Operation Jack

Fighting autism, one mile at a time.

Archives for 2010

Why I Barely Focused On My Race Last Week: An Update On Jack

by 7 Comments

Normally on Mondays, I write a weekend recap and crack jokes about all the odds and ends of my weekend travels. But today, you’re getting Jack. Literally. There are a lot of things about my son Jack I want to blog about, so that’s what today’s focus is going to be.

Just in case this is your first time here, I’m a father of there and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. I recover well from my races, and I know that’s a gift, so last year I came up with the idea of making the most out of that gift by running 60 marathons in 2010 to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism.

So far, so good … kind of. I’m on schedule, through 28 of the 60 marathons so far, and I think I’ve raised somewhere around $25,000. Not totally sure on that number, but I think it’s somewhere in that ballpark.

Yesterday I struggled miserably through the San Diego Rock ‘N Roll Marathon. If you watch NASCAR for the crashes, you should read my race report. I definitely needed to be shut down crashing hard.

Now, on to Jack.

A Traumatic Visit To The DAN Doctor
If you’re not very familiar with autism, DAN stands for Defeat Autism Now and DAN doctors focus on biomedical treatments. There’s a lot of controversy in this area of the autism community and people either believe in their methods or they don’t, but there’s not a lot of middle ground. It’s almost civil-war like in the autism community. That’s one of the joys of Train 4 Autism — we let you pick the autism-related charity of your choice to be the beneficiary of your fundraising efforts.

Anyways, we went to a DAN doctor a few years ago. Our pediatrician recommended it. Doctors typically don’t recommend them, because their treatments are viewed as alternative. They focus on nutrition and supplements, not drugs. One popular theory out there is that vaccines cause autism, and while there’s no definitive answer yet, if you’re a parent in our position, you leave no stone unturned for your child. We’re not going to get time back for Jack, and we’re in a race against the clock to get him as close to mainstream as possible by the time he’s 18.

We get a lot of information and we weigh it all very carefully and make decisions. It’s a very difficult thing to do and the decisions we make for Jack’s treatment are probably the most critical thing we’ll do that will impact any of our three children’s development.

We weren’t pleased with the service we received from our DAN doctor a couple of years ago, so we stopped that treatment. But we still considered the idea. Through Operation Jack, I came in contact with people who could reliably recommend a very good DAN doctor. We set an appointment, and made a 90-minute drive for our initial visit last Thursday.

To say the least, we were infinitely more impressed with this doctor than with the previous doctor we saw. The first doctor we saw seemed to give a generic plan for Jack without really listening to us. But the new doctor asked lots and lots of questions to dig deep and really find out what’s going on with our little guy. The plan really seems tailored to him, and we’re really excited about it. Well, I’m a little more excited than Tiff, because she has 14 different things she needs to do daily. But like I said, when you’re in our position, there’s nothing you won’t do to try to make things better.

So why does my headline say this was a traumatic experience?

Because at the end of the visit, we had to go into a different room, where they drew blood samples from Jack for testing, plus they inserted an IV to get key nutrients into his system.

I had to lay on the table with him and physically restrain him. He was screaming in terror. At first, he was saying, “Stop! Stop!” in his broken English. Then he turned to his comfort zone, numbers, and shrieked out a “three, two one!” because he didn’t know what to say. Then, in his jumbled little words, he got out, “I want white rectangle.” No idea what that meant, but it was so, so sad, because he was in a ton of fear and he seemed like he was in a state of panic. It was completely heartbreaking.

Our older son Benjamin’s first-grade teacher’s name was Mrs. McCarthy, and I couldn’t help but look at him and think that he should have been in Mrs. McCarthy’s class at that moment, learning and getting ready for recess. But he was getting held down on a table in a doctor’s office, screaming in terror, and that wouldn’t have been the case if he wasn’t born with autism. It really made me sad.

He was clingy afterwards, and during the drive back, he was very quiet and reserved. I kept looking at him in the rear-view mirror and he looked so sweet, innocent and sad. I was so heartbroken and it left me in a haze for about two days. That’s a sight I’m not going to forget any time soon. I don’t know if the incident was more traumatic to me or to him, but it was rough.

