Fall in DC-unedited

Nostalgia: TZ/KN and Running

I had a meeting with a Professor yesterday. The topic: my future. The question: what lies next? He told me about his college degree and after working for a few years, that he realized very quickly that he loved geography and wanted to be involved with that for the rest of his life. "You know, work is going to suck no matter how much you love what you're doing at times. That's just the nature of the beast. But at the end of the day, it's gotta be something you're going to look back on with nostalgia."

Kenya was a lot like that. Today, I can only remember the amazing times that I had there. The way the dried up grass would often prick your feet  or the same old food day and day out seem to escape the minds eye and are replaced with moments of ecstasy. Nights when we had guacamole, finishing my first research paper or going to Happy Days for a Tusker after  long day of class fill my mind. There was one time when we were less than 72 hours away from crossing the border to Kenya that I went to the bartender, made a deal of an early happy hour with 1000 shilling shots of Smirnoff (about 80 cents) and agreed to be the bartender. It was probably the most fun I have ever had at a bar, EVER. We left and I remember Moses driving the land cruiser up this 2 km hill to get to our home. The farmed hills had never looked so beautiful as the sun gave her final shimmers before heading into the west. It was almost a godly scene. The pupils of my eyes couldn't close enough to it looked like a place that you could picture heaven. Actually, you know that scene at the end of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, where Gandolph the White rides down the hill and the entire sky looks white and heavenly. Yeah, imagine that. But in a distant land. See, that's what I remember, the good not the bad.

Now, getting back to the point. At times it sucked. It really sucked and all I wanted to do was go home and eat a delicious cheeseburger with a milkshake. Yes, I would fantasize a lot about the Convention Grill's meal that would be awaiting me upon my return, probably too much. In the end, there is nothing more than I loved than waking up every morning, watching the stars at night, being removed from society and learning about who I am without the distractions of a world where my surroundings are concrete structures and not Kilimanjaro. I love the outdoors. There is something about being secluded that is liberating, much like running.

Now fastforward to last night. It's a late Thursday night/ early Friday morning and the craziest game of baseball I have ever witnessed has just finished. I'm walking into Mcdonalds with my stomach dead set on a quarter pounder with cheese and all of the sudden, I see my pledge brother, Brandon Rukin. He's a great athlete and stellar golfer. We talk for awhile and then he asks me the staple question that almost every person I meet now asks me "Why in god's name do you run that far and how do you enjoy it?"

The answer isn't simple.

Running goes back a long long long way. All the way to third grade when we first ran the mile. It was an autumn day and the sky was clear. I was running for the first time on a track that would become the home to all my track workouts. My teacher said go and I went. I just ran. Nothing, I was in the lead by half way through the first lap and it kept on growing. I was better at this than everyone I knew. I could just keep on going. I remember thinking how big the 400 meter loop was. I won the race by minutes.

In fourth grade, we were to play cops and robbers every day at recess. My high powered gas tank made me a permanent cop. I would run around for 20-30 minutes at a time and just chase people. I had so much energy and I took it out on the playground. I was fast and the robbers were scared. Very scared.

My running never really took off in high school. I was injury prone and there were kids who were a lot better than me. I was getting too caught up trying to prove myself in practice when I should have been trying to prove my self during the races. I would do workouts at speeds that were too fast and wouldn't let my muscles recover properly on easy days often turning them into progression runs. As I started to give up hope on myself, so did my confidence. Running had become part of my soul. It's just who I am.

After a fun, yet disastrous freshmen year of college, I saw myself looking at a bit heavier Elliot in the mirror. Something was missing. The fire that I had as a kid had been completely extinguished. Then the kindling sparked. I put on a pair of running shoes and ran, slow, but ran, and didn't stop. For the rest of the summer, I would go to the gym every day and lift complemented by running. It was hard work, but hey, there wasn't much else to do in the Minnesota suburbs.

