2022: the first marathon, for a fiftieth

This story starts in December of 2021, right around my 49th birthday. The 49th running of the Honolulu Marathon was happening that Sunday, not far from where we live, and we were out for a walk that morning watching the runners go by. It was a beautiful Sunday morning. Michelle said, "Hey, we should do this next year for your 50th birthday." She said it a bit tongue in cheek. Once I said yes and called her bluff, it became real for both of us, and we committed to it 100 percent.

Mind you, we had never run more than 8.1 miles at one time. We'd done the Great Aloha Run on occasion, every other year or so, and a 5K or a 10K here and there, and we didn't really enjoy any of them. Both of us did a lot of running in the Army and, to be honest, hated it. I was a fast runner in my early years in the Army, and when people asked why, I told them: why would you want to run longer than you have to? The faster I ran, the sooner I was done with it.

But in that moment of weakness, a marathon a year away didn't seem like anything to be too concerned about, so I said yes. Let's check it off the bucket list and do the marathon for my 50th. We made an agreement with each other that we'd sign up, and a couple of days later, when registration opened for locals (the kama'aina signup), we did. Now it was on a calendar, and now it was serious.

The plan was one and done

We had friends who'd done the marathon before, and they were wrecked for a week or two afterward. We didn't want that. We decided we were going to train enough to actually run the Honolulu Marathon, not walk it, and have a good experience, and then be one and done. That was the plan going in.

In January we started running a little here and there, 1.5 miles one day and 2 the next, and we built walking into the routine to break up the running: walk Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for 45 minutes to an hour, run the other four days. We'd mix it up, some hills, fast one day and slow the next, and we really didn't have any idea what we were doing. We just did it, and as the weeks went on it got better and easier and the distances went up.

A typical week that March looked like this. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday started with a CrossFit workout at 5:30 a.m., which we'd been doing for several years, and then a walk of about three miles or an hour. Tuesday and Thursday were runs of 3 or 4 miles. Saturday was maybe 5 miles and Sunday was 6 or 7, and that was the whole volume at that point. CrossFit is worth a word here, because those 15- to 30-minute workouts two or three days a week hadn't been enough to keep us in shape at our age, and I think that's part of why we were looking for something more.

Around Michelle's birthday in April we took a golf vacation to Florida, and for the first time ever we packed running shoes. We ran twice in ten days, which doesn't sound like much unless you know that I would never, ever have gone for a run on vacation before that. There's a story from that trip. We'd played a course one day where the restrooms had a keypad, and the next day we were running through the neighborhood next to it when Michelle really needed a bathroom. The neighborhood was under construction and the only options were porta-potties, which she wasn't going to use, so we ran to the golf course restroom, and because I've always been good with numbers I still had the code from the day before. We both still remember it. I hope they've changed it.

The moment we knew

Somewhere in that spring there was a switch. I don't know if it's the runner's high or what it is, but we'd always hated running, and then there was a point where instead of dreading going out for a run, we dreaded missing one. That's when we knew we were hooked. Running still sucks. It's hard and it's painful. But there's something to it that kept us coming back, and something that felt terrible about skipping it. It's hard to explain. When you run until you're exhausted, the feeling afterward is fantastic, and as bad as the running is, that reward makes it all worthwhile.

The half, and the summer

Our first half marathon was the Hibiscus in May. It runs through part of the Honolulu Marathon course, and its last six miles are the marathon's last six miles, so it was a good preview of what we were getting into. Our training runs had only gone to 7, 8, and 8.5 miles, maybe 9 at most, and we ran the half together and came in right around two and a half hours, which isn't too shabby for a first one. A couple hundred runners on a beautiful Sunday morning. It was a really enjoyable day.

Over the summer we worked in a little cycling and swimming to break up the running and give our joints a rest, and at the end of July we did the Na Wahine sprint triathlon, a 500-meter swim, a 12-mile bike, and a 5K, in the first year the race was open to men. It was short and it was a lot of fun, and we kept the swim and the bike in the weekly rotation from then on for the variety.

Twenty weeks out

Then we bought a book, Andrew Kastor's "Running Your First Marathon: The Complete 20-Week Marathon Training Plan," and when we were twenty weeks out in July we started following it for the rest of the year. The plan had races built into it, and here that meant the BioAstin Marathon Readiness Series:

• a 15K the first week of August
• a 20K the first week of September
• a 25K in late September
• a 30K the third week of October
• a half marathon in November

Five races, each one longer than the last, to get you ready for the marathon in December. The farthest we ran leading up to it was the 30K, 18.6 miles, and that one was a real milestone for us. It runs on most of the actual marathon course, so it was a preview of what December would look and feel like on a slightly smaller scale, and we were both in excellent shape by then after following the plan from the book. Feeling good through the whole 30K gave us the confidence we needed for the marathon six weeks later. By the end of November the training was pretty much done and it was time to taper.

December 11

The marathon was three days after my 50th birthday, and my parents flew out from South Carolina to celebrate the birthday and watch us run our first one. We got up early and caught the shuttle down to Magic Island at Ala Moana Beach Park, where the marathon gathers, and there were something like 25,000 people in the street ready to go, with maybe 15,000 of them running the 10K Start to Park and 10,000 running the marathon, all starting together. The Honolulu Marathon starts at 5 a.m. because once the sun is up it gets hot, even in December.

It turned out to be a beautiful day with good conditions, and we each ran our own race. My goal was under 4:30 and I came in at 4:22. Michelle's goal was under 6:00 and she came in at 5:42. We both ran the entire thing, grabbed a couple of malasadas at the finish, and enjoyed the day.

What it cost, and what we learned

It cost a whole year of training. We learned a lot about ourselves that year. We learned that running can be a way of life, that the runner's high is real, and that running does feel good once you've done it long enough for your body to switch that on.

We learned you can't run past nine miles on keto, at least we couldn't. We'd been doing keto for about three and a half years, and in the summer of 2022, when the mileage went up, we found out you need carbs. Nothing crazy: more fruit, potatoes more often, rice now and then, enough to have the energy the runs needed. We also learned that once the runs get long you have to eat while you run. The first thing we bought to eat on a run was GU gels, salted caramel, at the end of June, and we trained on those and used them all the way through the marathon. We stuck with them until the summer of 2023, when we added Skratch Labs energy chews and trained on both through the 2023 marathon. Nutrition is a whole rabbit hole we went down that summer and are still going down, because for endurance training it's everything. That one got its own page.

After the marathon came the letdown. We'd done all these races and all these events and then the marathon, and we were supposed to be one and done, and we sat there thinking, now what? We needed something on the calendar. So over Christmas, two weeks after the marathon, we decided to do it again in 2023 and keep training. Then I took it one step further and said, "Hey Chelle, why don't we sign up for the Hawaii 70.3 over on the Big Island?" She thought I was crazy. "No way, crazy man. You sign up for that thing yourself." So I did, and I talked a couple of my crazy friends into signing up too.

That pretty much closes out 2022.