The visit to the DAN doctor was definitely worthwhile, though. Painful, but worthwhile.

We Got Good News!
We’ve struggled with a little bit of bad news with Jack lately, so we were due for some good news. First, we thought we were losing a considerable amount of the services he’s been getting, and as parents, that scared us a lot. You can’t get time back, and every day is critical as he tries to break free from this neurological disorder that holds him down.

I blogged about this a couple of weeks ago and let y’all know. Well, that same day, we were notified that we were approved for Medi-Cal for Jack, a state-run insurance program that will help him obtain some services we’ve been trying to get. That at the very least offset our fears of losing half of the behavioral therapy hours we get for him. So that was a definite bit of good news.

Well, I forget what day, but it was sometime since last Thursday that we got official notice that we’ll only be losing three hours of behavioral therapy (down from 17/week). That’s definitely manageable, so Tiff and I collectively exhaled with relief. Plus, if we get him into some other services, it’s not like the weeks are getting any longer, so maybe this will all work out even better. Whatever the case, we were very happy when we found out both of these things (Medi-Cal, plus only losing three hours).

On top of that, we declined enrolling Jack for summer school this year. Last year, the summer staff consisted of instructors who we were unfamiliar with because they didn’t work at his school during the school year (he’s in the local public school district). We pulled him after one day, because there were quite a few things we were extremely uneasy about.

It’s tough on Jack to not be in school in the summer, because he thrives on his routine and he regresses when he’s out of the program for three months. But we chose to decline summer school this year, because we were pretty uncomfortable with what we saw last year. Well, early last week, we found out that the teachers he’s been with this year will be teaching summer school. But we had already declined!

So we talked to the teacher, who talked to the administration, and they let Jack in for the summer. This is absolutely in Jack’s best interests, and we’re really happy about this. It also works out well for our other two children, Benjamin and Ava, because while Jack is in school, Tiff will be able to do things with them that would be difficult with Jack (like going to the pool, etc.).

So in about one week’s time, we got three separate bits of good news. It’s about time — we were overdue!

Jack’s Artwork
My grandma loves penguins. And she has a soft spot for Jack (who doesn’t?), because her son, my uncle Marty, also has autism. She’s developed a bond with my wife over the past several years. Anyways, Jack’s school had open house on Thursday night, and we got a lot of his art projects from this year to take home. One of those items was a penguin, and I knew the minute I saw it that we’d be giving it to my grandma.

We had dinner with my grandparents (and my dad, stepmom and brother) last night, so we brought the penguin and gave it to her. Needless to say, she really, really liked it. I’m sure Jack had some kind of help making it, but I know he did it, and it’s her newest treasure. We took a picture afterwards. My grandparents are a lot more alert than they look in this picture, but the sun was in our eyes and it was kind of chaotic.


That sun in our eyes was awesome.

Jack Moment Of The Weekend
At dinner, we were talking when we were done, and out of nowhere, Jack started screaming very loudly. That was our cue to go. We got him ready to go out of his seat, but we realized he’d kicked his shoes off, so we went to get them on. I think me and Tiff miscommunicated who was holding on to Jack (he darts), and before we could blink, he took off running through the restaurant, straight from the back, where we were seated, towards the front door. Tiff made a mad dash after him. We’re used to this kind of stuff, but I’m sure it looked odd to other folks in the restaurant.

That’s All For Today!
If you got to the bottom, I really appreciate it. I like to write my jokes in my blogs, but Jack means more to me than any of that and the fact that so many of you want to know how he’s doing means a lot to me. I really appreciate you reading and caring. Have a great Monday!

Race Report: San Diego Rock 'N Roll Marathon

by 3 Comments

With 60 marathons on the schedule for 2010, I’m bound to get a little bit of everything. I thought I got a year’s worth of painful misery last weekend in the Med City Marathon in Rochester, Minn. Unfortunately, the San Diego Rock ‘N Roll Marathon served up a second serving on Sunday.

I headed into the race thinking I could get run in the 3:06 range if everything went right. This was my fifth time running the course, and I’ve made mistakes there, but I’ve also run it well. Early on the course is quick, then there’s a good hill about nine miles in, which is followed by a big downhill and then no elevation changes of consequence.

