tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-115043342024-03-07T19:41:51.434-08:00Judy DenverJudy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-90082951320742769842011-11-23T14:51:00.000-08:002011-11-23T15:01:36.570-08:00Queen for a DayIt’s Friday, October 14, and I’m at DIA, walking to the gate for my flight. The signs above the gates are a virtual tour of the marathons that I’ve run over these past ten or so years. Chicago, my second state and first Boston qualifier, so many years ago. Kansas City, where I ran my first ultra along the Little Blue River just a bit east of KC, cheered on by my mom and my cousin Janet. Las Vegas, where Melissa and Michelle and I celebrated my 50th birthday (with the men in our lives) after running the stark and stunningly gorgeous Valley of Fire Marathon. Dayton, where I stayed with friends Jim and Jonni, and ran the Air Force Marathon in London-like pea soup fog, bringing home an age group award that was especially sweet since it was awarded by marathon greats Bill Rodgers and Alberto Salazar. Boston, where I've had an amazing ten-year streak, running a dream on Patriots' Day in April every spring since 2002. Nashville, where I met Michele and Paul and David and Lynne and Rhonda and Trent and Ian and Kathleen and Ben and….well, let’s just say a bunch of friends, to take on the challenge of the Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey Marathon. (We all survived, but the food poisoning that followed made the trip home from that one a plane ride I’d rather forget.) San Diego, where I ran my only RocknRoll marathon, one of my slowest but also my only true family affair, running with my cousins Kerri and Stacey.<br /><br />Aha, finally: Grand Rapids, Michigan. It seems that maybe it’s the only destination on this concourse I haven’t visited yet. That must mean that it’s time for my 50th state. Can I be at this point already?<br /><br />Like so many of the marathon weekends I’ve had in the past few years, this one is all about sharing the experience with friends, and – like so many other marathon weekends of the past few years – this one starts with Leann picking me up at the airport late on Friday night. Leann and I are sharing quarters at a Comfort Inn on the north end of the city, where Michele and Melissa will also join us tomorrow. Over the years, I’ve shared hotel rooms with Leann and Michele and Melissa, people I’ve come to value as some of my best friends. I’ve roomed with v-teamers and TMers and people I’ve barely met beforehand and friends of friends: Rita and Rhonda and AnneMarie and Shelagh and Carolyn and Amie and Dawnie and my dear friend Theresa and my cousins Kerri and Stacey - and there hasn't been anything but a great experience yet. I’ve been hosted by some of the most gracious people in the world: Sunflower Mary and Leann and Michele and Melissa and Karen and Nan (in three different homes!), and by Jim and Jonni, and by Lynn and Jim. Mick and I stayed in the same Boston B&B three years running, in a different author-themed room each time. I've made road trips on a couple of occasions with my coach Benji and his wife Amie, who have also - over the years - become some of my best friends. Once, in Idaho, Leann and Melissa and I shared a rustic cabin that backed up to Yellowstone. In Hawaii, John and I stayed at the very luxurious Hyatt Regency at Kaanapali overlooking the Pacific channel with views of Molokai; in Alaska, Benji and Amie and Melissa and I all stayed in the rustic Reluctant Fisherman Inn, where the rooms were plain and spare, but the views onto Prince William Sound were stupendous. In Newport, Oregon, I shared a cool house just steps away from the beach with Betsy and a group of Marathon Maniacs that included Mary Hanna, the winner of the women’s masters division in that race. Just once, I spent a night in a hotel with my sister Sue. My mom provided the housing the night before my Iowa marathon, and my brother Stan provided quarters the night before my Omaha marathon. Only a couple of times have I spent a pre-marathon night completely on my own.<br /><br />On Saturday morning, the great diner that Leann had scoped out for us is closed, so we go with Plan B and head to IHOP. That’s okay: we’ve done this before, and IHOP always comes through with plenty of carbs. Having dealt with breakfast, we turn our attention to the other thing that marathoners obsess over: weather. And there’s plenty to obsess about here: the weather is absolutely atrocious.<br /><br />Now, the thing is, you can’t do anything at all about the weather, but right up until the starter’s signal, it’s always a topic of conversation. You would think that after 65 marathons, it would somehow fade into the background, but it just doesn’t work that way. I’ve run marathons in snow and rain and heat and blistering sun and high temps and cold temps and high winds and just about everything in between. My first marathon was in Steamboat Springs in June 1999, and we ran in a snowy wintry wonderland. For Melissa’s 40th birthday celebration in Madison, Wisconsin, we ran in temps so high that the race director was forced to end the marathon early (thank heavens I finished before the black flag went up). My first Boston was a marathon-perfect cool and drizzly day; the next three years, Boston set heat records for April. In New Jersey last March, the run along the Atlantic Ocean started with 29 degrees and snow flurries. In Austin, I walked out of my hotel into freezing rain and promptly fell in the icy parking lot. The heat and headwinds in Tucson, Arizona, apparently didn’t affect my ability to turn in my fastest time ever. In Tulsa last November, the ferocious headwinds between miles 15 and 21 were enough to stop you dead in your tracks. I ran St. George, Utah, twice: once with full sun and 80-some degrees at the finish, and once with a driving rain that had me so cold that I seriously considered dropping out. Both were among my fastest races.<br /><br />The forecast for race day has vacillated wildly these last two weeks. Today, the conditions are lousy: it’s rainy and cold (not in itself all bad for a marathon), but the wind is howling. Absolutely howling. The forecast for Sunday is not any better. So. The weather will be what the weather will be. And still, Leann and I find ourselves wandering the aisles of the local Target and Meiers stores looking for throwaway plastic ponchos, even though I’m sure I have one (or maybe two or three) in my suitcase.<br /><br />The next pre-marathon ritual takes us to the expo at the YMCA in downtown Grand Rapids - where the race will start and end – for packet pickup. We’re working also on getting our logistics straight for tomorrow, and it’s a good thing, too, since our navigational skills this morning are a bit off. Still, we get to the expo without incident. It’s a small expo, so we make quick work of it, stopping to take photos of the unconventional pace group signs (among them: Al Gore's Inconvenient Pace Team - 4:58 - and the Pi Pacers - 3:14 - and Dubya's Running Mates - 3:44). We take note of the sign pitching the pickle juice aid station, but opt to not sample any. We meet up with Michele and Melissa, who come to the expo directly from the airport. Together, we check out all the stuff, but in the end – other than free t-shirts given to us when we buy a few gels – we make it out of the expo without accumulating a bunch more stuff.<br /><br />Of course, it’s not like we need more t-shirts. It's easy to accumulate stuff at marathons over the years, and it all starts with the t-shirt, which is the standard giveaway for any race. After 65 marathons, I could start a thrift shop with race t-shirts. I have cotton t-shirts and tech t-shirts, short-sleeves and long-sleeves, plain old uni-sex shirts and nice fitted gender-specific shirts. I have shirts of almost every color of the rainbow: blue and yellow and green and purple and gray and red and black and lots and lots of white shirts - but just one pink shirt. I've gotten t-shirts at almost every race I've run; a couple of times - in Austin and in Tulsa - I've gotten two shirts for the same marathon. I have shirts I've never worn, and shirts that I wear almost every day. My favorite shirt is my Mardi Gras shirt: a white long-sleeved shirt of a tech fabric, with a simple fleur-de-lis logo on the front. Or maybe my favorite shirt is my Shires of Vermont Marathon shirt: a short-sleeved black fitted shirt with a pretty green logo that I wear to Pilates. Or maybe it's one of the ten Boston shirts that I have: the Boston shirts are a history of the art of marathon t-shirts, starting with long-sleeve uni-sex cotton shirts, colors changing every year, to nice fitted gender specific shirts in a good tech fabric. When they come to clean out my place when I've passed on, they may just find me already buried in a mountain of marathon race shirts.