Portland Marathon, brought to you by the number 10

As I said before, I wanted to do something monumental on Oct. 10, 2010. The Portland Marathon fit the bill, especially considering the original plan for the race — helping someone qualify for the Boston Marathon. See, my personal best is 3:44:34, set at Atlanta in 2006, which would get her to Boston. That went belly-up, however, and I was left to my own devices to not train and wallow in whatever it was I wallowed in. In fact, had I not bought my plane ticket in July and prepaid for the hotel room shortly thereafter, I would have bailed on the trip altogether.

The trip got off to an inauspicious beginning Friday when I left 40 minutes late. My friends Matt and Bryan, the members of Seattle band Bekker, were crashing at my place for a few days while playing shows in Laramie, and we had a fascinating discussion about writing music. However, it meant I got a late start and was rushed in getting to Denver International Airport 130 miles away. I made my flight in plenty of time, but I cut it much closer than what I feel comfortable and I breathed a hell of a lot easier when I was on the plane.

My Aunt Sara and Uncle John, in Portland for their grandson Trey's 5th birthday, picked me up at the airport, drove me to my hotel, and then took me out to a lovely prerace dinner at Sideline's Sports Bar and Grill (no relation to Sideline's Sports Bar/Meat Market in Casper). After some salmon, rice, sweet potatoes, veggies, and two pints of Alaskan Amber, I headed back to the hotel and got some sleep.

Saturday morning I was supposed to be looking at provided photos for a story for the magazine, but instead watched ESPN's Gameday and the Hawaii Ironman on the computer. As I mentioned before, this is the race I would rather have done, but at this point it's going to take a miracle for me to get there; frankly, it'll take a miracle for me to land on the start line in Hopkinton on Patriots' Day. It was supposedly all part of my motivation. At least that's what I kept telling myself.

Later Saturday, my friend Mindi came down from Seattle to take me downtown for lunch and packet pickup. We ate at a New York-style kosher deli called Kenny and Zuke's, not that a six-inch-high club sandwich and fries is the best prerace meal. Then we hit Safeway and picked up a couple friends of hers who were attending a dinner at the Hilton where we had to pick up our packets. Let me just say that with 13,000 runners spread between a 10K, half-marathon and full marathon, the Portland Marathon has a monumental task to get all these people in and out of a prerace expo in reasonable order. That said, while they did a good job of herding us through (literally, if you saw the labyrinthine pattern of hallways, escalators, and warehouses saved for the expo) I determined that I'm not doing any more big-city marathons. I can achieve my goal of 50 states while avoiding the big ones, really.

At Safeway I got a frozen meal to stoke the stove for Sunday's race, and called it dinner — that and 22 ounces of flat Pepsi left from an earlier 32-ouncer. I also had the bananas and Clif bars for dessert, as well as for my prerace breakfast. Sleep never comes easily the night before a race, so there's no point in talking about it. Part of it is being keyed up for the race, but the other part is the fear that I oversleep and miss the race; every Ironman competitor has that dream during the training cycle. In fact, I opened my eyes for some reason, and no more than two minutes later my alarm went off.

I had the breakfast of champions, fouled up my bathroom, and then headed downstairs to catch the shuttle to the airport, where I caught the Max/train downtown for the race. It started raining sometime Friday night and certainly hadn't stopped by race morning, so I steeled my resolve to get soaked — and stood under an overhang near where my wave would push off. I listened to my loud, angry music and eavesdropped on various conversations before dropping off my dry clothes bag. So intent on avoiding the rain was I that I waited until the gun went off before leaving the entryway to a building.

The plan was to be very conservative throughout the race, because my training would not allow for me to push myself. Indeed, a big-city marathon forces no other strategy, because even though 90 percent of the people were in the proper waves, somehow a few joggers and walkers snuck into the first two waves and the rest of us had to dodge them, or get slowed down. Fine with me, since I knew anything less than 4 hours (around 9:10 per mile) was a pipe dream.

The 3:50 pace group passed me early on, and then the 4-hour pace group passed at about mile 4. The rain stopped briefly, then resumed at that point. That's also when my cool technical t-shirt started chafing some sensitive protuberances on my chest, necessitating a vaseline stop at the 4.5-mile aid station. Don't mind me, I thought, I'm just reaching under my shirt and groping myself with vaseline, saving me some major pain later on (that was a lie, because I knew the postrace shower was going to hurt in a major way regardless of how well-lubricated I was). I had to reapply every half-hour at the nearest aid station, and I ended up with two gooey blobs on my shirt.

Lots of people passed me and that bothered me for about those first four miles, but then I realized for once in my life that I was running my own race. The course took us through the industrial part of Portland — not what you think of when you think "Portland." Seriously, we passed loading docks, warehouses, train yards, and more warehouses. Surely the course could have taken us to Forest Park or through the Rose District rather than the train yards north of downtown. The only cool thing was seeing the fast people running in the other direction, and in my case wishing I could click off 6-minute miles for one-tenth the distance.

My iliotibial bands are a well-documented bane of my existence in this space. Sunday was no exception. It was worthy of note that the halfway point for the marathon was front of an all-nude revue place, located conveniently across the street from some shipping warehouse along the Willamette River, and that kept my mind occupied until mile 14, when my IT bands completely tied up. That makes sense, since I figure my longest run this year was in that range. I was sort of prepared for it, and I ran through it anyway. I was one of the few people plodding out 9:30 miles on average to run all the way up the one hill, from mile 16 across a bridge to mile 17 at the middle of the bridge over the Willamette. Holy Christ, the downhill was brutal. But I kept running.

In fact, I think I ran more in this marathon than I ever have, and that includes my PR in Atlanta four years ago, when I walked much of the last five miles. Well, I jogged, anyway. My refueling plan of 24 ounces of grape Gatorade worked like a charm, so my only folly was my shredded IT bands. I ran next to a woman who said she trained for the marathon with Crossfit, meaning her longest run was 3 miles; they believe anaerobic power in short bursts builds aerobic fitness, and that elite endurance athletes train incorrectly, because Crossfit is The Way, The Truth, and The Light. I held my tongue and left her behind at 22.

There was another long downhill before mile 24, and then a brief uphill to another bridge over the Willamette, and then back downtown for another downhill off the bridge. With my IT bands screaming for mercy — actually, no, that was me screaming for mercy because of those damned things — I mercifully made a series of turns through the tall buildings and finished the damned race, as raindrops exploded all around me.

I got through the food line, put on my dry finisher's shirt, wrapped myself tightly in my space blanket, and stood in line for a half-hour for my dry clothes bag (another reason to never do another big-city marathon). There was no place to stand, and I beat bricks to the Max station and the ride back to my hotel.

That night I had dinner with my cousin and her family, as well as my aunt and uncle. It was great to see them, and to see Mindi the day before, so I guess I can take that away from my lost weekend in Portland. The time wasn't important (4:11:55); I knew that about a month-and-a-half back. It was time to see that part of the family and to run my tenth marathon (five standalones and five Ironmans) on 10-10-10.

Guess I'll have to come up with something big and legitimate for 11-11-11.