The biggest thing that impacts me in San Diego is the humidity. The temperatures are relatively cool. The first two hours are usually in the mid-60s, which isn’t perfect, but it’s always colder in San Diego than where I live, so it feels okay. There’s a cloud cover, too. So physically, it feels good, but the humidity makes it tough for your body to cool down. As a result, what feels like an easy effort is actually tough.

Last year, I ran by feel and willingly ignored heart rate. My pace was fine, but my heart rate was at the 10K level. If you do that for seven miles, the last 19 are going to be miserable. And they were. So this year, I knew to be very careful and stay within my limits. I did that early and stayed under control. I expected to be a little fast, and I was. I know how I’ve been running lately and I figured I’d be ahead of sub-3 pace until mile nine when we headed up the hill on the 163, where I’d lose it, then get it back down the ensuing downhill and eventually be in a good race against myself.

I could tell it was humid early on, but I ran well. I went through the 10K in the high 42s and felt pretty optimistic about the day. But at about mile 7, I started to get a little stiff in my legs. It wasn’t a terrible feeling, but it was unusual and I was a little concerned.

At mile 8, I started to get the hip pain I’ve been feeling in all of my races for the past month or so. Mile 8 has been where it’s been kicking in, so I wasn’t surprised. And it started to feel pretty painful pretty quickly. It started to work its way down my leg and by about mile 9, I finally realized that the problem is in my IT band in my right leg.

I was in a considerable amount of pain and by the time we started heading up the hill, I knew it was going to be a long day. I actually held a pretty good pace going up the hill, and I moved well on the subsequent downhill, but I was yelling “ouch” a lot more than I wanted to.

Once I was at about mile 12, the wheels came off. I went through the half in something like 1:34:58. Trends to a 3:10, but I figured I’d do 3:13 or 3:14 at best. By 16.5, though, I had a limp in my stride, like last week in Rochester. It was on-and-off the rest of the way, but I was really hurting. It was an extremely painful run and I was slowing down in a hurry.

I’ve gotten pretty good at fighting through pain caused from fatigue, but pain caused from injury is a whole different story. I was just wanting this run to be over from about mile 17 on. The sun came out at about mile 19 and things continued to deteriorate. The Cytomax sports drink on the course made me queasy, which was no surprise — that happened the other times I had Cytomax during the Rock ‘N Roll events. I resorted to water only and started pouring it over myself because I was getting warmer and warmer.

Volunteers were handing out sponges soaked with ice water and I took those three times. Painfully cold, but wonderfully cooling. I was looking at a time somewhere in the 3:20s. I had no idea where, because I had no idea how badly I would continue to slow.

I didn’t even start doing the math until two miles to go, when I figured out that I was looking at somewhere between a 3:24 and a 3:26. I was feeling a tiny bit short on breath over the final two miles. The last 6 or 7 miles in the sun were completely exposed and I was getting cooked.

I saw a friend of mine named Charlie who paced me for a couple of minutes with a little less than a mile to go. It helped me pick up the pace the rest of the way, and I stayed below 3:26 with a 3:25:18 finish time. I was walking with some pretty severe pain in my right leg and a ridiculous limp for about an hour after the finish. Now my challenge is going to be to get better while running a marathon every week.

As for the race, I strongly do NOT recommend this race. Weather is never great, and I’m not a fan of Competitor events. They’re events, not races, and I feel like they’re catered towards non-runners looking to do a marathon, not runners looking to run a marathon. I was nervous about their transportation logistics, and sure enough, it was a disaster. From the time I left the finishers area to go to the shuttle, it took more than two hours before I got to my car. I’ve run this race five years in a row, but I don’t think I’ll be down next year.

All-in-all, a very difficult day at the office. But another race is in the books for Operation Jack. 28 down, 32 to go!


I would be perfectly content permanently forgetting this run.

I got this custom medal holder donated. It has 60 pegs and I’m going to post an updated picture each week as I get closer to filling it up.

Weekend Preview: San Diego

by 6 Comments

Normally, I write my blog and I add the top paragraph when I’m done. I think of something clever to get you to read the rest of the blog. But today, I’m not feeling very creative and I’m in a hurry.

