The Day Before
This bandit thing was going to be a real pain in my ass, I could tell. If it was hard to get all the details of what to pack right for a marathon where I was registered, it was going to be even harder to coordinate a point-to-point race where I couldn’t depend on any of the resources provided by the race, nor park at the start or finish. No dropping a bag, no counting on gels or Gatorade along the course. No post-race showers or pre-race busses. So Sunday morning, after a quick 2 mile run with some accelerations, I went into Boston early to drop off a backpack with a change of clothes in my office. My office is across town from the finish, but it was better than nothing. Then I went down to where the Olympic trials were supposed to be going on.
Well, that’s what I thought anyway. The map on the USATF web site didn’t have any landmarks labeled or anything, so I just looked at a google map, compared it to the course map, and made my way to the Esplanade next to the Charles river. I could see people running, but they were your regular garden variety slowpokes, not Olympic-caliber precision machines, so I wandered away from the river to the Boston Common.
There were runners EVERYWHERE with their red race pack bags complete with BAA Boston Marathon logos. They were also, inexplicably, all dressed up to run. Tell me, why in the world someone would need to wear a running cap, tech-t-shirt and running tights on the one day of the year that they are almost certainly NOT going for a serious run? I thought for sure that I must be near the expo since every single individual I saw was dressed thus, or already in this year’s supersexxxy jacket, with a race packet slung over their shoulder. How wrong I was, I was miles from the expo. The city of Boston was just overrun with runners. While I sat around on the common drinking juice and waiting for Cranky to turn up I watched jacket after jacket parade by on snooty-looking backs. “¿Qué son esas chaquetas que tiene todo el mundo?” (
What are those jackets that everyone has?) Asked a homeless guy to the drug dealer sitting next to him.
“Hay una maratón mañana, ese, una maratón.” (
There's a marathon tomorrow, dude, a marathon.“¿Maratón? ¿Qué es eso?” (
Marathon? What's that?)
“Una carrera. No sé.” (
Some kind of race. I don't know.)
Even the streetrats had to sit up and take note of the army of snooty runners in their awe-inspiring supersexxxy jackets. It was as if there were tens of thousands of skinny people parading around with signs that said, “I run marathons and I do it faster than you.” I couldn’t believe how tacky it was to be wearing the jacket around the day before the race. If they could break Race Commandment No.1: Thou Shalt Not Wear the Merchandise from a Race that Thou Hast Not Finished Yet, I was thinking it wasn’t so bad to break the 14 millionth commandment: Thou Shalt Not Pay for the Merchandise for a Race for which Thou Didst Not Qualify. I had to have one of those jackets. They were so sexy.
Eventually
Cranky and I found each other and he saved me from having to hang out with the abjectly poor and the mentally unstable any longer. We were both brimming with energy and decided to walk to the expo instead of taking the train, even though I joked that every extra block we walked today would probably add an hour to our time tomorrow.
“This is going to be the biggest convention of sharky running geeks in the world,” Cranky told me as we walked into the foyer. Before braving the expo we went to the bathroom. In line I scoped out all the other women. There were a few wives, but mostly it was women with that “runner’s look” about them wearing t-shirts from other marathons and utilitarian ponytails with slick-looking sport watches that looked like they could collect more data than the Space Station. When I came out I complained to Cranky, “Everyone in there’s wearing a marathon t-shirt. Like they’re the only one in this room who’s done a marathon before! I mean, duh, you have to run a marathon to qualify!” These people thought they were so cool. Well, I wanted to make a point of letting someone know that I didn’t think they were all that. I could qualify, I swear, I just don't feel like it.
Cranky picked up his packet and while they were checking his papers and driver’s license with a far more critical eye than anyone ever looked at my fake ID in college, I wondered how easy it would be to just reach into the box and pull out someone else’s number. To avoid temptation I let my gaze wander off and I saw a woman who must have been about 60 who had the most bangin’ body in the room! Her biceps were more well-defined than Cranky’s (who has some fabulous biceps, by the way)! I hated her.
Put on a jacket, you showoff! I thought. Then we went into the expo. The first thing we found were racks upon racks upon racks of official BAA gear: singlets, shorts, hats, sweatshirts, water bottles, wet bags, and sweatshirts with dozens and dozens of runners practically climbing on top of each other, all searching for the same size, which had sold out hours ago. Just for your reference: every man in the Boston Marathon wears a men’s medium. If you ever go, show up early for your sexy, snooty gear. There were no jackets at all in the women’s section, and we couldn’t find a jacket that would fit me on the men’s side, so I sullenly bought a top with a mesh strip down the back. It was sexy, but not nearly as sexy as the jackets.
