There was no miracle that day. I continued to struggle and tried to run as much as I could. But whenever there was a slight incline, I had to stop to walk. I completed the 22nd mile at a pathetic pace of 12:30. I gave up any hope of achieving my goal time. Mentally I broke down completely. I did not care about my time anymore. I just wanted to finish the race and stop my agony. I alternated between running and walking and covered the next few miles at no faster than 12:00 pace.

Finally it came mile 25 mark. The early drizzling now turned to pouring rain. I started to worry about my wife and kids. I hoped they would get inside a building by now instead of waiting to see me cross the finish line. I wasn’t sure whether it was the slight downhill terrain from this point on, or the fact that I knew the end is near, or effect of roaring cheers from thousands of spectators along the road, or the combination of all, but I seemed to be able to run again. I managed to run the rest of way in 11:30, at a tad over 9:00 pace.

I crossed the finish line at 4:11:46 (4:11:01 chip time, 2002/4349 overall, 1405/2335 male, 268/416 age group). A finisher’s medal was hung on my neck. It was very hard to describe my feeling. I was proud that I completed a marathon and was relieved that the pain and agony was over. But at the same time, there was much stronger feeling of disappointment. Undoubtedly, I failed. While it was true that I wasn’t too happy about not being able to make my sub 4-hour goal, my main disappointment came from the fact that I gave up mentally at mile 22. My poor talent, my extremely limited running experience might have kept me from attaining my goal. That was acceptable and there was nothing I could do about it during the race. But mental collapse was not. Even when I realized that my initial goal of sub 4-hour finish was out of reach, I still could have made a secondary goal of 4:05 or 4:10 and tried hard to make it. But I did not. I just accepted the defeat without attempting any serious fight. Was I severely tired or fatigued? Of course I was. But did I do my best and give it all I had? Definitely not. I knew this because if someone had stuck a gun at the back of my head during the last several miles, I would probably still not have run any faster but I would surely have run a bit more and walked a bit less. One becomes stronger not by winning easy battles but by losing hard-fought ones. I lost my battle alright, but it wasn’t a hard-fought one.

I found my wife and kids near the entrance to the Plaza of Nations building. Luckily none of them got really wet. I then realized that my kids (ages 4 and 2) were probably too little to stand outside in bad weather for hours. I would not take them to watch me running marathon for another year or two. For them, watching a 5k or 10k race during summer would be ideal.

Disappointed by my performance at Vancouver, the first thing I did after I got home was filling out the race application and signing up for Seattle Marathon. I wanted to have another chance to achieve my goal. But more importantly, I wanted to redeem myself and prove to myself (not to anyone else) that I was mentally as tough as I thought I was. How could a mountaineer not be mentally tough?

I cut back my running mileage but increased the intensity during the summer months. I started hill repeats and interval training. Seattle Marathon race course is even hillier than the Vancouver course. And the location of the big hills doesn’t help either. They are between mile 20 and mile 23. To have a successful race at Seattle Marathon, hill training is a must. Every other weekend, I had to take time off running to go hiking, in preparation for my Mount Rainier climbing. I only managed to do three hill repeats and eight interval sessions during the entire summer, but later it appeared that even this little amount of relatively high intensity training helped my running tremendously.

At the end of July, I successfully summited Mount Rainier with a friend of mine. After the climbing trip, my second marathon training started in earnest. I followed Hal Higdon’s Intermediate I training program for my first marathon. Naturally, I wanted a more challenging program this time. I compared half a dozen training programs available on the internet and settled for Hal Higdon’s Intermediate II training program. First of all, I followed his Intermediate I program before, while admittedly it was a bit light compared with other programs, I went through the program injury-free. For someone like me who had only been running for a year before undertaking the marathon training, coming out of the program injury-free and yet still being able to complete the marathon in just over 4 hours isn’t something to be taken for granted. It speaks volume about the quality of the program and Hal Higdon’s training philosophy (not about me, of course). Second, most other intermediate training programs include both weekly speed workout and long runs of more than 20 miles. While they are probably suitable to more experienced runners, they sound like a perfect recipe to get myself injured. Hal Higdon’s Intermediate II program has no speed workout and no long runs of more than 20 miles. That seemed perfect for me.

(to be continued)