Just in case you’ve never been here before, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic and to make a really long story short, I’m trying to run 60 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. The long story is here.

Speaking of Jack, keep happy thoughts for us today. We’re heading up to a highly recommended DAN doctor in Los Angeles. If you don’t know what a DAN doctor is, be grateful!

E-Mail Notices
A lot of you get email notices when I post new blogs. I’m not going to send those out any more because they take up too much of my time in the morning. But you all know I post them Monday through Thursday and I have an RSS subscription.

Weekly Contest
Every week, I have a weekly contest where you guys make an easy donation to a great cause by guessing how fast I’m going to run my race. If you think I’m going to run a 3:12, you donate $3.12. It’s super easy, less than the price of a happy meal, and did I mention that it’s going to a great cause?

Last week, I changed the contest up a little bit because I had a pancake-eating contest with a fellow former big-boy named Lonnie Butler. So y’all picked who you thought would win and it was me. I took everybody who picked me, came up with a very random process and legitimately chose Jennifer Whitter of St. Louis as the winner.

This week, it’s going to be the pick-Sam’s-time contest again. I’ll get to that in a bit.

Great Weekend, Coming Right Up!
San Diego is about a 90-minute drive from my house. I have to stay down there Saturday night, but it’s going to be a nice, easy weekend for me. I’ll be able to relax at home with the family on Friday night, sleep in and then hang out with the family on Saturday. I won’t need to head down until after lunch. I’ll have plenty of time that I won’t be rushed, I’ll be able to visit with people I want to meet in San Diego, and still have enough time to relax in my hotel Saturday night.

Sunday, after running the race, getting cleaned up and then having In-N-Out with some friends, I should be home by 1 p.m. Does it get any better than that? I’m not saying I deserve a break for a weekend, but that’s what I feel like I’m getting.

Ice Cream Update
I had butter pecan with s’mores flavored Magic Shell last night. Kind of an odd combo, but it was good. Really good. I highly recommend that magic shell. I’m at 123 days on my current streak now, in case you’re keeping track.

San Diego Race Preview
Well, this is my fifth time running the San Diego Rock ‘N Roll Marathon. They’ve changed the last few miles of the course, but I don’t think it’s going to have much of an impact on how I approach the course.

The first oh, 15 or 16 miles (maybe even more) are going to be the same and I’m really not concerned enough about the changes to study the course profile before I get my packet at the expo. I saw it a few months ago and nothing stood out. For the most part, this course starts off on a gradual uphill, has a blazing fast gradual downhill at somewhere around 4 or 5, then goes into a gradual uphill at around 6-7. There’s a long, fairly difficult climb from miles 8-10 or so up the 163, and a big part of that challenge is the camber of the road. You’re running on a slant, which is tough.

After that climb, though, there’s a big, sweeping downhill where you get some time back and catch your breath, and then you roll in on an unremarkable second half.

As much as I dislike Rock ‘N Roll events, this was my first marathon, so I’ll always go back and feel at home. In 2006, I ran a 4:06 in my first full. The next year, I went 3:21, which was a 17-minute PR at the time. In 2008, I went 3:07 five or six weeks after running a 3:03 at Boston, but I didn’t feel like I really had it that day. Last year, it was humid and I chose to run at sub-3 pace even though it was 10K effort for me. Seven miles of that did me in and I bonked pretty hard, finishing in 3:31.

I have a tiny bit of a confidence problem with my 3:57 in the Minnesota sun last weekend, but I know that was a 1-in-60 kind of day. I’m feeling fairly fast right now, though, and I’m still planning on chasing a sub-3:10. I’d love to set a course PR, which would be a 3:07:11. I think that’s fairly realistic. If I was setting an over/under for Sunday, it would be 3:09.

OK, so you hear that? Now enter the contest!

That’s All For Today!
Have a great weekend, everybody. I’ll see you back here Sunday with a San Diego race recap.

Weekend Recap On … Wednesday?

by 8 Comments

If a blog falls in the woods and doesn’t get updated, does anybody notice? Yeah, it’s Wednesday and I’m just now posting my weekend recap. I was planning to post it yesterday instead of on Memorial Day, but when you see what I did on Monday, you’ll understand why I’m a day late.

