The Distance, part 2
Photograph courtesy Philip Greenspun
Lots of photos of me and my GBTC team-mates here
I wanted to get a post out before Monday's Boston Marathon, but pre-race activities and the day job somehow got in the way. Prep for the marathon had been a bit more challenging that my Fall lead-up to the Philadelphia Marathon, with a combination of minor injuries, excessive business travel, and the usual issues of fitting one's running around the vagaries of the Boston winter. One highlight was pulling out a 1:17:02 at the New Bedford half marathon, a one minute improvement on last-year's time, and within shouting distance of the time I ran in a similar tune-up race last year.
My final bit of race preparation was to go out on Sunday and watch the U.S. Olympic marathon trials for women, most of which took place a mile of so from my house in Cambridge. A number of impressive performances made for a great spectator event. Magdalena Lewy Boulet courageously ran the whole race on her own, separating from the field early, only to be passed late in the race by a blisteringly fast Deena Kastor, but holding on for second. Full writeup here. And GBTC's own Sara Donohue, who had had her own injury issues since qualifying for the trials in December, ran a stellar 2:46 for 69th place.
Monday morning came soon enough, with the promised early temperatures in the 40s Farenheit (single digits Celsius) and cloud cover. Out to Hopkinton by car with Christy and David Bedoya, and fairly painlessly delivered to the "athletes' village" in Hopkinton. After hanging with some of my GBTC team-mates it was time to head to the "corrals", which do somewhat resemble cattle pens. Fortunately I was in the first of the non-elite corrals, and when the gun went off it took only 10 seconds for me to get to the starting line, and while there were probably 600 people in front of me it was not long before I was running without impediment.
The start is famously fast because of the excitement, crowds, and significant elevation loss, so I did my best to go out at a cautious pace. My plan was to try to lock in a 6:30 per mile average, 6:25 at the fastest, knowing that my 6:22 per mile pace in Philadelphia had been run in perfect weather, on a flat course, with very helpful pace makers. (Full story here.) This plan was intended to get me to the finish line ahead of 2:50. The first mile marker arrived and I had 6:20 on my watch - not too bad, I thought. A second mile of 6:11 really had me thinking I needed to lighten up, but it was also nice to realize how comfortably I could run that pace, almost a minute per mile faster than most of my long runs.
It wasn't until the 4th mile that I started to hit the target pace, but all went smoothly from there for quite a while. The clouds were gone, I was sweating, and while there was a cool breeze, I was also aware that I had hardly run in temperatures above 50F (10C) all year, so I was a bit concerned about hydration, especially since the closest I came to having a real problem in the last marathon was when I started to get leg cramps at mile 21. (Cramping seems to be poorly understood, but dehydration is widely regarded as a factor.) I made sure to get plenty to drink, even getting 2 cups of water at some of the stations.
I like to chat when I'm racing at a pace that permits conversation (which is funny since many people consider me an introvert) so I started to make conversation with people around me. I found some other guys who had wanted to run 6:30 pace but gone out too fast like me, and also Christy Carrara, a top local woman running her first marathon and even further ahead of her target pace than I was. After a few miles she dropped back and I met up with "Dan from Chicago" who was running steadily in the right range for me, and we hung together through Wellesley, where the famous screaming college girls were even louder than I recall from 1994, and provided quite a boost to the spirits. Then down the steepest descent of the day into Newton Lower Falls, and for the first time I was aware of a bit of tiredness in my quads - more precisely, in my right quad. This is the main issue with the Boston course - 15 miles of downhill, 6 miles of uphill, 5 miles of downhill seems like a really good recipe for quadriceps destruction. I was glad when the descent was over and we entered the famous Newton Hills. Normal quadriceps service was resumed, at least for now.
I had resolved to take the hills carefully, knowing from prior experience that the hard part of the race is actually getting through the last 5 miles after Heartbreak Hill. I was pleasantly surprised when the first 2 uphill miles were covered in 6:35 pace. By now my even pacing was causing me to make steady progress through the pack, and Dan from Chicago had dropped back.
Before long I was on Heartbreak Hill, where GBTC member and Tufts University coach Rod Hemingway had generously located himself with a crowd of his athletes from Tufts in a well-orchestrated cheering squad. They loudly cheered "Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!" as I went past, and I waved enthusiastically. I passed not-quite-team-mate Zak Ventress, last seen in Philadelphia in my previous marathon. I passed Paul Hammond of local club Whirlaway, raising the chance that I might bring my lifetime performance against him to 2-and-30.
I had expected to have to start working hard after getting over Heartbreak, but it got hard faster and in different ways than I expected. I developed a nasty side stitch, and combined with rapidly rising fatigue I was suddenly in the zone of despair, with DNF thoughts swimming in my head. I started talking to myself: "This is what you knew to expect. This is what you trained for. Don't throw it away now." It was a relief when I get to the 22 mile mark and realized I had just run a 6:17, in spite of feeling pretty awful. (I didn't notice it at the time, but I ran Heartbreak at 6:50 pace, which would be my slowest mile of the first 24 - as it should be). The quicker mile perked me up, and now I was focussed on getting to mile 24, where the "official" GBTC cheering squad was located. I had given up thinking about my pace, and was just focussed on getting to the next milestone. For weeks I had visualised running past my friends in that spot and hoped I would look good when I did so.
I completely failed to notice Washington Square, and before I knew it I was in Coolidge corner, past mile 24, and then a sea of screaming GBTC folks came into view. I was no longer at the enthusiastic waving stage, but I managed a big smile and raised fist, capture below by Hattie Derderian, daughter of my coach Tom (who, by the way, has never run slower than 2:48 in the marathon).
The boost from seeing my friends lasted for only a few meters, so now it was time to pick another intermediate milestone, the Citgo sign and Kenmore square. Just before Kenmore I passed the 40km mark in exactly 2:40. This was the first time all day I had hit a metric marker without being ahead of 4 minutes per km, which I thought was what I needed to run to break 2:50. I started to doubt that 2:50 was going to happen. I was just trying to keep moving.
The distance was going by at a glacial pace now. But I made it to the Hereford St turn, and heard Somerville runner Joe O'Leary go past saying "Come on Bruce - sub 2:50". "Have a nice time" I thought as he went past. (Joe finished in 2:49:14).
Finally the turn onto Boylston St and way, way off in the distance (actually 3.5 blocks) was the finish line. I kept moving towards it, wishing I had remembered what cross street it was nearest to. With almost no warning, I started to notice a lack of muscle strength in the quads. Suddenly I was running with a weird gait, and then I knew I was going to fall over. I went forward onto my knees, and started crawling. In an inspired move, I got back to my feet and walked across the line, which turned out to be only a few steps away. I saw 2:49 something on the clock as I went under it. I couldn't believe it. Soon afterwards I saw another team-mate Dan Smith, to whom I gave my first race summary: "Just another day at the office".
Official time: 2:49:46. Mission accomplished, with not a lot of margin for error. I can't stop thinking that I could so easily have bonked just a few hundred metres earlier or worse, with consequences I don't want to consider.
I managed to go the whole day without seeing Lance, in spite of finishing just one minute ahead of him. I had told some folks that I hoped to beat him (our PRs were within seconds of each other coming into Boston, but on different courses), but honestly it's much less important than meeting my personal time goal.
Finally, the musical angle. Not a lot to report there, except that I did hear the themes to Rocky parts one and two, satisfying the major check-off items for running cliches. Born to Run and Chariots of Fire were notably absent. Anyway, here is my contribution of a less cliched song:
Stars of track and field - Belle and Sebastian
Labels: marathon boston lance
posted by DrBruceD | 5:00 PM
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