BOSTON 2006


CABBIE
"Can I sit in the front?" I asked the cabbie after I took one look at the rear seat of his big yellow taxi. With the partition covering the air space above the front seat back, and the rigid wall extending from there to the floor, it had all the room and appearance of the back seat of a police cruiser - about 8 inches from rear seat to front. Not where I wanted my knees 36 hours before the start of my second, and hopefully last Boston Marathon.

"Sure", he said, with a slight downward head bob. He looked about forty, dark, stocky, with a sparse wiry beard. From his vaguely French/West African accent, he certainly wasn't a Somali, and absolutely not South Asian.

"Where are you from?" I ventured, after we'd had an opening round of weather exchanges - Boston in the mid seventies today, me coming from the Rockies and a snowstorm that morning.

"Haiti", he answered simply. Instantly, all the horrors flashed through my mind - AIDS entry into the Western Hemisphere, deforestation, Duvalier, Papa and Baby Docs, Aristide, the poorest country anywhere near us. A litany of ecological, economic, political and social devastation. A pariah land (not to mention the apocryphal home of voodoo.) Where do I begin  a conversation with him?

Turns out I didn't have to. He started it all by himself, blasting full-blown into a highly scripted and lyrical story of how he is borrowing his friend's cab, to make more money for his improvement project back home. He returns frequently to set up and oversee health clinics and a reforestation project. With 70% of his countrymen unemployed, the international monetary community refusing to provide assistance (and demanding loan repayments for money not even provided, he claimed), and an ineffective though mostly honest democratically elected government, the only real chance his people have, he feels, is overseas remittances from people like him. And he wants to make sure his money goes to improvement, not just subsistence.

While he's careening around the 350 year-old streets of downtown Boston, with me trying to assimilate all of the human-built environment after a week in the American Alps surrounding Snowmass, I'm having a hard time keeping up with his lilting narrative. If what he says is even half true, he's a fireplug of hope for a devastated country. I was glad to give him a 20% tip when we unloaded in the Theater District at the Courtyard Marriott.

Upstairs on the 12th floor, I enter my room. I might as well have been in a Japanese coffin hotel. The king bed easily took up 3/4s of the floor space. The narrow armoire jammed into a corner had doors which barely made it past the edges of the work table and bed between which it was wedged. I'm sure the re-designers had said, "Thank God for LCD TVs!" A standard CRT-based screen would not have fit between the wall and the foot of the bed. In the bathroom, if I'd been a six footer, my knees would have hit the wall while I sat on the (small rimmed) toilet, There was room for only a shower stall, which took up the entire width of this budget sized space. Space for a $200/night budget (parking, for those with cars, was an additional $15, and breakfast, for those with stomachs, was an extra $12-15.) Not the place I wanted to spend much time. Luckily, Boston is the "walkable city", so outside I went, north 2 blocks to the Common, and the corner of Boylston and Tremont.

The corner was bustling with crowds leftover from the Red Sox game (the Mariners, in town for the Patriots' Day weekend series, pulled out a 3-0 victory behind the stellar pitching of Joel Pinero and JJ Putz), theater-goers on their way in, and those who'd just been enjoying the first 70+F Saturday this year in the blooming park. Just as I got to the subway exit, my cell phone rang.
ORIENTATION DINNER
"Hey, Al, you made it in yet?" It was Pat, here also for the Marathon. A neurologist, my age, he was presenting at the concurrent medical conference on sports medicine. He was due to talk Sunday at noon on "Exercise and the brain". Attending the conference gives a doctor a free pass into the field; most everyone else has to qualify with a rigid age-based time. He was down at the Colonnade, and trying to talk me into coming there for their pasta feed. Once he found out it was $35 a head, he'd backed down, and now was wondering if I'd look for some Guinness with him.

Not one to imbibe two nights before brutalizing myself in a marathon,  I said, "Well, you can hop on the 'T' and meet me here. I'm in the Theater District, and there are all sorts of restaurants, brew pubs and whatnot here. We can find somewhere for you to eat, and me to pick up a snack." I'd already had a PB&J on the plane, in a vain attempt to try and use up all the food we'd bought for our ski trip. He seemed a bit hesitant, but once he realised it was only 3 stops from his hotel, and there was a stop literally just outside the front entrance, he ventured he'd give it a try.