We made our way around the cramped expo, brushing past booths to avoid the crowds. After all Cranky’s tooling on expo whores, he didn’t pause for a second before snatching a sample shot of Gatorade Endurance Formula or peeling his free cold/hot pack out of its package. “Look! It goes in the freezer!” he gushed, holding out the bag of blue goo towards me. We saw a LiveStrong booth and elbowed our way near it to see if Lancey Pants was there. (For someone who lives in New York, Cranky’s a surprising celebrity whore too). “Is that...?! No, it’s not,” he gasped. We walked away joking about how we should pretend to be snooty Europeans and go up to the booth saying, “You are not zee Lance Arm Strong. I spit at you. Puh! (spitting noise).”
There was a table of famous athletes giving a Q&A to runners in one corner. I heard a voice I thought I recognized. “Cranky, is that Ryan Hall?” I asked.
“I don’t know, let’s go look,” he said. We looked at their name tags. It was definitely NOT Ryan Hall. The two names that we saw were Tim DeBoom and Peter Reid.
“THAT’S what Tim DeBoom looks like?! THAT’S Peter Reid?!” I said. These are guys that have been in triathlon for centuries. They’re practically dinosaurs of the sport. Every time you hear about them, you hear about how they’re “getting up there” and how it’s time for the “new generation to step forward.” These guys didn’t look like seasoned veterans with decades of sun damage. Peter Reid looked like the quiet kid who inexplicably joins the army after graduation
despite good grades and family money. Tim DeBoom looked like someone who might have been a couple years ahead of me in high school, the kind of guy that everyone knows which girl he took to the prom. I felt old.
We were ready to leave, thoroughly disappointed and disgusted with the expo when we stumbled on a whole other room while trying to exit. There to one side was a whole slu of official BAA merchandise, including
JACKETS, and dozens upon dozens of picnic tables manned by helpful volunteers there to sell you the perfect singlet, key ring, baby tee, jacket, or whatever your heart desired... as long as it was in the 2 sizes they had left: Men’s medium (ironically), or extra small. The way I see it, if they wanted only the athletes to wear them, they wouldn't sell them at the expo. And there was nothing dignified about the way that runners, nay
customers were crawling all over each other to buy them. I didn’t even take the time to tell Cranky where I was going as I danced up to the picnic tables. “How big is an extra small?” I asked to the first guy whose attention I could get.
“It’s smaller than a small,” he said, rather grouchily.
Thanks a lot dipshit. “Ummmm, well, can I see one?” I asked.
“You want to try one on?” he grumbled, slightly sarcastically.
No, I just want to see it from a distance folded up in a plastic bag. “Well, yeah...” So he stomped off to the back and came back out with a shiny, new Boston Marathon jacket. I slipped it on and zipped it up. The zipper came apart at the bottom. Cranky, who had figured out that I wasn’t behind him and had come back to look for me said, “Uh oh.”
“You broke it!” accused Mr. Personality (credit goes to Cranky for the name).
“I didn’t mean to!” I said.
“Well, do you want it?” asked Mr. Personality, like he was in such a hurry to sell the remaining men's mediums to someone else. I turned to Cranky and asked how I looked. Other than a collar that looked a tad Elizabethan, it fit. “Yeah, I’ll take it.”
“Did you want one with a
ZIPPER?” he asked, like I was stupid enough to take the one on my back right then. I had kind of assumed he would switch it out anyway.
Cranky made a point of finding a different person to buy his blue and white BAA singlet from, and we finally went back out to the real world Boston toting our red bags that indicated that we, too were among the cool kids.
We spent the rest of the day watching the legions of blue and black jackets parading around the city and talking about marathons: our own experiences and those of others. We agreed that the long run is way more important than the deadlift for marathon success. We agreed that Mindy was an important asset to have in your corner for a marathon. We agreed that he should make sure he can swim more than 50 yards before he attempts a half ironman. And we agreed that we were MUCH cooler than pretty much everyone else in the world, ESPECIALLY those snobs in the jackets. We agreed that the jackets were sexy. Finally, we parted ways and I went home for a bland dinner and a good night’s rest.