First things first, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. Long story short, I’m trying to run 60 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. So far, so good. 27 down, 33 to go.

Well, except for this past weekend, when I ran what I consider to be my worst marathon ever. I’ve run slower twice in my 55 lifetime marathons. But this one was absolutely the worst. Read my recap here and see if you can sense how miserable the experience was.

Anyways, on with the weekend …

But First, A Jack Update
Jack continues to slowly progress. Last Thursday, Tiff took him to get his hair cut. We go to a place for kids, and normally sits in a fire engine chair designed to constrain children who are about 2. But he was willing to sit in the big-kid chair, which was awesome. And even awesomer than that (I know, not a word, but it’s my blog), he was willing to wear a smock. He’d never done that.

He’s doing little things spontaneously every here and there. On about Monday or so, Benjamin walked into a room that he was in and Jack waved and said “hi” to him. Things like that seem small, but they’re an indicator that he’s starting to come around. Last night when I put him to bed, he was going through a numbers book and saying the numbers. He was looking to me to hold up the number of fingers of the word he was saying. I did that for about 15 minutes. It’s a simple little numbers game for him, but we need to keep reinforcing that when he speaks, he gets the desired action he’s looking for. Someday it will all click.

Tomorrow, we have an appointment with a DAN doctor up in Los Angeles. It’s a doctor that comes very highly recommended from people who would know. We’ve been waiting months to get in, so we’re excited about this. DAN doctors focus on biomedical treatment for children with autism. We’re not discontinuing anything else we’re doing, but we’re going to add this to the equation. We had bad luck with a different DAN doctor in the past, so we’re happy to have a new one. We’re pretty convinced he needs this help.

Oh, and one last thing. Last year, the summer school program our school district offered was terrible for Jack. The staff was terrible and we pulled him after one day. I won’t get into a long explanation, but it was bad news. Well this year, the staff is going to be the same staff he’s had all year, so we’re excited that we’ll be able to put him in there. They’ve done a great job with him, plus he regresses a little in the summer without his school routine. We just found this out yesterday and we’re pretty excited about it.

OK, now on with the weekend. For reals.

Date Night!
I celebrated 11 years of marriage with my beautiful wife Tiffany on May 23 (the Sunday before last), but since we had a chaotic day, we took a rain check on babysitting and brought in Baja Fresh for dinner. But we cashed in our rain check last Friday night and used a gift card at PF Chang’s. It was a nice start to the weekend — nothing beats eating dinner without interruptions … for free! About 51 more weeks and we’ll get to do that again.

I’m Starting To Realize That All I Talk About Is Food
So the next thing I’m going to talk about is lunch on Saturday. It was with my ex-stepmom (or maybe I call her my second mom?) and her family. She was married to my dad from my fourth grade through eighth grade years. Her and my dad weren’t meant to be together, but they’re both great people and I’ll always love her and respect her for doing a great job raising me and my brother like her own during those critical years.

She lives in the Minneapolis area now, so when I get a chance to see her, I do. Rochester, Minn. is about 80 miles south of MSP airport, so I made sure to meet up with her. She has two children of her own, who are now 13 and almost 17. I got to eat with them and her husband and I had a great time. They’re wonderful kids, a reflection of the job she’s done. I’m going back up to Minneapolis in a couple of weeks to run Grandma’s in Duluth. Hopefully I have time to swing by on my way back to the airport.

More Hanging Out With Good People
I hung out with a real nice guy named Lonnie Butler on Saturday night in Rochester. We shared a hotel room to keep our costs down. Like me, he has an autistic son named Jack. Like me, he’s a former big-boy turned marathoner (he’s down to 210 from 300, I’m at 203 from 261). And like me, he had a rough go on Sunday.

But it was really nice to meet him. We’d chatted a fair amount over email and it was cool to finally meat him. I also got to meet his wife and his Jack, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

More Food Talk …
I had dinner Saturday night at a place I’d never heard of called Jimmy John’s. Apparently, it’s a sandwich shop chain in the Midwest and Lonnie gave it high marks. The thing about guys like me and Lonnie — we know good food when we eat it. I think I lived up to the California stereotype by ordering a turkey sandwich with avocado spread. But it was really good. He was right.

