May 12, 2013, Wilmington, DE
2nd place, 11th overall, 2:56
In the week following the Boston Marathon bombing I decided I wanted to run Boston next year in 2014. I’ve been on a three-year Boston plan, running Boston in 2006, 2009, and 2012, which is based on the fact that it seems to take me exactly three years to forget how painful running Boston was the last time (that course eats me alive, pushing me out too fast during the downhill start and then punishing me on the Newton hills). But the bombing struck a deep nerve, and when the racers lace up to face down their fears next year, I want to be there with them.
But given that Boston registration occurs in September and no one except the North Face dreams of holding a major running event during the steamy Mid-Atlantic summer (a mistake NF won’t repeat), I had to scramble to find a marathon in the area to get my BQ (as you’ll recall, the timing mats had been removed by the time we got to the starting line of the Baltimore Marathon in October, so I didn’t have a qualifying time). In the nick of time I found the Delaware Marathon, a solid two weeks after Promise Land and a mere 2-hr drive from DC. I could trot a BQ easy and still have enough gas for some June races.
But then I came across this on the Delaware Marathon website:
Cash awards of $1000; $500; $250 will be given to the top three overall male and female marathon winners. Cash awards of $200 and $100 will be given to the top two overall male and female marathon masters winners.
A $1000 bonus will be given to the overall male and/or female winner if the fastest marathon time ever run on Delaware soil is set. The fastest marathon times ever run in Delaware are 2:25:12, by Michael Wardian of Arlington, Virginia, set at our 2011 Delaware Marathon™ and 2:59:24 by Feng Sun of Columbia, MD, who set the female record at our 2006 Delaware Marathon™.
Holy cow. Three thousand bucks for running under 2:59?? I hadn’t run a sub-three hr marathon since Charlottesville in 2011, my hamstring was still bugging me, I had an exhausting work trip to Iowa planned the week before the race where I was organizing a workshop on phylogenetic analysis. But I had to give it a shot.
lots of tapering with Tavis and Cecile in Iowa
For those of you wondering why anyone would organize a workshop on phylogenetic analysis in Ames, Iowa, allow me to explain. For several years now I have been collaborating with researchers at the National Animal Disease Center at the USDA in Iowa who study influenza in swine. Since the 2009 swine-origin influenza pandemic, the USDA has received a lot more funding to sequence the genomes of influenza viruses collected from US swine for analysis. Hence, the purpose of this workshop was to train scientists at the USDA (and other special invited guests, including two very charming ladies from Brazil) how to analyze this molecular data. And that’s where I come in, along with my friend at USDA Tavis and my Fogarty colleague Cecile.
One morning I went on a run on what was called a ‘nature trail’ only to find life-sized plastic animals popping out. I soon realized that each animal was strategically placed before a backboard that was full of bullet holes. Oh, that kind of nature trail. On our first night Cecile and I tried to walk from our hotel to the downtown of Ames (exactly 4 blocks of Main Street) and found ourselves marching through industrial waste sites, walking along train tracks (and across train bridges, in keeping with the Stand By Me theme), and through a cemetery, which was refreshingly civilized compared to the toxic waste sites. After that adventure, we let our new friends Doug and Andres chauffeur us around.
Fortunately for Ames, I am easily impressed
aaron sported his new iowa schwag at josh ritter
Aaron picked me up at the airport and we scurried off to see Josh Ritter at the 9:30 club. From listening to Josh Ritter’s plaintive songs you would never expect him to be so giddy on stage. I was ready to keel over from too many days of teaching people who to get Bayesian programs running on their PCs (I’m a Mac girl), but I couldn’t quit on Mr Ritter’s enthusiasm and I hung in there til the end.
The next morning we ran the Race for the Cure 5k with our moms. Aaron’s mom Rosemary won her age group, a mighty comeback after fracturing her pelvis skiing in Colorado in January. My mom won the windmill category, and proudly sported her pink survivor shirt. We met up with the dads and treated the moms to brunch at the Hamilton.
