Sunday, April 22, 2012

Tha Race

Hey again, Josh here. I have a lot to talk about, so saddle up partner. Firstly would like to say thank you to my amazing Aunt Diane. I'm posting this badboy using my new 27" iMac computer, which she passed on to me cause' her and Uncle Richard are moving back to Australia. I want to go to Australia one day. Kangeroos are friggen' cool. They are a day ahead of us. They're toilets flush the opposite way. The place is effin' down under man. I am going to be blogging like crazy now. Blogs are hard work, but doing it on this thing is way to sweet!


Enough about how awesome Australia and my new computer is, let's get rolling on the moment you've all been waiting for. "How did Josh fucc up that bad in Boston?". Well sit back and let me humour you on the debacle that unfolded over the course of 33km last Monday. wanna know how I feel about the  Boston Marathon? Pissed. Every April 16th for the rest of my life (Unless we all die for that hokus pokus 2012 bullshit) I am going to start a rally and do something really bad to commemorate the pain I endured on that stupid Boston day. Global warming is a mother-effer. I got a jist of this phenomenon during race day. It seems to me that Global Warming thought it'd be a funny idea to miraculously jump up to 30 degrees on Monday April 16th, when 28,000 psycho's had to run 42 kilometers for the 116th Boston Marathon. Keep Reading.


Like Global Warming, Karma too is a mother-effer. A week before the race, Boston runners of the twitter world were buzzing over the possibility of a heat wave. I retaliated by tweeting "Attention Boston Runners: The only people who should be concerned about the weather is those who plan on finishing on the podium". That was aggressive, and well fucc man, that one came back to bite me in the ass. The good people of the Boston Athletic Association even encouraged runners to back out and defer they're bib number until 2013 because of the heatwave we were all about to face. I didn't want to do that, because that would be pretty pussy of me. My train of thought was this; in the event that we all die at the end of 2012, like Mr. Nostradamus insists, I wouldn't get the chance to run another Boston Marathon. The other thought was on a more serious note. I had been training for 16 weeks, got in the best running shape I've been in, ready to roll out a 2:32 Marathon, and I wasn't slowing down because it was about to be 30 degrees out. I also wasn't expecting shit to go down like it did. Keep reading.


Race Day


A.K.A the day of humiliation and self torture. 6am wakeup (torture number 1). Leg shave, check. Take a dump, check. Eat breaky, check. Put on my gear, check. Pops and I then proceeded down to Boston Commons where hundreds of busses were taking cartels of other insane people over to Hopkinton, Massachusetts (that word is so hard to pronounce) to get to the starting line. By 10am, the heat was already showing its ugly face. I met up with my boy, Luke Shane who is from New York. I met Luke over twitter last year using the #BostonMarathon hash tag. We met up before the race last year as well and then again this year. Luke is a super nice dude. His story is similar to mine, he hasn't been running long and he's constantly getting faster. He was ready to throw down a sub 2:40 Marathon as well and had the same attitude as I did. Fucc the heat, we're invincible. My plan was to roll out a 1:17 half, and pick it up for a 1:15ish second half, purely on the adrenaline from the cheering spectators. I was fit enough to run this pace, but unfortunately I didn't do any training in desert-like conditions. So I rolled out a bunch of 5:50 miles, hit the half in 1:16:36, and shit got difficult from there. I once I hit the half, I knew there was no way in hell of negative splitting the remainder of that bastard. I wasn't in Boston to run slow or have fun. The faster you run, the less fun it is. By mile 2, I was already drenched in sweat. I made sure to hit every damn water station at every damn mile. I was tossing back gatorade and dumping water on my head, only to be dry again by the next mile. At mile 15 I was friggen' dying man. I probably looked like the biggest loser. My singlet was stuck to me, my shoes weighed a million pounds from all the water I poured on myself, I was yelling, swearing, groaning, moaning, grimacing and then came to a complete stop before the start of the hills in Newton. I pulled over to the side of the road, knelt down, and looked pretty pathetic. People were nervous. Huddling around me and shit. I jumped to my feet and started running again. I hit 30k in 1:50 and shit was really beginning to slow down. I made it up heartbreak hill, where I was officially heartbroken and no longer able to drag my ass any further. The heat was crazy man. My quads were shot. I felt like giving a double middle finger salute to the entire town of Newton. 


33k was the end of a long and crazy journey for me. It happened to be right around Boston College. I officially hate Boston College and will cheer for any NCAA team that plays against them in football/basketball/hockey. Screw you Boston College. I knelt down once again and then was taken to a medical tent. I broke down. Yeah I cried, this marathon meant a lot to me. 3 years ago I was a loser. Did shitty in school, was a lazy blob with no ambition, and then I decided to turn things around. The first two marathons were okay, but I wanted to do something inspiring for this one. Yeah there are dudes that run 2:10 and quicker, but they aren't human. I wanted to run 2:30something so bad, and the heat took it from me! Such bullshit. When they shipped my gomer ass back to the finish line, I was walking around with my head down, feeling sorry for myself, you know, all that good shit. I saw my mom and dad and they were pretty happy to see me alive. I feel like I let a ton of people down. Sorry for the scare to anyone tracking me online. After you didn't see my split from 30-35k I'm sure you were worried sick. That was the most painful shit I've ever done. Yeah women push babies out of their vajeens, but this was probably worse. Theirs a quote I like that goes something like this..."To Describe the agony of a marathon to someone who hasn't run it is like trying to describe the colour blue to someone born blind". You can find out a lot about yourself in a race of that length. I found out that I had a lot of balls to pull off what I did, even though the result was hardly anything to be proud of, I know I have a fast one in me.


So what's next? There's a half marathon in London on April 29th that I might jump into. That will be a gametime decision as I haven't run since Boston, been drinking a lot of Gin, and have some pretty sore toes. I want to run it bad tho and get some anger out, LOL. Thanks to everyone that has been supportive of me and takes interest in my running. It really does mean a lot and I promise I bounce back. It probably happened for a reason anyways. Not sure what that reason is yet, but I'll find out soon.

Take care.







1 comment:

  1. What about your amazing mom? You done real good kid! Time will expose all.

    ReplyDelete