The Knoxville Covenant Health Half Marathon

I've spent two years trying to participate in the Knoxville half marathon, which I finished on Sunday.



I first became aware of this race in March 2016, when I was walking to Sunday brunch with my friends and crossed the race course a few times. During one of those crossings, I stopped to talk to a volunteer who explained that the race goes through Knoxville and finishes on the 50 yard line at Neyland Stadium. Living in Knoxville, that's kind of a big deal. At this point, I'd already finished the Great Smoky Mountains half marathon and the Asheville half marathon at the Biltmore, so the idea of doing another wasn't terrifying, and in August of 2017, right before I did the GSM half again, I registered for the Knoxville Covenant Health Half Marathon for Spring 2017.

Then I didn't participate in the race.

The month before the race, I did the Asheville half again, and not only did I come in last place but I also picked up a terrible cold that ended up settling into my chest and hung around for a month. I was determined to still do the Knoxville half, and took so much cold medicine that I am probably on a list somewhere as a possible meth cooker, but the week of the race I was still coughing and my average mileage time was a half hour a mile, so I had to painfully admit that I could not do this race. Since I didn't cancel until the week of, I lost my registration fee, and I was too ashamed to even go pick up my race shirt. I was so mad and disappointed in myself for getting sick and for not going to see a doctor to receive actual treatment rather than dosing myself with Mucinex and orange juice for a month, and I resolved that this year, it was going to happen.

And it did.

After finally defeating the GSM half this fall (I mean it; I'm not doing that one again because the course has physically injured me two years in a row) I decided not to do the Asheville half again. I got a flu shot this year, which I usually never do. I physically avoided any friend who said they had a cold. My health was not going to be an issue this year, even if I had to sequester myself and live in a Lysol-scented bubble. I did not get a cold.

But damn, this race was a bit of a struggle.

At first, I wasn't intimidated by the course, because a lot of it takes place on streets and greenways that I normally walk on the weekends. Sure, I don't normally add them together in this particular combination, but I've walked a lot of the course at various times and for various differences, and wasn't too afraid. I even talked to people who had done it, and they all assured me that there were only a couple of terrible hills, and long stretches that were "mostly flat". I even agreed, because I pictured them in my head and thought things like, "Yes, Forest is mostly flat" without thinking things like, "It's mostly flat because the entire street is just one long rise in elevation". I got a little bit more worried when I looked at the elevation chart. There is never a spot where this course is flat. There are spots that are flat-ish, in that they are flatter than other parts, but no parts are actually flat.

People warned me that the hill on Noelton Drive (it's not really "on" Noelton so much as it is Noelton; the entire street is a hill) was the worst, but that came after an entire neighborhood of hills. It was a lot, and my legs felt like jelly when I got to the top of it, which was kind of a bad thing since that hill is pretty close to the halfway mark. I even felt a little dizzy for a moment, and thought about telling the next cop car I saw that I was done. Fortunately, just before the Mile 8 marker, the course goes past my friend Mindy's driveway, and Mindy's whole family and my friend Yodi were all out in the driveway to cheer for me. I've never had a cheering section at a race before, other than at the end when my friends finish before me, and it was shockingly motivating. Yodi even ran out to walk with me for a minute. He was playing some sort of song on a speaker, and wanted me to dance, but I have no idea what that song was because at that point all I could mentally process was, "I have to finish now."



"You can do it!" Yodi told me.

"I want to die," I answered.

Later, just after Mile 9, I tried to cut around a large puddle on the Third Creek Greenway by stepping onto the grass, and I went all the way down onto both hands and both shins in mud. Other runners offered to help, but I was good and covered. I looked kind of like I turned the half marathon into a Spartan Race, but I kept going. When I was telling my mom about it on the phone, she asked, "Well, what did you do?" and that was my answer. I kept going. Four miles from the finish, someone could have covered me in a bucket of pig blood like Carrie at the prom, and I would have wiped it out of my eyes and kept walking. I'm not stopping for mud.