One Little Letter
I originally planned to run the Mad City Marathon in Madison, Wisc., on Sunday, but when I talked to Lonnie, and found out Rochester was his first marathon, I switched to run that one instead. The race I ran is called the Med City Marathon, so I went from Mad City to Med City. I had no idea why it was called Med City. Where do you get “Med City” from Rochester, Minn.?

When I stepped out the front door of my hotel, I found out:


I was totally excited to see THE Mayo Clinic! That’s big-time! And I kid you not, I took two steps out of the front of my hotel to take this picture.

More Food Talk …
After the race on Sunday, Lonnie and I went to Denny’s for all-you-can-eat pancakes. We’d been talking about this ever since I had 11 pancakes at IHOP after I ran the Country Music Marathon in Nashville on April 24. But those pancakes were a little smaller than the ones we ate on Sunday.


This is how big they were at Denny’s on Sunday. They were pretty good-sized, in my book.

We each ordered and knocked back the first three fairly quickly. With the all-you-can-eat deal, they bring you two at a time on the subsequent plates. I finished my second plate quicker than Lonnie, but was starting to feel fairly full. I could tell Lonnie was probably feeling the same way. I ordered my third plate fairly quickly. I made my move to put the hammer down.

Pancakes No. 6 and 7 came out and I worked on those while Lonnie was finishing up his fifth. I really hoped he stopped there, because I felt pretty full. With a two-pancake lead, though, I knew I could wear him down if I could just stick it out.

When our waitress asked him if he wanted a third plate, he declined and I was relieved. I didn’t want to go to nine. We were done eating by about 1:30 p.m. Central time, and I was so full, I didn’t eat at all on the plane and when I got home at 7:30 p.m. Pacific time (eight hours later), all I had was a small serving of chicken and sausage to get some protein in my system. I was still full. Oh, I had some ice cream, too. Couldn’t skip that.

So after all the anticipation, I was able to pull out a victory. I went out fast, held on to my lead and came away with the W. It was a good win over a tough competitor!

We had a contest last week and I’ll announce the winner tomorrow. Too tired as I write this to take care of that. Which leads me to …

My Memorial Day Holiday
Just because it’s a holiday doesn’t mean the calendar doesn’t turn. My work revolves around a monthly cycle and yesterday was the 1st. So Monday I was busy. I’m always guilty of being overly ambitious on how quickly I can get things done. Maybe I’m just overly optimistic?

Anyways, I had a pretty crazy week last week and I knew I had a full day of code writing ahead of me on Monday. I got started at somewhere around 9 or 9:30 in the morning, and aside from taking maybe an hour or so for lunch and then dinner, I didn’t finish until about 3:45 in the morning … yesterday? I guess it was Tuesday at that point?

I woke up naturally at about 7:45, got Benjamin ready for school, worked at my kitchen table until about 1:30, took a nap for an hour, then I think I got back on the computer for an hour or two, but I don’t really remember. It was kind of a blur. But I took another nap from 3:30-5:30, and then a few hours passed by and I think Tuesday was over? I’ll sort it all out at some point.

But that’s why I didn’t have a blog yesterday. I didn’t really feel like writing it at 4 a.m.!

That’s All For Today
I think that was enough. My ice cream streak is at 122 now. Is tomorrow really Thursday already? Wow. Time for a nap.

Race Report: Med City Marathon

by 10 Comments

In Sunday’s Med City Marathon in Rochester, Minn., I did exactly what I promised my wife I’d do. No, I didn’t promise her I’d run my worst marathon ever. I promised her I’d be careful and take care of myself, the same guarantee I give her before every race. This was my 55th lifetime marathon, and they’re still not easy on my body. When the temperature gets up into the mid-80s it can get pretty tough. That’s what happened today, and I did everything but crawl to finish the race.

I knew going in the temperatures were going to be warm. It was in the mid-60s at the start and the forecast called for it to get up towards the high 70s by the time I finished. I’m not sure on the humidity numbers, but I know that came into play, too. The elevation profile on the course looked like something I would run well. Some early rollers, a nice downhill, and then nothing major for the last 15 or so miles. I figured that with good weather, I could challenge for 3:05, so with the warmer temps, I thought I’d be in for a 3:10 to a 3:20.

