This is my introduction and my story running the Boston Marathon this past April. Enjoy! I hope to see you in comments and on other stories.
Monday, April 16th, 2018 may not be a day that lives in infamy for everyone, but it will certainly be so in the minds of the 29,979 runners who congregated in Hopkinton on that miserable morning to participate in the 122nd annual running of the B.A.A. Boston Marathon. In a nasty twist of fate, the weather forecast had deteriorated every single day after coming into the 10-days out view. The amount of rain and wind expected had incrementally increased; a worst-case scenario that inexorably matured from some probability to 100% probability. The conditions that miserable day: 35-38 degrees F, 30 mph winds with gusts to 50+ mph. And, given that Boston is a point-to-point course that runs, on average, in a ENE direction, the wind direction was almost entirely from the exact opposite direction... meaning right in our face!
I had trained hard. Having run Boston way back in 2000 (when I was fast, starting in the elite group and running 2:25!), then again after a long break from running in both 2013 and 2014, I definitely knew both the course and how to prepare effectively for the event. [note: yes, I ran the year the finish line was bombed by murdering terrorists and that was so frickin' horrible for everyone affected I can't even talk about it]. I began the mileage build-up in December and topped out the first week of April right about 100 miles per week. I had thrown in the usual and customary marathon training workout days, long runs, tempo fartleks, mile-repeat speed work, plenty of easy miles, and the whole nine yards (so to speak). I went into the event as prepared on my end as I thought I could be. I did my part, but as always with outdoor competitions, you are at the mercy of whether or not the Weather God(s) do their part.
My wife and daughter went with me from Seattle for a 5-day vacation in the Boston area. My older brother from Maine was running as well. It was nice to have a virtual training partner who I knew would be there too (in previous years I had run it by myself). Also, most of our family had come to watch and we soaked up five rooms at the hotel all told. The days before the race were a nice break from the looming task at hand; hanging out with family, getting dinner together, a couple of low-mileage easy runs, and mostly just trying to forget what Race Monday will bring.
And then, inevitably of course, that Boston Marathon Monday finally did come upon us.
The 6 AM alarm jostled me from an uneasy night's sleep in complete darkness. The weather forecast was no longer a "fore," now it was just the "cast." I could hear as wind gusts blew heavy rain at the window while I laid there in almost abject denial. Was this real, was it really here? It was like Christmas morning on opposite day; "couldn't it just be one more day away?" I thought to myself. At first I didn't want to face it. I laid in bed awake for ten dark, anxiety-ridden minutes talking myself out of getting up. I thought maybe I'll just lie here, along with my sound-asleep wife and child in the other room, until its too late to make the start. It was a horribly uncomfortable feeling. They looked so peaceful and comfortable that it made my heart ache to not be able to rejoin them.
But I knew what I had to do. I sat up in bed. I put one leg on the floor, and then the other. I put on my racing attire. I slipped out while my daughter and wife happily slept. Knowing my brother was experiencing largely the same thing, and waiting for me, helped get me out the door. Daylight hitting my eyes immediately helped sweep away some of the bedroom anxieties. Darkness has a way of making them feel more powerful. We went to Starbucks and in doing so got our first taste of what we were facing outdoors. It was grim! Once up and moving about though, the confidence began to build a little. Thoughts like "well, this is what I trained for," and "it's just as bad for me as everyone else, and their still doing it!" went through my head. There's even some solidarity in that latter thought.