Fifteen minutes later, he pops out of the grungy Boylston Inbound station, looking more dazed and confused than usual. I quickly grabbed him before he became a target for whatever riffraff might be plaguing lonesome tourists this evening.

"Oh, so this is the theater district? Looks nice ... busy." Pat nosed around, trying to sniff out the ambiance.

"Well, there's all sorts of places to eat around here - cheaper, more expensive, brew pubs, Indian, Italian ... anything in particular you'd like?"

We finally settle on "Tantric", a South Asian spot a block away from the Commons off of Tremont. Pat chowed down on some spicy salmon thing, while I made do with a crepe-like Dada and a mango yogurt lassi. I faced the TV and got to see Pinero tie the Sox in knots with his slider and sinker, getting out of a bases-loaded, no outs jam with zero runs scored.

"So, you have a plan for the race? I asked Pat.

"Well, I thought I'd just try to go out at an 8 minute pace, and see what I can do."

"Have you ever done that?"

"I did the Seattle Marathon in just under 3:45 [this would be an 8:24 pace] last November."

"Really! That's great! That means you would have qualified anyway for Boston."

"I know. I was feeling a little guilty getting in through this conference. But I'd already paid my money, and I didn't want to register again, so I guess I'm stuck with this 20,000 number." Pat would have to start at the very end of the second wave of runners. The whole field would be going off in front of him. He'd probably have to be passing people the whole way to Boylston street. Repeating his time from Seattle would be a tough nut. Given the hills in that race, there was a good chance that he should be capable of going under 3:45 here in Boston. Pat had committed himself to improving his running. He had entered and finished a grueling 50 mile race over three mountain passes the previous August in the Cascades.  I began to worry he might just beat me, which would be a first. His half marathon and 10K times were far slower than me. But I usually begin to fade after 18 miles - I think I've got about 30k worth of racing in me - anything more, and I start to disintegrate.

We parted after dinner, making plans for meeting at his hotel the next day, Sunday, for the afternoon double of expo and pasta feed. Still on a combination of West Coast and Mountain time, I stayed up until almost 1 AM watching some forgettable action flick on the Starz channel the hotel provided - at least it didn't take up any space in the room!
WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD
Next morning, after the hotel breakfast buffet, I put on my Sunday best (which looked an awful lot like my Monday race day wear), consisting of cargo pants, Ironman top and Boston Marathon 2005 windbreaker, and headed back to the subway. Green line to Park, Red line to Harvard Square. A friendly good luck from one of the riders as we stepped off into the gloom beneath Cambridge. "How'd she know I was running tomorrow?" I asked myself, as I re-adjusted my Boston Marathon 2006 grey hat to better cover my forehead from any stray rays of the sun I might encounter on the #71 I would take to Mount Auburn Cemetery.

During the late 60s, when I was at college at Wesleyan University in Middletown CT, my girlfriend (a year behind me in high school), ended up at Radcliffe. I would spend weekends visiting her, and we'd travel all over Cambridge and the greater Boston area, meandering around and sightseeing, being basically penniless in an innocuous way. She was very smart, of course (the average 'Cliffie was a valedictorian or salutatorian of her class, with a combined SAT score of 1460), but she always thought that my mother's recommendation helped her get in. My mom had a PhD in psychology, and had started her academics in that field with a Master's from Radcliffe after the war when my parents lived in Lynn, Mass.

The bus dropped me off right in front of the entrance. I wanted to buy some flowers, roses actually, to put on the grave, but saw no florist anywhere around. Odd, this being such a big cemetery and all. Just inside, there was a small stone kiosk with several maps. I had the area and plot of Susie's grave, and discovered that my destination was literally at the other end of the park. I popped on my headphones and fired up my iPod.

When I first learned Susie had died, 20 years ago at age 35 of leukemia, we still listened to vinyl. I rummaged through my record collection looking for something to console me. In the mid sixties, she would summer with her family at Martha's Vineyard, and talked about hearing James Taylor play at the Community Center in Menemsha. So we got into his music when he hit it big a few years later. I instantly went to "Fire and Rain": "Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you ... I always thought that I'd see you, one more time again." But of course, I never did. I'd gone West, she'd stayed East after college. We'd been too much in love to stay friends, so all my memories of her are of our perfect times together; we didn't have any life everafter, so my tears on learning of her passing were pure adolescence rushing back at me.