The Morning Of
I woke up at 5:00 to begin my pre-race ritual: eat breakfast, figure out how to get to the race, pee as many times as possible, forget half my stuff and have to run back into the house a dozen times, etc. My dad works over near Hopkinton, so he offered to drive me to the start. I followed
Mary’s (aka Iron Matron) advice and got an early start to avoid road closures. Dad and I were worried about finding the right place, but when we pulled onto the highway and saw the caravan of yellow schoolbusses stretching as far as the eye could see, we stopped worrying. Dad was amazed. He’d never thought of the logistics of transporting 25,000 people from one place to another. We peered into the busses at the slumbering runners. “Those are some of the best amature marathon runners in the world,” I said to dad.
He looked into the next bus we passed. “They don’t LOOK that special,” he said. Maybe because not many of them were wearing The Jacket.
Traffic crawled up to the exit for Hopkinton and then kept going. Cops had already closed down the exit ramp. By this point my back teeth were swimming and I was ready to jump out and squat in the bushes. Apparently some of the runners on the hour and 45 minute bus trips had the same idea. The lucky ones just had to chase down their busses when they were done. The unlucky ones got warnings from cops. One guy refused to tie it off when the cop warned him, and while he watered the trees, a cop stood behind him writing him a ticket.
Meanwhile, dad and I had pulled off the highway. Cops were standing at the exit ramp directing all cars back onto the highway, screaming at everyone. “Keep MOVING, sir! You
can’t stop there! Let the runners out and MOVE ALONG! NO, YOU CAN’T GO DOWN THERE! MOOOVE!” I jumped out of the car as fast as I could and they had me wait at the corner with several other runners until they could flag down a bus to bring us to the start. This experience with the Nazi cops marked the beginning of a trend for the rest of the day: I would actually be less in the way if I went with the flow rather than trying to avoid the amenities intended for those who paid for them. I rode the final mile or two in style in a private coach next to a man from Chicago with coffe breath.
I was running late to meet Cranky, but I had some business to attend to. I found a porta-potty line only about 5 people deep, and did the peepee dance the whole time I was waiting. Women all around me were name-dropping marathons, and I would have given anything to get into the little blue cubicle to get away from them, but of course, the guy in front of me had to poo, and my line ground to a halt. These things ALWAYS happen to me!
When I finally tracked down Cranky at the designated meeting place (albeit a little later than expected), he told me that the "athletes' village" had absolutely no security, so we decided to set up camp in there. The Athletes' Village looked more like a refugee camp than anything else with acres and acres of runners who had staked out their two square yards of space and were lying around, some with pillows and blankets, others nervously stretching. Cranky and I spread out on his Mickey Mouse poncho and settled into some nervous chatter about the race and how much better we were than everyone else here. If security was going to be this loose, maybe I could get in with the first wave and get this thing over with just that much faster.
When they started calling the blue (qualified) bibs to the corals, I went with Cranky, but we parted ways as I got in line to take my third and final potty stop before the race. Hundreds of other runners had the same idea, and although there must have been at least 50 porta-potties in the lot, the lines stretched 20 or 30 people deep. One guy disappeared behind the line of blue huts to relieve himself, closely followed by a cop. I didn't hear what came of it, but a few minutes later I heard one volunteer say to another, (put on your best Boston accent) "Make shuwah that theyuh goin' IN the porta-potties. The cops aah ready to arrest people." I waited my turn, finished my business and wandered off to scope out the corals.
The corals stretched for several blocks and were separated into 15 sections, each with a rope to separate it from the sections to the front and back of it. Volunteers were standing at a break in the gates checking numbers at each coral. Damn. I spotted another guy standing around with his iPhone on his arm, a Red Sox cotton tee, basketball shorts, and street shoes. "Are you a bandit too?" I asked. He was, and this was his fifth marathon: 4 at Boston and one in New York, and he hadn't paid for a single one of them.
"You just have to wait till things get a little hectic, then slip in when they're looking at someone else. Try to stay towards the back, because the farther forward you go, the more security there is." Well that made sense. We were casing coral #14 when the volunteer manning it said, "Do you work for UPS?" I was startled when I realized he was talking to me. I was wearing my UPS sweatshirt with 3 weeks of breakfast dribbled down the front.
Damn, and I'd thought I was invisible. Nick (the other bandit) and I quickly moved a couple of corals up to test our luck there. Suddenly, the sun came out.
