Austin Hastings

26.2 miles run, 5 hours 3 minutes, sore legs, over $5,500 raised for charity, 15lbs shed, countless clif shot bloks consumed and one heck of a fun time.

It had always seemed as if marathon running was a sport for the hard-core athlete, and until recently, I’d never seriously considered attempting one.  At best, I had run the 2004 Rock n Roll half marathon in Phoenix because I thought it would be an attainable challenge. While the successful 13.1 run improved confidence in running endurance, I vividly recall catching a glimpse of full marathoners blazing down the course, further solidifying my perception that marathon running was an Olympian sport to which only the athletic gods, or Kenyans, could successfully participate.

Flash-forward to 2006, sitting at the bedside of my mother as she fights cancer.  When she ultimately passed, there came a shift in my perspective in terms of how I should interact with this life.  There was a realization that I needed to place more confidence in myself and to invest effort into what interested and inspired me in life, rather than selling myself short. On a deep level, the concept of life being far too short became far too real.  I gained awareness of the sobering reality that it is not out of the realm of possibility that I might also have the threat of cancer in my future.  Knowing this, and feeling it on a very real level, there was an increasing urgency to work on two particular improvements in my life: 1) to take much better care of my mind and body, and 2) to actively and passionately pursue what excites and inspires, in spite of what I might have ever feared or thought unattainable through whatever self-induced constraints.

This realization drove me to consider an attempt at running my first marathon.  Committing to this run could drive me to get in the shape of my life, help to conquer self-enforced limitation and would also open the door to new and exciting challenges in the future.  The marathon also appeared to be a great platform to raise funds to give back to the people who helped us in our time of need.

I thus committed to a training program, signed up for the 2008 San Francisco Marathon and began training in January with the goal of becoming a marathoner by August and raising donations for Hospice along the way. I enjoyed six months of training which taught me all about pushing physical and mental boundaries, ultimately preparing my body to cross the finish line on August 3 in 5 hours. I was also very happy to meet and exceed the chosen $5k donation mark thanks to the incredible support from family and friends, and it wasn’t so bad shedding 15lbs in the training process.

I’m incredibly grateful for this entire experience, and I’m so glad that to have had this opportunity to learn, grow and meet new people. There is a lot that I’ve learned along the way and I’d like to share my “lessons learned” for anyone else interested in running their first Marathon.

Training: 0 to 26.2 in 6 months

I made it across the finish line in 5 hours 3 minutes with a surprising ability to endure the mileage, and the most challenging issues being very sore legs and joints as well as a mental negotiation for the last 6 miles.  This is in stark contrast to my first official training session where a 1 mile run gave me a run for my money.  For me, training proved to be crucial, and for the first timer, I highly recommend joining a training program. I was nervous about my readiness prior to the run, but was shown that training had successfully prepared my mind and body for 26.2 miles.

A program will provide structure based on experience, pacers who will coach you, friends to help you grow with the mileage and a support network to carry you to the finish line and beyond.  It pays to invest in yourself with coaches who will guide and motivate you, as well as peers who provide the all-important social support and accountability.

My group was called Athletic Endurance and was an off-shoot of the San Francisco Marathon.  I’ve also heard glowing reviews of Team in Training.  If you do not have access to either of these groups, you may be able to locate a quality training group by contacting the Marathon organizers, doing some research online, joining a local running club or asking employees at a local sports store.

I can’t emphasize enough about how much I recommend joining a training group. The immediate access to experts for answering questions, the structured guidance and the great conversations I had with my teammates proved of immeasurable value to me, and I’m certain this helped me to have a successful marathon experience.  If you’re sitting on the fence about attempting your first marathon, joining such a group might be just what you need to ease into it.

Gear & Supplements

26.2 is a long, long distance to run, and the goal (for me) was to ease the mileage as much as possible.  Through experimentation as well as recommendations from experienced marathoners, I recommend the following gear and supplements to enhance your mental and physical endurance. I’ve linked up the product names and photos below to make it easy for you to purchase or do further research online.

Running shoes & socks
It’s a given you’ll need running shoes. What is lesser known is how important (and easy) it is to have a professional pair you with the proper shoes for your feet.  Running many miles, it’s important that your shoes have the right balance of support for your specific arches and running patterns, because your feet WILL take a beating.  I didn’t have black or falling-off toenails, which perhaps I can attribute to good shoes & running socks.  If in the Bay Area, I’d recommend Fleet Feet.  They helped me find the right pair of shoes and I didn’t incur any added expense than I would have if I bought the shoes without assistance at a Sports Authority or the like.

Running shorts, shirt and underwear
This is obviously all up to what style you like.  I bought a nice Nike running shirt and North Face shorts for the race.  The shirt was a cool fabric with reflecting material for running near roads as well as little slits on the sides allowing more air in.  The shorts had a nice zipper pocket to place items, though I don’t like to store things in shorts while running.  The ASICS running underwear had no seams on it, which will make sense to you as the miles wear on.