Sometime about a month before I left for Boston, I got the idea that I needed to clarify once and for all when her birthday was. Knowing I was going back to Boston must have triggered it. I knew it was in May, either the 5th or the 25th. Deep down, I guess I knew she was a Gemini, but for some reason, I did a small amount of detective work trying to discover her death certificate on the internet. All I got was a Boston Globe obituary, which contained several intriguing facts: her funeral was on May 30th, she was buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and she was survived by her immediate family (all of whom I knew, of course), and her "fiance", a psychiatrist named Harry. She was identified as a psychologist, training in psychoanalysis. Odd. My Mother was a clinical psychologist, and my father's name was Harry.

I looked up Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and found it was in Cambridge, easily accessible by public transportation. I resolved to make a pilgrimage to her grave site, and maybe find a little closure, or at least spend some time wallowing in maudlin memories. Music always helps me do that.

Another song which seemed somehow fitting, as I planned to visit her on the day before my final marathon, was "Dead Flowers", by the Rolling Stones. It's actually a creepy little thing, both biting and sorrowful. Maybe I never forgave her for not following me on my life, instead of living her own, I don't know. In it, Mick is singing to "little Susie", and he promises, "I won't forget to put roses on your grave." It appears on "Sticky Fingers." I  called up "Dead Flowers", assuming I'd flip to "Fire and Rain" as soon as it was done.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery got its start in 1831, with a new idea for graveyards. Boston is an old town, for America. In the midst of the city there are several 17th and 18th century burial plots. If you look at the gravestones, you'll see the earlier ones have skull and crossbones carved on them. On later headstones, that image is transformed into a rather gruesome looking angel (imagine a Jolly Roger with wings). The purveyors of Mt. Auburn thought that the dead should rest in a park where people would want to come and visit, and be uplifted by a garden atmosphere. They went in for flowering trees, ponds, gardens, willows and the like. It's a quiet, hilly little place, ripe for contemplation and remembrance.

But it was BUSTLING on this Sunday morning. I couldn't figure it why my walk toward the back kept being interrupted by carloads of mourners, until I remembered, "It's Easter!" Yes, the perfect day to look for one who's died, hoping against hope that she might come back into my life (especially if she's Jewish.)  As I meandered slowly to area 9250, plot 62,  I got lost in the music, the warmth of the mid-April sun, and the endless stream of old men and women chauferred by their middle aged children on to someone's grave. The iPod Shuffle took over, and I never got to Jamie Taylor.

"Sticky Fingers" has a lot of bluesy, soft and sad songs in it. The Shuffle gods brought me, in quick succession, "Dead Flowers", "Wild Horses", "Moonlight Mile", and, yes, "I Got the Blues". I actually got lost in a Mick Taylor guitar solo on that last one. By the time I re-surfaced, I was nearing the flower shop, which was conveniently located about 100 yards from where Susie was said to be resting. Yes, the lady had some red roses, and I also got two yellow ones for good measure. I clutched them, and strode off to try and find her gravestone.

I circled for several minutes, spiraling closer until, with a sudden shock, I saw the slab, set flush to the ground like all the others after the mid-sixties. "Susan Jane Wise. May 25 1949. May 28 1984" The dates, one atop the other, were flanked on each side by what appeared to be pumpkins. I'm sure there's a good story there, but it's not one I was ever a part of.

I don't know what I expected, I had a sudden feeling of finality, of reality. A letter from her mother, telling me of her death (only after my mother had written, asking about it), an obituary, with small details, the announcement in our high school alumni magazine of a memorial fund - all of these were oddly vacuous, able to be brushed aside. A gravestone, with its weight, its intention to tell the infinite future of this death, is permanent, static, unchanging, immobile. I moved my iPod to my Funeral/Wake playlist.

