Marathon 2/40: Cambodia After making the decision to run 40 marathons in 40 countries in 4 years, finishing the month of my 40th birthday, and sharing this goal publically, I started planning my race schedule for the rest of 2019. I also had some sleepless nights filled with anxiety, terrified about this big goal and thinking about everything that could go wrong to stop me from achieving it. That fear slowly faded when I started adding to my weekly running volume and getting back into shape. (I ran Tokyo in March 2019, under-trained due to injury and I had several low volume months to snap out of it.) I realized that my easy pace now naturally between 7:50 – 9 min mile depending on length of run, conditions, and how I am generally feeling. I decided that since I’m truly not going to be racing these marathons, I could absolutely run most of them within this pace range with 30-45 miles of running each week and recover quickly because I wouldn’t be pushing. After two months of 30-45 miles per week with a few tempos and some speed work, Erik and I flew to Siam Reap, Cambodia for me to run 2/40: Khmer Empire Marathon on Sunday Aug 4 2019. Neither of us had been to Cambodia so it added a country to the count (51 for me!) and we made a long weekend out of it. First thing to note about flying around Asia when you live there already: it’s big. I definitely underestimated how much travel would be involved to get to these places. Sure if you are already in SE Asia and want to jump around, that is relatively quick and inexpensive. However, Japan is on the northeast edge of Asia. So flying to Cambodia looked like this: Fly out of NRT (far airport outside of Tokyo) at 8:40 PM Thursday. Land in Bangkok at 2 AM. Walk through, in hindsight, a shady neighborhood to check-in at a hostel to get ~6 hours of sleep on the layover. Walk back to airport to catch flight to Siam Reap. Land in Siam Reap late morning. Now, the tradeoff is that this round-trip flight (similarly long but not redeye on the way home), was only $300. This is how I manage to afford all the travel and races: I accept the discomfort of long flights with layovers on budget airlines and use the time while traveling to get work done / read so it is not unproductive. We get to our tiny resort – after the driver sent from the hotel swings into the “expo” (more aptly a hotel lobby with a couple tables of Gu for sale) so I can snag my bib – and it’s lush and tropical and I’m again in awe how far the dollar takes you in SE Asia. For $75 per night, we got a suite with a massage included and daily breakfast. It also included local tuk-tuk rides but was in a great location that allowed us to walk around most of the town. It was our first time back in the region since we were broke grad students and we were living large! I went to the gym and got a massage. Friday night we wandered around town grabbing drinks and bites at different places. On Saturday, Erik joined me on my 5km shakeout run and I confirmed that, while slightly less stifling than the Tokyo summer humidity, it was not going to be pleasant to run a marathon in the conditions. I was also conscious of how much more comfortable I was with running through areas of chaos. Limited sidewalks, which meant running in the traffic, uneven surfaces, and dirt – I just flowed with it. I do not think this is something I could have done before traveling as much as I have. We took a tuk-tuk out to the office to grab passes that allowed us into Angkor Wat, where the race started/finished and weaved through. We had an early dinner at a little place where you could build your own pasta bowl – something I did not expect to find in Cambodia – which provided me a very similar pre-marathon dinner to all my others. Race morning started early. We were up at 3AM, handed the breakfast from the hotel all packaged up to go at 3:30 as we got into our tuk-tuk and at the start line at 4AM. I cursed myself for not bringing my own toilet paper because there was none in the porta-potty, but I did have wipes. They turned out to be the ones that tingle and, very much burn when exposed to other, more private areas; so that was an interesting 5 minutes but definitely woke me up. There was a lot of fire and ceremony at the start and the gun went off at 4:30AM. The Race
I knew I could not run this fast. It was not the goal and the humidity simply would not allow it. However, I am still learning what “not fast” means in humidity. As mentioned, my easy pace ranges between 7:50-9mm. So I figured that in an actual race environment, I would start running an 8mm and stay steady. I did that for exactly 1 mile. Mile 2 was 7:39, then 7:48 and 7:51. By mile 5, I was holding a steady 7:50 pace. The course brought us back into Siam Reap and then curved north again to start the path through all the temples. By mile 11 it was light out and it, thankfully, was cloud covered with even a little drizzle. I saw Erik before mile 12 (we rented the tuk-tuk for the day to drive him around the course!) and swapped out my water bottles. I was still feeling okay. Mile 14 was my first mile over 8 min pace and I never got back under 8 for the rest of the race. By the time I hit mile 18 I realized a couple things 1) I had stopped sweating, 2) I had gotten in less than 200 calories since the race started and 3) I had slowed down without knowing it. All of this scared me and I immediately checked in with my body and felt terrible. Humidity hits me hard as a person who sweats salty and aggressively. This was now unsafe. So I stopped running. And I gave up the podium. I’d been trending sub 3:30 and cruising in second place (and, had I held it, first (!) as that woman also blew up!) but knew based on the turn-around point that there were a couple women only a few minutes back. I then ran/walked the last 8 miles, coming in 4th place with a 3:47 (8:40mm). It took me roughly 2:22 (7:53mm) to run 18 miles and 1:25 (10:25mm) to run those last 8. It was humbling and yet made me really, really happy. This journey to 40 marathons in 4 years is not about the podium. That is actually one of the reasons why I made this goal. I wanted to run for more than the time. For more than that one day that needs to come together perfectly or it leaves you disappointed. I want to start my 40th year of life healthy – mentally and physically. Therefore, while it is a journey that is very much about crossing 40 finish lines, it is about experiencing all the bits in between reaching them that I am chasing. This time, it was about a long weekend with my husband, eating good food, relaxing in a beautiful place new, and weaving through old temples.
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AuthorA Midwest girl gone global. I choose happiness everyday: I run, eat well, travel, and love completely. Archives
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