My father drove us to the the start drop off in Hopkinton. This was the final moment. After leaving the (often under-appreciated) comfort of the car, there were no more "outs." There was no longer anywhere to hide or anywhere to go except to run the race and finish it. We took a school bus packed with other runners to the starting area called the Athletes Village. We had waited long enough in the car beforehand that we wouldn't need to spend too much time in the Village, which was a good thing because the Village is outside and exposed to the elements. The Athletes Village is both a fascinating and excruciating existence simultaneously. On one hand, it is the one time you are paddocked in with almost everyone who is competing that day (solidarity and familiarity!), but on the other hand it's crowded and hard to maneuver at a time when you mostly want to be left alone with your running demons. About 45 minutes after arriving my brother and I began to strip throw-away clothes off and begin the herding process toward the actual starting line about three-quarters of a mile away. We were in the first of three waves that start some 20-minutes apart and I noted we were fortunate that we did not need to wait in the Village for one of the two later starts.
The first wave probably had some 8,000 runners separated into 8 or 9 corrals. I was in the 2nd corral. I stood on the line huddled in with the other athletes. From where I stood - cold, already wet, squarely in the middle of Main Street in Hopkinton, MA - the city of Boston was a seemingly incomprehensible 26 miles, 385 yards away. And there was no way for me to get there except to put one foot in front of the other. At the moment of peak anxiety into this contemplation, the gun fired. We huddled together even as we started moving. Unlike any previous racing experience, closeness to other runners was practically magnetic; we sought out proximity like Tour de France bikers in the peloton. Though this is mostly inevitable in a crowded race in the first few miles, it usually becomes much more disassociated as the race progresses on and people enter the tiresome stage of their individual, 'do-not-disturb'-signed, running worlds. Not today. We packed together to shield the head wind the entire way. It was simply necessary for survival.
Packing up to beat the elements
I was surprised to see sizable crowds out cheering for us. I thought that was totally frickin' awesome. They came out bundled up in winter clothes, slickers and umbrellas in hand. My extended family had found a few points to travel to in order to cheer for us along the route. This was spectacular. Me and the other athletes greatly appreciated this and also the extent the race volunteers stepped up to the plate.
I think some people thrived in the conditions and others did not. I was on the "did not thrive" side, but not too far so. I held my goal pace (albeit, 10-15 seconds per mile slower for the weather) through ~18 miles where I stopped to pee for a full minute. After that, my pace slowed and the race became fairly difficult though. People were going by me and I was uncomfortable from being soaked and cold and there was less chances to group together to shield from the wind and rain. It just became survival. With the hills behind me (at the 21 mile mark) there was also a faint glimmer of increasing hope: every step got my one step closer to Boston. I had been heads down for a long stretch and recall looking up and seeing the huge Citgo sign. This is a great sign for Boston Marathon runners, like a North Star for us. It means you're almost done. I kept from slowing too much down Commonwealth Avenue and the turns onto Boylston Avenue. I'll never forget this moment: being in abject pain and discomfort, massive crowds wailing on both sides of the street, driving rain and a wind-swept, and almost seemingly impossibly-long, Boylston Avenue stretched out in front of me. Other exhausted runners, in their own internal marathon-demon worlds, doing exactly what I'm doing. Finishing. Finishing on a day like no other, on a day barely-arguably the worst in 40 years, dating to 1976 (albeit completely opposite, that day was 100+ degrees or something). I crossed the line.
Crossing the finish line at the 122nd Boston Marathon!
For those who did thrive in these conditions it seemed to be life-changing. The finishing stories for the elite men and women were so incredible that they were internationally news worthy. American Desiree Linden won the women's race by 5 minutes, after reportedly thinking about dropping out in the first few miles and even stopping to help a friend re-join the front pack following a port-a-potty stop. Other stories from the women's' top-ten are equally, if not more so, inspirational. On the men's side Japanese national Yuki Kawauchi won the race. An amateur with a full-time day job, he was able to thrive in the conditions wherein the usual speedy elite Kenyan suspects faltered in the torrent conditions.
