**Note**- At the time I ran this race and wrote up this post a few weeks after finishing, I was under the impression that the course was marathon distance (26.2 mi). Low and behold, I found out several months later the course was actually 21.2 miles. Ha! Keep that in mind if you read here, I haven’t edited the post. Chalk it up to the joys of running without a GPS watch 🙂
Race length: Marathon 21.2 miles
Race Location: Bothe-Napa Valley State Park, Saint Helena, CA
Finish time: 3 hours, 58 minutes, 54 seconds
Place: 6/16
As I walk out of the bathroom of the Puerto Rican Restaurant El Coqui on the Friday night before the race, I’m getting a serious sense of deja vu. John and I are back in Santa Rosa, CA for the second time in the past five months, participating in the Napa Valley Trail Race. We ran this same race last October, with both of us completing a half-marathon. This time around I will be doing a full marathon, my first one.
Our activities this weekend are eerily similar to the last time we raced. We go to the same restaurant Friday night (El Coqui), stay at the same Airbnb, and eat at the same breakfast spot the morning of the race. There is even rain in the forecast for tomorrow, just like there was last time. The rain ended up holding off and not coming down until we were finished with our race, so the hope is that the same thing happens this time.
Miles 0-10
There are about 15 runners who gather to the start of the full marathon which begins at 9 am. After a colorful pre-race speech by Dave Horning, event organizer and founder of Enviro-Sports, we are off. I instantly fall to the very back of the pack of runners, as the collective pace feels too fast for a race that will be 26.2 miles and likely will have most of us out on the course for 4 hours or longer.
I fall into conversation with two other gentlemen who flew in from Chicago to run this race. Amazingly, they tell me they have done 50 marathons in 50 different states, and this is something like their 75th marathon. I commend them on this rather magnificent achievement and they tell me traveling for races is a great way to see the country. Also, they add, their wives “really wanted to go to Napa,” hence why they are at this particular race on this particular day.
The first 6 miles or so zip by, and I’m back to the starting line to end my first loop. After finishing this first loop, there is an 4 mile out-and-back on what is called Mill Trail. For all you keeping track out there, that adds up to 10 miles so far. You do that twice (20 miles), do the loop one more time (6 miles), and wala, you have yourself 26 miles and a full marathon.
The first 10 miles come to an end and I’m feeling good. I’ve intentionally held a lot in the reserve tank in this beginning part of the race and was telling myself that these first 10 miles should really be about easing into the race. A wake-up to my body that we are going to be running for a long time today. Needless to say, my body feels sufficiently warmed-up.
Miles 10-16
Somewhere along the race I see a runner pass me running backwards. I do a double take and see that it’s my buddy John. He’s doing a half marathon which shares the same course as the full. I get to run with him for 20 minutes or so and I try to milk him for as much conversation as possible. It’s a big morale boost and keeps my mind off the remaining 13 miles or so that are left. Finally, we split ways and I feel myself starting to experiment with putting more gas on the pace. But I’m still trying to store a good amount of reserve, telling myself that my current position on mile 13, is only halfway. And as I have heard from other veteran runners, the real halfway point of a marathon is mile 20, as that’s when many runners hit a wall.
I come back to the starting line for the end of my second loop (mile 16) and I head straight for the bag I have stashed with food and electrolyte drink. I down the electrolyte drink and go to open my food bag, but my fingers aren’t cooperating with the cold weather and I can’t open it. I feel helpless for a moment but regain my composure and ask the very nice volunteer at the aid station if she can open it for me. It even gives her a little trouble but after 10 seconds or so, she gets it and I have access to food. I thank her profusely and then try to devour as much food in as short amount of time as possible. My food strategy is a bit unorthodox. I have packed dried mango, cashews, macadamia nuts, and 85% dark chocolate in this little bag. The strategy here is to eat real food and what I’m use to eating. All of this food goes down well and after three or four big mouthful, I’m off to the Mill Trail for the second time, for miles 16-26.
Miles 16-26
The run to the Mill is an out-and-back, so you get to see exactly how far the other runners are ahead of you. As I make the ascent, I’m mentally taking notes on how many people I could reasonably pass by the end of the race. A few seem too far out, probably 2 miles ahead of me at this point. But as I get closer to the turn around spot, there’s a cluster of 4-5 runners or so that definetly are within catching range. This puts an extra bounce in my step and I give the turn around sign a hard slap. There’s 8 miles to go and the finish line is within sniffing distance.
I pass by 2 runners on my way back to the starting line, as I head into my last 6 mile loop. I quickly down some water and a Powerade from the aid station and I’m on my way. I can feel the tank slowly emptying, as I’m now running at something like 85% max effort, compared to the 55-65% at the beginning of the race. It’s obvious I’ll make it to the end at this point, it’s just a matter of how many people can I catch. In short time, I pass by another 2 runners, which gives me another energy boost.
At what I’d estimate to be mile 22-23, my legs start to feel like they are turning into cement blocks and I’m losing the light and free stride that I have had for so much of the race. Funny enough, I’ll get short bursts of adrenaline and ride that for 2-3 minutes, only to have that tired and heavy feeling come back to me. I try to coach myself up, telling myself this is exactly how I should feel, I mean I’m at mile 23 of a marathon! It’d be weird if I felt different.
The last 3 miles are challenging but not impossible, and I’m not the only one tired as I pass another guy who had to have been nearly 2 miles ahead of me when I saw him on the Mill Trail out-and-back. He is nice and tells me I’m looking strong and this trail and these steeps are a bitch. I tell him I’ll see him at the finish line, quickly think I hope that didn’t come off the wrong way, and jog past him as he walks the incline.
The finish line comes at last and I give a little jump as I pass the line that marks the end of the race. The director makes a comment to me that I had an excellent last 6.5 miles, telling me my split was 57 minutes and the winner of the race ran that last split in 1 hour, 3 minutes. Well, I guess keeping something in the tank paid off after all. It occurs to me I could have gone faster from the beginning and while that could be something to play with moving forward, it’s really hard to not love the feeling of being relatively strong by the end of the race and getting the boost of passing other runners in the last 5 miles.
At the same time, and as many others athletes have observed, these race/events are really a race against our own selves, not against other runners. It’s not the other runners you have to overcome, it’s the doubt, the nagging narrative in your head that tells you you’re too tired, this run is too much, everyone else is faster and strong than you. And you need to overcome this not so much on race day, as that’s when you’re as motivated as you’ll ever be, but it’s overcoming that narrative on the hundreds of training runs that lead up to race day. I’m more excited than ever to get back out and train, and as Killian Jornet said, we don’t train to race, but rather we race to train.