I also wasn't hurt, and I didn't die.



I finished.

I do have to disagree with the idea that Noelton is the worst hill. My vote goes for the one at 22nd Street, because it went on forever. Noelton is steeper, but you can see the top. On 22nd Street, it just felt like you were climbing and climbing and climbing, and eleven miles into the race that's not a feeling that you want to have, especially when it was past the last water station.

I also have to take a moment to thank my friends. They sent encouragement online, and texts. My friend Erin saw me on TV and texted me the photo during the race, so that I saw it on my Apple Watch and thought, "Holy shit, I'm on TV." (That was fascinating to me because nobody ever takes pictures of the back of the race. You always see photos of the front people, the ones who are sleek and running and managing to smile, but nobody ever takes pictures of the slow, steady turtles at the back.) Mindy asked if I wanted them to run out with any specific consumables, an offer that I might take her up on next year because that spot is a great place for a quick sugar rush. Yodi gave me a hug when I needed one. Sara met me at the stadium, held my stuff when I wanted to immediately go to the bathroom to wash my hands (God bless her. She deserves some kind of a medal because my attitude for about 20 minutes after I finish a half marathon is a mix of disjointed enthusiasm and irritation. I handed her my water bottle and the bag with my other shoes and blurted, "I'M DONE WITH THESE. I'M DONE," and she took them without batting an eye.), untied one of my shoes for me when I was having trouble bending, drove me to brunch to meet our friends Drew and Peter, didn't complain when I wanted to catch Pokémon for a minute after brunch, and drove me back to my car later.

My friends are wonderful.

They are currently all forgiven for any incidences of tardiness to meals, movies, or other events over the past year.

And now I have a time to measure myself against when I do this race again next year.

"Walk it off!"

For the first few years of high school, I had a gym teacher who had one answer for anything that happened to you in gym class.

Hit in the face with a volleyball? "Walk it off!"

Body-checked into the bleachers during floor hockey? "Walk it off!"

Ruptured your spleen during football? "Walk it off!"

OK, that last one didn't happen, but it could have. "Walk it off" was his stock answer for everything, to the point that it was jarring when we got another gym teacher later in high school who was all, "Do you want to switch teams so that you're not skins? Are you not feeling well, and just want to walk the track today? Do you want to help me referee? Maybe we need three or four refs for this," it was mentally jarring to have a teacher in gym who actually seemed to acknowledge that high school is a terrible time that couldn't always be walked off.

During our few years together, I imagined a number of things happening to that first teacher. I imagined him on fire. I imagined him crushed beneath the wheels of a school bus. I imagined him having a heart attack while screaming at someone in the middle of the gym, and all of the students running for help while I stood over him and whispered, "Walk it off", but I never imagined that, later in life, I would hear his voice in my head, and somehow find it inspirational.

Friday night, as part of the Great Smoky Mountains Half Marathon weekend, I took part in the 5K. When I did the half marathon last year and the year before I didn't do the 5K the night before, but I was unhappy with my performance last year and decided that if I was going to do this again this year, then I was going to challenge myself, and do more than just complete a half marathon. If you do the 5K on Friday and the half marathon on Saturday, they call it the Black Bear Double, and I signed up for it.

(Let's take a moment to recognize that over the course of a few years I've changed from a person who couldn't complete a half marathon to a person who feels that completing one isn't quite enough of a challenge. Holy shit. Who am I?)

Some people were pushing themselves on the double, which followed a lollipop-shaped course: there was a straight mile, a circular loop for a mile, and then you retraced the straight mile back to the starting and finishing line. I was between the first and second mile marker when the first runner heading toward the finish came back heading the other direction, but most of us were not pushing ourselves hard. Much of the back of the 5K was people who were doing the Black Bear Double, and we were all talking to each other about how we wanted to get an OK 5K time but not use up too much energy before the half marathon tomorrow. Everything was going according to plan, and then we got to the loop.

