This is a story about having
to work a lot harder than you thought for something. It is not so much a story
of perseverance as it is a story of serendipity in the places you least expect
it, and adversity in the places where you feel like life owed you a break. It
is also a story about being really, really cold.
I ran my first marathon 10
years ago, almost to the day. I ran that marathon in 4:45. For years I ran
marathons -- sometimes trained and sometimes untrained – always clocking an
underwhelming 4:00 to 4:15. What I learned from this experience was that 30
miles per week won’t make you faster, and that The Twenty Mile Run is the most
wretched workout in all of sport.
Turning 30 taught me
patience, and I learned that to run faster, you just have to run a lot more.
Since then, I have clocked a handful of marathons in the most frustrating of
all time windows: 3:35:01-3:40:59, a time that would have qualified me when I
was slow and the qualifying times were slower, but are not fast enough to
qualify me with the new standard. I have had one fantastic race, but as I
continue coming home in the “close, but no cigar” neighborhood, all I want to
know is that it was no fluke. So my only goal this week was to qualify for
Boston at Boston.
In my build-up to the race, I
had one cold, one stomach bug, and one major nagging injury caused by a high
heel and one wrong step. Who knew a big toe tendon could be so important? But
it haunted me for hundreds of miles, migrating through my heel, arch, shin, and
ankle. I also ate better than I’d eaten in my entire life, cutting out all
processed grains, added sugars, and cheese for 3.5 months leading up to the
race. But that’s a story for a different post. I arrived in Boston feeling
good, and secure that only my own stupidity could get in the way of me and my
3:30 goal time. I was even foolish enough to keep in the back of my mind that
there were certain graphs that projected I could run this thing in 3:11 (cue
90’s sit-com laugh track).
When we landed in Boston the
Thursday before the race, it still hadn’t hit me yet. It didn’t hit me in the
rental car line, when I saw half a dozen people wearing marathon jackets.
(“Beat her!” Richie Porte whispered at me, pointing at a woman wearing this
year’s jacket, a metric ton of make-up, and a sparkly headband). It didn’t hit
me when everywhere we went, people asked me if I was there for the marathon. It
only hit me when I walked down Boylston Street the Friday before the race and
saw all the cops, jumbotrons, and scaffolding going up around the finish line.
Only then did the realization punch me in the gut that THIS IS REAL!
Luckily, we weren’t staying
in Boston, so I stayed away from the hype or else I probably would have had
diarrhea all week. The expo on Sunday morning was about as much Marathon
Madness as I could handle. There’s only
so long that you can be jammed in between 30,000 of your closest friends and
their families trying to decide between the same 5 t-shirts (do I want the one
that says “wicked,” “runnah,” “Boston Strong,” the one with the big BAA logo,
or the one with the small BAA logo?) before you scream “Get me the fuck outta
heyuh!” and a kind National Guardsman with a machine gun escorts you back to
the safety of the fresh air.
I had been obsessively
watching the weather since the 10-day forecast was first posted. I watched the
weekend storm move forward, and the mid-week storm move backward until both
shitty days had converged right on Marathon Monday, with sunny days to either
side. There was still hope until Sunday afternoon that the rain would hold off
until everyone but the charity runners finished (who cares about them, they’re
not in a hurry, right?). But not even that came to pass. Watching the evening
news the night before, the smug weather man on News Center 5 smirked as he
reported 45º highs, steady rain, and 15mph headwinds all day. Then again, I had
the race of my life on an unseasonable 27º day in Sacramento. Maybe it would be
good…
…And maybe it wouldn’t . I’m
always cold, and everywhere we went that weekend, I wound up needing to buy
another layer of clothing. It is a scientific fact (that I just decided was
true) that 55º in Boston is much colder than 55º in California. And 55º in
Maine is even colder than that.