Yes, it's true, I have a set of songs I want played at MY funeral. Why not? I'd like to enjoy it while I'm still alive if I can. So Bono started singing "Bad", a song he created for a friend's death, about the same time Susie died. This is my favorite U2 cut, a live version from 1989. "Let it go/Surrender/Dislocate/See you walk away/into the light/Set your spirit free/see you breakaway/into the night/thru the day/into the half light/through the flame - Let it go, and so fade away."
THE BRAIN AND EXERCISE
Back to the Commons and a quick trip to my suite at the Marriott, then back again to the Green Line, this time outbound to the Pru. I quickly spy Pat in the lobby of his hotel; he's still a little hyper from the talk he just gave at the sports medicine conference, on exercise and the brain.

"I was a little nervous, 'cause these guys at the conference are all the gurus of endurance sports medicine. But they're usually talking about sweat rates, or heat exhaustion, or hydration, or training effects on the mitochondria. It seems like no one is looking yet at how the brain is involved in all this."

"I'm a big believer in training the brain," I respond. "I don't mean doing psychological preparation or visualization, or positive talk, or associative or dissociative thinking during exercise. I'm not talking about thinking at all. Let me give you an example of how I'm interested in this. When I'm lifting weights, say leg presses, and I go from 90 to 180 to 270 to 360 to 410 pounds, the first two sets are easy - I can chat with someone else, fiddle with my iPod, stretch my arms, whatever. Seems like I've got a lot of spare brain capacity for those weights. But to do 10 reps of  360, or 6 of 410, that takes a much narrower focus from my brain, like a lot of extra neurons need to be recruited to get enough muscle fibers firing to make the weight. Even conscious thought gets in the way, the heavier the weight gets. Same thing happens in a short sprint, say a 100 or 200 meter swim race. Any thoughts are just random observations, but if I try to use my brain for actual thinking, I do worse."

"Well, I'm sure you're on to something there - the brain needs to experience the stress of exercise in order to learn how to engage itself more fully to let the newly trained muscles work to the fullest."

I go on: "Right. And for a long distance race - like what we do, a marathon, or a triathlon, or ultra race, well, the brain needs to be exercised and trained, just like the skeletal muscles, the heart, our glandular system, everything. All the organs in the body have to make adaptations to accomplish the tasks we're working towards.  There was a guy, a neurophysiologist named William Calvin, at the UW, who loved taking raft trips down the Colorado River. He wrote a book about that, and used the canyon as a springboard to make speculations about earth and human history. He had an intriguing idea of how the brain got to be its modern size. You know, some people say that language, the need to communicate in groups for hunting, is what drove the natural selection for bigger and more complex brains. But he says, maybe it was the need to throw more accurately that actually drove the brain to become big enough to accomodate the complexity of language. See, when we throw, we're doing a lot of very quick processing,  eying the target, range finding, assessing the distance and thus arc and angle needed to throw, then quickly recruiting lots of muscles and coordinating their efforts. Successful, accurate throwing was rewarded with a higher likelihood of dinner, and so selection pressures drove a bigger brain size. When we weren't throwing, we had all that spare brain capacity for other things like inventing fire, words, and cave drawings. I think that's a great idea, that sports is actually the fount of intellectual capacity and achievement. My way of sticking it to snobbish academics who disdain the value of physical skill and prowess."

"Hmm, maybe he's onto something there," Pat responded. "See, nobody's studying this - all the research money for sports medicine goes into cardiology and muscle physiology. Gatorade funds hydration research. But getting grants to study the brain and exercise - there's no money in it."

"What you've got to do is get some drug company to see where it might lead for a breakthrough in degenerative disease treatment. Get this: there's all these studies showing exercise is great for improving depression, Alzheimer's, and other neurological disorders. Now, why is that? Isn't exercise just about cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, things like that? Obviously not; exercise also exercises the brain. SOMETHING is happening, either an increase in neurons, or synapses, or efficiency of neurotransmitters - something, we just don't know what. If somebody could discover the neurochemical underpinnings of how exercise improves functioning in neurological disorders, then maybe a drug company could figure out how to treat it way more effectively - faster, deeper - with a pill, rather than the crude method of exercise, which has its limits of course in the tolerance of the other organs."

"Hey, if we could find a pill to speed up the adaptation of the brain to exercise, wouldn't that help athletes too?" Pat mused.

