Boston 2007

I have run the Boston Marathon once before. My preeminent memory of the 2004 race is of the herds of runners scurrying this way and that, prior to the start, trying to find somewhere to pee.
Hopkinton, where the race has started from in each of its now 111 editions, is a tiny, rural town of 2,700 residents with neatly but unpretentiously kept lawns and practical wooden or vinyl siding on the houses. On that April Monday three years ago, it was an African grassland; the race participants like desperate gazelles flocking to the the edges of yards and ducking behind obscuring shrubs, police on horseback and foot acting like confused, learning lion cubs chasing them as only the first drops were hitting the ground and thus there were men running about with cocks flapping in the cool spring air and women hurriedly waddling away as one must when one’s thighs are limited by the shorts still wrapped around them.

That was then.

This year is all about bringing the love; encouraging whatever is necessary simply for survival itself. It is, even more than usual regarding marathons, about stupid courage, about competition and camaraderie.
This year, it was 43 degrees, raining and windy and a cop wouldn’t bat an eye if you pissed on his gun. The forecast for raceday was so dire (with some predictions calling for torrential rain, sub-freezing temperatures and sustained 45 m.p.h. winds) that there were actual high-level discussions of whether or not to cancel the race on account of weather for the first time in its history. By the time the day arrived - thankfully slightly milder than was expected - an air of gratitude took precedence over all.
Everywhere, there were men spreadlegged in front of bushes and women gathered in groups of 3 or 4 talking casually and laughing as they crouched comfortably next to each other anywhere; in the street, on a lawn, even a sidewalk. It was raining, who cares.

I sprint to the start, as my qualifying time has earned me a spot up front and I fully intend to enjoy such a perk as the difference between starting in the front and even 2,000 people back can mean minutes before the starting line is crossed. The gun sounds and we are cascading downhill.
There are many elements that contribute to the Boston Marathon’s deserved reputation of being one of the more - if not the most - difficult of the major road-run marathons in the world, but primary among them is the hills. It’s not the hills between miles 17 and 21, where the infamous “Heartbreak Hill” is the last in a series of three that is sure to make the ill-prepared and the ready alike weep, but the 4 miles of steep downhill running at the very beginning of the race.
Sure it makes for a great pace if one is fool enough to think that such is the rate one will run for the entire race. If they staged a 5 miler on this part of the course, there is no doubt that everyone who ran it would easily set their personal-best time at the distance and walk away without a scratch. Later that night though, even just the first four of those five miles would show the toll they’d taken.
The great marathoner and former personal one-time torturer of Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, ran upwards of 140 miles a week readying himself for Boston in 1982. Thinking this still might not be enough preparation for the downhill portions, he sat at home at night, every night, and punched the tops of his legs 1500 times.
Downhill running is fast, but terribly shocking. The runner is basically falling further forward at a seemingly ever increasing rate of speed, and is stopping and skidding with each footfall. At 170 footfalls a minute, a just under six minute mile sees the legs accepting 1000 individual shocks, or 4,000 over the first four miles. I remind myself that it is only four miles and it certainly is nice to look down at my watch and see that I’ve run four miles in a little over 23 minutes with very little effort at all.

But here’s the rub.

Those little extra shocks break down the quadriceps muscle and other tissues of the legs in little, gradual, almost unnoticed ways. This kind of damage will only reveal itself much later. Specifically, it will reveal itself around 15-17 miles later, or right around the time that I am ascending the half-mile long incline that is “Heartbreak Hill.” The extra strength summoned for this climb and the fact that I am making sure I stay on pace as I do it, will ensure that I will have nothing left to try to catch anyone from this point on, and that the next 5 miles, the last miles of the race, will be all, 100% all, about holding on for dear life. I vowed to myself before the race that I would not do a mile faster than 5:45 (which I failed at, covering mile 3 in 5:41) and would not go slower than 6:59 (which worked out nicely as I ran my slowest mile, mile 19, in 6:54,) but after Heartbreak, I was afraid to look at my watch as I passed the mile markers, fearing that there might even be a great big “8” staring back at me. There was not, but I was stunned at this, as my gait had turned frighteningly abbreviated.