Then the announcer said, "For those of you who are coming from the bathrooms, we are starting in just a couple of minutes. Please make your way to the nearest coral." And then all hell broke loose. Dozens of runners crowded into the all the small breaks in the gates, and Nick and I mixed ourselves among them. I had just passed the second volunteer and was still standing next to them when a runner said to me, "You're going to roast in that sweatshirt."
I stole a quick glance at the volunteer to either side of me to make sure they hadn't overheard. If I took off my sweatshirt, it would be obvious that I didn't have a number. "Uhhhh, it's okay, I'll throw it out once I start running," I said, and shuffled myself farther away from him in the crowd. Then, far off up ahead the race started to move. I took off my sweatshirt and flung it to the edge, hitting a girl in the face in the process. Lickity-split we were moving, running before we even crossed the line.
The Boston Marathon
Right from the very start there were spectators. Families stood in their driveways holding out orange slices and cheering. I let Fellow Bandit Nick go on ahead and settled into my own pace. Immediately people started passing me. We passed a biker bar with dozens of ZZ Top look-alikes standing by with cigarettes and Budweisers in hand.
By mile 3 the crowd had thinned out around me, and the spectators had thickened up. Any man who hadn't peed by the side of the road yet would have to use a porta-potty from here on out. I fell into step with a mother of 4-month-old twins who had qualified just before getting pregnant. That's the only person I could find running my pace: a woman who'd just come off 2 months of bedrest followed by childbirth. We ran together for several miles, but eventually I had to let her go too. We passed Fellow Bandit Nick around mile 5, already walking. His basketball shoes were not cutting it, he said. By mile 7 I could already feel blisters starting to form in their usual place along my insteps and on my big toe. "These blisters are really going to suck when they come of age in about 10 miles," I told Becky, Mother of Twins.
I let Becky, Mother of Twins go around mile 8 and continued on by myself for awhile. The crowds were tireless, cheering for everybody they could, calling out the names that were written on arms, countries of flags printed on shorts, or names of charities printed on uniforms. It took me forever to figure out that when they were yelling "GO 2008!" they were talking about me! I was wearing my Martha's Vineyard "No Weenies" t-shirt that says 2008 in big green letters on the front. Later in the race a guy would come up behind me. “I’ve been trying to read your shirt. Does it say ‘No Weenies’? That could be taken a couple of ways...”
Thanks a lot, Einstein. I couldn’t think of anything clever and sarcastic to say so I just ignored him.
I finished the first 3k in 26:45, about on par with a tempo run, maybe a little bit faster. I crossed the 10k mark at 54:12. I made it to 15k in 1:22:27, just 1:33 over my PR for that distance. That’s okay. You say poor pacing, I say knowing my limitations and taking advantage of them. I already knew that Boston was famously treacherous for being downhill for the first 7 miles or so. People tend to go too fast at the beginning and ruin their legs for the second half of the race. My rationale was that no matter what happened I would lose any say in my pace around mile 20, so it was just a question of getting to 20 miles as fast as possible, and then hang on at whatever pace my body chose for me. By the time I got to mile 12 I was beginning to feel a bit tired, and I was dismayed. I was focused on the 14 miles ahead of me, not the 12 behind me. The miles were ticking away quickly and I guess it just didn’t register that I’d already been running for about 2 hours. I crossed the half marathon point in just under 2 hours, only about a minute off my PR and my butt was cramping up a bit. The downhills had ended, and now we were climbing over rollers. I was running low on liquids, and I was being passed by pink numbers (unqualified runners) from the second wave now. Although temperatures were only in the high 50's, it was about 20 degrees warmer than any temperature I had trained in and I'd had very few opportunities to train in the sun. I was hot. I was also suffering from cramps: not exercise cramps, the other kind of girl cramps. This was the beginning of the end that would last for the rest of the race. I guess 2 hours is where long runs usually catch up to me, but that didn’t register, like I said, I knew I still had a long way to go and let myself get down about it.
Then I hit Wellesley. Here are the things I’d heard about Wellesley College:
~ “You can hear it before you can see it.”
~ “God bless the Wellesley girls.”
~ “I’m sure that no one can talk on the Wellesley campus for weeks after all that screaming.”
