Qualifying for Boston

Qualifying for Boston

When Maria moved to Boston for college, I casually mentioned that maybe I would run the Boston Marathon and visit her. At that time I wasn’t sure how often she would want us to visit, and this would offer the perfect pretext for visiting. However, things went well, and we visited or she came home on a regular if not super-frequent basis. So no excuse to visit was needed. However, I had made that statement in front of Travis, who always remembered and encouraged me to fulfill my promises/dreams. And so when he went off (going to the same place but definitely not following) to Boston 3 years later, he said, “I’ll see you in April – you know that you promised Maria that you would run the Boston Marathon and this is her last year there.” And there it was, he laid my promise on the table, called it and then had doubled up on it by making it a trip to see both of them.

I hadn’t run a marathon in over 4 years and had no plans to run one when this mid-September bomb dropped. And even if I had run recently, there was the not-so-small matter of qualifying. I never had. I had never really understood the whole attraction of Boston and consequently, I had never really felt a need or desire to run there. This fit neatly with the fact that my best times were still 8-10 minutes short of qualifying. And that is what went through my mind first. Here I am in mid-September, with a strong base of running, but no marathon distance training, no recent race experience and no idea of my speed, with a goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon or, at least in my mind, not lowering my image in the eyes of my son. Peer pressure doesn’t work so well on me, but I do value his respect.

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I also respect the marathon. At 26.2 miles, the distance can take a toll on you even if you are well prepared and at that length, most of us mortals are incapable of running it at a speed fast enough for it to really be a race. I usually control my pace for much of the race, but it controls me at the crucial point where finish times can be greatly increased or hold steady. I knew instantly that I could run a marathon, but I had no idea if I could run a marathon at the necessary speed to qualify. Over the years I had talked to people and read about the need to put it all on the line in order to achieve a significant goal. Basically, this means to risk failure or blowing up. This means running at a pace that is faster than comfortable and that may result not just in not qualifying, but being so tired and depleted that completing the race might not be possible. Imagining failure and the physical fatigue and the mental anguish of dropping out creates a huge mental barrier to truly attempting such a feat. But I resolved to do the training and see if I could get in the speed range that would make a Herculean attempt meaningful.

Training for a marathon always requires a commitment, and training for a marathon that would serve as a qualifier for another marathon seemed an even bigger chore. I quickly decided that it would be best to ignore the effects that the first marathon would have on the second and just see if I could qualify. I started running with a bit more frequency and I started tacking on a few miles to make one run a long run. I started at 12 miles and didn’t seem too tired so that was a good sign. My daily runs felt good and I jumped to 40 miles a week total.

What would I do differently in training for this race? That seems to be a straightforward question

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and the obvious answer was to incorporate speed work into my workouts. But as simple as that sounds, speed work is intimidating and hard and dangerous. Lots of runners get injured from doing speed work while adding long runs while increasing total distance. Many of them never make it to the starting line. Speed work covers relatively short distances but it drains the muscles and can have detrimental effects on runs for other days. It requires a mental toughness to stick with a schedule. For whichever reason, I found it tough to get motivated on those days and worried that an injury was waiting just down the trail. So the obvious idea of speed work would not be my savior.

Another question on my mind was where to run a qualifying marathon. This is a hard decision even when made 6 months in advance. Many of the popular marathons fill up early, and in any case they didn’t allow me adequate time to train. Almost every time I run a marathon, I think that I needed one more month of training in order to be prepared. That feeling is there whether I had a short period (10 weeks) or a long period (20 weeks) to train. Using this logic, I needed at least 10 weeks to train starting in mid-September, so the earliest possible date would be December, and January would be even better. So I started the search for a marathon in the early part of the following year. Well, there aren’t a lot of mid-winter marathons. Plus, I wanted a marathon that would not add an obstacle to qualifying. So I peered over the elevation charts – flat is good and downhill is better. No rolling courses or personal challenges would work. I had only a handful of choices and I eliminated some because of the possibility of heat. I would prefer to try to run fast in the cold than on a warm day. I also ruled out expensive

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cross-country trips and decided on a reasonably local spot: Myrtle Beach in mid-February. Plenty of time to train and hopefully just enough time to register and recover for an April 17th run in Boston. Oh well, one step at a time.

My strength as a runner is consistency. On a regular basis, I run a reasonable distance week after week after week. I don’t do grueling workouts. I am not good at peaking. What I am good at is running my miles at about the same speed one after another – endurance over a standard distance. The trick for me in a marathon is to increase that distance from my normal 7 miles to the largest possible number, knowing that the closer it gets to 26.2 the better.

