Race Report One - The Gu-ing

I sat down this evening to type out my race report in Microsoft Word. I am almost on page 4, single-spaced, and I'm only up to mile 5. So I have decided to post what was one of the most noteworthy parts of the marathon, and I will add a few posts over the next few days to finish up the telling of the marathon. As luck would have it the event occurred at the start of the race, so I may be able to keep things in chronological order.



The Gu-ing

At 6:00 we all managed to be quiet for the National Anthem. Some fireworks went off, everyone cheered, and we started shuffling forward as the corrals in front of us made their way. That point was one of the three times during the day that I almost cried. The enormity of it all hit me, and I was pretty scared about what the next several hours were going to have in store for me. The sound of the chip mat beeping in front of me jolted me back to the moment, I hit the timer start button on my Garmin, and I was off.

Maybe because I was at the back of the field, things seemed to thin out quickly. I was passed by faster runners, and I did some passing of my own. I realized that it was hot. Well, not so hot as it was HUMID. I was sweating profusely, and I had barely done anything.

“Thankfully” something happened to make me forgot about the weather. I was running along, thinking about how decent mile one was going. Then I felt something cold and wet hit my hand and my shirt. I thought “Oh, some idiot just dumped some water out and I got hit with some. Oh well, it’s pretty hot right now, so it’s not a big deal.” A second later I discovered that my hand was sticky. Apparently, I was covered in Gu. Yes, I was covered in energy gel. It may have been straight-up Elmer’s Wood Glue, as sticky as it was. Or maybe the glue that NASA uses to attach those heat resistant tiles on the bottom of the shuttle. I can only guess that someone had dropped a Gu packet, then someone else stepped on it, and I was in the line of gross, sticky fire.

My right hand was coated in Gu. It was all over my race number and the front of my shirt. My shorts were plastered to my legs. It was dribbling down my leg. For brevity’s sake, I’ll kind of skip over everything that went through my mind at that point, but I will say that rage is an excellent emotion to carry one through the first 10 miles of a marathon.

We were headed into Epcot a few minutes later, so I stopped at EVERY bathroom that we passed in an effort to wash the Gu off. Gu doesn’t wash off. Scrub all you want with paper towels and commercial grade hand wash – you’ll still have a sticky residue. I was having chafing issues 1.5 miles in, thanks to the Gu incident.

I eventually got the Gu situation into something I could tolerate. I did try to offset the leg-chafing with some Vaseline from the aid station. So I was sticky AND covered in Vaseline. I was a red-hot mess.