The loop was in a field.

The 5K was not advertised as a partial trail run, and the field didn't even have a trail. It had a path where a lane had been cut into the grass, and we had to follow it for a mile. At first I thought maybe I had just missed that part of the course description, but then everyone around me started complaining about it, too, especially the guy pushing someone in a wheelchair. I've never trail run before, but I've hiked, and I know that there's always a hole or a root or a rock waiting to trip you the minute you let your guard down. Sure enough, the second I realized that I was twenty feet from finishing the loop and getting back on the paved walkway, I looked ahead instead of at the ground and gave my ankle a good, hard roll.

It hurt.

It hurt a lot.

I staggered for a moment, and the two women walking with me both asked if I was ok, since they'd both seen me almost go down. Before I could answer, I heard a voice in my head.

"Walk it off."

I still had a mile of 5K to go, and then 13.1 miles in the morning. I could decide I was too injured to do either of those things, but I knew in my heart that was a lie. I've twisted my ankle before, and I knew it wasn't sprained. It would be sore, but I was not unable to finish. There was a guy behind me pushing someone in a wheelchair through grass, for Christ's sake, and I was going to crybaby about my sore ankle? I walked it off.



Then, the next morning, I walked again. Since my ankle actually was still sore in the morning, I changed my goal a little. While my original thought was that I wanted to beat last year's time, I decided that due to the injury I would just set a goal of finishing while favoring my ankle, and let my speed be my speed. Fortunately, the race rules have changed a little, and the sweeper at the end is a four hour pacer, rather than 3:30, like my first year, and I figured the extra half hour was enough of a cushion that I could walk at a normal pace, not jog on the downhills, and could baby the ankle a little while still finishing. Resigned to my slightly new goal, I shifted myself back from the 2:30-3:00 hour starting wave into the 3 hour plus starting wave, and that's where I met Gwen and Dennis:



They're a married couple from California who started doing half marathons for fun, and we walked together and talked for the entire race. We discussed our jobs (Gwen's retired), Tennessee (it was their first trip to our state, and they were pleasantly surprised by most of it; the exception being the Confederate flags they saw in a few places), food (they like the ribs here), classic horror movies (Dennis feels that Adrienne Barbeau was cast in so many because she was good at screaming, while Gwen and I agree that she was cast for something on her chest that wasn't quite her lungs), and pretty much anything else that popped into our heads while we made the slow trek from the high school to the finish line. At Mile 12, Gwen decided she wanted to jog the last part, so she went ahead and Dennis and I walked the rest of the way in together.

I got my finisher medal, and an extra medal for doing the Black Bear Double:





Overall, it was a very pleasant experience, except for my foot. Right around Mile 9 I thought, "Jesus, I think I have a blister." The same thing happened to me during the same part of the course last year, and sure enough, right around Mile 10 I felt intense pain in my foot, and then it slowly diminished through the rest of the race, meaning that the blister had probably exploded. When I finally got back to my hotel room, it turned out that I was right, but rather than show you a picture of my foot I'll just show you one of my sock:



It hurt a lot. Yesterday, after the race, I could barely walk on it. Overnight, the swelling has gone down quite a bit, and it's stopped leaking blood and fluid (whatever that is inside of blisters), but while I was thinking about it I realized that the problem is not, as I suspected last year, my shoes or how tightly I lace them. It's this specific course. I do eleven and twelve mile training walks without this happening. I've done another half marathon twice without this happening, but two out of three times that I've done this one on its terribly canted course surface and come away with a terrible weeping foot blister.

I haven't made a final decision yet, but I think I'm not going to do this race again.

Or I might just accept the blisters, and walk them off.

Last Place

I had a half marathon on Saturday, the Asheville Half Marathon at the Biltmore Estate, but it's taken me a couple days to write about it because I was waiting to figure out how I felt about it. See, unlike last year when I did this race and set a personal best, this year I did it and set a personal worst, and not just in regard to my finishing time.