But then I lost it. I travelled for a few weeks for work and didn’t run. I travelled for vacation and didn’t run. I got sick and didn’t run. We had bad weather and I didn’t run. Christmas came and I didn’t run. Any excuse and I didn’t run. I had weeks without a run. Why? Who knows? My only saving grace was that when I did run, it tended to be a long run. I got back above 40 the first week in January although my long run was only 12 miles and I was now 6 weeks out from the marathon. I followed up on that by travelling and not running for 17 consecutive days. My taper was too long and way too early. I broke that dry spell the morning after my flight home by running 20 miles. It was hard and made harder by the fact that I ran hard. I took 3 recovery days – I needed them - and then ran two 7-milers. Seventeen days out from the marathon, I ran 22 miles. I was determined to get myself in shape for a marathon in a period of 3 weeks – the normal time to start the taper. I reached 44 miles that week, exceeding 40 for only the second time in the past

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eight weeks. After 8 on Sunday, I ran 11 on Monday followed by a long run of 20 miles – on 6 days rest and 11 days before the race. Adding in a 7-miler and another 11-miler, I reached 49 miles. That was my highest recorded weekly mileage in years and one week out from a must-do-well marathon.

Myrtle Beach is a good place for a marathon. It is reasonably flat, has lots of empty hotel rooms in February, is well organized, is reasonably priced and has a temperate climate that seems to cooperate. Crowd support is a bit weak and most fans are there with the specific intent to cheer for a specific person and not for all of the athletes. While some will cheer you on, others will act as if they don’t see you when you are the only runner within a hundred yards. The other notable facts are that there are many more people running the half than the whole, that both races start simultaneously and share the same course for 13 miles, and that they have relay teams as well.

Race day arrives and Myrtle Beach is crawling with runners walking in the dark towards the start line. Like zombies in a frightening flick, we converge to the lights. Prerace is prerace and a few more Port-a-Johns would have been helpful, but the fact that we are using chips, the small total crowd (<5000) and that the starting line is 100 feet away remove any pressure. We will be there when the 6:30 AM start occurs. The sun will not, as it is not scheduled to rise until 6:56 AM. That’s fine, as we will have streetlights and some early morning light before the sun hits the horizon, but it adds to the coolness of the start. It also means that we stand around and start during the daily temperature low and it reduces the chance of heat being a factor, It won’t be a factor today as it is a bit chilly, but really

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the perfect temperature for a marathon. My lucky streak continues.

We don’t so much line up as crowd up. I toss off my sweats and feel cold in my shorts and singlet, but I know that will change after a mile of running. I have run here once before – 7 years ago – and the course start and finish have changed. Because of changes in the Boston qualifying times and my extra years, I only need to cut 2 minutes 13 seconds off of that time. That is only about 4.5 seconds per mile. Of course I have aged and I haven’t had the best training, but... it’s only 4.5 seconds. It is hard to explain to non- runners that 4.5 seconds per mile is actually a lot – particularly for 26.2 miles. But enough complaining. I stood among the runners looking at them and both consciously and subconsciously admiring their fitness and comparing their predicted times to mine. Many are there for the half and I need to run their pace twice. Some are there for fun, some with friends, some to complete the distance and others to race. This is an unusual marathon for me. I am usually there for fun, but today was a challenge. As I told everyone multiple times, I hadn’t run a marathon lately and I was running this one only because of my stated goal: to qualify for Boston. I repeated this to myself and reminded myself that I should not slack off during the race. Either I make Boston or I go down spectacularly in flames. I had never had a DNF (Did Not Finish) at any sporting event, but I kept trying to convince myself that if I didn’t qualify for Boston, I needed a DNF today.

The excitement was palpable as always when the gun sounded and we rocketed off into the thin veil of light now showing. Pacing in the first few miles of a marathon is extremely important: too fast and you

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have ruined your race; too slow and you are likely to establish a rhythm too slow to achieve your optimal time. Most of the time in a daily run, I look to my body to communicate the pace. However, I have discovered over time that this is an unreliable indicator at races, since the adrenaline faucet is running at full blast. Everything feels too easy. For this reason, I try to pull back my pace to feel slow at first and judge my pace through the first mile by whether I am passing or being passed. Usually more people should be passing me as they sprint out and this was particularly true with today’s group. Without a careful examination of the bibs, there was no obvious way to know what race category others were. The relay runners, and there were about 200 at the front, were all running a 10K pace. The halfs were running, well in the first mile, many of them were running a 10K pace. Mile 1 and 2 clicked off fast but controlled. Shortly after that I spotted 4 Port-a- Johns which were, to the best of my recollection, the only ones on the course. I decided to make a preemptive stop. Not needed, but done, and I am back in the flow.