<br /><br />But not all races give out t-shirts; or at least, not *just* t-shirts. I have a blue wind-shirt from the Mount Desert Island Marathon in Maine, and a yellow wind-vest from the Mississippi Blues Marathon in Jackson. I have a great quarter zip black tech long-sleeve shirt from Fargo, and a thick, kind-of-ugly sweatshirt from my Indiana marathon. I have hats - a red one from Rocket City in Huntsville, Alabama, and a white one from Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky. I have goody bags of different weights and sizes and colors and designs, all the rage these days, whether shopping-bag or backpack-type, all useful. My goody bag in Idaho was a potato sack, something I now regret that I didn't save. I have a very cool beer glass from my Delaware marathon, something I fretted about getting home intact. There's a mug from the Leadville Trail Marathon I ran many years ago that my friend Nattu picked up for me, but that somehow I never retrieved. Myrtle Beach gave us all gigantic red beach towels. I have posters from my first marathon, and from my first Boston, and from a bunch of other races. I have big extravagant race programs from every Boston, and more modest ones from a handful of other marathons. Once, in the only race I've ever won - the tiny Blue Springs 50k - I got a pair of socks as a prize; today, in addition to the blue short sleeved t-shirt in my goody bag, there's a pair of Grand Rapids Marathon Socks.<br /><br />The other thing I'll take home is a magnet. Somewhere along the way, I started collecting refrigerator magnets from every marathon city or state. I have some doozies. A football magnet from Marshall University, where I ran my West Virginia marathon and finished by carrying a football the length of the football field before crossing the goal line. A pink flamingo magnet from Florida, a great magnet with articulating arms and legs. A tornado-shaped magnet from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the winds made for a very tough race. My Boston magnets are always a part of the packet; plain and simple, an annual gift from the Newton-Wellesley Hospital. I have no fewer than four moose-themed magnets, although the only place I've actually seen a moose was in Alaska. My Hawaii magnet is a surfboard; my Georgia magnet is a peach; my Arizona magnet is a kachina. Here in Michigan, as in some other non-touristy places, finding a magnet is a bit of a challenge. Leann helps me in the quest, and we finally land in a book store where they have a small selection, and I choose a simple rectangle with a picture of the city that says "Grand Rapids". Sometimes simple is best.<br /><br />After all of these rituals, we don't have much time for sight-seeing. This is not really a destination we chose for the scenery, so we make do with a tour of the local store with tons of Michigan apples on sale, all at 49 cents a pound. That's okay, since I've managed to take in tons of sights along this fifty state journey. I've seen national parks galore: Yellowstone and Yosemite and Acadia and the Redwood Forest and the Sequoias and Zion and Bryce Canyon and Cape Cod and Capitol Reef and the Grand Tetons. I've visited incredible historic sites: Antietam and Plymouth and Santa Fe and Charleston, SC and the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock. I’ve toured of more covered bridges than I could imagine would exist in Vermont and New Hampshire. In my New York marathon, we actually crossed the International Peace Bridge from Buffalo into Ontario, and finished at Niagara Falls. I spent a weekend in New Orleans, and was treated to all the sights there, from the French Quarter to the above-ground cemeteries to the Garden District with the attendant trolleys, but I also got to see the sobering visions of a post-Katrina world. In South Dakota, I saw the Crazy Horse Monument and the beautiful Black Hills. I've had the good fortune to make vacations out of many of my marathons, spending extended time in Hawaii and Alaska and once, a grand driving tour of the entire Western part of the United States.<br /><br />But this trip is about a celebration, and the people and parties are the main attractions. Soon it’s 6 p.m. and the four of us (Leann, Melissa, Michele and I) are at the Bistro Bella Vita, a swanky Italian eatery recommended by my Grand Rapids friends Len and Alan. The restaurant is accommodating to our group that grows to include Benji and Amie, who have just arrived from Colorado, then Len, then Rhonda (up from Indiana), John and Carol (Michele’s friends from the Hal Higdon running board, where we all first met), Phil Bush (another original v-teamer and good friend, over from Chicago for the event), and my Iowa pal Randy Koch. Randy and I have been friends since sixth grade; he lives in Grand Rapids now, and it’s a pure gift to me that he’s able to join the party. We eat and we drink and we have a grand time. My face is already getting sore from smiling so much.<br /><br />But we’re not just here to party: we have a race to run. After a short night, it’s race morning, and it’s déjà vu all over again, but in a good way. When I got up at oh-dark-thirty for that first marathon in Steamboat Springs so many years back, Rome and I were at the home of his friend Mark, in a beautiful log home just outside of town. My first order of business was a trip to the bathroom. When I returned to our room, Rome asked me if I had looked outside yet. No, I replied, why? Well, you might want to check outside before you get dressed for the race. Oh yeah? So I went to the window, and found the thing that I least expected: a winter wonderland. Snow, and a bunch of it. It had started in the middle of the night (it had been sunny, cool, and windy the day before), and was still coming down, big white flakes. “I can’t run a marathon in the snow!” was the first thing in my mind. And then I realized that I really didn’t have much of a choice: if I was going to run a marathon that day, it would be in the snow. Oh boy.<br /><br />So this morning, I come back to the room from my trip to the WC, and Leann asks if I’ve looked outside yet. Uh-oh. Um…..what up? Rain, says she, rain. So I go to the window to look for myself, and sure enough, there’s a light rain. At least this time, the precipitation is not a surprise. But then I look to the flagpole, and I’m heartened, seeing what Leann hadn’t noticed yet: almost no wind. Yesterday, the flag was whipping around furiously. Today, it’s just hanging there. Hallelujah Jordan!<br /><br />There’s been a twist in the plans for this morning. Originally, I thought that Leann and Melissa would join me for this 26.2-mile journey. But that’s not to be, as Melissa is nursing a bum knee and Leann is recovering from the crud. Actually, to be completely accurate, Melissa is having knee surgery in a week or so, and Leann sounds like she belongs in an oxygen tent. They are quite a pair. They’ve elected to take the early start, and are saying that they will walk the distance. This means they need to head downtown a bit earlier than Michele and I. They take off, and I’m left in an oddly quiet, solitary room to finish dressing and eating my stale bagel and drinking hotel room coffee. It’s a pretty alien sensation, after so many shared pre-marathon rituals, and I spend a few moments thinking how blessed I am to have found such great friends to share this experience. But I’m only alone for a scant ten or fifteen minutes before Michele shows up, ready to go.