Grandma's Marathon 2021

Here are my thoughts in the days leading up to Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, and the race itself. It was a wonderful experience, even thought I didn't make my A or B goal. I met the most important goal I had, which was to finish with a smile on my face and a positive attitude! I'm so happy I ran Grandma's again, and conquered the ghost of 2016.

Wednesday June 16th

Three days until Grandma’s. I’m so happy to be running a real live marathon. And I’m also so nervous about it. Will my training be enough? Am I heat adapted enough? Will my intestines behave? So many questions. BUT! I intend to have fun, because if this isn’t fun why in the world would I do it?

I’m starting to carb load. That’s not hard, especially while my weight is so low anyway. I had some pasta at 10 AM today. Then at 12:30 today I had a turkey sandwich on white bread, and then a piece of cherry pie. I drank some electrolyte water this morning and now I’m TRYING to drink more water. That would really be good; if I could hydrate properly in these next few days. For dinner I’ll have some bbq chicken and a baked potato without the skin. And salad from the garden.

Lee is on a business trip and the sprinkler system is being installed today. They REALLY made me angry this morning. They started moving plants without talking to me, ran over a hydrangea, stomped on a baby Solomon Seal. I talked to the owner and made it clear that if any of the plants they touched die he will compensate us. UGH! They also “might” have cut one of the water lines that Lee installed, and they keep leaving the backyard gates open. Fortunately our dogs our old and have no desire to roam, but its just so inconsiderate. Who doesn’t shut a gate after going through it? Rude, ignorant people, that’s who. 

I think they are making progress. I can’t wait to have the system working. Its been so hot, and so dry, and we have all these new plants. Its been awful trying to keep them watered. It will be a relief to have it all magically happen during the night.

I did laundry for Duluth today, tomorrow I’ll pack. I’m terrified I’m going to do something incredibly stupid, like forget my bib, or my running shoes. 

Thursday June 17th

I’m mostly packed. I’ll pack my cosmetics and all that in the morning. I’ve packed my race clothes, my new running shoes, my bib. I ran my second to last run this morning, 5 slow, easy miles. It was hot and steamy out. I've got 3 more miles to run tomorrow morning, then it’s on the road to Duluth I go. 

The weather is looking ok. Sunny, low in the 50’s, high upper 60’s to low 70’s. Dew point in the 40’s so low humidity. Not a lot of wind. Now I just need to keep my head on straight!

The sprinkler system is installed. For the most part it is working as intended, but it’s missing a few spots. The owner is coming over tomorrow to check on it. I think it just needs some adjustments, but every time I talk to the man he starts making excuses or saying “well Lee said….”. Lee will be there when he comes tomorrow as well as me so he better not try that! 

Friday June 18th

This morning I finished packing and headed to Duluth around 10:30. I blew off the last “shake-out” run. The hay is in the barn, as they say. The sprinkler system owner came by and adjusted the heads where needed. We agreed to pay to install one more head to properly reach all of the bed on the east side of the property. I think we’ve got it taken care of. 

It was an easy, uneventful drive to Duluth. I stopped twice in rest areas. The first time I ate lunch, a Turkey sandwich on white bread, some chips, part of a banana. I snacked on a Lara Bar in the car and drank lots of electrolyte water. That’s why I had to stop a second time. I’m trying to focus on hydrating. It will help tomorrow.

I drove straight to the Expo, parked, and went inside. I wandered around, bought a Grandma’s shirt and jacket, and a pint glass. Then I went to get a gear bag. They won’t let you take a bag on the bus this year, you have to drop it off today. It’s so you can have things you think you might need after the race. I put in a jacket, my Oofos sandals and a disposable mask for the bus ride back.

It’s not necessary to wear a mask most places if you are vaccinated but they want you to wear one on the bus since it’s public transportation.

Some of the people I know from the Boston Buddies Facebook group were at the Expo too and I met up with a few of them. We took some silly pictures, and chatted. Eventually I decided that it was time for me to head to my hotel. Tonight is not the night to party! 

I’m in a Hampton Inn in Superior, WI. It’s only about 10 minutes from Duluth. It’s a nice hotel, Hamptons usually are. They have snacks and water bottles in the lobby for the runners. For some strange reason that makes me happy.

I unpacked and ate a frozen spaghetti dinner and some salad from our garden in my hotel room. Now I’m just hanging out, watching golf on TV, crocheting, browsing social media. I bet I go to bed early. I’ll be up at 4:30, then the fun begins!