The miles kept flowing by and at a good pace. I was steady and there was little variation from one to the next. We visited the tourist sites on the edge of town and one pancake house after another. Let’s finish this run and eat some pancakes! As we neared the half, I felt good and for some reason felt that I should speed up so that I could pass some of those half-marathoners before they turned off. I don’t think that I impressed any of them but it did speed the split. One after another, runners turned off the course towards their finish as we ploughed ahead to our own half marker. I crossed at 1:42:14. It is hard to know until later whether

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a half time is good or bad. If it turns out that you have a low time but sacrificed finish speed, that is bad. If you have a slow time but saved energy for the second half, well then you were a genius. I judged this time to not be too fast given my goal and perhaps even a little too slow. Knowing that the last part of the run eats up time, I calculated how much time I had in the bank – how much slower I could run in the second half. So I had 2 minutes and 46 seconds to carry over, plus I could run the second half slower by 2 minutes and 46 seconds and still make it.

Doing math in marathons is always risky and usually requires that the same operations be done multiple times before the results are accurate and remembered. I don’t wear a GPS or even a watch and I subtract my past time from my current time to obtain my split, and divide my total time by distance to know my average pace. So my calculation at half was that I had run about a 7:48 pace. To run an even qualifying time, I needed a pace of exactly 8-minute miles. So this meant that in the second half I could slow down from 7:48 to 8:00, plus I had an extra 12 seconds per mile available so I could run an 8:12 pace from here on out – that is 24 seconds slower per mile! This seems complicated sitting at a desk, but it is truly complicated when running. On the positive side, by the time I knew all of this I had crossed the 14-mile marker running at the same pace, and so I had even more time in the bank and less distance to cover.

While 24 seconds per mile seems a lot slower, many runners commonly experience decreases in speed of 2 or 3 minutes per mile in the later stages. Given this, even though it might be the correct action, we don’t immediately take advantage of this time but

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we try to maintain the pace for as long and as far as we can. And that is exactly what did.

As I mentioned, the crowd support in Myrtle Beach tends to be personal rather than generic. However, if you bring along a dedicated supporter, fan, family member or even just a hyperactive person that you meet the night before, their opportunities to interact with you are ample. In the second half, the runners are spread out. Side streets are empty. Parking is available. Eva had come along for the adventure and she saw me 9 or 10 times and stopped off for a latte. On one occasion, she cheered for me for 50-75 yards as I approached, then 2 minutes later I hear her cheering for me for 50-75 yards as I approached, and then a third time just down the road. She was doing all of the work, but I had to smile and be friendly each time. Fortunately I felt good, and I shared this with her. Normally this is the time when I shrug my shoulders and say that I am not sure how this is going to conclude.

We cut through a small area filled with people and find an active zone with an aid station. I sip on the cool Gatorade and start running again. Zip. Zip. I have been passed by 2 guys running at full speed that look as fresh as if they had just started. Wait, they are relay guys running the anchor legs. Wow. There’s Eva. I smile again and totally out of character, I claim victory saying, “I’ll make it.” Hah, what kind of idiot makes a finish time prediction with 6 miles – the last six miles - to go? Well me, I guess. I felt good. I felt strong. The weather was perfect at about 50 degrees and sunny. I had maintained my pace and had about 4 minutes “in the bank” with 6 miles to go. That meant that I could

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average an 8:40 and break 3 hours 30 minutes. Not a problem today.

Off I went to claim victory. Miles 21-24.5 were a straight shot up Kings Highway, paralleling the beach. This is a major road and we ran on the right side. It was flat but I felt like it had the slightest roll. The change was small but it dipped down to sea level and then, dare I use the word, “climbed” up to 40 feet above sea level. It felt a bit harder but not significant, but the time on the clock had ticked more than I expected and I needed to maintain the pace. Where had the time gone? Suddenly at mile 24, my calculations showed that I could not slow down any more and that I needed 8:45 miles for 2.2 miles to meet my goal. Two miles ago and this wouldn’t have seemed like much of a challenge. So this is what it had come down to at the end: I had to run a not-fast pace, but faster than the last 2 miles. All of that big talk about running on the edge and risking a flameout was just talk if there was no energy, but I felt reasonably good. There was nothing to do but stick my head down and try to run the next 2 miles.