I came in last place.

I'm not being overly dramatic, either. I was the last male finisher. Twenty women finished after me, but I was last for the guys.



I was so last that the photo above was taken by my friend Lauren's dad, because the official race photographer had already left the finish line area. Apparently if you are not at the front of the race you may as well not have been racing at all, and it doesn't matter if you finished because your achievement isn't worth being photographed. I've never before wanted to go find someone and scream the Starfish Story at them quite as much as I do the photographer right now, but that's not the feeling I've been trying to sort out for a few days. I've been trying to figure out how I feel about it.

The honest answer is that I feel fine.

I knew going in that this was going to be a hard race for a couple of reasons.

First, it's a hard course, as far as hills are concerned. I remembered this from last year, but since you probably haven't done the race yourself, feel free to look at the elevation changes chart at the bottom of this page. The hills are at the beginning, and the stretch between Mile 4 and Mile 6 is brutal. I slowed down a lot in that part and honestly thought about quitting, and another lady who was walking beside me for that stretch gave me kind of a pep talk about how she was struggling, too, and how we would both get through this and finish and everything would be ok. I pulled past her at Mile 7, and she was swept from the course for being too far behind just after Mile 8. I felt guilty about this for several hours, because she helped get me through a rough patch and I felt like I should have done more to help her, but other than offering encouragement I'm not sure what else I could have done.

She and I were struggling for the same reasons besides the hills: we were both heavier than the last time we did this race. I mentioned when I did my last half marathon in September that I had put some weight back on. I didn't get rid of that extra weight over the winter, but instead put a little more back on to go with it. I'm working on turning that around again (I've lost seven pounds since January, which is great, but I could definitely be working on that a little harder, and will, rather than working on fitting All Dressed chips into my mouth; why do they have to be so good, like Salt and Vinegar chips and BBQ chips had a delicious baby?), but in the meantime being bigger means being slower, and that's a concern on this race since they are very strict about the time. There are certain checkpoints, and you have to be above a specific time when you pass them, or you are removed from the course. Last year I didn't even see the sweeper, a man on a bicycle with a black broom across his handlebars, but this year I did: at Mile 8 there was a brief out and back (this is where you walk out to a point, turn around, and walk back) and he was coming into the out and back just as I was leaving it. I swore, sped up, and put him mostly out of my mind. The lady who talked me up the hill was entering the out and back just before he turned in to it, so I believe this is where he got her.

The last reason we were all struggling was the cold. The temperature was somewhere between the high twenties and low thirties Fahrenheit the entire race, and when I passed the house it flurried for a minute or two. Sure, we bundled up:







but there's something mentally draining about walking in cold weather for me. All of my cold weather races are always my slowest ones, and it's not because I have extra layers on. Instead, there is a constant refrain in my head of how cold it is, how I could be on my couch right now, how cold it is, how I want a hot chocolate, how cold it is, how sane people are inside right now, how cold it is, etc. Walking in the cold pulls my focus, so I never reach that moment where I forget that I'm walking at all and just truck along. It could have been worse, though. The people doing the full marathon on Sunday had to deal with snow:











I hope they all stayed warm.

So, I had a race:



I finished:



and I celebrated my victory:





like I wasn't the man in last place:



Mentally and physically, I'm in a much better place about this than I was after that half marathon in September. I'm not in pain, I only needed a day or two to recover, and I only got one small blister, from wearing the wrong socks. I discovered on Sunday morning that I actually had packed the correct socks, but I somehow couldn't find them in my bag on Friday night when I was laying out my race clothes. When I finished the race on Saturday and got back to our room I calmly told Laura and Bernadette, "There's some kind of situation in my shoe. I might have a blister, I think," and when I pulled off my sock there was a quarter-sized circle of blood on the bottom, but it had already burst sometime during the race and didn't hurt.

Now it's time to hang up my medal:



and focus on the next race.

Which is in two weeks.

Because I might be insane.