In the depths of my self-doubt I started to hear a dull roar coming from over a ridge. Then it got louder. It sounded like a fucking rock concert. When I crested the hill and saw the old buildings and the sign for Wellesley College I knew that this was it. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Half a mile of 18- and 19-year-old girls leaning over the barricades, holding signs like “Free Kisses”, “I Love Runners” and “Hug me, I'm a Wellesley girl” were holding their hands out and screaming their fucking heads off. It was the most thrilling thing that I’ve ever done in my life. I stuck out my hand and had a full minute of high 5’s before I pulled my hand back for a second. Then I stuck it out again and got another minute of high 5's. I wouldn’t be surprised if that stretch was the fastest I ran in the whole race.
Elevation profile. The range goes from about 500' to 0' above sea levelThe Wellesley high carried me through mile 14, but by mile 15, going into Newton I was feeling pretty crappy again. The course was really undulating, the weather was getting hotter, and my water bottle was empty. Up ahead, though, I knew I was going to see Mary (Iron Matron) and
Tetas.
Mary had said that she would be waiting on the right side of the road around a playground at mile 16. Part way through mile 15 I saw a playground coming up and moved right to find her. And there she was, right where she said she would be, staring up the road behind me. I called out her name, but she didn’t hear me and kept cheering on the runners behind me. Who cared about them,
I was
here! I stopped right next to her and practically knocked her over trying to get her attention. “You’re early!” she exclaimed, once she figured out who this nut case was that was attacking her.
The thought crossed my mind to lie and say I was surprised, I didn’t know how fast I could actually run. “I left in the earlier group,” I admitted. I met one of the three Mini Marys while the Iron Matron filled up my bottle with sweet, cold Gatorade.
“How are you feeling?” she asked. I let loose with my laundry list of aches and pains: cramps in my butt, cramps in my abdomen, blisters... Then she wished me well and I ran off. I downed about ¾ of the Gatorade in the next ¾ of a mile. I was already starting to feel human again before I found Tetas standing in front of her office building. “TETAS!” I yelled at the top of my lungs (I didn’t want to give her a heart attack like Mary.)
I dumped out the last few ounces of Gatorade to make room for the Accelerade that Tetas was holding for me, and flicked my wrist a little overzelously, spraying a spectator sitting on the curb. Oops, my mistake. Then we loaded me back up with Shot Blocks.
“Oh my God. You just ran 16 miles!” Tetas gushed.
“Oh my God, I’ve still got 10 to go!” I groaned as I shoved the blocks back in my pocket and got ready to go.
“Go Claire!!!!” she screamed after me.
“GO ME!!!!!!!” I yelled back, and pranced off feeling significantly better.
Tessa’s comment made me realize that I really HAD run a long way already, and it was okay that I was feeling a little bit beat up. I managed to hold on to that thought through the first half of mile 18. By this point I was dumping every cup of water that I could find over my head, and I’d drained most of my accelerade and refilled on water from a helpful family that wanted to keep pouring even after I was full. By mile 19 I decided to eat every mile rather than every other mile. I was starting to get tired, and this was a desperate stab at staving off the inevitable death march.
Just 2 miles to heartbreak hill, I told myself.
You WILL
run over heartbreak hill, and then you’ll get 2 miles of downhill, then you’ll get 2 miles of flat, then you’ll be done. Just 7 miles left. Crap, that was a mistake. Seven miles felt like an awfully long way.
Just get over heartbreak hill, I repeated over and over again.
In the beginning of mile 20 I hit heartbreak hill, a little earlier than expected. I was actually a little crushed it was so early, since that meant that there was just that much more to talk myself through afterwards.
YOU WILL RUN UP HEARTBREAK HILL! I told myself. Things I’d heard about heartbreak hill:
~It’s not that bad.
The surprise: Heartbreak hill is
NOT THAT BAD! Actually, after so much downhill running, it actually felt good to be running uphill. My legs felt fresher than they had for miles. I did stop once on Heartbreak Hill to slug back a dixie cup of water, and then I looked down at my Garmin (something I never do). I was only holding 11-minute miles. This will not do! So I tried to pick it up. I pushed over the top of heartbreak hill with a horrible, stabbing pain in my back somewhere between my shoulderblade and my kidney. I must have pulled something in my back heaving for air, and it was sore for the rest of the race, but on top of all the other stuff that was hurting, it hardly seemed to matter.
Okay, 2 miles of downhill, then 2 miles of flat, I told myself. I looked down at my garmin again. I was still going slower than a 10-minute mile, even on the downhill. My body had chosen its finishing pace and there was nothing I could do about it. I kept surging and then looking down at my wrist, sure that I was going at a 9-minute pace this time. Nope, 10:15, 10:34, 11:04, 10:46... So the deathmarch had begun.