"You mean, like, steroids for the brain? I don't think it would work - training the brain without the simultaneous muscular and glandular and cardiac work is worthless. The athlete is a complete unit - it would be no more effective at improving, say, running speed for a marathon with weight training alone. An important component, but worthless if that's all you do. You've got to actually DO the sport to make improvements in it. Some training sessions work certain parts of the system - say sprints for muscular strength - while you need, say, long slow distance for other adaptations."

"So when are you going to start working on this, Al?"

"It's work for someone younger, just starting out. Besides, (a), I'm a clinician, not a researcher, (b) I'm an obstetrician, not a neurologist and (c) I'd rather spend my time training my own body, rather than learning about others' bodies."
GETTING READY TO RACE
I'll skip over the expo and the pre-race "pasta feed", complete with roving clowns and stilt walkers. Basically an endless series of subway rides, punctuated by masses of people moving through lines.

I spent the night before the race in my cubby meticulously arranging the minutiae of a marathon. Unlike an Ironman, which has not only three sports' worth of gear to arrange, but also the transition and special needs bags to obsess over, a marathon is quite simple: shoes, socks, pants, shirt, and a number. Extras might include a watch, heart monitor strap, hat and sunglasses. I threw in a few gels for good measure. The bigger deal was prepping for the pre-race marathon: getting there and waiting with 20,000 others to race - a 4 + hour ordeal, longer and more complicated than the race itself.

Let's see: iPod, food, drink, warm clothes, backpack, clothes bag for the baggage bus, and reading material, in case I don't see anyone I know. Oh, and a cell phone, for connecting, sun screen, money, room key, etc., etc. Exhausting just to think of, much less pull together in the four hours I have to kill that evening. But I manage to get it all done, and still have 3 hours and 45 minutes left to stare vacantly at the action adventure flicks on the hotel cable.

(I never have any trouble sleeping before a race. I get my usual 7 hours, and wake before the alarm goes off.)

Next morning, it's down to the Marriott buffet: sausage, bacon, oatmeal, yogurt, OJ. I know, I know, nothing heavy before a race. But, I'm not going to start running for 5.5 hours - I must be sustained during the coming ordeal! Then back up to quickly change, and head out the door for the 2 block walk to the buses leaving from the Boston Commons. I end up third in line, so I get my pick of seats - 3rd row in, on the aisle (the first two rows sit over the wheel wells, giving no room for legs). Out the I-90 turnpike to 495, and Hopkinton. The trip takes about an hour, and with the line-up for boarding, some riders have filled up their bladders. Two in particular, both dressed in Rhinestone Elvis outfits complete with black wigs, and shades, attempt to convince the driver to stop a bit early so they can unload at the road side. But she's a school bus driver in real life, so she has no problem sticking with her orders, which are to drive straight to the high school, no stops. The lady behind me borrows an empty Gatorade bottle, and start to hike down her shorts, just as we pull into the parking lots. I stand aside as there is general charge for the exits, with talk of "inviting looking bushes to the right."

I ring up Pat as I enter the compound. He locates himself outside the corner of a tent, where's he's waiting for a lecture on the "Psychological Aspects of Marathoning." I want an empty head, not a full one, so I tell him I'll meet him after I hit the latrine line. I also want an empty bladder. About 2/3rds of the way through the line, I spy Richard, the spiritual chief of our local triathlon club, who's back at Boston for another try after last year's heat wave. I wave "hi", and meet up with him once I leave the porta-potty. He's waiting in line with the brother-in-law of a good friend of my wife. We re-introduce ourselves; all three of us are doctors, which of course hurts, rather then helps our running. Like I said, you want an empty head, devoid of facts and knowledge, when you're abusing yourself by running for 3-4 hours.

But meeting them does give me a place to sit for the next 45 minutes, and a chance to ignore my own anxieties by listening to someone else's. Richard moans about being a "sprint triathlete, not a long distance runner." And it's true; given his 10K times, he should be a near 3 hour marathoner. Last year, he went nearly 3.5, but at least he got to blame the heat. Unfortunately, though I can't convince him of this, he's also training seriously for Ironman Coeur d'Alene, where he hopes to qualify for Hawaii. A good race at Boston and a good one a CdA just cannot be done. Two different training regimens, too close together. Hopefully, he'll keep his focus on Ironman; it will be his first one in five years. He's such a good short course racer, and he's so smart, but still, even though he can intellectually understand the differences, until you actually go through the damned race, you don't completely understand what everyone is trying to tell you about pacing. And nutrition/hydration. I raise my eyebrows at his Fuel Belt filled with Hammer Sustained Energy, a protein/carbo drink which is way more than I think he needs for this short a race. He seems convinced, though.

