect. There were a lot of people just hanging out and a surprisingly large amount of kids with their parents. It seemed like a fine place to bring children, but it was weird that it was 11pm and this many people brought their kids out in the middle of the city intermingling with the stereotypical drunk packs of girls in short skirts and heels, but … whatever. I sat there for while just enjoying the atmosphere.

• 

• 

• 

• 

I continued on to CVS to get my Gatorade and snacks, and then did a quick google maps on anything else I could check out that was close by. I found something called “The Eyeball”, which was exactly what it sounds like. A very large eyeball. Unfortunately, it is housed in a little park, which was closed for renovations but the eyeball itself was still visible from over the hedges around it so I got to see it and take a picture of it … for whatever that was worth. I don’t really know what the point of it is, other than it’s pretty neat.

I went to the marathon start/finish area to check it out. It was creepily quiet and mostly dark, so I was paranoid walking around by myself so didn’t stick around for too long. I went back to my hotel room, and used my theragun for a bit before bed.

Saturday 12/11/2021

When I woke up on Saturday, I didn’t have anything planned for the day other than to go to the expo to get my bib and free t-shirt. It was much colder today and similar to the forecast tomorrow. mid-30s in the morning and warming up to mid-50s in the afternoon.

I did a little browsing on Google maps again to see what I would want to do that was walkable. I am glad that I didn’t plan any of this ahead of time because I would’ve been stressed to try to do what I planned to do rather than just doing what I felt like doing. I searched up within a one mile radius and first thing that caught my attention was the immersive Van Gogh experience was playing at a place nearby. I got a ticket for that for 11:30 so that I had time to go to the expo before that and then drop off my stuff back at the hotel.

At the expo I was expecting the official merch to be better in terms of selection. In particular, they had exactly one type of hat, and a very boring/plain hat at that. But I bought it anyway because of course.

Among the other vendors, there was one featuring hundreds of different headbands, which was great because I also love headbands, and can’t run without one. They had a “buy 4, get one” deal, so obviously I did that. One of these was a rainbow headband, which I immediately knew I was going to wear tomorrow for the big day. I got a few other things from other vendors, including a pair of gloves for two dollars which I was excited about because I knew that I would need to start the race with gloves on but that my hands would get sweaty and I wouldn’t want to be carrying my gloves for three hours.

I got two packs of chewable salt tabs (30). I sweat an inexplicable amount and my sweat is very salty, and I probably overdue my electrolyte replenishment but better safe than sorry. My favorite thing to do after a long run is a shot of water with half-teaspoon potassium, fourth-teaspoon sodium, and 500mg of magnesium. Side note: everyone is magnesium and Vitamin D deficient; take a supplement.

For fuel, I bought one Gu (caffeinated), two packets of sports beans, and one package of clif bloks (total 500 calories), with a plan to also drink Gatorade at every water stop. Gu are the easiest to consume, and my favorite to eat of the options, but I like the beans and the bloks for the ability to spread out the consumption more uniformly, whereas the Gu you have to eat all at once. I really hate how the bloks and beans get stuck in my teeth, and also make me feel like I’m going to choke on them while running. I’ll probably just go all Gu next time, after this reminder. My running friends would scold me for this but I never train with this type of fuel, so it’s definitely “doing something new/different on race day”. I train on CVS snacks… usually Kettle Corn PopCorners, but whatever I’m feeling that day when I make a pit stop at CVS.

I wandered around the expo a little bit more, and saw the BMW that they were giving away in a random draw to one of the marathon runners. I did not know that this BMW was going to have all the runners names printed on it.

I went back to my hotel and dropped stuff off at 11 which was perfect timing to walk over to the Van Gogh thing. I had no idea what to expect from this. All of the people that worked here were super friendly and very excited about it. There weren’t many other patrons there, and it didn’t seem necessary for me to buy a ticket in advance, which I thought was interesting because I thought the one in Boston was sold out indefinitely. Anyway, the experience was to sit in a large room while classical music played and Van Gogh’s art was projected on all the walls with lots of movement/transitions: “evoking his highly emotional and chaotic inner consciousness through art, light, music, movement, and imagination.” It was very trippy and I wondered what it would have been like to be really high for this experience. I thought it was cool but I also wanted to learn a little bit more; there was no information and I really had no idea what I was looking at. I think it would’ve benefited to have some educational/historical context somewhere. The program was about 30 minutes, and I was done there by 12. Next stop was the Dallas Farmers Market because that was only a couple of blocks away.