Race morning
I won’t bore you with the
details of getting to the start. There were blocked streets, long walks,
port-a-potties, school busses, and soldiers everywhere. I was seated on the bus
with a girl whose number was roughly the same as my own. We discussed running
together, and perhaps if I had run with her the race might have turned out 2
minutes and 41 seconds more satisfyingly. However, on the ride out to Hopkinton
she told me about how she had missed her start 2 years in a row because she was
still in the port-a-potty line, so when it came time for her to make her last
piss stop and I didn’t have to go that bad, I let her go. Against all odds, my
bus was also right behind my friend Chris’s bus. I have talked about Chris
before: he is the guy that ran some 70-odd marathons in 2012, and calls it a
light year when he only does 6 100-mile races. Chris, New Bus Friend, and I
made a happy band of travelers as we set up camp to wait for the start.
The sheer mass of humanity at
the start was something to see. There were runners dressed in the ugliest
clothes they could find in the back of their closets packed cheek-to-jowl all
over the Hopkinton High School grounds, and up to the starting line. There were
also snipers on the roof, which made the idea of an illegal pee in the bushes a
little less appealing. By the time it was time to walk the kilometer or so to
the starting line, I couldn’t feel my feet. I thought I’d taken off my sweat
pants at the last possible moment, but the herd just kept going and going as we
pressed to the start. And there were soldiers everywhere. I stood there getting
colder and colder as we waited for the starting gun to go off. Surely I’d warm
up, right? So off came the gloves, and the hat, and the sweatshirt too.
By the time I realized that
I’d thrown out my iPod in my sweatpants, I was already in my corral and it was
too late to find them again. Usually, I don’t like to race with music but I’ve
found that on very special occasions House music can put me in a kind of trance
where I run a little bit faster and don’t feel the time passing and am
completely present in my body. Perhaps if I’d had some external metronome when
my internal pacing mechanisms broke down, things might have turned out
differently.
I also had an old long
sleeved race t-shirt on that I had planned to throw away, but it was too cold
and I wound up wearing it the whole race. One thing I learned: If you run a
marathon in a shirt that says TURKEY TROT in big letters, for 3 ½ hours
everywhere you go people will yell, “GO TURKEY!” at you.
With all those soldiers
around, I expected there to be a national anthem, but instead some Berkelee
student sang a song about the marathon, and then there was a pop. “Was that
it?” I asked. Someone around me said something to the effect of, yeah, you dumbass! Then we started
flowing forward. I almost missed the starting line. I was expecting an arch,
but looked down in surprise to find that I was standing on a blue band in the
road that said “START.” And so the dream began…
The Race
I am a short person, so
running in tight groups of tall men with flying elbows is stressful for me.
Usually, I’m out of the elbows in the first mile or two but this is Boston.
There are 30,000 runners, and the average time is right around the time I was
running. I wouldn’t be safe from elbows until after mile 16, and I would never
really feel completely safe from a broken nose. One good thing about running in
a crowd, though, is that it keeps you focused during the first few miles of a
race – when you feel good, so you can’t win your race but you can sure as hell
lose it.
As I ticked away the first
few miles, I only looked down at my watch at the mile markers to see my split
for the previous mile. I wanted to spend the race enjoying the experience and
feeling my body, not watching my wrist. But every time I looked down, my watch
was telling me my splits were 8:00, 7:56, 7:48, 8:03… I had planned to run
between 7:30 and 7:45 on this first downhill stretch, but this felt HARD. It
felt like the first 100 steps of the run, when you feel old and tight and achy,
and like your legs don’t move right. In fact, I couldn’t feel my legs at all.
The only way I knew that my foot was hitting the ground was feeling the impact
in my hips. I was completely numb below the waist, and would stay that way for
the rest of the race. In 26.38 miles, I never warmed up.
To make matters worse, in the
first few miles, it started raining. It rained that steady rain that soaks
through to your base layer, and then keeps soaking. From what I remember, it
would continue to rain until I hit Cleveland Circle around mile 23 or 24. Then
the wind picked up, a cold, raw wind that came right out of the east and blew
through all your clothing. By Mile 8, I knew I was in trouble. I kept feeling
like I would bonk at any second, and yet I never did. I just never warmed up! By Wellesley and the halfway point, I was
starting to wonder if I would get pulled off the course with hypothermia.
