I studied Social Psychology for a few years, and one of the coolest experiments I ever learned about involved these creatures to the left (i.e., marshmallows). The experiments were simple and consistent; starting in the late 1950's, Walter Mischel and his colleagues would gather a bunch of four-year-old children in a classroom and offer them a marshmallow, with the promise that they would receive a second marshmallow - under the condition that they waited at least twenty minutes before eating the first. Naturally, some of the children would diligently wait and receive their reward; others, impatient from the start, would be unable to complete the task and immediately start munching on the first marshmallow they were given.
In the years that followed, the researchers kept in touch with the parents of the participants to observe how they developed. What Mischel and others found was quite powerful - the children who were able (at age four) to wait twenty minutes for a single marshmallow were rated by their parents as being better students, more well-adjusted socially, more communicative/verbal, and better able to deal with stress. As they went through high school, their SAT scores were higher; they obtained higher levels of education, and they were less likely to experience drug addictions. (I'd cite this if I had to, but I'm not an academic. Trust me though.)
Because I am a bit of an elitist, I'm going to cherry-pick just one implication of this research and run (pardon my pun) with it. To me, Mischel's findings suggest that the cognitive strength (or whatever you want to call it) required to put the body through just a shit-ton of intellectual-slash-emotional-slash-physical stress must either be ingrained in some of us, or alternatively developed at an extremely early at age through mechanisms I'm not sure anyone understands. Either way, some of us "have it" and some of us don't, and that's fairly consistent throughout our lives.
Or at least that's what I told myself at mile 12 of Sunday's half-marathon, with the wind at my back only serving to make the day seem ten degrees hotter than it actually was, with the concepts of (a) hydration, (b) a ceasing to the dull ache in my feet, and (c) the finish line nothing but vague thoughts in the back of my mind. I told myself I was crazy, but at the end of the whole mess I could at least say I finished a badass distance again. Somehow, I got through - all things considered, about as quickly as I would have liked - and this is my story.
(NOTE: Four-year-old me would have eaten zero marshmallows, by the way; I can't stand them now, and I couldn't stand them then. Twenty-seven-year-old me still eats 20+ Reese's Peanut Butter cups at a sitting, sometimes, so I'm not sure I would have come out ahead in a Mischel experiment. Oh well.)
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Race day began partly cloudy, cold, and windy. It was almost so cold that I considered wearing a long-sleeve throwaway shirt at the beginning (but ultimately, I decided against it). I'm typically quite nervous the day before a race, but this particular morning I felt psychologically A-OK.
The set-up of the race was rather... prehistoric. I suppose you get what you pay for when a half-marathon costs $28 to enter - there were no chips to attach to your shoe, so there was no chip time; it was difficult to hear the PA announcer pre-race; and the sweatshirt each participant received was clearly a throwback to 1992. Seriously, it was practically a track suit (and, by the way, track suits look super comfortable - no wonder organized crime members wear them all the time). I may purchase a mullet and wear this sweatshirt as my Halloween costume this year.The course was also a tad boring, consisting of two concentric loops (the first about 2.5 miles longer than the second). The toughest part of any course set up this way is the monotony; while there were many water stations, and the teams that manned them were full of enthusiasm, their vigor and energy did not make up for the miles in-between which consisted of nothing except scrub pine trees and the occasional road marker. Particularly in the later miles, I'd wished there were more people on the sidelines cheering us on (but the finish line cluster was exciting to reach nonetheless).
My strategy was to run ten, 8:50 miles and then try to break it wide open into a near-sprint for the remaining 3.1 miles. Per usual, I ended up feeling extremely strong through the first six (52:10, which was a little too fast in retrospect), but ultimately I slackened my speed to be right on pace at the ten-mile mark (1:28:30). Again like always, the best laid plans of mice and runners tended to go astray - I bonked a bit toward the end, particularly in between miles 12 and 13, and my final 5k was completed in a decent but somewhat pedestrian 27:15 - my watch had me completing the race in about 1:55:45. This was a full minute faster than my first half-marathon, and given the consistent 25 mph nor'easterly winds, I'm not about to complain about the improvement. Still, I had hoped for more.
The music playlist on my iPod - set to shuffle all 33 songs - did not fail me. The cooler, calmer songs tended toward the first half of the race, while I was able to rock out to the dulcet tones of Van Halen and Metallica in the second half. This was serendipity, but I noticed it and mentally appreciated it in the heat of the moment.
And I was thrilled to have a greeting party, right next to the PA announcer at the finish (I could hear him at this point), consisting of my fiancee, my mom, and my cousin. After I chugged about six small cups of Gatorade and water, and after the "oh-wait-am-I-gonna-puke" feeling passed, I was able to take inventory of the ravages my body endured during the race.
Two damaged toenails (one of them black - no worries here, some runners get them all the time), some very sore hamstrings and calves (which started to feel better after my mid-afternoon nap), and let's just say that showering at any temperature required copious amounts of Vaseline and moisturizer for the three days following the race. All in all, I feel I came away with little damage.
The worst, though, was (and remains, unfortunately) the post-race cold. Some runners routinely get colds after the race; some research I've read - and I don't completely trust this, but I'm passing it along because I think it makes a decent point - suggests that similar to how runners typically carbo-load before a race, they might also consider zinc- and vitamin-C-loading for a few days after the race. On race day, I had a bit of a sore throat, but that isolated pain turned into a full-blown cold the day following the race; runny nose, stuffy nose, post-nasal drip, sneezes, coughs, itchy nose, watery eyes, headache, you name it, I've had it. I'm just getting over it now; it's been the worst.
The night before the race, I made a joke to some friends (who don't run) about buying stock in Vaseline whenever I'm about to run a race... it should have been a joke about NyQuil.
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While I'm taking five days off from running to recover (mainly to recover my black toenail), the gratification that I continue to delay will eventually happen, in December - this will be a full month without any regimented training runs. I plan to still run a bit, probably cross train a bit as well, but I do intend to take that month off from all structured exercise. In between now and then is a Thanksgiving Day "Turkey Trot" half-marathon, which is unfairly named as 13.1 miles should never be considered a "trot." You likely will not hear about the next race in this space... unless I am feeling very frisky about it.
I suppose all bets are off.