The farmers market was really awesome. It had a large indoor section with permanent stuff like restaurants and little shops. There was an even larger outdoor area, which was covered by a permanent roof structure, but very much “outside”. I got tons of free samples of delicious food. The best thing I had was a dry rubbed brisket. There was a lot of stuff that I really wanted a full lunch of, but it was all stuff that you wouldn’t want to be eating the day before a marathon, so I figured I would just get something like that post race tomorrow. I browsed some of the stuff that interest me; one booth in particular that I thought was very cool was this place called “Outside, Texas”. I was drawn to this booth because they had two large tables at their booth and both of them were covered with nothing but hats. I was looking at the hats in awe and the girl working there asked me if I saw anything that caught my eye. I said “well the problem is they all do” and she laughed and said “oh yeah, when I started working here they told me I get one free hat and it was such a difficult decision”. Then she told me that this company’s mission is to get people outside and exploring the national parks in Texas and they contribute a percentage of their sales to donations to the national parks, so in addition to liking their hats I also liked their mission. I spent like 10 minutes staring at the hats, mentally comparing them, and eventually narrowed it down to one.

I had another difficult hat decision at another shop that had a bunch of different hats from “Red Dirt Hat Company”; they were all unique and cool designs, so I got one of those too, and ended up with 3 hats to go with my 5 headbands. I got a couple of Christmas gifts for people at the market too. One of those was pretty heavy, and so I wanted to go back to hotel to drop stuff off before my next activity.

As I’m walking back to my hotel, the street that I’m on directly faces this large tower that’s standing pretty separate from any other tall buildings. I had seen it last night, lit up in Christmas colors, but didn’t really think much of it. Now that I’m staring at it, I think “Hey, I bet I can go up there!” so I google it, and yes, I can! And only about a mile from where I was. So I drop my items off at my hotel room, and just walk in the direction of the tower. The problem is that I eventually come to a dead end, where train tracks, fences, and large plant growth are blocking my way to get to the tower. I’m really confused so I’m just wandering around the train platform to see if there’s any way to get through, but can’t find anything. Eventually I see two other people on the platform so I ask them if they know how to get to that building. They laugh and say they are trying to figure that out too. We backtracked and figured out we had to go underneath the train tracks to get there. Fifteen minutes later, the three of us were in a huge elevator with a handful of other people going to the top of this tower. Someone said something about being an Eagles fan, and then someone else said they were a Giants fan, so I said “I don’t even want to tell you guys where I’m from”, and they said “oh … you must be from New England”, and I said “you got it”, and everyone laughed.

The tower’s name is Reunion Tower, and has a great view of downtown Dallas. Outside of downtown, there’s millions of highways in every direction. I only hung out up there for about 15 minutes, but very glad I went up there. I started getting hungry because I had only had free samples for lunch, so next order of business was finding a Subway and a place to get popcorners.

• 

• 

• 

• 

There were 3 Subways within a mile of my hotel. Amazing. On my way to one of the Subways was the JFK memorial and the “Old Red Museum”. I stopped to get a pic of each. I got my favorite order from Subway, steak on herb&cheese bread, toasted, lettuce, pickles, onions, chipotle sauce & ranch.

I stopped at 7-11 for more Gatorade and popcorners. I also spent a ton of time looking at the packaged, sugary pastry type things as a back up plan for breakfast tomorrow because the hotel had just a small nook with not much stuff and I assumed it would run out of everything due to all the runners staying there. I was trying to decide what I would want tomorrow for so long that a man said “just get one of each”, and then I felt embarrassed, and quickly grabbed a package of mini cinnamon/sugar donuts, and a package of zebra cakes, which was a really great nostalgic throwback as those were my go-to in high school but haven’t really had them since.

It was about 4pm at that point, and I wanted to go sit at a random sports bar or something to get more of the full Dallas experience, but figured it would be much better to go back to my room and relax for the night.

I ate my food, watched TV, and spent a bit of time mentally walking through and timing out the day tomorrow. This included identifying a sports bar within 0.5 miles where I planned to get my post-race meal and watch football. My flight wasn’t until 7pm, and late checkout was at 3pm, so I had some time to do something.

My corral didn’t start until 9am tomorrow, and didn’t close until 8:45am. It was less than a 5 minute walk to the corrals, but given the amount of crowds, and not wanting to be stressed and last minute, I planned to leave the hotel at 8:15, so I didn’t really need to be up until 7am. I knew I would have trouble sleeping, so lights out was at 10pm.

