April 17 2005
Boston Marathon
So. I must have been successful at Sacramento, because here I am, in
Hopkinton, MA, on the third Monday in April, waiting in a pen just
around the corner from the start line. I'm in the ninth such pen, the
one for those with numbers between 9 and 10,000. About mid pack, as
we're all seeded by qualifying time.
18 weeks ago, I rounded the corner in downtown Sacramento, having
slogged almost a full circle around the Capitol. By that time, I was
convinced my legs had turned to mud, and my brain to pulverized
granite. While I didn't find the "wall" at mile 16, 17, or 18, as I had
always done before, this time it found me about mile 23. My glycogen
ran out, and I went from 7:47-7:55 minute miles - BAM - to 9
minutes plus for the last three. Running at the same effort level, but
dropping substantially slower, I knew I was running on fat fuel alone.
I was sure my time would fall into the 3:30's from the 3:22 I'd been
looking at for the first 22 miles. I looked up at the clock - 3:26 and
counting!!! WOW. I'm going to break 3:28, be under an 8 minute mile
average, and SMASH the qualifying time. I cramped my way across the
finish, and came to an abrupt halt. If you'd put a gun to my head and
said "Run!", I would have croaked, "So shoot me!"
I inched my way thru the chip removal, the bag pick up, and the mylar
blanket. I made it to the Capitol steps, and started to call Cheryl. At
that point, I realised how I actually HAD made good on my promise to
myself, and, for the first time ever after a race, broke down and
cried. I gave it a good minute or two, then found a sunny spot, and
rang
her up.
So, here I am. So much has happened in the past four months. For
starters, I guess, my mother died just after Christmas. She was living
with us the last 8 months of her life. She spent less than 30 hours in
the hospital before her body finally gave out on her. She was
surrounded by all her family. Her
granddaughters were already there, and her daughter and grandson (my
kids and sister) got there 12 hours before she passed on. She was
feisty
and inquisitive literally right up to the end. My last words to her
were a discussion about/reading from a book called "Long Distance" by a
journalist who tried a year's worth of endurance training (for cross
country skiing) to experience and learn. During that year, his father
died, and he found out not only what his body was capable of, but also
why one would want to try such a thing, to begin with. His goal? "I
want to gain an intuitive sense of my body and how it works. And at
least once I want to give a supreme and complete effort in a race." The
author (Bill McKibben) quotes University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman,
"Running is basically an absurd pastime on which to be exhausting
oneself. But if you can find meaning in it, you can find meaning in
another absurd pastime: life". My efforts at racing, my mother's
efforts at living - and dying - they were entwined of course. And my
next race would take me back to where we first met - the city of my
birth, and the city of my college girlfriend. Where I hadn't been
(except for a generic business meeting) for 35 years. With my wife,
who'd NEVER been there - a California girl, who didn't really have an
intuitive feel for this oldest of American Cities - where It All Began,
380 years ago.
Our first view of Boston was all underground. From the airport almost
to our hotel, we traveled under the bay and the old part of town at
rush hour in a seemingly endless tunnel. We emerged at the Charles
River between Back Bay and Beacon Hill, and took another 20 minutes to
go five blocks to the old Boston Police headquarters, recently
converted into Jury's Hotel. For some reason, the bar at this place has
become THE hangout for the twenty-something office worker, and each
night (Friday and Saturday), it was filled to overflowing at high
decibel level with young Bostonians on the prowl.
Our tours did not include the local meat markets. I was more interested
in recapturing some scenes from my youth - riding the T, seeing Faneuil
Hall, Filene's basement, Durgin Park, Cambridge, Harvard Square, and
... Radcliffe. There, I would visit my high school/college girlfriend
on weekends, in her dorm room and (later) apartments. She'd show me all
over the city, and I felt like anyone of the 50 or 60,000 other college
kids cramming Bean Town. To us, there was only the Boston for students.
We were all clothed in Navy Pea Coats, or, later, Army fatigue jackets.
Funny, because we spent so much time fighting the war making machinery.
At the end of my college years, I went on to Southern California, and
she stayed behind to study at Tufts. Fifteen years later, she became a
cancer victim.
In her memory, I wanted to see once again her freshman dorm, where I
had to sign her out and bring her back unharmed. By her junior year,
they'd loosened up "in loco parentis" to where she could live in an
apartment. She and her two roommates lived just upstairs from where
"Love Story" (a maudlin movie from 1970) was filmed. She had a
director's chair with "Ryan O'Neal" (the male lead) in block letters on
the back. I wanted to recapture the walks we'd taken all over Cambridge
from the Radcliffe Commons to Harvard Square and back. But either my
memory had gone foggy, or the town had changed too much. No landmarks
were familiar, and I never could find the exact dorm, or apartment
building I remembered listening to "Abbey Road" over and over in.