After crossing the line the first thing I recall is another finisher looking over at me and, quite softly like we were in a library, asking "so how did you do? Did you have a good day?" I emitted something close to "GRRRGGGRRRRRRRR-ummmpffff" in response (it turns out she was the 19th female finisher). My jaw was locked and I was involuntarily convulsing, so talking was almost impossible and I had significant confusion too. I read later many runners had core temperatures as low as 93 or 94 degrees F. I bet I was low, maybe 95. The best way to describe it is simply an uncomfortableness. On a scale from 1 to 10, it was an 11. It's hard to explain, nothing hurts like a broken bone for example, it's just a combination of complete and total muscle fatigue and exhaustion, mixed specifically on this day with near-hypotermia. I took a long hard look at the medical tent. The calculus was whether I'd make it the 5 more minutes, and ~300 yards of walking necessary, to where my wife was supposedly waiting to grab me out of the family meeting area, and even then if that was successful, where we had to then go from there. I turned away from the medical tent and went for it. A marathon volunteer huddled me into a "space-blanket" (the thin, effective, environment-shielding cover-up given to runners at the end of races), and I got a medal. I thought nothing of this medal at the time, and if they hadn't run over and draped it around me I'd never even thought to get one. Right then I hear my name being called. It was my wife!!
She and my father had driven downtown, found parking in a garage, and camped out a spot in a Starbucks nearby the finishing line. We had pre-race planned something to this effect, but you never know the result until the plan is put into action, and they had pulled it off. Self-imagining wandering around aimlessly in the finisher area for even another three minutes felt like a possible trade-off with an impending hospital visit (or worse), so my joy and happiness at this moment, as she led me out of the finishing area to their home base, was equal and offsetting to my 11-on-the-scale uncomfortableness. When we reached a door that led inside I almost cried. My wife helped me change inside the Starbucks bathroom (I couldn't take off my shoes and clothes by myself). As the wet clothes peeled off and warm sweatpants and sweatshirt went on, something began to well inside of me even as I continued to convulse. It was something that wouldn't subside fully for at least a week. It is hard to describe even what it is or was. It was a mixture of elation, pride and sense of accomplishment. The icing on this emotional-state cake: it was over. It didn't hit me all at once. At first I felt it a little bit as I swapped cold, wet clothes for dry clothes, then it was a little bit more as the convulsing died down and as I began to take sips of warm, wonderful coffee, and a little bit more as I continued to warm back up towards normal and watched other runners experiencing the same emotion through their post-finisher journey. That is when I realized I was experiencing pure, unadulterated (yet exhausted) joy.
My wife headed back out into the wind and rain to look for my brother. He finished about 30 minutes behind me. When he came in he cried right then and there and we all hugged. As he experienced the same step-wise, post-race triage I had just completed, we both began to realize something great. We'd both done it. The task was almost impossibly large, the task had been looming naggingly for months, and even menacingly so for the past few days as the storm forecast had matured, but most importantly, the task Had To Be Done. And we had both done it.
After an hour inside, rejoining the family that had braved the elements to cheer along the course and discussing our experiences exhaustedly, but excitedly, we hobbled to the parking garage. We slowly and gingerly slipped into the car. My wife took a picture. Now I remembered why I'm so glad they got that medal to me:
I dare you to call it a "participation medal." :) :) :)
We had pizza delivered to the hotel. We ate hungrily, sipped Cherry Pepsi (it had been so long since I'd had soda!), and chatted excitedly. A real sense of camaraderie was palpable and brewing on social media. It was like one big family had been born out of this challenging shared experience. We had challenged ourselves and in return been part of something larger and possibly greater than we'd imagined it could've been. It felt wonderful. Except for walking, that hurt like hell.
I hobbled to our room, turned the thermostat to 78 and took a long, hot shower. I closed my eyes and a voice asked myself "do you think you're ever coming back?"
"You can goddamn bet I am."
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PS: I've been on Steem since July 2016 though I'm just starting to blog now. I'm especially interested in long-distance running (@runningproject, please add me!), family, crypto, programming, web development. Professionally I'm working on bridging new energy storage technologies and decarbonization.
Four Boston's and counting! (click on the image to follow me)
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