Fastest miles: miles 2 and 4 at 8:28, slowest miles: 17 (10:54), 22 and 24 (10:38), and 25 (10:37)
I hit mile 23 and started repeating to myself,
Just keep it together for 3 more miles, Claire. And then,
Just keep it together for two and a half more miles... Each mile lasted a lifetime. The crowds had thickened and we were running next to the train tracks at this point. We must have already been in Boston. More and more spectators were holding cups, but fewer and fewer of those cups were intended for the runners, more and more were filled with beer. The signs didn’t just say, “Go Uncle Dan!” and “Suzy you’re my hero!” anymore. There were other signs too: “Run with Jesus”, “You’re Crazy!”, and “Better You Then Me!” I wanted to stop and point out the error on the
Better You Then Me poster. I wanted to tell her that her sign meant that she was going to follow me to the finish line and that I hope she suffered just as much as I did until then. But I’d already run away by the time I’d thought of something clever to say.
At mile 24 the blister on my left instep popped. I had completely forgotten about my blisters until my foot started to sting. That gave me something to think about for a couple of minutes before I settled back into Keeping It Together for 2 More Miles. We could see the iconic Citgo sign at Fenway Park looming overhead and all the spectators had either just come out of, or were on their way into all the clubs on Landsdown Street. Some were offering free beer. The crowds were getting old, I just wanted peace and quite for a minute so I could concentrate.
Just hold it together for a mile and a half, Claire. Around that time I started to hear people calling out my name. I kept hearing people scream, “GO CLAIRE!!!!!” but my name rhymes with everything, so I thought nothing of it. Still, I pretended it was me they were cheering for. Unbeknownst to me, my mom was standing somewhere in there. She didn’t recognize me. She was looking for a ponytail and I was wearing braids. She wasn’t expecting sunglasses (because I never run with sunglasses... at night). Later she would remember me going by, but figured it wasn’t me. The reason she remembered this me-look-alike with braids and sunglasses (me) was because right behind her was a girl with CLAIRE written down her arms. I never saw Claire pass me, so I probably beat her. Serves her right, bitch.
Actually, I was still being passed consistently on all sides. I was passed by a steady stream of people for 26.2 miles and the only people I passed were the pukers and the crampers. I passed the 1-mile-to-go mark and looked at my Garmin: 25.5 miles and just over 4 hours. Shit. I was going to have to run an extra .3 miles! I tried to pick it up for the last mile, but there was nothing I could do to speed up. I was running as hard as I could and still hovering around a 10:00 mile. We were running down Commonwealth Ave and dipped down to go under an underpass and I got a sweet 30 seconds of relative quiet, at the price of the uphill out of the tunnel.
I was checking my wrist every tenth of a mile and clocking in at 25.8 miles when I heard someone yell, “Just around this corner and the finish line’s right there!”
FINALLY! I turned the corner, and then another, and there, about 400 yards in front of me was the finish line! As I sprinted at a blistering 9:45/mile pace past the grandstands I was sure that this was the marathon where I was going to cry. I was
definitely going to cry for joy. All that training, all that running in the cold, all that... everything... I crossed the finish line in 4:13:49, with more than a minute cushion on my 4:15 goal!
After the Marathon
I did not cry. There was no time for that. There were no catchers at the finish line, and you had no choice but to dive head first into the sea of dazed and confused runners. It was all I could do to stay upright, and negotiating the constantly shifting sea of thousands of runners who were in the same state required all my concentration. Was someone going to do something unexpected? Was I going to have to make a quick move? What was the best rout around the guy in front of me that required the least number of steps. The first stop in the assembly line was medical checks. Volunteers stood in the middle of the crowd shouting something about did anyone need help. I saw runners sitting in wheelchairs in postures that I associated with the decrepitly old. Then, a few minutes down the road they were handing out water. I clearly wasn’t getting out of here any time soon, so I grabbed one. So what? Down the street a few more yards and several more minutes they were handing out space blankets. A volunteer wrapped me in one and it was the closest thing I got to the hug that I really, really wanted. Then, several feet and many minutes later, there were volunteers giving us stickers that served as brooches for our silver capes. Farther along, and after several more minutes we shuffled past people handing out bags of food. Like hell I was passing this one up! Now the exhausted runners shuffled into a bottleneck where the busses were waiting filled with drop bags. I shuffled through the narrowed pass where runners' movements were less and less predictable and where flying silver capes made it even harder to plan out the most direct rout through the crowd. All I wanted to do was sit down. I missed Cranky more than I’d ever missed anyone in my life. The busses were arranged by bib number. Numbers were assigned by qualifying time or projected finishing time, so therefore, all the runners assigned to one bus would show up at once. This sucked. Finally I pushed through to where they were directing us to the family meeting area. Cranky and I had arranged to meet at the farther one. For some reason I had pictured a serene pen filled with no more than 100 docile people taking up about the size of a football field. There would be massages and perhaps Enya would be playing. Instead I found myself in a couple of blocks of mayhem. There were runners and family everywhere screaming into cell phones and whipping arms in the air oblivious to nearby faces pointing out Dad or Buddy or Sally or whoever was coming through. I sat right down in the sun and ate me a power bar before I even thought about trying to find Cranky. When I felt I could get up again I wandered around for about 10 minutes looking for him. Then I sat down again, figuring this was his 20th marathon, he could damn well find me.