Hydration Belts/Packs
Water and nutrition is essential when running distances, and it is helpful to have a hydration belt or pack of some sort.  What I ultimately purchased was essentially a “fanny pack” with an angled water bottle, the angle allowing me to easily remove and replace the bottle from the pack when needed.  There was also a decent zippered compartment that I filled with my “shot bloks” (described later) as well as anything else that I needed while running.  Some people use a CamelBak Hydration Pack, or in my earlier training, I just carried a smaller waterbottle with a handstrap.

Hat and sunglasses
Keep the sun out of your face with both and it’ll ease the miles.  I wore a runners hat provided by Athletic Endurance which was more streamlined than a typical hat and had more ventilation to release heat from the head.  I wore a pair of Oakley Sunglasses with a safety chord ensuring the glasses wouldn’t fall to the ground.

Music player & headphones
I’d highly recommend that you not listen to music while in a training group, as the conversations you can get into with your teammates can be entertaining and also really helps the miles fly by.  Also, it’s dangerous to run around roads without the ability to hear your surroundings.  That being said, there are also opportune times to listen to music, and I definitely took advantage of it to the fullest extent.  There’s nothing like blazing down a path in rhythmic sync with the song that you’re rockin out to.  My music weapon of choice was an iPod nano using Nike+ secured by a low-profile InCase iPod Nano sport armband.  For headphones, I’ve really enjoyed Sony sports earbuds.  They have great sound, and specifically have a short chord which provides just enough to reach your iPod, but not so much that it’s flopping around while running.  The headphones come with a chord extender as well.

Bodyglide & sunscreen
These are your friends.  Bodyglide is to be applied liberally where you might chafe.  Nothing puts a cramp in your distance running life chafing body parts… yuck.  Sunscreen should go without explanation.  When you start running for 2, 3 or 4 hours, it’s easy to get burnt, even when overcast.  In the spirit of full transparency, I forgot sunscreen a couple of times and thought I’d be ok since often I’d run in San Francisco’s foggy mornings.  Lesson learned, one CAN get too much sun even if the sun isn’t blazing in a cloudless sky.

Heart rate monitor
Now THIS is a fun toy.  My trainer recommended I pick up a Polar F11 and I love it.  There are all kinds of things you can do with it, but I really enjoy its ability to give me my heart rate and calculate my calories burned.  I found the concept of running towards a calories burned goal versus a time goal was inspirational, and I ended pushing myself a bit more in my solo training because of this.  And I have to admit, I certainly enjoyed seeing that I burned 3000 calories in one 17 mile run – not too shabby for those looking to lose some weight, or at least ease your conscience if you want an indulgent dinner.  Additionally, in keeping check on your heart rate, the watch helps tells you when your intensity is too high or too low to meet you goals.  I highly recommend this, or similar products.

Shoe Pouch/Wallet
The shoe pouch/wallet is a sweet little invention.  It’s a little pouch that attaches to your shoelaces.  It’s just big enough to fit your ID card and a debit card, as well as a key or two.  This was a helpful way to carry my essentials without the bother of feeling them in my pockets.

Nike+
If you own an iPod Nano, this is a relatively cheap way to really enhance your running experience.  Nike+ is only $30 bucks for the receiver and it provides real-time feedback and tracking of your mileage.  At any time, you can push a button and know how far you’ve gone as well as how far you have to go for a run.  It was quite helpful in structuring my early runs to specific goals.  When you connect your iPod, it sends the running data to an online site which gives you beautiful charts displaying detailed information on all of your runs.  It’s incredibly cool.  Even better, you can challenge other runners with Nike+ from anywhere in the world.  For $30, this is a steal, and you don’t have to pay for the web service.  The one catch is that Nike would like you to buy their Nike+ shoes into which you’d insert the RFID chip they give you, but a quick search on google will provide instructions on how to attach the chip to your existing shoes free of charge.  To those without the iPod Nano, Nike has released a wrist watch version of this technology which I have not yet tried.

Recommended Supplements

A quality multi-vitamin
Marathon training puts a lot of strain on the body.  You should already be consuming healthy foods, but I found it important to take a high quality multi-vitamin to ensure that I’d have the fuel needed for really pushing my body. My trainer recommended a multi that would be taken 2 or 3 times throughout the day since most 1 day supplements tend to have the nutrients go out when you visit the bathroom.  I’m not a scientist or a doctor and can’t advise specifically, but I can say that I feel the multi-vitamin was a lot of help.  I backpacked through Peru weeks before my marathon, traveled with a lot of sick people (buses, planes, etc) and never caught a cold.  I also religiously took my multi-vitamin, and I like to think that it helped me to stay healthy and strong.