<br /><br />This morning, Michele and I head out - in the darkness - to a rental car for the drive to the race start and finish. Logistics for this race are pretty easy, since the race is essentially a big loop, starting and ending at the same point, so we can drive into downtown and park nearby. The easiest races are the loopy ones where you walk out of a hotel and are right at the starting line; that's a rare treat, and something I did most recently in Providence, Rhode Island. Most of my favorite races have been point to point courses, and the logistics have been more tricky. I've ridden yellow school buses from a finish line to a start for more races than I can count. On a few occasions, I've had bus rides on nice comfy tour buses. In Tucson, they transported us on nice buses and let us stay on board until the race start, and I took a nice little nap in the warmth of the bus. Is it a coincidence that I ran my fastest time that day? At St. George, Utah, they bused us on yellow school buses and dumped us at a higher elevation, but made up for the cold conditions at the start by building nice big bonfires so we could keep warm. Twice I walked to race starts in downtown Denver, just a few blocks from home. In Boston and Atlanta, I rode subways to get to the race start; in Deadwood, South Dakota, I rode on a little old-fashioned trolley. The bus to the start in Cordova, Alaska, was the most colorfully decorated bus I've ever seen. For my first Boston, Mick dropped me off on a back road in Hopkinton, and I walked backwards along the course the rest of the way to the starting corrals, a pilgrimage made more poignant by the quiet and solitude imposed by the fog on the oddly empty roads.<br /><br />This morning we drive to downtown Grand Rapids, and we get to the start area just in time to see the early starters off. It’s especially ironic to see Melissa and Leann in their Boston Marathon jackets lined up with the walkers. Rhonda also makes it here for the early sendoff. We finish up the last pre-race rituals (i.e., multiple trips through the bathroom lines – in this case we actually get to use the indoor facilities at the Y, something of a marathon treat), then Michele and Rhonda are off to warm up. They are both running the half, so will line up and run independently of me. Michele promises to come back to mile 23 or so to escort me to the finish.<br /><br />Now I start looking for Benji and Amie in earnest. When Melissa and Leann opted for the early start, it was a loss, but I didn't mind too much because I knew that I still would have Amie as a running partner. But now, as the minutes to start time count down, I realize that I screwed up in not setting a specific meeting place. We run roughly the same pace, though, so how hard will it be to find her? Well, the unexpected answer is: plenty hard. I scan the crowds, but with 3000 runners in the combined marathon and half marathon, there are just a lot of people here. It seems weird – and a little bittersweet – that I will start my 50th state marathon just like I started my first ever marathon – completely alone.<br /><br />As far as race starts go, this one is pretty low key. Over the years, there have been many memorable race starts. The Star Spangled Banner is nearly ubiquitous, and I’ve heard lots of versions; let’s just say some have been better than others. In Iowa, we were sent on our way by a couple of people clad in togas (the Marathon to Marathon, naturally), and with a surprise greeting from Tom Vilsack, then the Iowa governor who also went on to run the race. (Happily, I can report that it’s one race where I beat the incumbent.) In Austin, after waiting around in freezing drizzle, two deer bounded across the roadway just as we started running. On Maui, in the darkness of a January morning, we were treated to a traditional Hawaiian blessing. Chicago was my first big marathon, and I can never forget the arc of clothes being thrown to the sidelines when the crowd started to move. At my last marathon in Alaska, there were only about thirty of us lined up at the start line – 26.2 miles outside of a remote fishing village – so for once, I was able to hear the starter call out “Ready – Set – Go”. My biggest surprise in my first marathon was the fact that the (relatively) small crowd started to move, and I had never heard a gun go off. That has happened over and over again on this journey, and today is no different. Without any fanfare, we start to move.<br /><br />I learn very quickly, though, that someone wearing a shirt announcing that this is my 50th state – in bright red and blue letters on my back - will never be alone. I’m surprised and humbled by all the people who make a point of running with me and congratulating me. It’s a non-stop stream of well-wishers. How could I think I was alone for this milestone day? The truth is, it surprises me that I've run with so many friends in marathons over the years, when I've always thought of myself as a solitary runner. I've run several entire marathons with Leann, talking about and solving the problems of the world along the way, in places as diverse as New Orleans and Burlington, Vermont, and Missoula and Wilmington, Delaware, and Providence, Rhode Island. I started one marathon with Melissa, in Denver, but I couldn’t keep up with her pace beyond mile 8; somehow, she slowed down enough to stick with me in Alaska for the entire 26.2 mile journey earlier this year. I've run portions of many marathons with Michele - most notably the first 15 or so miles of the Maui Oceanfront Marathon last year. I've run large parts of marathons in Tulsa and Ashton, Idaho, with Amie. In Little Rock, I ran nearly the entire race with Denise from Chicago, someone (I thought) I just met that morning in the starting corral; around the halfway point of the marathon we realized that we had run a part of the Deadwood Mickelson Trail Marathon in South Dakota together a few years earlier. Once, in Boston when I was struggling in a very hot year, Mick hopped out onto the course and ran 5 miles through the hills of Newton with me, helping me get through the toughest part of the day; never mind that he then had to run the 5 miles in reverse to get back to our rental car. Along the way, I've run stretches of road or trails with Shelagh and Lynne and Mike McKenna and Trent and Kent and Kerby and Dan Schwarz and Betsy and Rhonda and Sunflower Mary.<br /><br />The early miles tick by. The first five miles of the marathon are, according to the race map, a big loop around downtown Grand Rapids, but to be honest, I don’t see any of it. All I see are the faces of the people who run up to offer kind words. It’s disorienting – I don’t have any sense at all of where I am. Over the years, I've run in just about every setting imaginable, and have seldom felt as lost as I do now. I've run in cities: Boston and Chicago and Atlanta and Seattle and Denver, in the shadow of tall buildings. I've run along the water, from Tampa Bay to the Niagara River to Myrtle Beach to the Maine coast and the Oregon coast; along the shores of Lake Superior at Grandma's Marathon and Lake Champlain in the Vermont City Marathon, and among glacial runoff in Alaska; along the Pacific Ocean in Maui, and along the Atlantic in Rhode Island. I've run past college campuses in Boston - Wellesley and Boston College - and through college campuses in Austin and Madison and Providence and Seattle and Moorhead, Minnesota, and Huntington, West Virginia. I’ve run on military bases in Dayton, Ohio, and in Wichita. In New Jersey, I ran along a boardwalk on the ocean. I've run past state capitols in Austin and Madison and Jackson and Denver and Little Rock, and past that grandest capitol of all in Washington DC. Seldom have I been as unaware of my surroundings as I am here today.<br /><br />Phil is acting as official photographer today, so in addition to continuing to scan the runners around me, I’m scanning the side of the road for Phil. He told me where he would be, but as I’ve completely lost track of time and space, I have no idea where to expect him. Then I see him, and I feel connected.<br /><br />Ed from Chicago falls into step alongside me, and we cover much of the first seven miles together. Ed has finished the 50 state circuit himself, and now is working on a second time around. He’s great company, always somehow finding me again after each aid station.