The following is in no way intended to appear arrogant.
My stride has been described, mostly by veteran fellow runners, as “easy,” “beautiful,” “effortless,” and “perfect.” It is not as if I set out to do this with any intention. I didn’t spend hours in front of dance studio mirrors until I honed my footstrike to look like the running equivalent of Catherine Deneuve circa 1967. It’s just how I like to run. It’s always been what feels right. It’s what makes sense to me if I want to get from one point to another in the least amount of time with essentially the least amount of effort. If I could consistently run sub 5 minute miles by dancing like Rick Astley, I would do it, though I would be in disguise, possibly as Rick Astley.
It is rare that I get to observe what my stride looks like. It’s just one of those things that I don’t get much of an opportunity to see, especially since I’m usually concerned with running as fast as I can. So when, somewhere in Wellesley around mile 11, there was a glass replacement store with seemingly miles of big plate glass windows as the facade of its showroom, I couldn’t resist checking myself out. I turned my head to see my image, tightly clothed in black as always, gliding along. Damn, I look good.
I am so glad, oh so glad, that there were no more opportunities after that, as by mile 22, I was shuffling ahead as if my shoelaces had been tied together. Luckily, everyone else was doing pretty much the same deathmarch, though every now and again some crazy bastard would come flying by in perfect stride and I and any other runner around would mutter profanities to no one in particular. Most of us, at this point of the race, were between 25 and 40 years old, but everything about us from our weird, resourceful limps to our bitchy demeanors bespoke of men well into their 80’s, glorious death only a few agonizing moments away now.

There’s a guy who’s been next to me for a good 2 miles now who has on a shirt that reads “Eureka.” I don’t know if he’s a vacuum salesman, or if he’s running for a corporate team, but I have decided that I’ll give into the vaudevillian joke and I keep thinking “Eureka sucks,” or, as everyone keeps shouting out said name as we pass, “you don’t smell so good yourself.” I have to get away from this guy.
I put on a “surge,” which is like flooring it in an ‘83 Chevette with only 2 good cylinders, and get a good 30 feet ahead relatively quickly. “Eureka!” I hear again “Oh, shut the fuck up,” I silently plead and step on the broken accelerator again. This guy, whoever he was, is undoubtedly responsible for me finishing in 2:45 rather than 2:46, and I am grateful for that. I just hope he never wears that damned shirt again.

I am not super-fast. I am fairly quick and certainly relentless and the pace at which I run will never get me into the comfort of the elite trailers and training rooms before and after major world races. However, running at the rate that I do does entitle me to certain perks that I enjoy and exploit to the fullest.
I came in 222nd place at Boston this year where close to 21,000 people ran. In New York, I placed 200th overall in 2005 in a race that had over 37,000 participants. In Falmouth I consistently place in the top 60 out of 9,000. At the Ballycotton 10 miler in Ireland I came in 14th out of 2,700. I don’t state these statistics to make myself feel oh-so-cool, because in any of those races there were lots and lots of people far faster than I. I state it to illustrate a point:
These events are set up to accommodate thousands of runners and often hundreds of thousands if not millions of spectators. Often they are run through the most public places in the most metropolitan of cities. Huge roads are closed down and open only to the racers. 5th Avenue is closed. Boylston Street is closed. Commonwealth Avenue is closed. Due to the length of these races, by the time I come down the road for the last portion of the race, there is no one around me, sometimes not for a 100 feet or more. Lining the sides of these empty 6 to 8 lane thoroughfares are 50,000 or more screaming spectators, pressing against fences and barricades and reaching around police officers wherever they can. It doesn’t take much energy - thankfully, as I have none to spare - to raise my hands in a motion that begs for applause and noise, and they always oblige. 50,000 people, 15 deep on the sidewalks of New York, or Boston, or even Falmouth, go absolutely buggy just because they know how good it feels to the runner, to me.
As I cross the finish line, an almost instantaneous quiet replaces the sound of the crowd and the silence makes for the most intimate fraternity. There are 30,000 water bottles, medals, bananas, heat blankets, bags of chips. There are hundreds of volunteers eager to help in any way. There are helicopters overhead and newstrucks as far as the eye can see, and yet still there is silence, as embraces and breaths and smiles are exchanged between the 40 or so runners surrounded by all of this, and for this very short chapter, I am one of them. We are alone and I have done something that will live with me forever. I get to be a rock star for one day. I get to hear the roar of the crowd and allow it to carry a body that is only partly, at best, connected to this mind at this stage of the race. It is wracked with pain, it is twisted and beaten, it is ready to give, but it can still raise a hand, turn up the volume, bring the love.