I am not sure if you have ever run fast at the end of a marathon, but a little bit of speed will take you past a lot of people who are slowing down step by step. It will also play tricks on your mind. You can be strong for a minute and feel exhausted the next minute and then surge again. I ran a fairly steady pace with a few surges thrown in. At mile 25 I figured I had about 11 minutes plus a minimal difference between the gun and chip times. Again, barring a breakdown, I am there. So I pushed even harder and headed home. I missed the clock at mile 26 (or it wasn’t there) but felt safe as I turned towards the finish. Oh yeah, either I had really run the past mile, there had been a clock error, or

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my calculations were too conservative, but I had plenty of time and ran leisurely over the finish line with 1 minute 20 seconds to spare.

I had qualified for Boston. I had 9 weeks to get ready. But first there were pancakes to eat.

P.S. I learned afterwards that Boston rounds your time down to the minute and so there is an extra 59 seconds available. I had time to stop for pancakes on the course!

For more on qualifying times, see

http://www.runhardrunfun.com/2009/06/boston- marathon-qualifying-times.html

New York Marathon

  

 Chapter 4: New York Marathon

“N

ew York is a great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.” People had been saying this forever, but it seems exactly wrong to me. I had lived in Manhattan 3 separate times for a total of just over three years and I found it a truly great place to live. It had the energy to match what it asked of you. The world flowed around it and it seemed the CPU of the surge in information; everything from everywhere linked into NYC. The Big Apple, IªNY, even the karaoke standard of “New York, New York” supported this. Well, it is an arguable point, but when I drove the moving truck across the George Washington Bridge 10 years ago, I would never have imagined that it would be a decade before I stepped back into the city and I would haven laid even lower odds that it would be a marathon that served as a pretext for the visit.

In the ensuing years I travelled quite a bit, but NY was never on the list, and knowing it so well, I felt that those scarce vacation days and funds should be allocated elsewhere. But as I became a runner and considered the adventure side of the equation, New York represented the apex of the known world. I had never seen one of the marathons when living there, but later I began to hear about groups of people making the New York Marathon a destination vacation. A group of over 25 people from Venezuela journeyed to NYC to run and later, as one of them recounted the fun, I admit thinking that it sounded cool and fascinating, even if it had no possible part in my future. It just had that big city buzz about it and the media reported it. Having walked all over Manhattan, the idea of covering all 5 boroughs struck me as strange and perhaps even reckless.            I had never visited Boston and didn’t know much about the marathon there, but I knew New York to be great and everything that I heard about the marathon made it sound like the ultimate sports event. I harbored no illusions of winning or even placing in the double digits in my age group; I knew that this would be a participation event. Then, and my recollection of the sequence of the events is forgotten, my brother-in-law who lived across the continent from us on the East Coast, said that he planned to run New York. Great, we will see you there. Eva heard about two words and she was on board for the trip. “New York? Yes I want to go? Marathon? I think that we can work that in. I’ve got some ideas of things that we can do and places to eat and there definitely are people to see….” And so I completed the application 6 months in advance and waited to hear if I would be lucky enough to be chosen to spend a small fortune to run an inhuman distance from the extremes of the city to end at the tourist mecca of Tavern on the Green. And I was that lucky.

Everyone has their own way of preparing for a marathon even if they don’t. This predated Galloway, there were no forums, the running boom was beginning but the marathon surge would still need to wait a few years. Shoe fittings were judged by pressing a finger down to see how close your big toe came to the end of the shoe. Information about the race was practically nonexistent. We had no elevation charts, though New York must be flat, right? There were a few plans on how to train for a marathon, but they were generally directed towards elite runners and included 6-minute repeats. For the rest of us, there were two basic pieces of information: (1) you need to run at least 20 miles once in your training and then plan to add another 6.2 in the race, and (2) you may “bonk” or “hit the wall”.  Bonking meant running out of energy and was fairly easy to understand. We had Power Bars for that, though no one would actually consider taking these along for a long distance run. “Hitting the wall” was a term of mystery and represented an invisible but real barrier somewhere around twenty miles where suddenly the body could go no further. It was not known why this happened, but it was clear that it was undesirable and had detrimental effects on the outcome of your race. Best to avoid these.

My first marathon had gone well, being a reasonable time, the only negative split I would ever have and a quick recovery afterwards. I assumed this one would be more of the same, though I felt only slightly more knowledgeable about the distance. I continued running with no other real purpose than enjoying the daily activity. My neighbors started commenting about seeing me out, I had a great California tan and I could wear running clothes to the grocery store at any hour. I found a trail that allowed for a long loop with spurs that permitted runs of any distance, provided water breaks, avoided traffic and put me among the other real athletes in town.