<br /><br />At mile seven, as I’ve settled into the marathon zone, with Ed providing steady companionship while other well-wishers come and go, Amie comes sprinting up beside me. I’m thrilled! She tells me that she has been trying to find me, describing me to folks along the way, and finally somebody said, yes, I’ve seen that woman, she’s up ahead of you just a little ways.<br /><br />Now, it’s not exactly hard to guess how anyone spied me today. I’ve run in shorts and tights and running skirts in the past. I’ve run in singlets and short sleeved shirts and long sleeve shirts and jackets. I’ve started races in throwaway shirts, picked up for a few bucks each at the local Salvation Army. I’ve started races with garbage bags and ponchos to ward off cold and rain. I’ve sported red-white-and-blue 50 States Marathon Club gear and I’ve worn yellow-red-and-black Marathon Maniacs gear. In fact, I’ve worn most of the colors of the rainbow, favoring pinks and blues and purples. I’ve worn hats and headbands and visors and sunglasses, and I’ve held on to (or thrown away) gloves along the way – black and white and red, and – my favorites - purple. But today is the first time I’ve worn a costume.<br /><br />As far as costumes go, it’s not that showy, but for me, it’s an event. Melissa tried to outfit me in a red polka dotted running skirt, but in the end I opted for my trusty red Nike shorts. For a top, I decorated a white short sleeve shirt with red and blue stars on the front, and a 50 States Club logo on the back, along with a painted “MI=MY 50th STATE” message. My arms are clad in sky blue arm warmers with giant white stars. And the piece de resistance? It’s a red-white-and-blue sparkly tiara. And just to complete the look, I’m carrying a little American flag. You could say I’m styling.<br /><br />So I guess it’s really no surprise that Amie is able to find me. It’s great to finally be back among my old friends, even though I greatly appreciate the new friends I’ve been making along the way.<br /><br />Amie and I have barely had a chance to start chatting when, at mile 9, we see Melissa and Leann. I think uh-oh. When we did the math, we estimated that if we were all on track with our plans for the day, we would pass Leann and Melissa around mile 12. Seeing them moseying along here at mile 9 means that they are pretty seriously behind their game plan, since I’ve been running pretty steady ten-minute miles. We shout greetings to each other, but then the moment is gone.<br /><br />Somewhere along the way, we’ve moved from running on city streets to running on a nice wide asphalt bike path that meanders through some open space south and west of downtown. With the fall colors just past their prime, it’s a very pretty setting. For a few miles, we’re in a fairly open field, skirting a small pond. Surprisingly, this urban course rivals some of my more rural and remote courses for scenery today. After all, I've run in the Rocky Mountains of my home state of Colorado - in Steamboat Springs and in Leadville, and in view of the Grand Tetons, and in the shadow of the Montana Rockies in Missoula. I've run in the stark desert beauty of St. George, Utah, and the Valley of Fire in Nevada, and the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. I've run on asphalt and concrete and trails - oh, those tough trails - from the Tecumseh Trail in southern Indiana to the Appalachian Trail and the C&O Canal Towpath in Maryland to the Land Between the Lakes Trail in Kentucky and the wonderfully forgiving soft crushed gravel path of the Deadwood Mickelson Trail in South Dakota. I've run up hills and down hills, too many to even begin to mention. The single hill in the course is along this stretch, and at this point, Amie and I lose Ed, who had been with me for so many miles.<br /><br />The course has several out-and-back sections, and around mile 14, we head into the longest of these, and Amie and I start to see people whom we either know or will see a few more times along the journey. There’s Phil on a bridge, taking photos again. There’s a wedding party running altogether – a very interesting and enthusiastic entourage. There are relay runners, and there are charity groups pushing wheelchair racers. And now – right around the time that we pass the Pickle Juice aid station for the first time – there’s Benji, many miles ahead of us. He looks strong, and we shout greetings to each other.<br /><br />Up ahead, we cross under a roadway, and standing along the side of the path is Len. He shouts my name, and I’m thrilled. It’s a party! In fact, I’m so caught up in the celebration that I somehow miss him after we make our 180 degree turn up ahead. Next up: Leann and Melissa. What the heck? We figure that they must have seriously picked up the pace. And finally, there’s Rita, heading the opposite way as we head into the second, shorter, out-and-back leg upwards of mile 20.<br /><br />I’ve been having fun, but all the talking has taken a toll, and I finally tell Amie that the only hope I have to maintain any semblance of this pace is to quit talking and concentrate on running. So we run along companionably, Amie providing color commentary from time to time, and me grunting responses. I think everyone else is in the same shape, as the congratulations have slowed to a trickle. It’s all a good reminder of what it’s all about: that running 26.2 miles is never easy, and never to be taken lightly.<br /><br />We retrace some steps over already-covered ground, and then finally we can see the tall buildings of downtown Grand Rapids in the distance. I’m starting to look forward to seeing Michele at mile 23; at this point in the race, every intermediate goal grows in significance, as I think “if I can just make it to ____”, then I can worry about getting to the finish line after that.<br /><br />Michele is not, however, at mile 23. Somehow, I like this; it gives me yet another intermediate goal. First it was mile 23, now it’s “where in the world is Michele?” Time and distance is ticking away. Amie is inching just slightly ahead of me; it’s clear she has more gas in her tank than I do.<br /><br />At mile 24, there’s Michele. Yeah! Amie tells Michele that I’m not able to chat anymore, but that she should entertain me. I tell Amie that she should take off and have a good strong finish to her race. So she leaves me in Michele’s capable hands, and Michele starts talking me through the final 2.2 miles of this 50-state journey.<br /><br />Michele is naturally a Chatty Kathy, and she’s rarin’ to go since she’s been done with her half marathon for a couple of hours now, and she takes over. She’s perfect for the job. She keeps up a running commentary, telling me about her race, and about where the mile 25 marker is, and about the little obstacles between here and the finish (a curb to step off; a large water puddle to avoid; railroad tracks that might be slippery). It's easy to understand why Michele seems a little worried about the possibility that I'll fall and break something, since I have a bit of a history breaking things throughout this 50-state journey. In the months leading up to my first Boston, I fell in an awkward way on a ski slope and broke a rib. It made for some painful training. Then two years later, again right before Boston, I stubbed my toe in the middle of the night, and so ran Boston that year with a broken little toe. Just a little over two years ago, I stepped badly on a rock on a trail section of the Mesa Falls Marathon in Idaho and ended up with a stress fracture in my foot. In an effort to give my foot time to heal, I took some time off running and increased the time I spent on my bike. You can see it coming: I wrecked on my bike and broke my wrist. Not quite a year later, I tripped in a parking lot and fell hard on my knee, cracking a bone in my leg. Then, of course, earlier this year, I fell and smashed my nose in a Kentucky trail marathon. You can understand why someone who knows me would be concerned about me breaking more things. Today, amazingly, I manage to stay on my feet.