I'd kept this up for a few years, until I went to East Africa. I met a guy named Will Stafstrom, who may be the most influential running partner I've worked with. He runs for Bowdoin and runs a 26 minute 8k. Fast kid, much faster than me, but every day, he would slow his pace down so that I could run with him. Slowly, my pace started to drop (as in I was getting faster) and that fire that I had as a young kid was rekindled. I was running one day in the middle of one of the intense school days of directed research. About 2 laps into the run, I had this epiphany. Could I run 26 laps? Could I run 26 laps fast? I bet I could. I knew I could. I am going to. Twin Cities Marathon, I'm doing it.

Ok. So now that I've given a good reason as to why I chose to run that far, I still really haven't answered the core question: Why do I run?

Well, I run because I'm pretty good at it for one thing. Not many people in the world are as good at running as I am, and being someone who strives to be good at whatever I  do, running is the sport I excel at most. When I run, I feel free. I am a invincible when I run. Most of the crazy ideas that I have ever thought of and gone with have come during my run. It is here that I decided to go on SFS, it is on a run that I decided to major in Environmental Studies and it was very likely a run where I decided to apply early decision to GW. On my runs, I am free to think about whatever I want and have the time to sort the problems out in my head that truly challenge me. It is on a run that nothing seems impossible. I am immortal when I am on the road. I am liberated. Runs remind me that nothing you want in this world is impossible. That someway, if you really do want something, you can achieve it, and runs allow me to figure out how to achieve it and most of the times, my dreams have become realties. Without running, a part of me would be lost. It is ingrained in my DNA to run. It is where my best thinking comes and my thesis for papers are derived. Without running, I am lost.

October

Well, can't say my life has been to intense this month, well at least after the marathon. For the first two days of post marathon, I was in serious pain. Physically, I could barely walk and going down stairs was a nightmare. Mentally, I was annoyed and exhausted. I decided to do what I do best: research. I went to the library and found the journal of sport psychology. There, I found an article about marathon running.

The article stated that when you reach a certain point in the marathon, you mentally exhaust yourself. That is, your brain releases so many chemicals to keep your body moving, it often leads to exhaustion of the neurons. As a result, for a week or two after the marathon, you become kind of depressed and feel sluggish. Some have tried to compare this to giving birth, but the author was male and I'm not sure if anything can compare to that.

I soon found myself in a doctors office asking for a day or two where I could just rest. My legs were still not feeling great, I felt consistently dehydrated even though I was chugging nalgene after nalgene of water and I was tired. With a few days off and some time to veg out, I finally got the rest I needed to go and have some fun. This of course fell short because a constant injury I had throughout high school decided to creep its way back into my life: ITBS, or Illiotibial Band Syndrome.

The "IT Band" is a long inelastic muscle that stabilizes the femur. It is in the outer part of the thigh and can be caused for a myriad of reasons. My first ITBS came from wearing the wrong kind of running shoes, the second time (senior year of high school) came from weak hip abducters. This time, it came from plain old over working an injury prone muscle. For the past few weeks, I've been buying bags of ice at CVS and filling my bathtub with ice cold water and taking ice baths for 15 minutes. Painful as it sounds, the legs quickly go numb and it can make for a somewhat enjoyable experience. The idea is to constrict blood flow to your legs so that the legs can theoretically flush out waste products such as lactic acid and reduce swelling of overused tissue, in my case, the IT band. In addition, I've been using resistance bands to help strengthen my hip abductor and stretching to make sure the muscle releases all the excess blood from the muscle.

I went for my first run yesterday with minimal pain. Pretty awesome! Today, actually about 15 minutes ago, I got back from a 30 minute run and felt great on the last 2 or so miles.

So, now that I've talked way to much about my ITBS problems, I guess all there is left to say is that life is great. I've got great friends from both NatGeo, school and hell even around the world (shout out to my buddy in Australia Matt Zwiebel, can't wait to see you over winter break). Classes are really interesting and I'm being pushed to do my best in both of them.