I've got a plan, and if there's anything I've learned from 9 Ironman races and 4 marathons in the past five years, it's that plans only work if you follow them. My plan goes something like this: since there are two waves, and I'm near the end of the first one. I will start at the VERY end of the first wave. I'll let a lot of space develop between me and the pack. I'm a super good downhill runner, compared to most folk my speed, and the first several miles of Boston are downhill, with the steepest sections at the very beginning. I'll need some running room, or I'll burn up a lot of mental energy trying to either go slow, or weave around people. Then, the first 8 miles I will run at a laughingly slow pace. It should feel just below (slower than) the minimum speed needed to tire me out. I'll kick it up a notch from 8-9 miles through 14. Then the hills start. Here, I'll let my heart rate get into zone 3 - for me, between 143 and 149. I'll do my best to maintain effort up and down the hills, and not let myself get mentally psyched out by the uphill effort. Finally, when the hills are done - about mile 21 - I'll finish with whatever I have left. And especially in this last part of the race, I'll admire the crowds, the masses lining the streets leading into downtown Boston.

I'll let myself walk a bit in each aid station, just long enough to drink a cup of Gatorade. Whatever the weather is, warm or cold, windy or still, sunny or cloudy, I will ignore it. I will not let myself be pushed by the clock - I will run by feel, not pace, and I will NOT let myself burn out before the end. And I will let myself learn whatever the day is going to teach me.

While the Tacoma crew bid me good bye - they all leave for their corrals about 11:15 - I start to change into my race gear. Socks, shoes, heart rate monitor, bright red Wesleyan University short sleeve thin synthetic T shirt, red Ironman Wisconsin visor, and Oakley wraparound shades. Pinned to my waist belt (which holds my number, 9730) are two Gu packets. That's it. Everything else goes into the backpack, which goes into my official Boston Marathon gear bag. Except a grey "Tour de  Firefighters" long sleeved T shirt, which I'll throw away at the start. A last porta potti trip, then off to line up.

Without the runners waiting for the second wave mucking things up, the route to the corrals is almost passable. I jog the whole way at a very slow pace, taking care not to disturb the walkers. Halfway there, I stop to do a ten-minute stretch routine. At the corrals, I'm directed to the right, to the 9000's; I go left, to the last stall, for the 10,000s. I duck under the barrier, and remain steadfast at the back. I toss my shirt, and bounce around a bit, pausing for a very faint Star Spangled Banner coming from somewhere about a half mile ahead. Another old guy next to me notices my shirt, and asks if I'm going to carry on in the great Wesleyan runners' tradition of Bill Rodgers and Ambi Burfoot. I smile, admit I was there when they were, and acknowledge the great gulf between me, now, and them, then. A faint cannon blasts, heads bob somewhere up the hill. We remain standing still.
THE RACE
I see one of the Tacoma runners - his time was about 1 minute slower than mine, but his number was nearly 700 higher - and tap him on the shoulder, shaking his hand, wishing him luck. I wait. And wait. Finally, we start walking. I insist on walking the whole way to the start line. This takes nearly 8 minutes. The temptation to break into a run is almost overpowering, as the way is lined with thousands of spectators, all urging me to "Go, go, go!!!" The energy here, at the start, is humbling and overwhelming. At the very top of the hill, the start line, and pads for our chips to start our own personal clock. Finally, I can start to unwind my top. But slowly, gently.

The downhill start unfolds with precision. I do not run into any crowds, and run the first mile near 8 minutes - just perfect. I walk into each aid station, grab a Gatorade, chug it, and start up again. For 20 minutes or so, the way is almost quiet, save for the sloshy padding of thousands of racing shoes on the asphalt. Only a few people out here in the New England exurbs are bothering to cheer us on. We hit Ashland, and the crowds appear. For the rest of the race, we are not alone - there will always be hundreds in sight, and more important, in earshot, importuning us on. Anything written on a runner's shirt or number gets a response. I must hear "Go Wesleyan" at least 10 times a minute all the way into Boston. I also hear the same names over and over - "Dave", Patti", and "New Orleans" seem to be the folks I'm traveling with.