I took pride in the changes that were occurring to my body: my big toenails began to look weird, crack and grow unevenly. I had a tan that showed exactly the fit of my singlet and stopped just above my ankles where my feet were white with or without my socks on. I even developed a blue foot disease (coloring only) as a result of sweaty feet causing my Thorlo socks to lose their dye onto my feet. I could head to the community pool secure in the knowledge that there were concrete signs of my running, or at least enough weird cues so that I could start a conversation about running.

Almost all of my runs were alone, but running shared time with triathlon. I had launched into multiple activities simultaneously and they shared my efforts. With all the cross-training activities and no real running program, my weekly totals fluctuated but generally stayed in the low thirties with the occasional notable forty-mile week. I didn’t run in races as I considered my running to be personal and noncompetitive. This seemed a logical fit with a huge marathon, but not the case with a local 5k. I didn’t judge others; I just didn’t do short races then. I prepared for the race by running and I felt neither fear of the distance nor nervousness about the upcoming trip.

It was great to be back in New York. The convention was held at the New York Hilton and it exuded that big city feel. I heard athletes speaking French, German, Japanese, Spanish and a dozen other languages that I couldn’t decipher. People were walking around in running clothes, “jogging suits”, tracksuits and at least in midtown of this metropolis, there was a feeling of a marathon. The athletes were excited and you could constantly overhear conversations about running even if you might not understand the language.

Inside the convention area was the greatest ever congregation of runners, running paraphernalia and energy. This was the center of the emerging movement and every company that had any relation to the industry was here. Every high-tech food or piece of footwear was available for a real-life test. There was no concern about being on your feet because that’s what walking around in New York meant. We spent hours visiting the booths. It was impossible to know which of these items would help in the marathon, but I was not so green as to consider introducing something into the race with which I had not trained. These were toys for future runs.

One thing that never changes in New York is the high cost of being there. Fortunately, we had wrangled an invitation from some friends to stay over with them at their apartment and had plans with them for dinner the night before the race. We really wanted to see them and this was really the only time to do it, so no pre-race pasta dinner at the hotel tonight - not that I would have gone anyway. But that differs from hanging out with old party friends in some significant ways. They were animated and it was fun. They led us to a Greek restaurant near the UN and we ate heavy food, drank wine and ignored the hour – a perfect way to see them again. Our friend Miguel had previously run the marathon and shared a few tips – one might have been to get some sleep the night before the race. He made plans with Eva for breakfast followed by cheering.

Back at their two-bedroom apartment, an incredibly large one by New York standards, we headed off to bed. We got their young son’s room with lovely Disney sheets and bunk beds – at least I would lose no sleep from sharing a bed! I got the top bunk and put my head down next to Daffy Duck’s and eventually drifted away. I didn’t visualize the start the following day or a strong stride over the finish line, but I did have fairies dancing in my head and singing.

The morning of a marathon is special. Even if you are totally prepared, you do it so infrequently that it is out of the ordinary. I heard the alarm and reacted instantly to not wake everyone else up. Being a resident of the West Coast, the three-hour time difference and the ridiculously early hour combined to seem like a middle-of-the-night game. I could just as easily have been going to bed. I say that but actually it would have been easier to climb up the ladder than to make a startled dash down in the darkness to the floor. I didn’t step on any toys or miss any steps, so I had no new excuse not to run. Could it really be time to go? I slipped on my running clothes and planned to find out.

Outside it could have been any time: the sky was bright as it always is in New York. The stars sleep elsewhere because the city never sleeps. I was close by and only had to cover about 5 streets and three avenues to catch my 5:45 AM bus in front of the Public Library at Fifth & 42^nd. There was a long line of buses and some were already leaving. People seemed to be arriving from every direction. I spotted my bus and no sooner was I on it than off it went. As I searched for seats, I spotted a former work colleague now based in Puerto Rico and exchanged pleasantries. It’s a small world after all.

Fort Wadsworth is the staging area waiting for us at Staten Island and was in full-scale mobilization. Organizers now warn everyone that they may spend several hours under or near one of the tents and that the weather may be cold. The average low for the start later in the day is 47 degrees, a very comfortable running temperature. I have located Paul and apparently, he didn’t get that memo either. Not only am I underdressed for the temperature, the wind is whipping through and there are on and off again snow flurries. Paul seems to be braving it better than me. I have spent most of the past 15 years in the idyllic tropical climate in Caracas or in sunny Southern California. I doubt that it has made my blood any thinner but I am in shock. We board multiple buses sitting there looking for a seat, but most turn out to be private and full of people that were smarter sooner than us. Later I will attempt to reach a partial solution by spending way longer in the port-a-potties than normal – and then getting back in line to do it again. They smelled, but they broke the wind. (humor) The tents had no sides and were jammed with people. The body warmth alone would have been helpful had we brought something to sit on that would provide a moisture barrier. But without that, we had to stand in the cold for about 3 hours.