<br /><br />Part cheerleader, part coach, Michele tells me “you’ve got this” and “you can pick it up now, you can do this thing”, and her words spur me on. Somewhere in this last mile, she reminds me of the people who have helped get me here today, starting with my mom. But there’s not time to go through the entire list of people I need to recognize, so I just offer up a small silent prayer of thanks.<br /><br />And then it’s mile 26, just 385 yards to go. So many races, and so many finish lines. In the Marine Corps Marathon, we had to climb a steep hill to the finish in Arlington National Cemetery. In Seattle and Huntington, we finished on football fields. In Fargo and Omaha, the finish lines were, oddly, inside buildings. The Wichita Marathon finish was on cobblestones: ouch! In Vermont earlier this year, after a race entirely in rain, we had to run across a squishy wet field to cross the finish line. In Wyoming, the finish line was up a steep climb; in South Dakota, the finish was at the end of a nice downhill stretch. Some finishes come up suddenly, where you make a last turn and there’s the finish line right in front of you. Boston is the opposite: you turn onto the final stretch long before you hit mile 26, and it feels like that huge finish line with the yellow and blue balloons and the gigantic arch keeps moving further and further away. This finish line in Grand Rapids is – like almost the entire course today – blissfully flat, and it seems to come at just the perfect point in this day.<br /><br />Over the years, I’ve wondered what this stretch would feel like, and since I’m the biggest crybaby in the history of the world, I’ve been pretty downright certain that the moment will include a lot of tears. In my first marathon, there was a marker that said "1 mile to go", and as I passed it, I started to cry, only to learn quickly that crying and running aren't very compatible. Over the years, I’ve learned that one of the best cures for a crying jag is to go for a run. So, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that the tears I expected today don’t materialize. Today I’m running the last .2 miles of this journey with Michele at my side, and she is shouting to people that I’m finishing my 50th state, and I’m waving my little plastic flag, and all I feel is joy. Pure joy. Then I’m crossing the finish line, and Don Kern, the race director gives me – sweat and all – a gigantic hug. Joy, pure joy. Pure euphoria.<br /><br />Benji and Amie are both there to share the moment, then they take off for warmth and showers. The rest of the party starts to reassemble just outside the finish area. There’s Phil, offering to get me a soda. Rhonda shows up, showered and refreshed after the half. Leann and Melissa are done soon, forced to confess that they started running somewhere in the middle of the race, running a huge negative split. Rita almost walks right past us, looking fresh after her finish. We hang out briefly, but the weather – which has been about as perfect as it could be today, cloudy, cool, and barely windy – is looking quite ominous with dark clouds gathering. Besides, we have a party to attend.<br /><br />Most of us reassemble at a brewpub called Hopcat just a few hours later. Like the race course which was a gigantic loopy thing, this seems fitting: Hopcat is just a few blocks down from last night’s pasta feast. There’s a long picnic table just inside the front door of Hopcat, and we commandeer the table for our gathering. Nearly the whole gang is here: Leann, Melissa, Michele, Amie, Benji, Phil, Len, and Alan. The Jam family – unable to make the trip from Chicago – very graciously stands us a round of celebratory drinks. We have red-white-and-blue streamers and Mardi Gras beads and I wear my tiara again. It’s everything that I dreamed it would be – but so much more.<br /><br />Monday morning arrives, and we’re all winging our way back to our respective homes. I’m hearing the song “Closing Time” by the group Semisonic in my head: “time for you to go back to the places you will be from”. And I’m not really sure what comes next. After chasing this goal for somewhere around ten years, it feels odd not to have a new next big thing planned.<br /><br />When I get off the plane in Denver and walk down the concourse, I see again the virtual tour of my past marathons. Albuquerque, where Mick rescued me by bringing ice cubes to me on a sunny, hot, unshaded bike path along the Rio Grande. Omaha, where we ran through the Henry Doorly Zoo in the early hours of the morning, and I saw my mom and sister Sue and brother Stan and his family multiple times in the second half of the race, my two young nieces running the last hundred yards with me. Washington DC, where I spent a last long girls weekend with Theresa, and we both ran: a marathon for me and an 8k for her; before we knew her cancer was back, before we knew that it would be our last trip together. It seems that there’s nowhere left to go.<br /><br />But then I have to wait a few minutes at the baggage carousel, and the list of arriving flights flashes in front of me. Grand Rapids: bags not in yet. But other cities show up here, too. Orlando. Hmmm. I have not yet run the Disney World Marathon. Knoxville. Is there a marathon in Knoxville? Exactly where *is* Knoxville? The words from the song continue in my head, “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” And I’m reminded that there are worlds of possibilities.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-81830859684678169152011-05-10T22:00:00.000-07:002011-05-10T22:04:20.264-07:00Fried Oreos (Ocean Drive Marathon 2011)(Or how I run a marathon and manage to not break any bones)<br /><br />Over the years that I have been traveling to New Jersey for work, I've gotten to know the industrial corridor all too well. It's not a very attractive area: oil refineries, shipping terminals, breweries, and even a prison. These are all things you drive past before you've barely left the Newark Airport. The only thing to make an impression - other than all this heavy industry - is the vast expanse of multi-lane freeways. Lane after lane after lane of cars and trucks going somewhere - anywhere - in a hurry. It doesn't seem that anyone actually stays in New Jersey.<br /><br />But I've heard good things about New Jersey - particularly "the Jersey shore" - so I've been curious. Where and what are the good parts of the state? On my journey east for the Ocean Drive Marathon, a trip I'm lucky enough to combine with a work commitment in Piscataway, I finally get to experience a little bit of the multiple faces of New Jersey.<br /><br />Of course, New Jersey often plays second fiddle to its larger neighbor to the north, New York, and specifically New York City. So, after my first day of work at the mothership on the Thursday before the marathon, I head into the city. It's culture shock at its best: boarding a suburban train in Edison, New Jersey, and after an hour's ride, emerging at Penn Station into midtown Manhattan at the height of rush hour. I soak it all in while hoofing it up to Hell's Kitchen where I meet David, Abby, and Tracy - all friends from Taper Madness that I've known for years but never actually met in person - for dinner. Good food and better conversation: done too fast, and then I'm on a train back to New Jersey. <br /><br />Friday night, I get to see where my friends Carol and Michael live. More to the point, I have been invited to spend the night. It's been a really hard week at work - and Friday ranks right up there in the universe of "suckiest days of work ever" - so I'm especially grateful to Carol and Michael for the wine they feed me, and then the gourmet meal that follows. There's a real wood fire-burning fireplace, and more wine and good conversation before we all drift off to bed, and I fall dead asleep. In the morning, I'm awed by the landscape that I didn't get to see when we arrived last night in the dark. Carol and Michael's house sits on a steep hillside, surrounded by trees and trees and more trees. This is New Jersey??? Carol and Michael feed me again (fresh squeezed OJ, French toast made from fresh baguette), and then we go for a morning walk in the crisp country air along Rockaway Creek, a delightful stream at the base of their property. It's all extremely picturesque, in a very Norman Rockwell way.