In Framingham, I start to look for kids to high-, or actually low-five. The smaller the better. The ones about 4-6 years old seem to get the biggest kick out of it. They've been primed by 10,000 others before me, and have learned that only a few of us will do the hand thing. I'm glad to oblige. I'd rather think about them than about how slow I'm probably going. It feels too easy - just the way I've planned.

After nine miles, I start to actually feel the work. But I try to hold things back, to not think about the future, and I've certainly forgotten the past already. I'm paying no real attention to my time, just hitting the lap button on my watch every mile, noting they're all 8-something.

At about 12 miles, we start to anticipate the Wellesley girls. Through Framingham, I've noticed that some people are having trouble with my shirt - "Uh, go, uh, WELLES - leyan?" No matter; once or twice I try to correct them, but mostly I just smile or wave when I hear my alma mater shouted out.

I love crowds like the Wellesley girls. They know they've got a rep to protect, so they are easy to pump up. All I do is raise one or both hands in the air a few times, like a basketball player trying to pump up the home crowd. They screech a little louder, but, frankly, I think they're getting tired out. At this point they've probably been cheering for an hour, and know they're going to get a little break about now between the waves, with another hour or more to go. I also start to see my first beer drinkers, who see us as basically the entertainment on a bogus holiday.

After Wellesley, I start to look for an open porta potti, but they all have lines 2-3 deep. So behind an electrical substation in the woods by the railroad track leaving town, I join a few other guys to lighten the load a bit for the second half of the race. 40 extra seconds added to my time, I note.

Right after this, the hills start. Boston is famous for "Heartbreak Hill", where an early victor put the hammer down on his competition. Heartbreak is actually the fourth in a series of five hills through Newton, which carry you from 14.5 to 20.5 miles in the race. And, I think it's only the third worst in the series of five. The first one is always a surprise, as you're not quite ready for it. It's not very steep but it is long, and can start to sap your will if you let it. The hills are a double whammy. They come just at the point where you want to pick up steam. You do so, but going uphill, your pace actually slows down. This is mentally debilitating. And, physically, the hills take so much out of you that by the end, you run the risk of giving up on the final long gentle downhill into town.

The weather had been totally benign all race up to now - about 55F, and mostly overcast, with a nominal breeze. But as we turned the corner at the Newton fire station, and headed up towards the Mass Pike overpass, the sun came out, and the wind started blowing from our back. Sweat began to pour down my arms, and I tried to roll my short sleeves up. They kept falling down, and finally, I started grabbing the proferred water from road side helpers. This bandit water I wouldn't trust to drink, but I would pour it over my head and onto my back. Just the stuff. Some rich soul was actually handing out sealed water bottles - I took one, and drank about half. Over the top (this is the worst hill), I knew I was working, but still felt strong on the downhill. Folks would pass me on the upslope, but I was passing scores on each downslope.

Heartbreak arrived. 3/4ths of the way up, I knew I wasn't going to crack, that there would be no wall for me, not here at least, so I raised both arms in jubilation, to carry me over the top. Flying down hill following the inner curve, I had to start watching out for people in my way. I was passing most everyone at this point, but there was one more hill, the last and second worst, to go. It's second worst, because you tend to forget about it after the thrill of passing Heartbreak and the 10K to go mark. But slog up it I did, and started kicking into a new gear on the way down.

If the first eight miles had felt like a long run training pace, and miles 8-14 had felt like a marathon pace, and the hills had felt like work and fun (the downhills at least), now I felt like I was moving into a new, unknown pace. It felt about as hard as a half-marathon, but my legs were so much deader than in that shorter race. There were thousands of people surrounding us now, as we moved by Cleveland Circle and Boston College. The BC kids were way more numerous and much much louder the the Wellesley girls. I don't know why they don't get the same publicity - maybe because some of them can be too rowdy. Anyway, it was almost deafening. But I was moving; working hard, but moving at a good pace. And passing hundreds of people each mile, so many I had  to weave around among them.

