Estes Park Marathon 2006

This was one of the weirdest races that I have been involved in so far. The race itself was great, the support was great, and it was well organized. The weird part was the way that my body reacted to the work that I put it through. You will see what I mean in the following paragraghs.

We (my uncle's family, Barb, and myself) left the house at 4:30 am on Sunday to make the 1 hour 20 min drive. It is such a pretty drive that time just flys by. We arrived 1 hour before the start of the race to pick up our packets and let our nerves run crazy until start time. ;o).

Come 7 am it was time to get it on. The first 16 miles went great!! We (Steve and I) said right on pace of about 9:40 per mile and plotting right along. I kinda set the pace off of my heart rate montior, trying to keep it below 155 beats per min. Of course after 16-18 miles my heart rate montior is useless because when your body starts getting that tired your heart rate shoots though the roof. To keep the same pace that I had at 155 meant that now my HR was about 170. That is just to high, but I just kept going along.

At about mile 22 Steve got in front of me to take a turn setting the pace and all of the sudden I started feeling sick to my stomach. I lasted for about another 1/4 of a mile and then everything started coming up, I freaken started puking. This continued for the next 2 miles to mile 24 when a race official saw me and pulled from the course. The held me from finishing the race for about an hour and 15 mins while they put an IV in me and cooled me down. It was a bit warm out at 85 and the course was pretty hilly. I really do not know why my body reacted this way. I did all the training but for some reason my body quit asorbing the fluids that I was taking in causing everything to back up.

Needless to say after spending over an hour getting fluids put into me I refused to be transported and finished the race on my own. I will not have a DNF (Did Not Finish) on my record if I can help it. I guess that I did learn one thing though, even with all the training in the world you never know how your body is going to react on race day.

My final time, with my over an hour stop, 5 hours 21 mins.

Train Hard and Take care of yourselves, thanks for reading my blog.

Cheers,

Shad