<br /><br />The morning is done too soon, and I'm on my way to Philadelphia to pick up Melissa, who is coming to join me for the marathon. Ah, yes, a marathon. That's what I'm here for. And it's what I've been obsessing about for the last couple of days, while doing my "Taste of New Jersey" tour. Actually, it's the weather I've been obsessing about.<br /><br />The forecast is abysmal, and it only gets worse by the day. The weather folks are calling for cold temps for the marathon - really cold, in the 30s, maybe into the low 40s at best - with a head wind, and a good chance of rain and/or snow. I like cool weather for marathons, but this is ridiculous.<br /><br />Melissa and I connect at the Philly airport, then hightail it to Wildwoods, on the Jersey shore, for packet pickup. Philly itself is another trip into an eastern industrial city, but soon we're in a completely new landscape as we approach the shore. Everything gets flat and marshy and rural. It feels like we're in some kind of weird space/time warp. We drive and obsess about the forecast for tomorrow morning.<br /><br />After packet pickup - where we also both buy warmer duds (tights for me, a hat for Melissa) - we head to our hotel, which turns out to be just outside of Atlantic City. For dinner, we figure that we'll search out a restaurant in Atlantic City, so we make a driving tour. Wow. More culture shock. What a dump! It may be a gambling mecca, but, well, yuck. We decide to get the heck out of there, and stumble into Jojo's, a pretty decent Italian eatery. We power down our pasta and pizza, then head back to the hotel, where we'll obsess a bit more about the weather forecast.<br /><br />Race morning, like always, comes early. We have a 25 mile drive to the race finish in Sea Isle City, where we board buses to take us to the start in Cape May. We obsess about the weather. It's freezing! The wind is howling, the temperatures are low, but at least it's not raining. In Cape May, we get lucky: we're allowed to wait inside the host hotel during the hour or so we have before race start. We naturally migrate towards the other Marathon Maniacs, and get a couple of group shots together. We're all obsessing about the weather.<br /><br />Outside, just moments before race start, snow flurries skitter through the air. It's so cold that I'm wearing more clothes than I've ever worn in a marathon before: tights, two long-sleeved shirts, a singlet, and a jacket. It goes without saying that I'm also wearing a hat and headband and gloves. The surprising thing is that I will not be too warm during this race.<br /><br />Melissa and I start out running together; there is no incentive for either of us to run fast today other than the fact that - after we finish - we have a bit of a hike to get back to the hotel (praying for a free very-late checkout), shower, and then hurry back to Philly for our flights home. We jog together for most of the first mile, when Melissa takes her first walk break. She will pass me shortly, when she starts running again, and then I'll be on my own for the rest of this race. That's okay with me, since I'm feeling a huge need to concentrate so that I don't trip and land on my face again.<br /><br />After my emotional and physical meltdown at Land Between the Lakes, two weeks ago, I'm trying to stay positive today. And healthy. "No new broken bones" may be an odd goal for a marathon, but it seems to be a valid one for me. To that, I've added "and enjoy the run" as a bonus goal. In a marathon, it's not always easy to enjoy the run - at least for the entire journey - but today it's job one.<br /><br />To help me with the goal, I start out with a strategy of assigning each mile a letter of the alphabet, and concentrating on something to be grateful for that starts with that letter. But this is a minefield, from the start. First letter: A. I start a mental scan to find something with that letter to feel good about, and immediately come up with The Doctor, whose surname begins with A. Crap. But I'm not ready to give up yet; I decide to be grateful for the time that I had with The Doctor, and to just move on. <br /><br />It's good to have a mental distraction because, well, this race doesn't have a lot of other distractions. Cape May, where we start, is a nice beach town with Victorian houses and well kept yards. The ocean is visible to us only on occasion; you have to keep your eyes peeled to the right, and then often the best views are only of dunes. At worst, we see the backsides of empty beach houses. It's off season here, so as we run north along the shore, we pass through one empty beach town after another.<br /><br />The road is flat, flat as can be. In mile 2, I think of B for Boston - the town, the race, and my cat. Easy enough. The snow flurries at the start have ended, and it's actually fairly comfortable running with all these clothes and a bit of a headwind. Much better than expected.<br /><br />The race rolls along, and I work at the alphabet, and it turns out that I'm mostly just running in the moment. I concentrate on staying on my feet, watching the road so I don't trip on anything. The road is dead flat, but then we come to a drawbridge. It's straight up on one side, across a metal grate at the top (very scary for someone worried about footing), then straight down on the other side. This - and the 5 or so more along the course - are the only things resembling hills in this race.<br /><br />We get to Sea Isle City at mile ten. There is a companion ten mile race that ends here, with the finish staged on the boardwalk along the beach. This is one of the few times that we run directly on the ocean, but I can't really enjoy it, since we are routed onto a wooden boardwalk. My nervous feet tread lightly. The beach stands, with their bright signs and boarded up facades, call out for my attention. T-shirts, tattoos, bathing suits: the signs catch my eyes. Fried Oreos. More t-shirts, some ice cream, and then more fried oreos. The ten mile finish line: just a blur. Then we're off the boardwalk, heading toward our own finish.<br /><br />The rest of the race is more of the same: empty beach towns, stolen ocean views, dunes. Several more drawbridges. At mile 23, a drawbridge looms, and I look at it and think: whatever. I've been walking through aid stations, but otherwise running, but finally this steep uphill does me in. I walk up it, and I gingerly step over the metal grates, looking down at the water below, and then slowly down the backside. I'm ready to be done.<br /><br />One of the beautiful things about small races - and about running multiple marathons - is that you get a chance to see people you know along the way. During this run, I've chatted with several Maniacs, including a couple I recognize from the Kentucky fiasco just two weeks ago. "You broke your nose!" they say, when I ask if they were at the race. A mile or two from the finish, I pass Duluth Sarah, a 50-stater whom I've seen at races from Delaware to West Virginia to Colorado. Oddly, the one race where I didn't spot Sarah was at Grandma's last summer, in her hometown of Duluth.<br /><br />But the most important sight is that finish line. It's always sweet, but somehow sweeter now with every race, as I count down to my last few states. New Jersey: state #45, done. It has, after all, turned out to be a pretty decent day: the sun is shining, it's nice and cool, and the headwind - while always there - has not been a terrible factor.<br /><br />Melissa finds me immediately, and we agree that we need to fly. I head into the main tent to reclaim my checked bag, and run into Beau, a buddy from work who had a tremendous day here, setting a personal best, running sub-3 hours, and winning the men's master's race. <br /><br />It turns out that there are multiple things to be grateful for on this trip, even if I lose my place in the alphabet and cannot stay with the program during my run; Beau's victory is one of those things. The weather has turned out to be quite lovely, too. Melissa and I are extremely late checking out of the hotel, but the front desk clerk doesn't mind at all, and we get to the airport with just enough time to get to our flights. And I've managed to stay on my feet and complete a marathon with no new broken bones. I'm not sure I completely "get" New Jersey yet, but I'm a step - or more to the point, 26.2 miles worth of steps - closer.