After brunch we scurried up rt 95 to Wilmington for packet pick-up and checked into the Fairview Hotel. Inauspiciously, the hotel check-in clerk sat behind bullet-proof glass and there was a sign saying that if you wanted a refund on your room you had to declare it within ten minutes of checking in. There were lots of people loitering in the parking lot. A review Aaron read had complained that someone had been shot the night they stayed. Welcome to Wilmington! Fortunately, Boots had given us a good recommendation to eat at BBC Brewery, so we shot over to the ritzier part of town before collapsing for the night at the Fairview. We watched some quality television, including Top 10 NFL Divas (my favorite by far was Joe Namath, coming it under-ranked at #6), and conked out before 10. I was quickly stirred by the deep beat of a nearby all-night dance party, which kept me awake until 3am, and I woke up at 5:30am having slept so little that I wasn’t even drowsy, just fried.
We made it over to the marathon with plenty of time to spare, a great relief after our Baltimore start fiasco. I had been assigned an elite number and entrance to an elite tent, which was supposed to have a masseuse and water and gatorade and various amenities. In actuality, the elite tent had nothing but folding chairs and bored runners. The weather was perfect, cold at the start. While I waited for Aaron to finish pooping I was shivering so much that a lady I didn’t know came up and hugged me. ‘I couldn’t help it, you were covered in goose bumps. And it’s Mother’s Day after all.’ At the starting line we ran into VHTRC friends Steve Core and Karsten Brown — the race had a small-town friendly feel.
Here’s a run-down of my race:
Mile 1: Aaron lets me go ahead. I let two female runners go ahead, positioning myself into 3rd. Aaron catches me around mile 2 and we run together for a while.
Mile 3: I discover that I have to pee really bad. I knew that prize money went three deep, so I really didn’t want to stop to pee and lose my place. So I told Aaron that I was going to perform one of my extra special tricks: I closed my eyes, relaxed, and peed without breaking stride. It took several repetitions to let it all out, but that was so much better than running for the next three hours on a full bladder.
Mile 4: We start to catch relay runners. There were only 750 registered for the marathon, but there were another couple thousand signed up for the half marathon and the marathon relay, so there was a healthy density of runners on the course and a wide array of signs directing different running groups in different directions. The many volunteers at key intersections did a fabulous job of keeping all the various groups of runners on their respective courses.
Mile 5: We leave the Wilmington downtown and have a lovely stretch through a park along a creek, which reminded me a bit of Rock Creek and made me very happy (particularly the family of baby geese). Although it was cool, the sun was hot, and the canopy of trees was greatly appreciated.
Mile 6: I thought Delaware was pancake flat, but this race somehow managed to find the state’s one hill and make us run it twice (it was a 2-loop course). I know this ~150 foot hill is peanuts for trail runners, but for roadrunners it was substantial.
Mile 8: Aaron and I part for a bit, Aaron letting me push on ahead. Volunteer yells at him to ‘not let that girl beat you!’
Mile 9: I pass the woman ahead and move into second place, where I remain the rest of the race.
Mile 12: I almost get hit by a car speeding across the intersection as I complete the first loop (Karsten was with me and can attest).
Mile 13: I go through the half in just under 1:27, which seems pretty reasonable to me. My goal is to run under three.
Mile 14: My hamstring relaxes, but something in my stomach appears to be off. I feel like I have to take a poop. I won’t go into the gory details (I already traumatized you enough with my pee story), but I had signs of internal bleeding and all was not quite right down there. It didn’t bother me terribly, and I felt pretty darn good the whole race, but it was a good five hours after the race before I could keep anything from running straight through me. Thank god it was only 26 miles or that race would have turned for the worst.
Mile 25: With the lead woman out of sight (she finished in 2:52 and apparently can run much faster) and ahead of the third place woman by miles (she finished in 3:11), I had little incentive to push the last miles. I’ve had so many miserable finishes to marathons that I consider it a key part of my development to learn that I can finish a marathon without entertaining thoughts like ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if I got run over by a bus right now’ or ‘When this race is done I’m going to sit in a wheel chair and pretend I can’t walk and never get up…for the rest of my life’ or most commonly ‘This is the last race I am ever going to run, for real’. But Aaron caught up to me with one mile to go and made me fly home with him. Okay, we most definitely weren’t flying, we might have been going sub-7, but I squeezed some of the last juice out of my calves.