Saturday June 19th

As predicted I’m up by 4:30, My race clothes are laid out.  I have some coffee. Its always hard for me to eat before a race but I manage to choke down part of a bagel with peanut butter and a few bites of a banana. I get dressed, fill my fuel belt with Nuun sport electrolyte water, stick my 5 gels in a pocket in my shorts. By 6:20 I’m out the door of the hotel, ready to walk to the buses. It turns out the buses are actually parked right across the street from the hotel! How handy!

I put on my disposable mask and hop on the bus. With the mandate lifted thats the only time we have to wear a mask. I sit next to a young lady and strike up a conversation. This is her first marathon and she’s pretty excited and nervous. We talk about race strategies and I discover that she hasn’t figured out how to eat anything during a marathon. I told her to grab some stuff from the people along the course, and try, TRY to get some nutrition down. Nobody runs a marathon without taking in nutrition during the race. She’ll figure it out.

It takes a long time to get to Two Harbors. The bus ride bring back memories, of Boston 2018, when we stared out the windows in semi horror, aghast at the storm raging around us. Of Grandma’s in 2016 when I realized to my chagrin on the bus that I had forgotten my watch. But today is sunny and cool, no rain, little wind, no blazing heat.

Because of Covid the race start is a little difference from usual. They’re doing a rolling start so that people are more spread out. Except for kind of missing the excitement of a gun going off to announce the start of the race, I like it. You can start any time after 7:45 AM. When we get to Two Harbors I head straight for the portapotties and then find a spot where I can do my dynamic warmup routine. As I’m doing my routine the first runners begin, but no matter. I’m on the course by 7:50 anyway. And in the back people are always more spread out so I don’t really notice a difference.

The first hour or so of the race is sunny and a little warm. I'm sweating so I make sure to drink my electrolyte water, and regular water too. After a couple of hours the clouds roll in and it gets a bit cooler. Its still a little warmer than ideal marathon weather but its SO much better than 2016!

I’m using run/walk intervals of run 75 second, walk 30. Close to the beginning a  woman asks me what I’m doing. This always happens! She asks if she can follow along with me, and she does for awhile but eventually my pace is too  speedy for her so she drops back.

I’ve concluded that Grandma’s is not an easy course. There is only one big hill, but there are many little ones. Its almost never flat. There are also a lot of long inclines, the kind that slowly wear you out. And its very curvy since it follows the shore of Lake Superior. I concentrate on running the tangents as much as I can. I have no desire to run more than 26.2 if I can help it! And I end up doing pretty good. I run 26.35.

In retrospect one mistake I made was choosing a pace that was over my head. I wanted to try to beat my time from Chicago 2 years ago, but try as I might I couldn’t maintain that pace for very long during training. I had experimented with slightly slower paces and I would have been better off using one of them and speeding up later if I could. As it was by mile 10 I was slowing down.

I had a lot intestinal issues this training cycle. I think it’s related to my thyroid being out of wack but who really knows? As I practiced in training I took a couple of Pepto Bismol tablets before the race, and again during the race whenever I started to feel my stomach cramping. I ended up taking a LOT of Pepto, maybe 8 tablets total, but it worked, no portapotty stops and I was able to take in all of my nutrition without feeling queasy either. 

By around mile 18 I started to hear this voice in my head. It grew increasingly insistent. “Stop! Why don’t you just stop? Think how nice it would feel to just stop running?” Every time I stopped to walk the voice started up again. Every time my beeper went off telling me it was time to run, mentally I gave a little groan. This was very different from Chicago, where by mile 18 I was feeling increasingly strong and confident that I was going to be able to reach my goal.

Right before mile 21 a woman fell right in front of me. She went head over heels, flailing about, and landed hard, on her face and arm. She held up her wrist and it was obviously broken. I stopped, of course, and so did another woman. “I should call someone,” I said and then paused. “Who should I call?” The other woman said to call 911 so I did. I’ve actually never had to call 911 before!

A man came running up and bent over the woman. He told his kids to run to their house and get some splints. He was an orthopedic surgeon! What are the chances! He took charge of the situation. A van from the race pulled up too. I made sure 911 had her location and I exchanged phone numbers with the surgeon in case 911 called me back, and then I was on my way. I lost 5-6 minutes, and missed my “B” goal, but in a strange way this incident helped me. It gave me a reset, and the voice telling me to stop went away. I had a better perspective and a much better attitude, for the remainder of the race. I remembered that above all I want to reach the end with a smile on my face!