Meanwhile, bagels were being offered. Where I lived in California had few venues for a good bagel and I had missed H&H. Still, I drank water and avoided eating. My digestive tract has an issue, if you know what I mean, with eating before a run. If I had been better prepared and on top of things, I would have eaten early and perhaps have had ample time to digest them. Certainly my body could use the fuel for a furnace for the run and to stay warm. Amazingly, other people could put away three or four, a couple of yogurts, bananas and even a few hot dogs (my exaggeration). I would have assumed that they would pay a price, but I know too many people that do this routinely with only positive effects. So I said no to a bagel, easily justifying my self-denial with comments on cold hard bagels not being appetizing. Little did I know that they would catch on and soon cold, hard bagels would become a staple of almost all post-race goody tables. I still don’t pick one up today.

Almost always I find that the time between arriving at a race and starting is just about right. I say hello to a few people, adjust my gear, stretch a bit and then visit the toilet as close to race time as possible. I then get to the race line and as I am getting positioned, the race starts. Today was different. I was ready for the race to start. Running would mean some warmth and I would maybe even use less energy running than shivering. So as soon as a movement to the start area began, I was on the move. Plus I needed to figure out exactly where to go.

The New York Marathon has long been an overwhelming number of people and they began a corral system and a color-coded system early. The colors indicated which holding area on which road you started. There are three different start lines that all come together after the first mile. They are theoretically measured so as to not give any one an advantage while lessening the initial bottleneck. Well I am sure that it lessens it, but 40,000 people – bigger than my hometown – just take a while to spread out. Within each color, there are corrals based on your estimated finish time. So in theory everyone within your group of more than a thousand should finish within a minute of you. Get to know them well. The corral fills quickly and I see the different levels of experience, modesty and wealth. My corral is all men and a large number, I see at least twenty, are urinating into bottles which are passed to the side or tossed in that direction. A full quarter of the people seem to have on a black garbage bag as a wind protector. Others are shedding shirts, sweater, gloves, ski caps and such and most are passed to a collection point on the side. This was my first experience with a collection of this sort for the homeless and it seemed fitting that it occurred in the city that many of us view as the epicenter of the homeless. It is exciting. It is cold. A cheer is rising from the crowd. Pushing and crunching, they herd us together and we move closer to the start line. I am lucky (I think) to have a number around 10,000, which puts me about halfway towards the front.

Mumble jumble, some noise and talking, a quick stretch and bang. Was that the start? Today’s marathons have gotten large and more than a few have starts in waves. New York is now 3 waves with three colors with seven corrals in each. We had one gun. Not a big deal unless you are old enough to remember when runners were all measured by clock time and not by chip time. This time is lost and for most people is too significant an amount to make up. That is why New York was considered back then a marathon to run for fun, for the experience and not for time. It is one of the reasons that the times from there seemed so slow. Maddening, as it seems, we don’t cross the start line until more than 9 minutes have passed. It is warmer from the number of people but not yet from self-generated exhaust fumes.

Now our level of excitement climbs. This is spectacular and surreal. Runners already extend a mile in front of us. They are all around us and ten thousand remain behind us. We are all jackrabbits just released from a cage and anxious to escape. The race starts on Staten Island and we immediately depart on the Verrazano Bridge. It is huge and awe inspiring. I have seen it hundreds of times from the southern tip of Manhattan but never like this. In what has been called a dramatic spectacle, both lane directions, inbound and outbound head out, and have runners with imported smiles advancing. There are runners on both levels. The wind that we felt earlier at the staging area is now whipsawing us as we cross the water. Some runners are discarding their black bags and as they toss them to the side, they come flying at bullet speed back to those of us behind. We duck, we weave, we virtually explode with the gigantic rush of adrenaline recently released in each of our bodies and this transfers to every runner as we feed off our energy and that of those around us. And it keeps coming; the bridge is not a narrow transom crossing an aqueduct like in Southern California. We reach mile one at 16:22 and there are still hundreds of yards of bridge remaining. Sixteen twenty-two for the first mile? I do some quick math and, oh, a 6:58 mile in a crowd, for mile one. Too fast. What would I have run without my posse? That’s okay, I need to make up some time and it was just one mile.