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-79226379220734927882011-04-03T12:49:00.001-07:002011-04-03T12:51:26.820-07:00Whirlwind (Tulsa OK Route 66 Marathon 2010)(slightly out of order)<br /><br /><br />The Whirlwind<br />(Tulsa Route 66 Marathon 2010)<br /><br />Any way you size it up, it was set up to be a whirlwind of a weekend. Flying from Denver to Tulsa early Saturday morning, meeting Melissa at the Tulsa airport, heading to the expo and packet pickup at the Tulsa Convention Center, seeing a bit of the race course, picking up some supplies for race morning, finding our hotel, heading to the pasta dinner at the historic Cain's Ballroom, driving out to the Tulsa's Hard Rock in search of a pin for Melissa's dad, getting ourselves up early and to the race course in time to park nearby, hanging out with the Marathon Maniacs and 50 Staters at the Maniac Corner special tent, running 26.2 miles (or a bit more), heading back to the hotel for a late checkout after showering and packing up, and then high-tailing it back to the airport for the flight that would put me back in Denver by early Sunday evening. There was barely going to be time to look for the souvenir that I bring home from each of my marathons: a refrigerator magnet that somehow captures the essence of the place. But Melissa sealed the deal, in more than one way, when she met me at the gate as I deplaned, and handed me a birthday present that she had picked up in her extra time in the airport: a magnet, in the shape of a twister, with "Oklahoma" etched on its side.<br /><br />Little did I know, at the time, how apropos this little gift would turn out to be.<br /><br />All systems seem to be go, though, as Melissa and I grab the car and get on our way. I'm a bit jazzed after my flight, where the small plane seemed to be filled with other marathoners. Nothing like talking with a bevy of new friends about running marathons to get you jacked up for the one on the horizon the next day. The buzz keeps growing as we get to the expo and spend time at the 50 States booth, getting pictures with 50 State Club founders Steve and Paula Boone and the rest of the crew. Then we're taking a happenstance tour of Tulsa and the race course as we try to figure out logistics for parking on race day.<br /><br />At some point, between getting into and out of the rental car a bazillion times, one of us comments on the wind. "Sure hope we don't have this wind tomorrow," one of us says. "Was there wind in the forecast?" the other of us asks. "Well, no matter what, we'll just have to deal with it," we both agree. For we've both learned, in our respective 50 states quests, that the weather gods really don't give a flying fig if you plan on running 26.2 miles on a particular day, and they will hand up whatever weather they darn well please, thank you very much.<br /><br />And in the case of the Tulsa Route 66 Marathon on November 21, 2010, the weather gods see fit to hand us some warm and very humid temperatures - even at the 7 a.m. start - and to whip up the wind into an absolute frenzy. Yet what is there to do but run?<br /><br />As the saying goes, misery loves company, and thankfully - blessedly - I find that I have plenty of company to share that misery with in this marathon. Melissa and I find Maniac Corner - a gift of the race organizers, a special tent and gear check just for the members of the Marathon Maniacs and 50 States Clubs - early, and there we find lots of people to commiserate with. Benji and Amie have made a road trip of it; they arrived in Tulsa late Saturday night, and are here in the tent nice and early, ready to run. Jerry Greenwald has picked up their race packets, and he's here early, too. We see tons of people we know slightly or from internet group postings, and we gather for a big group picture. Then we're elbowing our way into the starting corrals, and the gun sounds, and a cloud of multi-colored confetti fills the air. This is a wave start and we're in the second wave, so we wait five minutes or so, inching up all the while, until a second gun sounds and a second cloud of confetti is unleashed into the air. It's festive, it's crazy, it's crowded. It's the way a race start should be: the crowd is thick for a few blocks, but then it gets comfortable to run.<br /><br />Well, it would be comfortable to run if it weren't for the hills. The first 15 miles of this marathon wind through central Tulsa, and it's a constant roller coaster. Happily, none of the hills are Everests, just gently rolling. And I don't mind them all that much since Amie and I are running together. Did I mention that misery loves company?<br /><br />Actually, the only true misery at this point is the humidity. It's warm for a race start, and the humidity is high. That means I'm running at a higher-than-desired heart rate almost right out of the gate. But Amie and I are chatting, and we're taking it as easy as we can without feeling like we're dragging, and the miles roll by.<br /><br />The fact that we're looping around city streets and block and parks and through some tony business districts makes the wind a non-factor. It's blowing, and it's swirling, but with all the twists and turns of the course, we're largely sheltered from it, and even if it finds us, we are never headed in the same direction for long. Life is good.<br /><br />And then life is even better - Sunflower Runner Mary from Wichita somehow finds me in the mass of runners. We chatted Saturday afternoon, but failed to make arrangements to meet up before the race, and I was afraid that, with more than 2,000 runners, we were destined to miss each other. But as Amie and I are running along, chatting, I hear someone approaching from behind, saying "is that Judy Denver?", and there she is. It's official now - this is a party!<br /><br />Mary runs with us for a while, then we get separated at a water stop, but later she finds us again. Amie and I are getting along famously, comfortable in a common pace. We're running a very workmanlike pace that hovers just under ten minutes per mile. This won't win us any age group awards today, but we're both more interested in survival than prizes, and it's just a joy to have the company. Since I'm primarily a solo runner, it always surprises and pleases me when I have a partner to share a race experience with.<br /><br />We run through some really impressive areas in Tulsa (who knew there were this many rich folks in Oklahoma?) in the first eight miles, and then the course loops us over and back across the Arkansas River, and then up around the city center. The temps have gotten just a bit more uncomfortable, and the sun is truly out now, and there's little shade. Our pace drops, and suddenly we're on the wrong side of ten minute miles. The outlook for a respectable finishing time is diminishing for both of us.<br /><br />The Route 66 Marathon has been advertising a detour on the course in mile 13 to a place called "The Center of the Universe". It's a .3 mile detour to a man-made landmark which seems a bit hokey, but on the other hand, they have been also advertising an extra medal that you'll get if you choose to add the distance to your race. Amie and I have talked about this earlier in the race, and decided that if it looks like there's a chance for a good finishing time, we'll keep on course. If that outlook isn't so good, then maybe the detour will be a good distraction (and a good way to explain away a slow overall time). As we approach the turn for the detour, we're in lockstep, both physically and mentally: let's take the detour. Since it's a little out-and-back jag, it turns out to be fun - we get to see people coming and going, including Sunflower Mary, whom we've lost on the course, and who is heading out just as we're heading back. And on top of it all, we get a nice little medallion as we circle the pole demarking The Center of the Universe.