Sports Gels, Shot Bloks, Powerbars and the like
Your body will require refueling during runs, and there are many options in how you supply this energy to your body.  Everyone has a different opinion on what’s best, mostly based on either taste or how well their stomach takes to the product.  Gel or Goo packs are tiny packets of, well, gooey stuff that you squirt into your mouth and provides electrolytes, caffeine, etc.  I tried them for a while, and Powerbar has some decent flavors.  I discontinued use of these pretty quickly when I found out about Clif Shot Bloks.  Shot Bloks are little “gummy” cubes of the same kind of stuff, electrolytes, caffeine, etc. and come in flavors such as Cola, Pina Colada and even Margarita.  I find that you can pop in a Shot Blok every mile or so, and I’ve found a lot of success with them.  During my marathon, I used one at each mile marker and don’t recall feeling any lack of energy during the run.  Some runners also prefer something more hearty such as any one of the plethora of sports bars on the market.  Again, choice in this area is often up to what does not make your stomach feel sick when you eat while running.  Shot Bloks have become my defacto choice and I’d recommend them.  I find the goo to be funky, and bars seem so bulky.

Also, please note:  For the love of god, NEVER try out gear or supplements for the first time on race day.  You don’t want to find that something doesn’t fit right, or doesn’t work for you and have to endure that pain in addition to high mileage.   Recommendations are based on my own trial and error, and some things may work for me and not necessarily for you.  Luckilly, training provides the opportunity to test out what works best so that you don’t have to worry about it when race day comes.

Fundraising:

This was the first major fundraiser effort I’ve run, and I’m grateful to have seen it meet and exceed the $5k goal I had assigned to it.  Due to my internet marketing background, I leveraged the interactive channel as much as possible, and it worked well.  I also owe a large portion of donations to interviewing with fitness potcasts, one of which was my father’s show Motivation to Move.  Here’s a list of what I attempted in terms of getting the word out about the fundraising.

Website & Blog
I set up austinhastings.com initially as a quick online donation form.  I eventually added a video in which I explained the fundraiser and cause, then added this blog.  There were many comments regarding how the video positively influenced donors decision to give.  The Blog made it easy to get the word out on fundraiser and marathon updates.  The video was thrown together using the built in camera on my MacBook Pro and hosted at YouTube.com.  The website was launched in a day leveraging WordPress for blogging and content management and hosted on Media Temple.  Media Temple is a great host, though if you’re looking for something a little cheaper ($7.95/mo), I also recommend checking out MidPhase.com.

Email
I went through every friend & family email I had ever communicated with previously and created a list to which I sent a message updating folks on the marathon and fundraiser.  It opened up a lot of email communication with old friends and drove a fair amount of donations.  I did this the basic way, simply sending via my gmail account.  In the future, I will utilize an email service such as constantcontact.com or firedrum.com to track metrics on open rates, clicks, email bounces and to have a greater understanding of who was engaged with the email.  I was also a little overwhelmed with the email response, so in the future, I’ll set up an autoresponder letting people know there might be a delay in response.  I had a lot of thoughtful and heart-felt emails that I’m still responding to.

Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter, et al)
These sites allow you to instantly blast out updates across groups of people to get them engaged with the cause.  I’ve worked on cultivating my social networks, so luckily I was able to get the word out about fundraiser updates with status updates and tweets on twitter.  I also created a fundraiser group on Facebook and invited all of my friends to it.  The cool thing about the social networks is that is fairly easy to make something viral.  One person joins a group, another person sees and joins as well.  It’s a cool concept.  With more time to get creative, it might have been fun to do some kind of funky video to distribute across the networks.

Podcast interviews
I first interviewed with my dad’s online radio show Motivation to Move, which brought a fair amount of attention to the fundraiser.  I also interviewed with Adam Tinkoff’s podcast “Another Runner,” and many other running and fitness podcasts were kind enough to play promo clips Adam recorded with me with quick blurbs regarding the fundraiser.  I had a lot of friend adds on Twitter as a result of the interviews, saw spikes in web activity and had donations from folks identifying themselves as having heard via a podcast.

Motivation to Move interview excerpt:

Another Runner Full Interview:

Another Runner Fundraiser Promo:

While I didn’t experiment too much with offline efforts (because I wanted to stick with my area of expertise), I have heard tale of massive success with fundraiser parties, carwashes, and all sorts of other clever approaches.  I think there were some good lessons to learned regarding online promotion, though, as many donations came from folks who happened to find about the fundraiser by searching on Google or Twitter, or by seeing a Friend involved with it on a Facebook group.  There is a lot of power to leveraging social networks to get the word out for your cause.

On to the next big adventure

I hope some part of this write-up has been helpful to you in some way.  The entire experience has been incredibly rewarding for me on many levels, and if you have even a glimmer of interest in attempting a Marathon, or similar big physical and mental challenge, I highly recommend delving right in.  This experience has strengthened my belief that if you can achieve what you thought to be impossible, it really broadens the scope of what you can enjoy in life.

What’s up next on the radar?  I’ll be running the Walt Disney World Marathon in January of 2009, looking forward to a much flatter course and a run fueled by the excitement and lessons learned from this first marathon.  I’m also looking into the AIDS LifeCycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles which is apparently 7 days of cycling 545 miles. Given that I rarely ride a bike, the old Austin wouldn’t have thought for a second about something like this.  New Austin says bring it on.  With the right mind-set, support and training, so much is possible.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear from you, so feel free to leave your comments below.

Austin