Sunday 12/12/2021

I woke up about every 90 minutes throughout the night, and each time before looking at the clock I thought “WOO HOO TIME TO GET UP AND DO THIS”, then looked at the clock and realized I had to go back to sleep. Each time I woke up, I peed and chugged another 28oz of water. When I woke up at 6am, and tried to go back to sleep, I really couldn’t, but that was fine because fitbit had me logged for 7 hours of sleep, which is great.

It was weird having so much time of being awake before the race. It felt so relaxed. I went down to the lobby to check out the breakfast nook. There were only a few people there since it was so early. They were clearly all runners doing their pre-race routines, with oatmeal, bagels, peanut butter, etc. Sadly they didn’t have everything bagels or cinnamon raisin bagels, so I got a sesame bagel and toasted it, and grabbed one cream cheese and one strawberry jam. I also got a coffee, and took them back to my room, to have a nice quiet breakfast. Usually I run on an empty stomach, so I was glad to have ~2 hours of digestion time before the start. After eating, I had time to continue relaxing and just watched TV, until it was time to get ready at 7:30.

For the past several days, I had been thinking about what I was going to wear, and I was still undecided. It would be mid-30s at the start and warming up to mid-50s in the afternoon, with 15mph wind, but not a cloud in the sky. I would definitely be wearing shorts because this one particular pair is my most comfortable thing to run in, and has ample pockets for all my fuel. I was very undecided on what to wear for top layer. I really dislike layering because it feels “weird” and bulky and bunchy to me when running. So I was thinking it would be long sleeve t or just a tank. Something I was surprised to learn about myself during this training season was that even though I sweat a ridiculous amount and find that incredibly annoying, I actually prefer to sweat more and have the wind be refreshing and cool me down, as opposed to wearing less and being comfortable when there’s no wind but miserably freezing when the wind hits. Wanting to apply the lesson I had learned from training, I wore a long sleeve t over a tank, and spoiler, this was the perfect decision. If I got too hot towards the end of the run, I could easily toss the long sleeve because it is just a $10 shirt from Amazon.

I went down to the lobby around 8 and it was totally packed with runners, and the floor to ceiling windows showed hundreds more runners walking by towards the start. I sat down on a bench inside and made some small talk with an older couple, not wanting to head outside yet because I knew I would be cold, just standing there waiting in the crowd. Eventually I made my way outside, and it was a total mess of unorganized crowd. I was in Corral D. The C, D, and E corrals were all supposed to be in the same physical location, but 15 minutes apart, so the people for all 3 corrals were clustered at the entrance to the actual corral area and no one knew if they were in the right place. I had some fleeting thoughts about human crush deaths and Travis Scott, but assessed no risk here because there weren’t many physical barricades outside of the corral. It is really rough being a very short person in a huge crowd. Slightly claustrophobic and feel like I get shoved around more than the average person because I’m below eye level, and I can’t see ANYTHING. It was cold and in the shade, and I was glad I wore the long sleeve. We heard the national anthem, and the A and then B corrals start. Then after what felt like an eternity, the volunteers held up signs that Corral D could now enter the actual corral area. The start line area was all hype as expected and I was fired up and excited to get going.

My strategy was slow and steady. My huge mistake in my first marathon was starting out way, way too fast because my legs felt so well-rested and full of energy. The result of that was a hugely challenging and painful struggle to simply survive the last 6-8 miles. This time I was going for consistent 10min/mile splits the whole way. I got a new Garmin watch several weeks ago and set the display to show Distance, Current Pace, Lap Pace, and Overall Pace, and planned to be looking at it constantly to keep myself in check early on. I thought about running with the 4:30 pacers to start out, but decided against it because I really didn’t want to be running with a crowd on top of me.

Miles 1 – 4

The first 4 miles flew by and I felt amazing. Sometimes when I’m running I feel like I’m “not doing anything” and that’s the sweet spot of effort that I was going for, and that’s exactly how I felt. Everything felt great. Anything that I was worried about my layers feeling bulky or having to constantly adjust was non-existent. Even things that I feel like are always little annoyances like the intersection of glove, watch, and sleeve did not cross my mind at all. I warmed up to a very comfortable temperature, but my hands and feet were still cold for the first several miles, which was expected.

I could easily have gone faster, but I was successful in my restraint, as I was actively having to tell myself to feel good about seeing 9:50s on my watch, instead of bad. There was a solid amount of spectators throughout this area because we were downtown. One of my favorite spectator signs was a really large man holding a sign that said “The hard part is over!” at mile 0.75.