Mile 26.2: I was happy with 2:56, just behind Karsten. I hadn’t run a sub-3 marathon since Charlottesville over two years ago, which was the last marathon I really raced (because of Boston’s heat and Baltimore’s logistics those marathons weren’t really true races). Although I didn’t win and get the big pot, I was happy with $500 for second.
I wanted to hang out at the finish and see Steve Core finish, but I kept pooping blood and my stomach hurt bad, so we headed back to our hotel and hit the road. When we got home we watched movies and TV all afternoon and evening. My stomach was fine and we had Thai food. We watched Django Unchained. I liked the KKK scene with Jonah Hill. I slept so hard.
Name: Martha Nelson
Bib #: 14
Gun Time: 2:56:43.2 ( 6:45/mile)
Chip Time: 2:56:41.2
5 Mile Split: 33:41.9
Half Split: 1:26:56.3
18 Mile Split: 1:59:36.6
Overall Place: 11/599
Age Group Place: 2/36 (Female 30 to 34)
ain’t no professor jaunty socks, but aaron liked the pony with the smaller molars
Aaron’s heart was aching for the snow ponies, so we brought them some treats. They were skeptical at first (baby carrots?).
fingers can be easily mistaken for baby carrots
But in return for the carrots, the ponies told us who was going to win in today’s 139th Kentucky Derby.
Aaron’s picks:
1. Revolutionary (7-1)
2. Palace Malice (28-1)
3. Frac Daddy (28-1)
Martha’s picks:
1. Itsmyluckyday (10-1)
2. Overanalyze (14-1)
3. Oxbow (33-1)
If Aaron wins, I’ll wash the dishes. If I win, Aaron has to feed a pony.
On the evening of my 32nd birthday my family did the embarrassing thing of getting the waiter at Buck’s Fishing and Camping to bring out a cake with candles. At this age I just smile politely and don’t squirm as much when the waiter sings along loudly. I took a big inhale and my mind raced with possible wishes: I wish….that Aaron doesn’t leave me for a girl who’s less gassy… that my father took better care of himself and my mom….that I got a new job, hard money, in a place not too far from DC and not too cold….That seemed like a good one. But just as I was about to let the air gush from my cheeks a different wish snuck in at the last minute, just as the doors were closing.
I want to be a trail runner.
I used to think birthday wishes were stupid. I certainly think the old adage that if you tell someone your wish it won’t come true is inane. But for one splitting moment each year, you get to clear out all the swirling clutter — professionally, socially, in your family — and identify your highest priority in a single simple wish. With my head spinning all year about where my life is going to take me (my remaining time as an NIH post-doc is rapidly dwindling, creating much uncertainty about the future — you know I’m totally losing it when I apply to a job in Florida of all places), I can’t think of a better birthday present than to have my head clear for one splitting moment about what matters most to me.
Promise Land 50k+
April 27, 2013
I’m not sure if others recognized just how much was at stake for me at Promise Land: essentially, my entire future in trail racing.
I’m really not being overly dramatic here. For over two years it has occurred to me that my stomach is simply not cut out for the quantity of eating required for ultra trail racing and that I should be done with it. Every time I tried to race a long trail race, it resulted in my stomach decorating the trails, aid stations, and finish lines with gastrointestinal goodness. First it was Highland Sky 2011, then Holiday ‘Pukefest’ Lake 2012, and most recently Willis ‘Pukefest II’ River (aka Swinging Bridge).
Now I am not one to quit a sport lightly. In all my years of playing soccer, basketball, field hockey, show-jumping (ponies), and of course running, the only sport I ever quit of my own volition was the Stanford women’s rugby team. After a few slaughterfest games filled with dislocated bones (and worse), I decided to take the route of self-preservation and not try to prove anything.
In many ways, ultra racing was beginning to feel a lot like Stanford rugby: a continual pummeling that was breaking my spirit.
