Report: The 38th Annual Hospital Hill Run (Half Marathon)

On June 4, 2011, I ran in and completed the half marathon (13.1-mile) course of the 38th Annual Hospital Hill Run (HHR) while totally barefoot. If this race report was made up of only that sentence it would sound kind of impressive but only tell a tiny part of the story. The HHR was a beast of a race that I went into somewhat unprepared and came out of well educated.

Training

Ever since I registered for the race in late 2010 I had the finish line in sight. I had run distances as long as a 10K (6.2 miles) up to then, but the half marathon distance was one I felt that needed to be tackled on my way to my "bucket list" item of completing a full marathon in my lifetime. Though I'd heard and read that HHR is one of the tougher halves in the whole U.S., I decided I was up for the challenge. All I had to do was train smart so as not to get hurt and consistently look toward the prize of crossing that finish line.

Everything was going well with my training until I got a flare-up of tendinitis in my right big toe a few weeks out from HHR. I can only speculate why it happened, but I figure that my form and overdoing it contributed to the problem. It made it somewhat painful to run on but not to the point that I felt I was in any danger. Still, I consulted with my running friends on dailymile and they recommended that I rest it as much as possible. I took their advice -- sort of. I cut back on my running a lot but still worked on getting the long runs in on the weekends. It was only when, lifting my toe upward, I could feel the friction of my soft tissues grinding against each other because of the inflammation that I finally backed off significantly and ramped up my intake of anti-inflammatories. With a week or two left until the race, my toe was back to normal. That said, it ended up that the longest run I'd had prior to the half marathon was an 8.77-mile run two weeks prior. I wondered if that was quite enough.

The Start of the Race

On the morning of the run I had a bowl of Chocolate Cheerios, a banana nut Gowalla bar and a Gatorade Prime drink. I washed it all down with a good helping of water -- or what I thought was. More on that later.

I left the house early in order to arrive and have plenty of time before the 7 a.m. gun. I hadn't even left the parking garage when I heard my first comment about my bare feet. "So are you doing this barefoot?" I replied in the affirmative. "Okay!," the man said. I got to the race area, used a porta-john, donned my fuel belt full of mango-flavored Gatorade (yum!), checked my bag and started warming up with dynamic stretching.

After chatting with some other racers -- including a few familiar faces -- lined up and got ready to race with the huge mass of bodies in the starting chute. I figured I'd finish in about 2 hours, 40 minutes, so I lined up near that pace marker. We were all warm. Not only was there a lot of body heat with us all crammed in shoulder to shoulder, but the temperature at the start of the race was already 78 degrees Fahrenheit. God help us all.

I started out the race at what I thought was a "slow" pace. I'd heard over and over that you don't want to start a race too fast, so I was trying not to. My goal was to average about 12:00 to 12:30-minute miles over the course of the 13.1 miles. About a 1/4 mile in I looked at my Garmin Forerunner 305 and saw that I was running a 10:48 mile! Holy crap! I don't hardly feel like I'm moving at all and I'm running at 10:48? Oh boy. I eased up even more and managed a more manageable pace.

Another piece of advice I'd heard was to not blow through the early aid stations. Stop and hydrate because you'll need it later on. I heeded the advice and took Gatorade and water. "I'll save my personal stash for later," I thought. The miles began to add up and I hydrated on what I thought was a good schedule.

The Walking Begins

Although my goal was to actually run the entire race, I found myself needing to take a walking break at about 5.2 miles in. This was on a hill next to the UMKC campus that raised 132 feet in 0.6 miles. Once to the top I ran for more than another mile.

My wife's picture of me
at the 7-mile mark.

I didn't think that my wife and kids were going to make it out to the race to cheer me on. Our church was holding a Father's Day brunch (two weeks early) that morning and my father-in-law really wanted for my family to be there. Our son also really wanted to see grandpa. So the plan was that my wife and kids would go to that, because the logistics of getting them out to the race and then to the brunch was going to be too difficult. Even so, my wife surprised me by bringing the kids out to cheer me on at about the 7-mile mark. That was a nice surprise and gave me a bit of a mental boost.