Since 1976, the New York Marathon is a point-to-point race and covers all 5 boroughs. We had started on Staten Island, crossed the Verrazano Bridge into Brooklyn, former home of the Los Angeles Dodgers. They had left in the middle of the night, but we arrive in plain daylight and preannounced. There had been no fans to yell us on as we crossed the bridge, but now faces of spectators appear at what is considered a world-class sporting event. We are running through New York, but it is obvious that the city is not a single place but an agglomeration of smaller neighborhoods. Almost every ethnic group not only shows up in support, but also mans an aid station and has pride in their community. It is always interesting when the viewers are the viewed and we stare out as much as receive. I high five a little boy. The spectators cheer but there is little interaction that requires effort on our part.

We wind through Brooklyn. Other than the climb of the initial bridge crossing, the course has had little serious elevation change. The weather has warmed up but my legs are still cold. I had debated wearing long pants, but worried about overheating or chafing. I am reconsidering that decision, but there is no changing it now. The course is almost straight and so the spectators and aid stations and mile markers come to us as we proceed unobstructed. Somewhere after mile 9, the road begins to have frequent turns and I am calculating angles to minimize the distance. When the official measurement of the race course occurs, all possible angles are considered and the shortest are measured. I don’t want to run too little, but I also don’t benefit from an extended course – and my math skill might substitute some for my running ability. We run just over eleven miles in Brooklyn and we reach the halfway mark. Everyone checks out the time and predicts their finish time. We reach different conclusions on how to count the start time, whether we will run a negative split and shave time off or whether we should add time at the end. But one thing is certain for those running near me, our calculation is about where we will finish and not about anyone else. It isn’t a race against these people around me. They are running with me. We might race in the last few minutes, but they are my best friends now. This calculation is about my race and my final time.

The marathon finish time is a single number. By convention, everyone drops the seconds and rounds down to the nearest whole number. Even then most people don’t have a real appreciation for what a race time means. Many people judge others by the hour. If you break four hours, you are fast. Less than four thirty, well that is almost like four hours. Or how fast is that per mile? A three thirty marathon means about an eight-minute pace. This respectable marathon time translates into what many perceive as slow. They can run (or could years ago) an eight-minute mile. Never mind that you have to string together 26 of them consecutively while taking water breaks and fighting through a crowd. They are unable to appreciate that a 13-minute time difference translates into a thirty- second change in pace. That is a huge change of pace for a seemingly insignificant incremental finish time. But as we calculate our anticipated finish times, we add and subtract and average. We can take joy that an 8:30 pace until now will average with a 9:30 second-half pace for a nine-minute pace and that even the 9:30 will be an average of the next section and that slower last quarter. We watch the times for each mile, but in the end they will only be conversational material as we discuss how we might have done better if we had run mile one more slowly or not faded so badly on mile 23. I make my calculation and I am not unhappy, given the slow start.

Just after this, without even gaining any elevation, we cross a bridge into Queens. I don’t know Queens very well. It has always been a place farther along the subway route where less-fortunate workers and families continued after I stepped off the subway, or how we got to the airports. We run two-and-a-half miles there and I run calmly without any hurry to leave, but without truly getting a feel for the neighborhoods. Maybe I should come back another time.

And so I leave by taking the Queensboro Bridge, better known to me as the 59^th Street Bridge across the East River. The elevation gain measures less than the opening salvo, but it makes my legs feel a bit heavier. This is the point of the race where a couple hours have passed and the body is starting to really draw upon your energy reserves, the muscles have sustained some injury and the mental edge has dulled a bit. It is a bit boring as we head up to the bridge and then we runners are alone on the bridge with only our own thoughts and motivations. For some reason, I find it interesting that portions of the metal grating are covered with carpet. The carpet is obviously for the runners and I am uncertain as to the scientific benefit: does it reduce pounding as well as providing a less slippery surface? Does it keep some runners from freaking out that they may slip through a small hole? Not wanting to test the reasons, I stay mainly on the carpet even though I step out a few times to pass another runner already feeling the effects of gravity with ten miles to go.

Yes, mile 16 brings us into Manhattan. It is what most out-of-towners consider New York and what New Yorkers call the city. I am familiar with this area because we lived 2 separate times for a total of ten months almost in the shadow of the bridge. I am excited to run up First Avenue and so I rush around the almost circular exit ramp which takes us on a ninety-degree right turn by going left and circling back under the bridge and in front of the Roosevelt Island Tram (think Jaws from James Bond) as you head up First Avenue. I have a good pace going, but I am under control.