Promise Land had all the trappings of beautiful, fabulous run — if I could not enjoy the day out there, ultras were likely to go the way of rugby. I have no interest in self-mutilation. I know that for a lot of runners trail running is a poetic self-challenge of mind and body, man against mountain. I approach running more like a child going sledding: the only reason I’ll slog up the hill is so I can whiz back down the (ideally very technical) slope.
‘Put it in your mind: twenty bobbing ponytails,’ Aaron instructed. I closed my eyes and imagined a field of female runners leaving me behind up the first Promise Land climb. ‘Let them go,’ I half-whispered to myself. That essentially was the game plan: turn the competitive nozzle to zero and approach it like a fun run.
That plan was actually pretty darn easy to fulfill when the course starts with a three-mile climb up a road. As I’ve mentioned before, climbing for me is like that plate of broccoli you had to gag down as a kid in order to have your dessert (ie, the descent). The 5:30am start of Promise Land was dark, so I never quite got my image of the twenty bobbing ponytails ahead. But I knew I was somewhere mid-pack.
As Keith, Aaron, and other WUSsies had promised, PL was BEAUTIFUL. I *loved* the course. My favorite so far. Spring was so ripe in the air, I half expected find bambi and thumper and skunk somewhere strumming banjos amidst the purple and red trillium. The weather was ideal — I think I told Aaron at one point that the air felt like a massage. But what really made the course for me was not just the scenery or weather, but how varied the course was, how much it switched up between open grassy thoroughfares to narrow wooded single-track, such that the scenes were always changing and varied. To complete the seduction, the rocky technical downhills were to die for (some of the more road-runner-inclined may have thought this literally).
Of course, the ultimate highlight of the day was when Aaron decided to run with me. I’m not sure quite what possessed him (although Aaron is pretty darn sharp, and probably realized that it was in both of our interests that I have a splendid day). But when I stopped to do some early shoe surgery after the first climb (my heel pads were sliding around and hitting my arch uncomfortably), I was beaming my brains out when Aaron stopped to wait for me. As a very social runner by nature, the second highlight of the day was coming across Greg Loomis mid-race, who had self-declared ‘blown up’. We took a little pace off to catch up with Greg for a bit. The clover gods highly approved of this, and rewarded us with twelve four-leaf covers. I held onto them for a couple miles, but gave them to Aaron when I had to stop to poop, and by the end of the run his pocket had converted them to mushed green bits.
Still, the clovers did their magic, and my stomach hung in there. I could feel it beginning to turn a bit, and food became increasingly less appealing. But what saved the stomach was actually the infamous climb up Apple Orchard Falls, which was so beautiful I almost didn’t notice how much we were ascending. Having that much time to walk gave me a cushion to slowly get some morsels of a margarita clif blok down (courtesy of Brian G.). As much as I dislike the climbs, they are at least an excellent time for coaxing down some nourishment bit by bit. In all, I got down 5 peanut butter crackers, 2 GUs, 1 margarita clif blok, most of my bottle with GU and carbo-pro, and handfuls of saltines and pretzels. I tried to have less of the sweet stuff, and I haven’t been able to eat my magic papaya since I barfed it up at Willis River. But I love the peanut butter crackers. Except that my hydration system didn’t quite work and getting my drink bottle out of the back of my Nathan was an ordeal that required Aaron’s helping hand (I’ve now bought a 1.5 liter bladder, so we’ll see how that goes).
Aaron had decreed that he would run with me as long as I left him when his heels began to fail him. At first I protested at this, but eventually agreed, and at Apple Orchard Falls we parted ways. At the aid station at the top of Apple Orchard Falls I drank a bit too much water that left my stomach gurgly, and I babied it for the next stretch. But the downhill was too much to resist, and let it fly to the finish. I couldn’t wait to tell Aaron that I had a good run. No pukes!