On Tuesday, the day after Patriots' Day, the day after the Marathon,
Cheryl and I started our drive to visit Shaine, our middle-born,
down in Connecticut. To get there, we hopped a cab to the airport,
rented a car, and drove in the exact opposite direction, northeast, to
Lynn Shore Drive, where I knew my parents had lived across the street
from the ocean in a small apartment house. The day was crystal clear
and perfect, warm but not hot; great for sightseeing, but of course not
for running 26.2 miles. This section of the highway was about 2
kilometers long, and the only plausible buildings were located at the
south end. I of course could not actually remember the place, as I'd
left there when I was six months old (so I've been told). But I knew
someone who might have the answer. I phoned a friend - my sister,
actually
"Leigh, I'm standing here on Lynn Shore Drive looking at what I think
is our old apartment house." Why I believed that a place which must
have been 30 years old in 1949 would still be around 55 years later, I
don't know. I was still around, so why not my first home? My sister
just happened to have sitting on her shelf an old family photograph of
the place with all of us clumped on a front porch next to my mother's
mother, who must have somehow come from Iowa to visit. We pieced
together the clues and agreed on the correct grey three story
structure. We snapped away with our cameras. The gentle Atlantic hissed
a bit above the traffic moan. Cheryl fidgeted. I wanted to drive thru
the north shore towns into Salem, locale of the hospital where I was
actually born. I like telling people I was born in Salem. It's
reassuring to always get back some comment about witches. Cheryl is
immune to this, of course, and wanted to see an actual witch house.
She was disappointed, of course, with the cheesy little re-enactment
and desultory cramped trip down into a dungeon-like basement of some
random renovated 17th century building ("not the actual Witch House,
but an historically accurate re-creation in an original Salem settler's
home"). We moved on to the Lexington
National Battlefield Park, where the Shot Heard Round the World was
fired. We got the whole story: furtive meetings in the Old North
Church, Paul Revere, his lanterns and midnight ride, the guerrilla
ambushes on the retreating British slinking away from Concord's armory,
empty-handed, leading to the Siege of Boston the next winter, and the
Declaration of Independence the next summer. The previous day being,
after all, Patriots' day, celebrating this very place and what happened
there in 1775, it should come as little surprise that we showed up
exactly 230 years after the events of that night.
I've always felt partial to our founding story, the plucky colonists
resisting taxes, dumping tea, harassing the Redcoats, and producing the
marvelous words of Thomas Jefferson, "When in the course of human
events ... we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are
entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It is that
pursuit of happiness that has most affected me. Any old government can
commit to protecting life and liberty, or even property. But how many
care about my HAPPINESS!? Who knew that trying to have a good time in
life could produce such a powerhouse of a country? Or lead to the 109th
running of the Boston Marathon?
Yes, the Marathon. The one I had just wanted to get into, then tried to
train for while getting real serious about an Ironman. Can't be done.
To represent well in a marathon requires (for me, at least), 12-16
weeks of 45-55 mile weeks, 5 days a week running, speed, tempo and
distance work, and enough rest in between the training efforts to
recover for the next one. To do well in an Ironman requires excessive
amounts of biking, 8-14 hours a week or more, and easier on the
running, mainly low speed stuff with a lot of "running off the bike"
(runs right after biking). I had to pick one: train up to my Sacramento
pace for running for Boston, or train to a Kona-qualifying level for
Coeur d'Alene at the end of June, nine weeks away. Being a triathlete
first, and a runner as an adjunct to that, the choice was grim, but
easy: bag Boston. On the grand scale of Life Achievements for me,
Kona's Ironman triathlon world championship is at the pinnacle, with
Boston being a little cherry on top - fun to eat at the start, but
quickly forgotten once the REAL sundae is engaged.
Which means, I had about 16 miles in me, not 26.2. I had hoped to
parlay that into a 3:45 marathon (my age-group's qualifying time), but
global warming got in the way of that goal. By 1 PM, reports were the
temperature was up to 79F along the route, not ideal running weather.
The bright sun, and leafless trees didn't help any. I would have
preferred 50-55, and misty. I had fun anyway, mesmerized by the crowds,
the screams at Wellesley, the antics of the runners and the spectators,
the beer guzzlers and Red Sox fans once we hit the city. The only time
I've seen more people in a day was biking from Malibu to Newport Beach
on a sunny summer Sunday near the end of our week long California Coast bike trip. But it
was a struggle and, in the end, just a very good excuse for a week-long
New England vacation.
We finished up seeing my older daughter at college. Cheryl had visited
her several times, but I had never been there to see Shaine.
Well, that's not exactly true. I spent 3 and a half years there from
1966 thru 1969. For some reason, and no fault of mine, I'm sure, Shaine
had fallen in love with the idea of going there, after visiting during
a junior year tour of Northeast colleges. She has never regretted that
decision, and likes being there even more now than when she started. Of
course, her boyfriend Thomas, loyal to her these past two years, may
play a part in that. Along with all her other friends.
I prowled the campus, looking for all my old dorm rooms. For some
reason, all the trees looked bigger, and everything else looked
smaller, and older. Except the sports complex, which wasn't there yet
when I attended, and therefore seemed huge and new. I found old photos
of me on the swim team, and looked at the track team picture containing
(all together) Ambi Burfoot, Bill Rodgers (both winners of the Boston
Marathon) and Jeff Galloway, now a famous writer and trainer of the
masses for long-distance running. Who knew then how famous and
influential in the world of long-distance running those three would
become? At the time the picture was snapped, they were all just second
stringers, unsung and unknown, until 1968, when Ambi surprised us all
by actually winning Boston. To us, he was just the guy who spent every
afternoon running endlessly on the huge grass quadrangle surrounding
the football field.
Shaine took us out to an Indian restaurant with Thomas. It was great to
see her in her own grown up setting in the same place where I'd spent
college, but not re-tracing my steps at all. It's like getting to grow
up all over again, but without the heartbreak.