The battle with the food belt

I am finally getting around again to writing about running, after a haphazard week or so. There was my apartment move to deal with - and then, the south asia earthquake - and we are all still coming to grips with the scale of the tragedy. Some local organizations that Im involved with are starting to work toward supporting relief efforts (fundraisers are being planned, etc) so I expect some of my time in the next few weeks to be occupied with that.

Regardless, my marathon training is still on - though I'd stopped writing about running for a little bit, running still has been going strong. Today I wanted to write about one of my recent runs, including an unusual struggle and some unexpected help that carried me through...

Our long run two sundays ago was an 18-miler. For me, and for other novice marathoners in the group, this would be the longest we would have ever run. I was pretty excited. Also, I had learnt my lessons from our 16 mile run two weekends ago - when I had just carried water for the entire run and ended up feeling wiped out. I was sporting a brand new, fancy water/food belt - a thing that you wear around your waist that contains a slot to hold your water bottle, plus pockets to store away some energy bar or sports gel. I was feeling good, feeling very prepared with my food belt, gel packets and gatorade mixed-water. This was going to be a good run.

I started running with Ted, slightly behind the rest of the group. Ted's a mid-thirties guy, he is a mathematician, as well as a pastor (quite a combination). He's a pretty good and fast runner, but this would be his first marathon too, and so he's doing some of the really long runs with the slow group, i.e., our group. He's quite a chatty guy and it didn't take long for us to start having a few laughs. All was well until half a mile - when things started sloshing around me. I realized that my food belt had loosened from its resting place around my waist and was now going up and down against my tummy! like a hula hoop. Of course, it had never occured to me to try the thing out beforehand. I had to stop. Ted, nice guy that he was, also stopped, and waited till I adjusted. I thought I had it nailed this time. We resumed running and had just started conversation again when the belt became loose one more time. Hmm - "maybe i had it on too tight. lets try loosening it a bit, and then it won't feel the pressure" - didn't work. "Maybe I should wear it lower." Not quite. "How about higher?". Nope. With each of these stops I became increasingly annoyed. I suggested to Ted that he should leave me to my plight and get on with it, that I'd join him and the group later. But he insisted that it was OK, he was determined to run with me no matter what. We got into a pattern - each time I had to stop, he would try and help me out with the belt. And then when we ran, he'd patiently engage me in conversation, trying to get my mind off the fact that I was wearing this awkward belt. By now we couldn't see the rest of the group ahead of us anymore - they were a few minutes ahead. Thankfully however, Three miles into the run, things improved considerably - I found a semi-decent neutral position for the belt and it held there for a little while. A mile later it started sloshing again, and I decided that I would just ignore it. At 5 miles I took the water bottle out of the belt and decided to carry it in my hand - and the sloshing reduced considerably. At mile ten, when we were back at my car (we were doing a 10 mile loop followed by an 8 mile loop to get our 18 miles) I dumped the contraption into my car, and the rest of the run was a breeze. In the end, 18 miles was accomplished without feeling too bad, and a new milestone was reached!

Now that I've had time to reflect on the run, I realize what a difference it made to have Ted along in those early stages of the run. If he'd left me and run with the rest of the pack right from the start, I'd probably have imploded on myself, that's how frustrated I was feeling. What's even more remarkable is the fact that he kept stopping whenever I stopped. To appreciate that, you have to know that one of the things runners HATE most is stopping intermittently when they don't want to. It upsets their rythm, screws up their timing, makes them stiff, etc. etc. If I were in his position, I'd probably have taken off and joined the rest of the pack! And yet, my day was salvaged only because he hung around with me for those first painful 30 minutes. Here's to you, Ted. I owe you one.

[ Check out the features of the food belt in the image. Quite fancy, don't you think? Now if only there was a way to actually wear it....]

And what happened to the brand new food belt, you may ask? well - it has figured out it needs more training before it can join me on long runs. So its going to take it easy for a while. Meanwhile, Im reverting to tried and true stuff - my old bottle strap to carry in my hand, plus shorts with pockets to keep energy bars and keys and what not (wow, what a concept). Who needs new technology?