Overall, when you look at the grand scheme of things, I need to count my blessings rather than my curses. If you add them up, the blessings win by a marathon. I am fortunate to have been born into this particular life and I plan on living it to the fullest. As Titanic's main character, Jack Dawson, would say "I love not knowing what's going to happen when I wake up in the morning, or who I'm going to meet, where I'm going to wind up...I figure life's a gift and I don't intend on wasting it. You never know what hand your going to get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you. To make each day count"

So with that I say: To make it count

The Marathon Breakdown

I wake up at 4:45 A.M. I slept like a log. I go and make coffee and oatmeal, then try to go to the bathroom. No luck. I take a shower and am feeling pretty rested. I am not that focused on the race and am feeling pretty calm as well.

We leave the house around 6:20 A.M. I sit in the back seat with Afrojack’s Essential Mix playing. We enter the Metrodome, that disgusting hell hold. Ironically, there is a longer line for the men’s bathroom than the womens. At first I was confused, then I got it, the men have one stall, the women have three. HA. Hilarious. I pulled down my warmups and put on Vaseline all over legs, waistband and armpits. At this point, I changed my music to my “Running Pump Up Music” and targeted Blink-182’s “Anthem Pt. 2” to be my final song before heading out to the starting line. I do a lap around the metrodome, do some light stretching, but there really isn’t much warming up you can do for a marathon since the first few miles are supposed to be very very easy if you are not competing to win. Non the less, I was feeling ready. I was starting in Corral 2 and was not allowed to move into corral 1. I was upset but glad because I had a clear view of the path without people getting in my way. (I was essentially in the second wave of runners).

I took off my long underwear and left behind that and my nalgene, one of the 20 we have at home (Parent’s didn’t care that much when they found out thank god).

So the gun goes off and I get passed by about 50 people on the spot. They are booking it, I laugh and tell myself that I will absolutely pass them along the way, just wait till the half. The first mile I was bored, relaxed and feeling pretty good. I caught up to the tail end of the first group pretty quickly. Matt’s mom, whose known me for the better part of my running career, had told me to make sure I don’t get stuck in the middle, to be on the side so I can just tell people on your left and they will move out of the way. I took her advice and was passing the people that would be running much slower than my intended pace without a problem. We made our way out towards Hennepin and I was feeling good. Mile 2 is where Karen Feder said she would be and I started looking around for her, forgetting that my moustache made me almost impossible to recognize. I make my way up the first hill with ease and then take a hard right towards Lake of the Isles. The first water station is there and I quickly learn that I am going to have to bend these paper cups to an angle to ensure that they actually get in my mouth and not all over my jersey. The Powerade and water are extremely important to be drinking during those first few miles since they ensure that you will be hydrated later on. The first one spills all over me, and the second one is no better. I take a water about 100 meters later and realize I need to go to the bathroom. No point in thinking about that, I’m not stopping. We go downhill where a significant number of people pass me. Tempted as I am, I stick to the plan. No worrying about pace until 7.

Lake of the Isles is packed. So much so that I run on the grass for a bit just so I don’t have to be pushing my way up and elbowing other runners. This happens for about 3 minutes and then I pass the 3:30 group around mile 4. Things start to clear up a bit after that. We make our way towards Lake Calhoun and I finally feel like I have a bit of space to let my legs really open up. I avoid the temptation, but take my first gel pack. I am calm around Calhoun and hit 5 and 6 right on pace. Then there is that hill that every person who runs in Minnesota knows about. The hill between Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet. From the start point to now, there has been literally no places without people. This hill is the first time I actually hear silence from the crowd. We head towards Harriet, then make our way by the bandshell and then to unknown territory. At about 6.5 I am with a group and we chat for a little bit. There is a gap of about 10 meters between us and them. It was the first amount of tangible distance I had seen between runners. I start to get excited and my legs are starting to feel good. I pick up the pace.