We took off and I did OK early. It was one of those situations where any little bit my body would give me on the course I gladly took, because I knew it was going to get tough later. But by five miles in, I knew I was going to have a tough day. At that point, both of my feet were numb and I have no idea why. That lasted a good five or six miles.

I did my best to keep my heart rate no higher than 170, but it would spike pretty quickly to about 177 going up hills and I’d struggle to get it down. I knew I couldn’t do that too much, otherwise I’d hit a wall and that’s not something I wanted to do in the heat.

My right leg and hip weren’t hurting (as has been the case recently) in the first half, but I was just slow as I tried to keep my heart rate down. I was told it was 82 degrees two hours in, so I’m guessing it was in the mid-70s for most of the first half.

I hit 13.1 in about 1:41, which is by far the slowest I’ve done lately. I gave up on my 3:15 and 3:20 goals well before that point, and started thinking about staying sub-3:30. I could go 1:49 in the second half to pull that off and I wasn’t worried.

But by mile 15, my hip started to sting a little bit. I had to alter my stride and I was doing an odd combination of a hop and a limp with every step with my right leg. The words I kept thinking over and over again were “death march,” because 3:30 was looking like it was way gone and I started to set my sights on a 3:40. But even at that point, I knew it would be tough.

I was really feeling the effects of the heat. It was absolutely miserable to be out there. It was the worst physical experience I had ever had in a marathon. In 54 previous lifetime marathons, I had never stopped to walk even once, except when I ran with my wife in Long Beach last year and an injury forced her to back off considerably.

But that came to an end about 17.5 miles in, when I took the first of six walk breaks. I always promise my wife I’ll take care of myself during a race. I’m getting used to marathons, and I know what to expect, but even so, they’re hard on the body. I was thinking about her and the kids and I knew I needed to back down and take care of myself.

My 3:40 was long gone and I was shuffling at about 10:30/mile. Considering I ran Fargo last week at a 7:14 pace, that’s incredibly slow for me. At about mile 21, I started doing the math in my head and realized I needed about an 11-minute pace to finish sub-4. I’m chasing sub-3 right now, and I really think I’m getting close. But here I was, doubting I could average 11-minute miles to finish sub-4.

I drank a ton of fluids late and poured a lot of water over my head to try to keep myself cool, but nothing worked. I’d walk, then do my hop-limp shuffle, then walk again. I was able to pick up the pace to sub-9 over the last few miles and it looked like I was going to make sub-4. I really, really didn’t want to miss that.

I was so beat, though, that I even walked after mile 25. I had nothing. But I picked it up and ran the last 0.7 or so and finished, I think, in 3:57:14. Aside from the run with my wife, it was the slowest marathon I’ve run since a 4:06 in my first.

It was 87 degrees at the end and I struggled to catch my breath. It was hot and I felt like I wanted to throw up, but after about 45 minutes, I started to feel a little bit better. I was trying to see how a friend of mine, Lonnie Butler, was doing. It was his first marathon, and he couldn’t have picked a more miserable day.

Me and Lonnie have a lot in common. We’re both former big boys (he topped out at 300 pounds, me at 261) and we both have autistic sons named Jack! He was aiming for somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00, and I was hoping somehow, even though I had a disaster of a day, that he didn’t.

His was even worse, though. When he was in high school, he tore the meniscus in his knee during a basketball game. At mile 11, he heard it crunch and he’s pretty sure he tore his knee up again. He shut it down at 13.1, which was where the finish line was. Lonnie went to the med tent and called it a day. I hope he’s wrong about the knee and he just has some kind of strain. I’ll find out in the next few days, I’m sure.

So, for both of us, it was just a really tough day. Fortunately for me, I can run next weekend. I have no troubles putting this one behind me and I’ll go out and attack that course and aim for a sub-3:10. With 60 races on the schedule, I’m bound to have one (or two or three) like this. So it’s done, time to move on.

27 down, 33 to go!


That was NOT fun.

Me and the Butlers after lunch.