"The marathon can humble you."

That's a quote from Bill Rodgers, the great American distance runner from the seventies. I saw it on a T-shirt in one of his running stores in Boston a couple of years ago. This is from a man that won the Boston Marathon and New York Marathon four times each between 1975 and 1979.
I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post a race report from the Dublin Marathon. To be honest, I was frustrated and disappointed with my result and didn't want to think about it too much. I finished in 4:17, which was over 30 minutes slower than my goal of 3:46.
With this post, I hope to close the chapter on the Dublin Marathon and work toward improving my time and setting a personal best. There was a quote from Herbert Hainer, the CEO of the adidas Group in one of our corporate newsletters. He says:
"Sport, which is our love and business, teaches us that greatness must be earned. World-class athletes will tell you that success is not achieved through easy victories, but rather through failure and frustration – only, of course, if you learn and change."
I had done the training and preparation including all the little things in the days leading up to the race. My 1:49 at the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon a month before the race gave me confidence going into Dublin.
The first half of the race I felt great and my split at the 13.1 mile halfway point was 1:53, which was within two minutes of where I wanted to be. Michelle had met me at mile 11 and I tested my blood sugar at that point. My reading was 8.0 mmol/L, which is high enough that I felt I wasn't risking a hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) reaction, but not so high that it would make me dehydrated and affect my performance. Michelle gave me a kiss and a bottle of Gatorade and six glucose tablets to take with me for the second half of the race.
If you take a look at my splits, you’ll see that I started to run out of gas around mile 15. Between miles 17 and 24 I was walking/jogging most of the time. My lungs were fine and I didn’t have any pain in my legs I just felt like I didn’t have any energy in me.

At the time, I didn’t know if I was low of if my blood sugar was high. It was about an hour since I tested at mile 11 and I had drunk about half a bottle of Gatorade (about 16 g of carbohydrates) plus about 30 g of carb’s from the glucose tablets. I couldn’t be sure because foolishly I hadn’t brought a blood glucose meter with me.
Looking back, I realize that I must have been low. I was incredibly hungry and just wanted to eat and eat and eat until I was sick. Other diabetics will understand this feeling--it’s common for me when I am experiencing a low blood sugar. Someone was handing out Hallowe’en-size Mars bars around mile 20 and I grabbed and ate as many of them as I could. Since the marathon, I’ve had experiences where my blood sugar has dropped dramatically during exercise. Recently, in less than half an hour on an exercise bike, my blood sugar dropped from 7.3 mmol/L to 2.9 mmol/L and I had to stop and take a PowerGel. I experienced the same feeling of running out of gas, which is what prompted me to check my blood sugar.
It was humbling being passed by so many people in the second half of the race but I was happy when I finished. I definitely learned a lot from my first marathon experience as a diabetic and I will use that experience in future training and races.

My next challenge will be the BMO Vancouver Marathon on May 6th. I have a comp entry thanks to the good people at adidas and I have enough air miles to cover my flight. I’m looking forward to catching up with my friends on the west coast.
In addition to my training for Vancouver, I’ve been taking spinning classes and Pilates. I’m hoping to buy a bike at the Toronto Bike Show in March and then try my hand at a few triathlons this summer.
I haven’t talked about it in this post but with your support, we raised about $7,500 for the Canadian Diabetes Association and I’m grateful to everyone that supported me.