When Cranky didn’t come to my rescue after another 10 minutes or so, I started limping towards an exit. I found a big L hanging from a lamp post and figured out that this bedlam was supposed to be alphabetical. Cranky was not waiting for me in the Ls, so I kept limping away to the barricades at the end of the street. They were holding them open to push wheelchairs through, but wouldn’t let runners out that way. I had to turn around and elbow through another 2 blocks to get to the exit, then several more to the subway.
On to plan B. I rode the train back to my office where I would call Cranky. I had written his number in Sharpie on my leg so I wouldn’t lose it. I hobbled out of the T and over to my office which was dark and silent. I sat down and left a loud message on Cranky’s voicemail and then proceeded to change my shirt, bra and all, in my cube. Then, somewhere in the office a phone rang...
AND SOMEONE ANSWERED IT! Oh crap! I was not alone. And who of all people should come waltzing down the corridor, but the president of the company himself. “Hi... Todd...” I said. Luckily I was dressed... I changed the rest of my clothes in the bathroom, popped my birthday-balloon-sized blisters with relish, washed my face, and then offered the Lindt chocolate bar from my goodie bag to my boss as a peace offering. Nothing says, “
Sorry I turned up sweaty and smelly and half naked in your office” like a sample-sized chocolate bar.
The rest of the afternoon I spent hobbling around Harvard Square with Cranky rehashing our success. He had held back and finished strong. I had run a marathon faster than ever before. We agreed that Heartbreak Hill was a joke, and that the runners took themselves way too seriously. We compared notes about the behavior in our respective parts of the pack. And mostly, we limped. After sitting down for an hour to eat some organic vegetarian pizza, I noticed that Cranky was not just shuffling, but limping a little bit. I sort of felt better, at least I wasn’t the only one. But it was also a horrible lesson. This was the first time I felt like I’d properly trained and been ready for a marathon. I was really hoping it would hurt less. It didn’t hurt less, and judging by the way Cranky was walking it was never GOING to hurt less. The only thing that all that training got me was A) into the finish line 25 minutes earlier, and B) higher functionality while I was hurting like hell. This one hurt every bit as much as the last 3. In fact, now that a couple of days have passed, I may actually be MORE sore this time around than I was for the untrained marathon.
But the up side is that I now own a supersexxxy jacket and everyone keeps asking me if I ran the marathon. Just like I promised, I’ve been telling each and every person that I didn’t qualify, I ran it as a bandit, but they don’t seem to care. And every time I see one of the supersexxxy jackets on the street I think, “
You think you’re so cool, but I can do that,” just like I always do, but now I’ve got a jacket to back it up.
So, am I glad I did it? Yes.
Would I have been glad I did it without the jacket? Probably not. To have taken part in the whole hype and not have anything to show for it would have been too frustrating. The whole reason I wanted to do it was for the bragging rights.
Am I a poseur? Yes.
Am I ashamed? Not really.
Will I qualify? Who knows. It's not high on my list of things to do right now, but we'll see when my legs feel better and after the season of speed work I'm heading into now that my base phase is over.
Should you do it? Definitely.
The best part? Beating Princess Angry's time at Disney by 10 minutes and 10 seconds.
Time taken off my previous PR: 27:24 For race reports, see below:
Cape Cod Marathon, October 2007Barcelona Marathon, March 2007Big Sur Marathon, April 2005