What I see as I come out of the underpass was perhaps the greatest scene possible for a person that runs and loves New York. First Avenue was mobbed. You could see about 3 miles straight uptown and it was a sea of runners outlined on both sides by shrieking, normally reserved, New Yorkers eight people deep on the sidewalks on both sides. I think that there was music, though there was no space for a band. Runners are cheering back as they leave the tunnel, leaving an eerie echo for the runners entering. It was impossible not to suddenly be supercharged and we all ran at our strongest, our best and our fastest. I had agreed to look for Eva at the right hand side uptown corner of First and 62^nd Street and I knew it would be hopeless for us to see each other in this crowd of spectators, with the volume of runners streaming by, and the ridiculous speed that we were running now. This was a mental deflator and I was pushing it out of my mind when I see her waving and screaming my name. I wave and I am past her, headed uptown.

I hold that pace for 4 miles as I go up First past the places that other friends had lived or that we saw when taking a taxi to the Triborough Bridge. We cross a bridge into the Bronx and I feel the elevation gain, although it is minimal. It isn’t affecting me aerobically; it is causing fluttering in my hamstrings. That’s weird. I’ve never had that before. It seems that every block we make a turn and the course is contrived. This is the South Bronx – the supposedly worst section around, and rumor has it that for safety reasons, they minimize time there. Having seen the map since then, it could be the reason, it could be geography, or it could be the corporate sponsors. In any case, a mile later we are going across another bridge and my hamstrings flutter again. This time they don’t stop completely but I keep on. Just before mile 23 we come off Fifth Avenue and we enter Central Park. Immediately we start climbing the only significant natural hill so far. Even though this is an elevation gain of only 80 feet, my quads flinch and then my hamstrings. I decide to forfeit some time, even though now we are nearing the finish and time has value, and I stop and do cross-legged toe touches, stretching first my right hamstring and then my left. That feels better and I am back in the race. That was a short stop, but I still estimate that fifty to a hundred runners have passed me during that time. But I am reeling in a few of them, plus people that are obviously suffering worse than me from bonking or hitting the wall, and from many that have cramped worse than me. The cold weather during the morning wait is collecting its toll. Two more miles.

Mile 25 is rolling as if to taunt my muscles and I vary my speed, I lean forward, I stretch again and I decide how best to hang on. A full-blown leg muscle cramp is painful. That is a fact that I experienced sharply and despite its warnings, unexpectedly. The immediate treatment is well known: stretch the muscle. First things first: finding some place to safely attempt this. The road is full of runners that lack the lateral motion or agility to avoid a suddenly-stopped runner. And the sides of the road are filled with fans that seek to see their runner one more time as the finish line approaches. But I make it to the side and go back into the cross-legged toe touch position and lean down. We now all know that the hipbone is connected to the thighbone, but I learned about the interconnection of muscles that day. As I stretch my right hamstring, the cramp shifts to my right quad. I almost fall onto the street, but I grab my foot & pull it up behind me. And the cramp leaves my right leg and transfers to my left hamstring. I shift and play this game. I see the feet of way too many runners going by, and even realizing that each runner had two feet, I still know that I am dropping by hundreds in the final results. Yet, I have to stop the cramp to resume running and after a couple of minutes, it subsides and I jump back in.

Whenever you are almost out of gas, in running or in a car, you have to decide whether it is better to speed up and get there or slow down and get there. I started slow to test out the legs. Paranoia can be a virtue but I was rewarded by a flattening of the road, so I chose the speedy route. We passed by The Plaza onto Central Park South with less than a mile to go and I could steal energy from the crowd. I’ve walked that section many times, but it seemed much farther this afternoon – it was after 1 pm already. I made it to Columbus Circle and turned back into the park expecting to finish. But that extra portion added to reach the Queen’s stand always seems like more than .2 miles. I hung in there and passed 10-15 people for a moral victory that the final rankings would have but never reveal. I accepted my participant’s medal and felt relatively good about my finish time. I rationalized away some time due to the delayed start time and blamed the cramps on the cold. Even with those things, I was only 6 minutes slower than last time. In reality, that meant that I was faster. Or so I decided.

The cramps were gone but so was my core body heat. I was cold and my only clothes were back at the room. It was several more blocks before spectators and runners could meet up. Eva found me and shared clothing and together we found Laura (the sexy singing sister-in-law). She had seen Paul a few times on the course and had great stories, and together we went to find Paul and to relive the race over a deli sandwich.

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