At Wellesley, with all the
sopping, screaming co-eds I had to smile.. I smiled and sped up, enjoying the
moment. But even that little acceleration felt hard, and I could feel my heart
kicking up a fuss. Once I hit the Newton hills, I felt the same thing. My legs
and breathing could handle the hills, but for some reason they just felt so much harder than they should have.
I had promised myself that no
matter what happened, I would stay present in the race and enjoy the
experience, but I have very little memory of the whole thing. I remember a
Canadian man peeing at the side of the road in Hopkinton with kids across the
street, I remember a runner falling on her ass at an aid station somehow facing
the wrong direction, I remember Wellesley, and I remember the rain. But I
remember very little else from the course.
One thing I do remember was
that I couldn’t feel my hands. I had two wooden claws at the end of my arms,
and when I went to dig my gummies out of my pocket at each mile marker, it took
me several minutes to snag one in my claw. Then, I didn’t have the dexterity to
get the food into my mouth, so I would just smear my hand across my face,
licking, biting, and slurping until the candy finally found its way home. This
act was repeated at every mile marker, in front of the tens of thousands of
hearty folks who came out despite the weather. I still run with a water bottle
so that I won’t have to stop at the rest stops, but at mile 18 my bottle was
empty and I knew that if I stopped even for a few seconds to refill my bottle
that I would start shivering and that would be Game Over; I wouldn’t be able to
continue. So I just threw my bottle away at the side of the road. I hoped all
the soldiers wouldn’t think it was a bomb.
By the time I came up
heartbreak hill, I was despondent. I had realized that I wasn’t going to bonk,
but this race was never going to get better for me. I was desperately searching
for something to enjoy about this miserable race to keep me alive for the next
5 miles, but I couldn’t find a single damned thing. Then, over my left shoulder
I heard a lunatic screaming my name. I looked over, and there was Red, rifling
through some soggy poster board with 2 miserable looking nieces around her
feet. “SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” she shouted. It was exactly what I needed. For the first
time all day, I felt like I could do this.
Red’s screaming carried me
through the next mile or two, until I hit Boston-ish. Honestly, I have no idea
where I was (mile 23? 24?) when I heard my name again. There was my mom beaming, and my dad trying to
take pictures. They got one shot of me looking very surprised. That shot would
show up later on Facebook and a company-wide email, since it was the only
picture anyone got of me that day.
Finally, after mile 25 I heard my name, and turned
around to see Tetas cheering for me. At first I couldn’t see Richie Porte, but
then I saw a poncho with a huge smile perched on a barrier waving and
screaming. If it hadn’t been for my
support crew buoying me through the last few miles, I don’t know what dark
places I would have gone to in my head, and whether I would have ever recovered
from the scars.
Finally, I saw the 1-mile to
go sign. For the first time in miles, I looked down at my watch. I had less
than 6 minutes before the BQ door closed, and I would get the chance to put
myself through this shit again next year. Perhaps if I’d been looking along the
way I could have made up the 2 minutes that I needed, but there was no way now.
I just tried to enjoy it.
…I’m so cold…
…Don’t forget this moment…
…I’m so cold…
…There’s the finish line. Can
you accelerate? You can? Well shit, maybe this could have been over sooner…
…I’m so cold…
…Don’t wish this moment away…
…. Why isn’t the finish line
getting any closer? It looks like a thong…
… I am so freaking cold, and
I’m about to get colder…
…And stop.
The Aftermath (the shivering, and the warm and
fuzzies)
We crossed the finish line,
and then had to walk about a block to where they were handing out water. I
assume that this was so we wouldn’t back up in a traffic jam and block the
finish. Then we walked another half a block to where they were handing out
medals. “I need a hug,” I told the 50-something woman who handed me my medal.
