2019 was supposed to be a triumphant year. Although 2018 had finished well after having completed my first ultra marathon, I was still disappointed with my performance at the Gold Coast Marathon last year.
I had unfinished business to take care of.
I had a new training plan, in the form of the Jack Daniels' Running Formula. I had worked out my plan months in advance, which looked reasonable and achievable. I was ready to smash my marathon personal best and come back to Blackall fitter and stronger than ever.
In terms of health, things were improving as well. In the latter months of 2018, my gastroenterologist had recommended that I be put me forward for a a different type of medication called Humira. This is a biologics drug (whatever that means), which blocks certain proteins produced by the immune system known to cause inflammation in Crohn's sufferers.
Unfortunately, Humira is not a readily available medication on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). It is very expensive, therefore approval has to be obtained before Medicare will release the medication at the usual prescription cost.
I had to jump through some significant hoops, including taking the steroid; Prednisone for a couple of months, to prove that I had done everything possible to improve my symptoms but without success. By late January, I had completed my Prednisone course and the documentation was submitted to Medicare to apply for Humira.
4 weeks later, the approval came through. I was absolutely delighted. I had no idea if the drug would work, but it was a new avenue to try, as my Crohn's symptoms were not improving. In fact, the arthritis in my back and sternum was getting worse if anything.
Humira is a set of injections rather than tablets, so I needed to be shown how to inject myself with devices not too dissimilar to Epipens. Basically an automated injection, that I could do myself at home. Fortunately, after the initial dose of 4 of these injections, I only had one injection fortnightly.
I visited the nurse at my gastroenterologist's office, was shown how to inject myself. Proceeded to inject the stuff into my belly, which was very uneventful and then I had to wait. Apparently, if the drug works it can take anything from 2 to 6 weeks to start working so I needed to be patient.
I won't go into explicit detail about Crohn's symptoms, as they can get quite disgusting. It is enough to say that experiencing the need to poo 6 or 7 times on a good day, usually diarrhea, along with sometimes crippling pain in the lower back, sternum or other joints can drive me quite insane sometimes. However, I haven't let it stop me running over the last few years. I just need to be well prepared before I leave the house, or before turning up to a race.
After only 5 days since my first Humira injections I started noticing that something had changed. It dawned on me late in the day that I had only been to the loo twice. I thought it must have been a one off. But, the same thing happened the next day. Surely, this wasn't right. The same the next day, and then the next until I got the weekend. It then dawned on me that I hadn't had any arthritic pain all week either, I was feeling really good!
Since early February 2019, my Crohn's symptoms have reduced dramatically! I have not felt like this since I was in my late teens, over 25 years ago. I felt like a new man, but I was very thankful to God, as much prayer had gone into getting approval for Humira and for it to work!
Now it was time to start training for Gold Coast. I thought to myself that I would crush it.
I kicked off the Jack Daniels' training plan and felt as though I would be raring to go in July. The training was hard, the intensity of some of the mid week long runs mixed with intervals were very difficult. At times I was not hitting my prescribed paces, which began to worry me by mid March.
I had a race planned in April; the Twilight Half Marathon at St. Lucia, that I was using to assess the training load and progress towards the marathon in July. I wrote about that race here. Ultimately, I didn't get the result I was after. Deep down, I had the feeling that I was overtraining but I didn't want to admit it to myself, so I kept pushing on with the hard sessions. I had backed the pace off a little but it was still a lot of effort just to get through each hard interval set.
Disaster struck in early June, a slight niggle in my left ankle continued to develop into pain I could not get rid of in every run. It seemed to get worse and worse and with 3 weeks to go until the marathon I had to stop running for at least a few days. I decided to visit the Physio to see if there was anything they could do, but they were unable to find any real issue with my ankle. They did strap it up, which helped initially.
With one week to go I was getting desperate, I was searching for any answer on the internet. I found an article on alternative lacing techniques, which can relieve pressure on certain parts of the foot. Some of the symptoms described were very similar to what I was getting, so I gave it a go. I changed the lacing only on my left shoe, and believe or not, in a matter or days I was completely pain free. I was so relieved with only a week to go before the race.
There was a few of us from EPRS racing the marathon this year. Unfortunately Steve (our spiritual leader!) would not be joining us this year due to his ongoing health journey. However, he would be there to cheer us on. We had done a lot of our training together, especially the long runs. To share the race with Sharn, Josh, Nathan, Pete and Jason was special regardless of the end result.
The Gold Coast marathon starts at 7:20am, which I always feel is too late due to the warmth and humidity here in Queensland. It is something that affects every runner, so I just had to put up with it. The weather on the day was really odd as well, it was supposed to be winter - cold and dry. At the start line though, it felt humid, the clouds were low and suddenly it started bucketing down with rain. I scampered into a portaloo to get away from it. I don't mind rain while running, but not 10 minutes before a race as it would cool me down way too much.
I started well enough. My plan was to run the first 5km at a very comfortable pace of 5:35min/km, this I managed easily and felt really good and enjoyed the very early stages of the run. Last year I was running much quicker at this point, which I regretted much later on.
After the first 5km, the plan was to increase the pace for the next 20km to around 5:25min/km. A touch quicker, but easy enough to maintain the pace for at least the next 20km. My training had me running the full marathon at a pace of 5:15min/km, so the paces I had chosen for the early stages were much slower and therefore achievable.
At around 15km into the race though, I felt as though I was really labouring. I wasn't tiring yet, I was still able to maintain the 5:25min/km pace but it was beginning to feel a lot harder than it should have. This was not supposed to be happening, with such a short distance having passed every km was getting harder and harder. The plan had been to increase my pace further once I reached 25km, at this point I was hopeful that I could still do it.
I reached 22km, just passed the halfway point and started to slow. It wasn't a deliberate ploy, I literally could not keep the pace up. By the time I reached 25km, my pace had slowed to just under 6min/km. This was so much slower than I had planned, even slower than my usual easy pace for my training runs!
I just kept getting slower and slower, I knew by now that my attempt to get under 3hrs 50mins was well and truly gone. Even cracking 4 hours looked like a distant memory.
At the 31km marker I did get to see my family, I actually decided to stop and give my wife a hug as I knew my goals were shot for the day. I told her it wasn't going to be my day, I decided to just try and enjoy the rest of the race as much as possible and not completely destroy myself. Seeing my family did lift my spirits and I was able to pick up the pace for a couple of kms, but I was soon back to a shuffle mixed with walking.
At the 34km mark I saw Steve, who cheered me on regardless of how I was doing. He has been a great supporter and friend over the last few years, seeing him there at the side of the road was incredible.
On I went, struggling through the last 8km until I could see the finish line. I was able to run quite well the last km, I even managed to increase my pace back under 6min/km. To be honest, I was just pleased to get the marathon over and done with at this point. I saw my beautiful wife and kids towards the finish line who were cheering no matter how slow I was running and managed to get over the finish line, to be handed my medal in a time of 4 hrs 23 mins. 1 minute slower than last year, unbelievable!
I was bitterly disappointed with my performance, but still managed to enjoy the day as my family had come down to support me. It was awesome to see the amazing performances by the other EPRS guys as well, really inspiring after having trained with them all for so long during the year.
As I look back at the Gold Coast Marathon and the preparation beforehand. I realise now that I had overtrained, I was fatigued when I got to the start line and really didn't have it in me to put in a decent time on the day. Will I be back? Of course I will. But now it was time to re-assess the training and start preparations for the Blackall100 50km again.
No comments:
Post a Comment