I also got to spend some time talking to a fellow runner, Greg Vaughn. Greg's known for carrying an American flag with him on his runs. It's to raise awareness for all the emergency responders who serve our country each and every day. I'd chatted with him at a few previous events, so we knew each other somewhat. Chatting with him helped make some of the walking more tolerable.

Just after the 8-mile marker I noticed that I had some blistering starting on my right big toe. For whatever reason, my gait when barefoot makes that exact spot prone to blistering on my longer runs. I ended up having to put some athletic tape on the pad of the toe to help keep it from getting any worse. It's a strategy that has worked well in the past and also worked well at the HHR. I really need to take a look at what's causing the blistering in the first place, though.

The run/walk intervals continued for a while and became a little more frequent each time. I was hot, I was tired because I'd pushed my early pace a little too much, and I now know that my hydration was messed up.

The Wheels Fall Off

Disappointment started to set in as I realized that the race I wanted to run had fallen out of reach. Not only was I not running the whole race, but the pace groups for 2:40 and 2:45 had passed me. What's more, I noticed that my hands were starting to swell up some. My wedding ring fits me well, so when my fingers swell to the point that I can't take it off then I know there's an issue.

By mile 10, I didn't want
to finish, even if I knew
that I was going to.

I was approaching the Country Club Plaza and the dreaded "Broadway Hill" at the 10-mile marker when I began really feeling like I didn't want to be out there anymore. I was going to finish, but I didn't want to. I was hot. I was tired. My hands were swollen. My stomach had a knot in it and I just wasn't enjoying it anymore. I had been out there for just more than two hours and had managed a 12:52/mi. pace. I had gone a mile longer than I'd ever gone before and I wished I could just quit. But I didn't.

For the next half an hour and almost two miles, I walked. I trudged up the nearly 150 feet of the Broadway hill's incline. At some point along the way I met up with Greg again. I told him about my fingers and he told me that if we were running an ultra the medics would pull me out. Essentially, I'd messed up my hydration by drinking too much Gatorade and not enough water, and he told me that I needed to lay off the Gatorade and just drink water from then on. Drink only water until I could pee again. So I did.

What was interesting was that I never felt lightheaded or stopped sweating. I know that those are tell-tale signs of dehydration, but they never showed up. It seems to me that I was hydrated well enough but just had too much sodium in my system, a condition called hypernatremia. What's interesting is that runners often suffer from the opposite effect of not having enough sodium in their system, hyponatremia. By trying to hydrate well, I overdid it to some extent. I never found the right "cocktail" mixture of water to salt intake.

The Finish Line

The finish line! Greg was
right behind me carrying
his American flag.

Greg and I walked the last hill to the 12.4-mile mark and it was all downhill from there. We went for it. We ran the rest of the way in. After a grueling three miles of personal disappointment, I finished strong. In that last 3/4 of a mile I ran an 11:14/mi. pace...and it felt good to finally cross that finish line. It may have taken me three hours and two minutes, but I FINISHED!

After I'd been given my bottle of water and medal I just about broke down in tears. That was certainly the roughest race I'd ever run. Certainly, it was the longest, but mentally it drained me. Looking back it'd be easy to say that should have pushed myself more. I could have found ways to be more motivated and run more of the areas I walked. Maybe so, but in the moment I felt I was doing well just walking, walking, walking toward that finish line. When I got tired of being out there at the 10-mile marker I could have just thrown in the towel, but I didn't.

All things considered, I'm proud of myself and I learned a lot. I set a goal when it was still cold out to run this race on a warm June morning. I persevered and fulfilled my goal to do the whole race barefoot. I got the same medal that the first-place finisher did. And next time I run Hospital Hill -- or any half marathon -- again, I'll know better about how to pace myself, hydrate properly and push beyond my perceived limits. I'll also have a pretty good chance of setting a new personal record!