My other favorite signs throughout the day:

“Are you listening to All Too Well?”

“Hurry up, the Cowboys play at 12!”

“Worst parade ever”

“If it was easy, it would be called your mom”

Miles 5 – 10

This section of the route went through the Highland Park area of Dallas. It was very residential, with huge houses, and well manicured lawns. I learned afterwards that this is the richest area of Texas, and the 7th richest area in the US, based on average household income. There were lots of families in lawn chairs on the sidewalk with kids holding signs they made, and lots of other people having gatherings drinking in their driveways. There were also multiple places in this area offering beer and shots of alcohol.

I was still feeling fantastic, but started to feel like I needed a bathroom around mile 5. They had porta-potties at every water station, which were every ~2 miles, so I stopped at mile 6.5. There was one person in line so I had to wait an extra 30 seconds. After I got out of there, I increased my pace significantly to try to catch up some of what I had lost, and finished that mile (7) in 10:52.

I was eating a salt tab pretty much every mile, grabbing a cup of gatorade at every water station, and gradually consuming my bloks and being annoyed at how much they were sticking to my teeth. I tossed my gloves around mile 8, and my body temperature was still perfect.

Miles 11 – 20

The next 10 miles were a loop around White Rock Lake. When I was entering the loop, the elites were already finishing their loop and coming back in the opposite direction. Also near the entrance of the loop, there was a long gradual downhill section, and I remember thinking this isn’t good because we’re going to have to climb back up that elevation somehow.

My body still felt great. And my pacing other than my pit stop was on point. The first place I started to feel any soreness or pain was my calves, which is not really common for me. I was very happy with the lack of lower back pain from my spondylolisthesis. Sometimes that pain can get very, very, very bad, and it is not easy to predict or prevent. PT advised me that keeping my hamstrings loose and stretched is the best thing to do, but it doesn’t always keep the pain away, which seems to get intense almost randomly, but is almost always just “there”. My other most common pain during long runs is in my left levator scapulae. For this issue, I spend 20 minutes every night on a tennis ball-sized ball to massage it, and that has really helped over the last several months. That issue was not bothering me just yet. Another thing that went great today was that my toes never fell asleep, which is a very common and painful problem for me. I ran in Nike Vaporfly 2 which are my favorite shoe of all time, because they are fast, comfortable, and they are the best at helping this issue.

This 10 miles of the course was honestly very uninteresting. Even though it was pretty scenic, there were almost no spectators at all, which gave it a distinct lack of excitement. I was listening to my long run playlist, but felt “bored”. I started taking some pictures and videos on my phone. There was one cute thing where these two friends of this girl “Lexis” were super hype for their friend, and ran along side her with signs for a bit, and I got some video of that. The whole loop was entirely closed to traffic, and the road was wide and well-paved, so at least that was nice.

Around mile 12 I started needing the bathroom again. Very sad because my two pit stops were likely the difference between hitting my PR and not. Similar to last time, when I got out of there I ran faster to make up some time and finished that mile (13) in the exact same 10:52 as my first pit stop. I crossed 13.1 at 2:11:30 and thought that was perfect, because that included two pit stops, so I was in great shape to hit my 4:24 goal, especially if I didn’t have to stop again! I had my caffeinated Gu right after I passed the half mark.

The entire loop around the lake was pretty windy (listen to the wind in my videos), but around mile 16 I started to get very annoyed how it was a seemingly constant, never-ending headwind. It was starting to feel difficult. For a bit of time I was running alongside this guy who could have been anywhere from 16 to 35, and he seemed to be starting to struggle. I commiserated with him about how the wind really sucks, and he said “yeah, and everyone told me Dallas was supposed to be flat, but I feel like I’ve been running uphill the whole time!” Then some other guy that was near us said “just wait until you get to the hill at mile 20”. Yeah… I should have believed that guy.

Miles 20 – Finish Line

The hill at the end of Mile 20 was awful. I don’t even need to tell you how bad it was, because I can show you. Here is a bar graph of my mile splits, overlaid on the elevation chart (dotted line is my average pace). This hill killed me. This mile was as slow as each of my two miles where I stopped for the bathroom. And I never recovered my pace after that, even on the decline on the other side. There was a group of fun people at the top of the hill playing Sweet Caroline and cheering everyone on.