She didn’t seem too thrilled with the idea, but she let me grab her by the
neck, and then sent me on my way. Then we still had to walk another half a
block to where they were handing out the space blankets. To their credit, they
were more like “space capes” with hoods, arm holes, and Velcro to keep them
closed, but it meant that we had to line up to have a volunteer dress us. I got
in a line, and then right when it was my turn I got cut in line by a pair of
elbows. By that time the cold was coming from deep inside me, and the blanket
did little to slow my metamorphosis into a popsicle.
As cold as I was, I must have looked worse than I felt. Everywhere I went, people came up and asked if I was okay in that, “Do you need to go to the medical tent” kind of way. One guy asked what letter I was looking for in the family meeting area, and it took a great effort to say “L” in a way that could be understood. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllll,” I slurred, biting my tongue pretty hard in the process as my jaw continued to slam together violently.
Somehow, despite the billion
miles I had to walk from the finish line to the letter L, I still beat Richie
Porte and Tetas to the meeting spot. I had my space cape on top, and a generic
space blanket tied around my legs, but the icy wind was still blowing. First,
two women I’d never seen before in my life came up and encircled me in a bear
hug to keep me warm. Then another rubbed my arms while they both placed
themselves strategically to block the wind. Then, when they left, a woman came
up. She muttered something that sounded like French as she looked me
meaningfully in the eyes and smiled. Then she proceeded to take off her scarf
and tie it around my neck, looking me warmly in the eyes the whole time. These
strangers were all so caring and giving, I was touched. I don’t know if it was
because I looked like death, or if that’s just what the Boston Marathon brings
out in people, but it warmed my heart to the race in a way I did not think it
could be after the miserable morning I’d had.
Once reunited with Richie
Porte and Tetas, we still had some 3 or 4 blocks to walk to Red’s fiance’s
work, where I had a change of clothes and a shower waiting for me. I was still
clutching a bag of food, but I couldn’t get my claw away from my body, let
alone into the bag and then up to my mouth. So I just hobbled. My hip flexors
were spasming. In fact, my whole body was spasming. But at least I could walk
my ass out of there.
We walked 3 or 4 blocks to
the Prudential Center, with icy winds blowing my mylar outfit off my body and
away behind me. In the Pru, Red’s fiancé had stashed a change of clothes for
me, and said I could use the shower. Richie Porte helped peel my clothes off of
me, and then I pulled down the seat in the handicapped shower and sat there
luxuriating in the warm water for ages. It was hours before I finally got the
cold out of my bones.
In the middle of the night
that night, I woke up with my foot
screaming with a throbbing nerve pain that begged me to plunge my foot back in
a tub of ice. It was the same spot that had bugged me on and off through my
whole training, but when I woke up I wasn’t even able to put weight on the
foot. Throughout the day, I was able to get the muscles warmed up enough to put
weight on it, but it was still more painful than it had ever been in the life
of the injury. How could I have done
myself so much damage and never felt a single thing? The cold must have made me
truly and profoundly numb to run through pain like that without an inkling of
what I was doing to myself. Thank god for small graces, but it also brought
home how much I really was under duress. When I finished that race, I was still
able to accelerate. I felt like I could have kept running, and I didn’t really
feel any worse at mile 26 than I did at mile 6. People argued that the headwind
slowed people’s times down, but how much more time could I have made upwithout
its heat-robbing effects.
The trouble with peaking for
a race when conditions aren’t right is that you never really know how much better you could have done. You don’t get a
second chance to be at your best. I sacrificed more for this race, and arguably
trained harder than I have trained for any marathon, and it is frustrating to
have landed right back in that same 5-minute window just outside a qualifying
time. Do I really want to run Boston again? HELL no! Not knowing what New
England weather has to offer. But I still want to know that it’s not a fluke
that I got there to begin with.
So I will run another trained
marathon again (in fact, I’ve already signed up for a famously fast course with
pacers), because I know I can still improve. I need to fix some muscle imbalances,
and build back up much of the muscle that I’ve run off. I want to get back to
trail running. Then I will repeat my training with a few tweaks (I will race
more, and control the pace on my easy runs… once I can find a reliable
heartrate monitor). And then I will have my revenge.
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