I pass 7 without even knowing it and hit a group of extremely athletic looking women and a few older, less in shape men. Some of them are panting, some of them aren’t. I’m feeling fine. I remind myself that I need to play this race conservatively so I have energy in the true "race" of the marathon. I tell the crowd to make noise and right at the corner of mile 8, I see Dan and Hillary Feder. They looked psyched and I point right at them. A woman on the street offers me a goo (an extremely intense caffine and electrolyte gel) and I am well on my way to picking up the pace yet again. I tell myself to stay calm until at least 10, but really don’t care that much. I’m feeling fresh and know that I could manage a pace like this for another 16.2 miles, I think. Miles 9 through the half are pretty much a blur. My goal was to catch the 3:20 group by the half then work my way down from there. I catch them right at the nick of time. The halfway point is right there and there is a huge crowd of runners. I am right in the midst of them when I cross the halfway point. I look at my watch 97! Perfect. Right where I needed to be. I pick up my pace again and start picking off people left and right. It’s not really until mile 15 that I really started putting myself into a tempo run mentality and it was about here where my miles were down to 6:55s to 7:10s.

I was cruising. Miles 15-19 were the best of my marathon. I picked off more people there than I could have ever imagined. Strong, built men and elite women were falling like dominos. I remember seeing a few men in front of me who had just looked jacked. I had caught up to these guys. Damn son! I thought in a bit more vulgar way. We hit the Minehaha parkway and mile 19 was right there. That meant that we were done with Minneapolis. St.Paul was on the horizon and the finish was way closer than the start. I had been on the road now for about 2:14 and had a very very strong 19 miles. My coach  told me that it doesn’t feel like a race until after 18. I was beginning to understand. I went over the bridge and put myself on the farther end so I could pass without pushing. Twas easy.

I was at 20. We were in no man’s land. The crowd was thin. I started to ride with a few other guys for a longish, not incredibly steep hill. Some woman around 21 yelled to us “Only 5.2 miles left” “SHUT UP” this guy and I both said both thinking the exact same thing. I don’t care about how far the damn finish is. I care about getting through mile 21, then working my way through 22, 23,24, 25. We make a left and I see that I’m on Summit Ave. Wow. Relax Elliot. You're not done yet. Keep focused and just stay calm. If you run 7:30s you qualify for Boston!!!” Summit starts with a hill, then houses. Oh those houses. I remember how many times I’ve driven down it, but man oh man is it different now. The crowd is enormous. So much cheering. I am no longer Elliot Upin, but 3187. There weren’t that many people by me at this point, probably people staggered out every 100 meters or so. When you have that much room between people, the crowd is literally cheering just for you. Everyone is going “Smooth stride buddy” “Keep it up” “Lovin’ the stache”.

At mile 22 I finally see my Uncle David out of the corner of my eye and point at him. That was the last time I was going to care about the crowd. Now I run. I felt okay during mile 22 but it had been 5 miles since my last GU and realized that I desperately needed something with caffeine. I hit the wall. By 23 the bad thoughts that I refused had forced their way into my head. I knew exactly where I was. I had grown up in Minneapolis. I knew that Summit had to be almost done with and when I finish Summit, I finish the marathon, kind of. Miles 22-25 were the longest miles of my life. I started looking at my watch more over, and was rejecting water. During other water stops on the later miles, I would feel myself get out of breath whenever I took water. I was toasted. I was going to a dead halt at around 25 and then I saw the Cathedral.

The spot where I knew I was going to finish. I had time to BQ. If a 350 meter run was completed in 2 minutes, I qualified. My brain shot adrenaline to my entire body and I felt like I was finally moving again. I was out of breath, tired and only thought of finishing strong. I looked at my watch with 100 meters left. I was at 3:10:20. I was safe. MISSION COMPLETE…almost! I sprinted to the end and stopped my watch. 3:10:46. I qualified by 13 seconds HAHAHA AWESOME!

I walked to a few people and very faintly said. “I’m going to collapse” They put me in a wheel chair and I was extremely disoriented. The only thing I could only utter the sentence “I BQ’d”. In the medical tent, I was given ice for my left shoulder, which was in the most pain. They put me on a patio chair upside down so the blood could rush back to the rest of my body and out of legs. I tried to stand up but needed help getting on my feet. After a few troubling moments, I finally made it up and started to walk. I was going to be fine. I walked around, drank some Powerade and two chocolate milks. Usually after my long runs, I’m starving, but my stomach wasn’t feeling great. I had eaten about 6 of those Power Gels and getting solid food down wouldn’t start for another hour or two when I devoured a Margherita pizza.