Sometimes I end up passing,and being passed, by the same people over and over because I run/walk. I struck up a conversation with  a guy power walking as fast as I was running. He’d run Grandma’s 45 times, every single race. He said there was one other guy that had run all 45, “but I beat him on time on the course!” Haha. He used to be able to run a sub 3 hour marathon but now he’s happy to run with the 5 hour people like me. I hope I can continue to be happy just to be running for a long, long time.

The only significant hill on the course comes at mile 23. It’s called Lemon Drop Hill. It’s not horrible, but any hill that late in a marathon is tough so I walked it.

There is a lot of construction going on in Duluth this summer, so part of the race was routed up one block. We passed a running store and they were out in force, smiling and waving. At one point along this part they are playing Sweet Caroline, the Boston Red Soxs theme song. I get very emotional all of a sudden and start crying. Sometimes I miss New England so much! And I'm not even a Soxs fan!

The final miles of Grandma’s are cruel. There are so many twists and turns. You know you are close to the finish, but where is it???  I kept thinking it was surely around the next corner, even though I had run the course before. 

Finally there it was. I ran the last half mile as fast as I could, and finished with a smile on my face, just like I promised I would. Right after the finish line my vocal cord disfunction (VCD) kicked in and I couldn’t breath. I bent over and started exhaling forcefully through my teeth, and gradually it went away. A few officials asked me if I was ok and I said yes, even when they pointed out the medical tent. One of them walked with me for a little bit, but I wasn’t going in there, nope! VCD is scary if you don’t know what it is, but the special breathing exercise my speech therapist gave me really does the trick and makes my vocal cords relax and quit choking me.

I got my medal, my heat blanket and a plastic bag. I started filling the bag with all the goodies they have out for runners after a race. I couldn’t eat right away but I knew I would be happy to have all that food pretty soon.

I even stopped and got my picture taken with my medal this time. At Chicago I was so out of it I just walked right through the photographers without stopping, but this time I made sure I didn’t miss the opportunity!

I walk slowly along the waterfront to get my gear bag and find my bus. I’m glad to have the light jacket I put in the bag, but I'm too tired to stop and take off my sneakers and put on my Oofos sandals. I wait to do that until I’m on the bus. There is a post race party going with bands, and beer, but I don’t care about the beer, and I’m too tired for a party anyway. It’s strange how I can go go go until I cross that finish line, and then I can hardly move. 

I ride the bus back to hotel, call Lee and tell him all about the race, eat some of my snacks. Then I take a nice long hot shower. It feels sooooo good! 

I ate dinner at a cute restaurant in Superior called Dolce Vita. The food was good but nothing special. Then afterwards I went to get ice cream at a place called Sweetuns. It was an old fashioned ice cream parlor and candy store. It was cute but the ice cream was marginal. I’m sorry, but Superior is kind of a hole. It seemed largely deserted and very quiet. Although the Wikipedia article on the city gives the impression that it’s a thriving little metropolis, it sure didn’t seem like it to me.  I should have gone back to Duluth for dinner; it was only 4 miles away. Oh well.

All in all I’m very happy about how Grandma’s Marathon turned out. When all is said and done my biggest goal was redemption for the fiasco that was Grandma’s in 2016. I finished with a smile on my face, and really that was the most important thing to me this time. Sure, I didn’t make my “a” goal, which would have been a new PR, but instead I learned a valuable lesson. My training didn’t support that happening. I could never maintain that pace consistently during my tempo runs, and it was no different when marathon day came around. Sometimes miracles do happen, but in general, no. Training doesn’t lie.

I didn’t make my “b” goal either, which would have been to beat my time from Twin Cities in 2018, but sometimes life happens instead. I couldn’t have just kept running when that woman fell. That would have ruined my race too. It was the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did it. And there was another valuable lesson to be had there. I was struggling mentally before that happened, and the little break and the distraction helped me get back on track mentally. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to have listened to that voice telling me to “STOP!” just a little bit. A short break, maybe a drink of Gatorade or a bite of a piece of candy from a bystander would have helped just as much. It’s something to think about in the future.

I’m going to take it easy for awhile, then run some shorter races in the fall and winter. I’ll probably run San Francisco on my deferment in 2022, and then hopefully do Dopey at WDW again in 2023. Beyond that I don’t know.  I still have lots of bucket list marathons, and I have no intention of stopping while I’m still capable of running 26.2. I think I’m done with Grandma’s however. But you never know, someday I might decide I need to go run Duluth one more time!