When I crossed the line I was still very fresh. Horton quibbled that I should have run faster, but all I could gleefully declare was that I hadn’t puked! I was so bouncy and happy that I tore back up the hill to find Aaron, who was only a couple minutes back. My quads were spent from the long downhill at the end, but I couldn’t recall the last time I had felt so pain-free and strong after an ultra. I also can’t recall the last time I so enjoyed a finish area, where I had the chance to down a burger and catch up with fellow runners: Alison, who won the won’s race (and like me is struggling with a chronic hamstring injury) and Holly (who is three months pregnant and STILL was planning to run the race until a last-minute relative bailed on babysitting) and of course all the WUSsies: Mario, Keith + Tracey, Doug + Kerry, Robin + Adam. Apparently this year was PL-run-with-your-husband/boyfriend day, and D+K and K+T and Aaron and I all ran as pairs, not an easy feat but one we all seem to have survived unscathed. We sadly had to leave before getting to see Sean and the Andrish clan — it would have been several more hours before Jack and Shannon came in.
aaron making sexy-face, me making squinty-face, and robin making hee-haw face
Of course, the next challenge is to determine to what extent I can race myself and still hold my stomach. It’s one thing to figure out how to hold one’s stomach while relaxing the pace considerably, and a whole different challenge to identify how much I can push myself and still hold it together.
But possibly there is a different approach to ultra running. I think when I began to cross over from road running, many around me thought that my speed over 5k-marathon distances would translate well to ultra running, especially since I love technical trail. Their encouragement has always been well-intentioned, but I’m such a crap climber, and the ability to climb is so important in ultra running (Sean will try to convince me otherwise, but his walking up hills is still faster than my running….), that I’ve accepted that I’m best suited to faster road races. Not that I would ever go back to just being a road runner — trails are way too much fun. Just that I would put my competitive energies into road running and leave the trails for the enjoyment of it and not get hung up on breaking records or chasing podiums. You know, it wasn’t that long ago that trail running was much more romp than pomp.
See you at Highland Sky!
My sleepy early morning eyes were entirely befuddled by the PL port-o-potty signage. I really hoped this wasn’t an omen for my race.
April 20, 2013
Shepherdstown, WV
wussies bring home the bling!
In keeping with Nelson family tradition, WUSsies dominated again at our annual This Race is For the Birds! Kerry and Doug joined Aaron, my parents, my brother + girls, and me in what has become our favorite running event of the year.
the looped trail race with multiple distance options
The course loops (4+ and 7+ mile options) go around the grounds of the US Fish and Wildlife Training Center, including a long trail section through the woods, a mowed path through some fields, and a short stretch of road. The highlight is running by the giant bald eagle nest, where after the race we spotted two chicks and a mega momma eagle watching her brood. As Kerry noted, this could become the New Eagle Run.
Fred’s 4+ mile race was successfully thwarted by a pair of determined two-year olds
The race is notably dominated by youngins (out of the top 5 finishers, Aaron and I were the only ones over 25). The guy who won the 7+ mile race was 16, and the kid (you can see him in the middle of the picture below) who won the 4+ mile was 11!
My goal became to beat the two dudes who wore track spikes (far left) [achieved by a mere 5 seconds]
Aaron blasts home to win his age group
Doug also won his age group (Kerry was just robbed by being at the tail end of the age distribution)
can’t let the spike dude get me!
Savannah clearly won the fashion contest
Bob won the hair contest
Poor Seanie spent the weekend at Georgetown Hospital, after fracturing three vertebrae in a plunge into the metro tracks at Woodley Park station during a seizure. In Sean’s honor we did a bug hunt for him at the post-race Lobsterfest V.
Seanie’s race was also successfully thwarted
Back at the house, Kim, Aaron’s parents, Cecile & Bernard, and Keith & Tracey joined us for Lobsterfest V: ‘homemade’ lobsters for all!
LOBSTERFEST V
The next day, Aaron and I joined my high school track coach Selena + family at the horse races in Berryville (where Selena’s family recently relocated). Sitting all day in the sun drinking bloody marys and slurping cocktail shrimp – yeah, I can handle that.
a different scene from the bird run
aaron luvs his ponies!
Aaron took a particular liking to the pony he named Professor Jaunty Socks