I was definitely starting to feel it, pretty much everywhere in my body after that. But certainly not as ready to die as I was in Philly, so my slow and steady pace really came through as a benefit here. The most pain was my right hip (top of IT band) and my groin muscles were in sharp pain on both sides, which was a brand new pain for me. I was eating my sports beans and continuing the consistent intake of salt tabs and Gatorade at every station. Some random spectator handed me a banana at mile 22 and I loved that person because my stomach really needed some real food- I was starting to feel like I was going to puke, but the banana really helped. At mile 23, the pavement was torn up and just horrible for running on. Adding to my annoyance of this, lots of people were walking at this point, and all of them had absolutely no awareness or etiquette. There was one group who was walking 5-wide and taking up the entire road. I can’t even imagine how oblivious and stupid you have to be to do that.

The last 3 miles was back in the downtown area, but a different route than the way out. The head winds wouldn’t stop (see Mile 25 video). Every step was a Russian Roulette of which muscle was going to cramp up and make me fall on my face; all my leg muscles felt like they were on the razor’s edge of cramping up, but thankfully never did. I feel like all of my time spent on the bike this summer really helped on the mental side of things. It feels hard to explain but when you’re doing a 4 hour activity compared to an 8 hour activity, time just goes by faster, even if you’re in more physical pain. You know you’re more than capable of sticking it out for 20-30 more minutes. 20 minutes is nothing.

The finish line was a bit underwhelming. I was expecting a bigger and louder crowd, similar to Philly. They were pretty quiet so I tried to hype them up but didn’t get much. I crossed the finish line at 4:26:59, 2 minutes slower than my Philly time. Sad that I was so close but ultimately such an amazing day.

I got my medal, pizza slice, banana, box of water, chocolate milk, and finisher shirt. I found myself a nice spot on the sidewalk curb to sit for a few minutes, amidst the buzz outside the finishing area. A couple of great friends facetimed me and were so hyped for me. Many others texted. Love to feel that support. Thank you all.

After several minutes, I gathered my stuff and went back to hotel. It was great that the hotel was a 2 minute walk from the finish, and that they gave 3pm late checkout to all runners. The shower was awesome, and afterwards I packed up, checked out, and headed out to “The Owner’s Box”, the nearby sports bar I picked out last night to go watch football. On the way I encountered a large ornament display. I was trying to take a selfie in front of it with my medal but couldn’t get a normal-looking picture. Some people were walking by and asked me if I wanted them to take it for me. Absolutely. On my way to the bar, I saw a place called “Hops&Hens” that had football on the TVs and was pretty empty, so I went in there instead since I was already here and hungry. I got a fried chicken sandwich and tots. I got bored pretty quickly because there was only one game on and only like 3 tables of people in there. Also, I wanted to sleep if possible, so I decided to go to the airport super early.

I wore my medal in the airport. One person asked me if I got that in Dallas today. I said yes, and she said congrats and then she explained to her friend that people who run a marathon wear the medal for the rest of the day. The airport was MUCH LESS crowded that Logan was on Friday night, which was really nice. I got through security quickly and watched the Bucs-Bills game. The Bills tied it up right as I boarded. Suspense.

You’re not supposed to fly the same day you run a marathon. Blood circulation, blood clots, dehydration, I don’t really know, just that you’re “not supposed to”. Ten minutes after we took off, as we’re still ascending, I felt all the blood drain from my head, and got very cold, and immediately was soaked in sweat. Places I didn’t even know I could produce sweat, like my inner elbow. I start panicking like oh my god, I am going to die on this airplane. Then it became a spiral of anxiety, and I was concerned it was going to feel worse out of a psychological thing, even though it started as physiological. I didn’t know if I should tell someone I feel like I’m going to die. I didn’t feel like I was going to lose consciousness, so I didn’t feel the need to tell someone unless it got worse. I focused on just breathing, and observing the guy next to me to “get out of my head”; connecting with tactile external things is a great way to dissipate anxiety. After about 10 difficult minutes, I felt back to normal, but was now ultra paranoid that something was going to happen again and maybe it would be worse, and I didn’t want to be that person causing the plane to land somewhere random due to a medical emergency. I sufficiently distracted myself by purchasing the in-flight Wi-Fi, watching the latest Wheel of Time episode, and scrolling reddit. I think it was the result of a drop in blood pressure, and dehydration. Luckily I felt fine other than stressed and paranoid the rest of the flight.

All and all, it was such a fantastic weekend, and I can’t wait to do something like it again. I already registered for Chicago in October.