Overall, I wish I hadn’t picked up the pace so much from 15-18 and had an extra gel pack that I would have taken around mile 22. This probably could have saved me some pain down the stretch and having more even splits would have allowed me to break the 3:10:00 barrier. It was a success beyond anything I could have anticipated. I did awesome and felt great. I cannot wait for the next one!

Some fun statistics:
I finished in my age group 6 / 106 (94th Percentile)
I finished overall 405 / 8535 (95th Percentile)
I finished in my sex division 347 / 4857 (93rd Percentile)

Race Weekend

I start to think about the race a little bit. Yes, I am competing for a time. I am not running to finish. Finishing isn’t the point for a runner since before puberty. For a runner who at the age of 21, can now say he has been running for over half his life, it is difficult to explain my feelings for the Sunday. You grow up watching runners. You go to the Twin Cities Marathon every years since you can remember and have seen your coaches places in the top 20 on a number of occasions.

The marathon to me, is something very very different than to the general public. It is an 18 mile tempo run followed by an 8.2 mile race. That is how I see it and expect it to be. The lactic acid will not swell my veins until the very final miles and I will be in pain, a lot of it, but nothing compared to that boy. At that point, it will be like any other cross country race, my body will be completely worn to shreds. It will be a mind game. It will require positive thoughts. It will require my favorite songs to be on replay in my mind.  It will require inspirational thoughts from those who I look up to most. It will require to think about everything that makes me angry and take that surge of adrenaline out on the pavement. I will fight, no flight this time. It will require me to think about the people I cherish most in this world, my work friends, my family, my AEPi Brothers, my coaches, teachers, rabbis. I will visualize them cheering me on in spirit. I will do anything I can to ensure that I put one leg in front of the other, and fast. Thoughts like only four miles left will not occur.

Lance Armstrong’s “Pain is only temporary” quote will be in my mind. The Wayzata coach who said, “Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful” will be there. Jamie Kirkpatrick, Matt Gabrielson and Jason Lemkhule’s sideline words of inspiration will up in that crazy brain of mine.

Now onto logistics. I will not speak about my finishing time this weekend. It is only in my mind and yes, I have a finish time that I want, down to the minute. Matt Olson, will be the only person I really speak to about my times, but here’s the game plan: I will do my first two or three miles slow. Very slow. Dead slow, relatively speaking. My pace will slowly fall for the next ten or so miles as my average pace time will not actually be hit until at least the half. At the half, I expect that I will be feeling pretty good, as I usually have on my pace runs. This is when I shift up the gears. Hoping to go through the half a minute or two slower than what I would be doing if I were running even splits, I will up the pace to a controlled tempo. At this point, I will try to control myself until mile 17 or 18. At mile 18 (or that’s what most pros I’ve talked to say), I will throw my parents my watch and I will run. I will race. I will find some guy and try to pick  him off, and like a man climbing a ladder, I will pull myself closer and closer to that beautiful downhill finish. At mile 18, for lack of a better term, shit gets real. This is where my hill runs, tempo runs, strength training and speed work will truly be tested. I have done everything that has been asked of me, and more. My body is well rested and my diet has been strict (except for the few glasses of red wine). Then there is the part that makes me quiver like a child. Those last 4.2 miles. Miles 22-26.2, and yes, that point two will be the hardest of them all. Those are the miles I’ve never run before. These are the miles that will make or break me. And this is where all those nasty thoughts are going to be battling to enter the forefront of my mind. This is where the race no longer becomes a thing of fitness, but a game. A very, very difficult mind game. A mind game that is still unfathomable to a virgin marathoner.

I will finish strong. I refuse to do anything less. My friends and family that are there will be giving me specially prepared fluids and pre cut cliff/power bars on the way. I will burn some 3,300 calories and lose about 2 pounds during this run. Glucose tablets and things of the like will be essential to spike my blood sugar when I absolutely must have it. My entire race depends not only on me, but the success of getting these bags on time. If all the stars align as I assume they will, I will be on top of the world come Sunday afternoon. 

Impala

Three Elephants