I woke up in a hotel room in Savannah, Georgia the day after
the Palmetto Relay feeling as though this expedition was even more
ill-conceived than I had originally imagined.
After 60-ish miles at 7:15-ish mile pace over the span of about 25
hours, with one night in a strange bed for recovery, I was off to run the 116th
Boston Marathon tomorrow. I’ve
definitely felt worse the day after a race, but I’ve also felt far better, and
at this point, the thought of “racing” 26.2 more miles in this state was
difficult to process.
So I tried not to process it, and mostly concentrated on
getting enough to eat, making my way through the maze of airports (Savanna to
Atlanta to Boston) and to the expo (where between the lululemon yoga dancers and
50 Cent’s “In Da Club” blasting from a booth selling headbands for female
runners, there was enough unnecessary hype to make an old-school marathoner
like Bill Rodgers vomit . . . that is, if he wasn’t actually part of the show
himself), and finally to a friend’s place to crash for the night. By the time bedtime rolled around, I hadn’t
even opened the bag that they had given me at the expo, let alone looked at my
bib (for all I know, it could have been the wrong one – fortunately, it was
not). Stark contrast to the first time I
ran this race, back in 2005, when I looked at my bib and immediately welled up
with tears. Totally detatched, but still
strangely focused, I went to sleep.
I woke up at 5:30 a.m. on Monday, walked to the buses, and,
for the first time ever, got on the first wave of buses out of town. Turns out that there aren’t any lines at the
port-a-johns when you get to Hopkinton early:
In spite of the mild weather, I was feeling strangely cold (perhaps a
sinister omen of things to come), so I ended up putting on my jeans and
button-down shirt intended for after the race over my shorts and singlet while
I waited for what seemed like an eternity to be called to the starting corrals. I saw a few friends in the meantime, listened
to the motivational speech again (it always seems to help), and then finally
made my way to the starting line (after agonizing over my shoe choice, and
finally settling on my Pirahnas with socks).
Finally, it was starting to warm up.
I remember dumping three cups of water over my head before the race, and
then the rest was a blur until the gun went off.
Within the first mile, I felt as though this had been a huge
mistake. My legs felt heavy, slow, and
painful, in spite of the downhill start.
People were passing me mercilessly, and I felt like I didn’t have it in
me to pass them, even if I had wanted to.
And over the next few miles, each rolling uphill felt like a
mountain. I was slogging forward at a
low 7-minute-mile pace, but the effort felt like I was going a minute per mile
faster. And to make matters worse, it
was gradually getting hotter. I had no
idea how I was going to keep this up for another 20+ miles.
So I went back to my Sunday morning hotel-room strategy, which
was not to attempt to process any of this, and to keep on moving forward. People kept passing me, but the rate was
slowing. I remember seeing myself in the
“famous” window around mile 8 and seeing that my form really didn’t look all
that bad – I just seemed tired. As I
neared the halfway point, and the Wellesley girl screams faded in, the pain
drowned out, as I passed the lineup, dead-eyed and barely blinking, just
focused on one foot in front of the other.
I distinctly remember one girl looking me right in the eyes, and briefly
thought about stopping for her, as the majority of them seemed somewhere
between taken aback and horrified by the look on my face. But I’d never stopped at Wellesley in my 7
previous runs here, and, as awful as I was feeling, stopping now would mean
breaking concentration, thereby risking a 4-hour-plus finish, and I wasn’t
about to let that happen.
But then, at around 14 miles, I passed my friend Dan, walking and struggling in
the increasing heat. Because it seemed
like the right thing to do, I slowed briefly to walk with him. Then we started
running again, and, within a few minutes, I realized that Dan wasn’t with me
anymore. (I later found out that he had dropped out.) Dan wasn’t the only victim –
with Newton hills looming and the temperature rising, gradually, the people
around me looked to be in even worse shape than I was, which was encouraging,
especially as I attacked the hills with everything that I had (which wasn’t a
whole lot). At this point, I was drinking
a cup of Gatorade every mile, then pouring a cup of water over my head, and
running through every misting tent and open fire hydrant I could find.
Somehow, my aggressive cooling plan seemed to work, and by
the time I reached mile 22, the race felt like a repeat of last year’s race,
albeit 20 minutes slower. I picked up
the pace on the downhills, and knowing that the finish was near made the pain
much more bearable. I was passing
everybody now. No matter what my finish
time ended up being (and at this point, I knew that it would be over 3 hours),
finishing the race speeding past other runners, as opposed to having the crowd
streaming past you, is the most pleasant way to finish a race like this. Rounding the last corner, I saw one more
runner in the distance that I wanted to catch – a runner who had passed me
within the first couple of miles, who was wearing a bib on the back of his
shirt that said “JESUS IS MY STRENGTH.” I
passed him about 100 meters from the finish line, and crossed the line in 3
hours, 13 minutes, 27 seconds.
Nearly an evenly-split race, between the first half and the
second half, in spite of the second-half hills.
A 6:50ish last mile definitely helped.
I staggered past the finish line, in less pain than usual during the
seemingly endless deathmarch to food, drink, mylar blankets, my change of
clothes, and the all-important finisher’s medal. The fact that the post-finish-line-walk
wasn’t quite so bad this year didn’t stop me from flopping on my back on the
ground in the grass, sun beating down on my face and bugs crawling in my ears, in
the “family meeting area,” where nobody was around to meet me. I really didn’t care – I was spent, and not
moving for a while was sweet relief.
Eventually I woke up, wandered around the city looking for
food (which, in the area of the finish line, is nearly impossible to find . . .
but plenty of designer clothes – go figure), then met with my friend for a
night on the town that is best left un-recounted here. The next day, I was horribly sick with some
sort of cold, and didn’t feel better until the following weekend. (But at least I still have this snazzy medal - picture taken right after the race . . .)
It’s almost a month later, and I still have mixed feelings
about this performance. On the one hand, in
spite of all sorts of adversity, I persevered, finishing fairly close to my
seed (1234 overall, versus bib number 1001). On the other hand, 3:13, other than being a
palindrome, is pretty meaningless as a finishing time – it’s not a PR, it’s not
sub-3-hours, it doesn’t even qualify me for the Boston Marathon next year. So I think I will agree to disagree on this
one, and look forward to future performances, where the results can be
evaluated with less ambiguity. (And the conclusions to the race reports can be more satisfying than this one.)
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