I was also starting to get the message from somewhere - my legs? - that I was working too hard, and that it would be really nice to slow down and rest. My head felt clear, though, well hydrated and still cooking, still insisting that I could indeed maintain this manic yet debilitating pace through town. At this point I was not using any particular motivation. No landmarks, no interaction with crowd, no racing with those around me. I was just on some catabolic autopilot, eating myself up as I plowed on to the finish.

This year, at about mile 25, the route headed under Mass Ave, and back up again. Around mile 24, I gave myself a promise - I would let myself walk a bit up that underground hill, while I was out of sight of the crowd, and, once back in the light, would kick in for the final drive home. It worked, as did passing up the last aid station - I didn't even have the energy to stop, drink, and swallow any more.

The final quarter mile of the Boston course takes a right off of Commonwealth, and then a block or two later, a left on Boylston for the final push home. During the dogleg, I spied a familiar head of hair up in front. Peter, one of the docs I work with, had been trying to qualify for Boston for several years. A year ago, he missed the cut off by about a minute. This year, he made it by about the same amount. He was hurting. I tapped him on the left shoulder (I was going to go around him on the INSIDE as we hit Boylston, for sure), and said, "Hey Peter!" Once he'd registered my face, I told him he would make it. He said, "The only reason I'm still running is that I'll get done faster!" For a moment, I contemplated going in to the finish with him, but he was clearly laboring, and I still had a small amount of juice left. I just said, "Keep going, you've got it", and ramped back up to my finishing "kick".

The finish at Boston has two chutes. The one on the left is preceded by a timing pad (for the announcer to see who's coming in) with about 150 yards to go. I made sure to pass over it, and, sure enough, as I came up on the finish line, I heard the announcer shouting, "Al Truscott, 57 years young, from Gig Harbor, Washington!" Then I hit the finish, raising my arms and smiling for the camera, hit my watch and stopped running.

This one felt good at the end. So good, I turned around and waited for Peter, to congratulate him and have someone to shuffle through the sea of silver mylar blankets, waiting water bottles and medals, and to do a little decompression with.
TODAY'S LESSON
Pat and I had made plans for dinner at about 7, at Maggiano's, a hearty, wood-paneled old school Italian restaurant, the kind where you think Mafia guys might go - or at least Sinatra and his pals. At about 6:15, I called Pat to give him directions. He sounded fine, lucid and all, but he claimed he was lying on the bathroom floor and couldn't get up. Something about feeling lightheaded and nauseated. I asked him what he'd had to eat after the race, and he said he got no food for about 90 minutes after the race. He'd been confused about where his baggage bus was supposed to be (it was actually back at his hotel). He had to take the subway back from the finish, and couldn't figure out how to do that. A little hypoglycemic, maybe?

Anyway, I walked to the restaurant and showed up on time, all dressed in my finisher's shirt and medal and 2005 jacket. I waited for him there for about 30 minutes, while he got dressed and took a cab over. Once there, we commiserated about our days. Turns out his time was only about 2 minutes slower than mine, but he'd felt much worse at the end. This got me to thinking, would I rather go "too" slow at the start and finish strong, or try to keep too fast a pace, and finish truly laboring (Pat's version of his race)? Pacing is everything in endurance events.

"You know what I learned today?" I started to lecture him. "I learned that, to do this right [this being something like a marathon or an Ironman], I've got to pay attention to only two things: how's my stomach doing, and how is my brain doing. I don't care what my legs feel like. They have to be ignored. But if my stomach is not absorbing fluid and sugar, then my brain won't work. And if my brain doesn't work, then the whole system shuts down. And I'm not talking about that little part of the brain where consciousness comes from. I'm talking about the whole rest of the brain, which is controlling this entire enterprise. Feed your brain, ignore your muscles. That's the trick."
THE NUMBERS
5K splits, with average heart rate during that time (my maximum HR is about 170)
5K    25:58    134
10K   26:35   136
15K   26:40   136
20K   27:11   136   (This includes my pee stop of 40 seconds); half way: 1:52.07
25K   26:16   139
30K   26:51   140
35K   26:49   145
40K   25:47   148
42.2K 11:55   152

20,300 started; I was in the top half at 9891. 2524 men aged 50-59 finished; I was 1151 among them. I qualified for next year by 57 seconds. A success all around. I think I represented myself well.

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