<br /><br />It's just a few more miles until we're at the mile 15 marker. After this we turn onto Riverside Drive, a pretty boulevard on the Arkansas Riverfront that will be our home until we hit mile 26. The good news is that, after 15 miles of pretty relentless hills, the rest of the race is flat. The bad news is that from mile 15 to mile 21 - 6 solid miles - we will be running directly south. And the wind is blowing - raging, actually - directly out of the south. To make a bad situation even worse, it's sunny and warm and humid, and there is no shade in sight, and not a single solitary building to block the wind. Amie and I size up the situation. It's gonna be a long ten miles.<br /><br />It's brutal. The wind howls. It's blowing at a steady 20 mph, with gusts up to 35 mph. It feels like a cruel joke by a very cruel weather god. I question my sanity. I question whether I really *need* to finish a marathon in each of the states. This seems like lunacy.<br /><br />There is one bright spot in this miserable situation, and it's the fact that this is an out-and-back route. That means we'll make a u-turn at mile 21 and then - glory of all glories - we'll have the wind at our back for the last 5 miles. It also means that we get to see everyone out in front of us as they make the return trip towards the finish. My entire motivation becomes watching to see all of our friends along the course. Those friends include a few close friends, and also a much larger community of people wearing Marathon Maniac and 50 State gear. We all make it a practice of greeting each other like long lost friends when we see each other. It helps - at least a little - with the pain and the misery.<br /><br />Among our close friends, Amie predicts that we'll see Jerry first, and sure enough, there goes Jerry, looking good and fresh and fast. Benji is not far behind, just looking like it's a day at the office for him. Melissa is next of the people on my list to watch for. She shouts something across the road, and I hear "turnaround" and "better" and "speed". The wind eats the rest of the words. Amie comments that she couldn't make out what Melissa said, and ever-so-confident, I say "she said that it's much better after the turnaround, and we'll be happy at that point".<br /><br />But it's starting to feel like running under water. Amie and I have grown ragged, and we've tried to help each other out with drafting. But somehow we just can't keep in rhythm any longer, and we find each other drifting apart. It's a yo-yo thing, one of us gets out in front a bit, then the other of us finds a spark while the wind does a whammy on the one in front. We're still in contact, but the gaps are getting bigger and bigger. I figure that at any moment, I'll look around and Amie will have left me behind.<br /><br />Finally - finally - we round the orange cone at the turnaround. It's five miles to the finish, and the wind is at our backs. But the wind in my face has pulled every ounce of energy out of my body, and I'm suffering. Amie is no longer in my sights; I think she's a few steps behind, and I expect her to pass me at any moment. But the truth is, I no longer care about anything other than finishing this blasted race. (It will turn out, when we meet up with Melissa at the finish, that her actual message to us was, "I thought it would be better after the turnaround, but it isn't at all. The wind took away any speed I had!" True dat.)<br /><br />On the outbound journey, I noticed an aid station set up by a couple of spectators, offering beer to runners, and now getting to that place becomes my mantra. I'm counting on it so much that at some point I wonder to myself - what if they aren't there any longer? I might be crushed. But happily, the aid station comes in sight, and I stop and slurp down a Dixie cup full of the stuff. I'm not sure why it is, but there's really nothing better in this world than a drink of barley pop late in a marathon, especially on a hot day. There's a poster next to this little aid station that says, "You look great good okay", and it seems just about right.<br /><br />At mile 26, we turn off Riverside Drive, and head up a small hill towards the park where this all started earlier in the morning. Just before the 26 mile marker is another sign that says, "0.3 miles to the finish - how does that detour feel now?" and I'm happy enough to be approaching the finish that I can actually laugh. Finally, the finish line is in front of me, and I pass Maniac Corner. It's fun to see Jerry and Benji and Melissa all hanging out along the fence, and cheering as I run by. I put in the best kick that I can, and then I'm done. State #43 is in the bag, at considerable more cost than I had bargained for.<br /><br />Amie comes in shortly after I do, having suffered even more than me in the final 5 miles. Then we're all heading off to cars and hotels and planes. There's little time to stop and talk since there's so much to do, heading to the hotel, showering, packing, checking out of the hotel, gassing up the car and turning it in before checking in for flights and getting through security. We meet up with Jerry and some other marathoners in the airport, and have a quick lunch, and then we're all off to our respective flights home. In a whirlwind, another marathon is done, another state added to the tally.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-17759229749893010492011-03-20T19:05:00.000-07:002011-03-20T19:09:40.470-07:00Broken (Land Between the Lakes Trail Marathon 2011)Somewhere past mile 14 of the Land Between the Lakes Marathon, I am on the ground, and I am completely broken. When I crashed headlong onto the trail moments ago, I landed on my nose, and I both felt and heard it break. It's been gushing blood like crazy for a while now, and lots of kind strangers have stopped and offered help, but other than providing me with a stash of napkins to staunch the flow, there's not much to do but wait for the shock to wear off a bit. I realize as I sit on the side of the trail that my streak of 57 consecutive marathon finishes without a DNF will be broken now, too. There's no way that I can get up and run again, and I've lost the will to go on. Broken nose, broken streak; these don't really concern me that much. Even now, as I sit on the ground with a bloody napkin under my nose, it's my broken heart that hurts the most.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">My heartbreak was my Valentine's gift this year from The Doctor. After close to two years together, he announced that he wants to be alone. He did not call it a breakup, but I don't get what else it is. He took me home, dropped me off, then quit calling or emailing. In the following weeks, I saw him once, briefly, and that was that. This has devastated me beyond any previous breakup. One day I thought that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, and the next day - no fights, no disagreements, no shouting matches, nada - it seems that I'll be spending the rest of my life alone. For days on end, I've done little but sit at my desk and, between conference calls, cry my eyes out.</span><br /><br />Benji and Amie and I had talked about making a road trip out of this marathon, but we had all waffled. A long drive, iffy weather, a trail marathon, and just the problem of actually feeling prepared for a race of marathon distance. But after Valentine's Day, it seemed the perfect escape; something that would get me outside myself. And that's what it's been: a perfect escape. The three of us have traveled together before, quite companionably, and it works that way for this trip also. We cross eastern Colorado and Kansas and get halfway across Missouri on our first day. That leaves us just roughly five or so hours on Friday to cross the rest of Missouri and a southern slice of Illinois (including a stop in Metropolis for photos at the giant Superman statue) before we reach Grand Rivers, Kentucky. <br /><br />After picking up our packets, we head off in search of the trail, wanting a sneak preview before tomorrow morning's race. We look for but don't find the point where the race enters the trail, but we then trip upon a stretch of trail further up the road, and stop to do a test run. The test run leaves us all a bit apprehensive - there's quite a lot of mud and water on the trail, and it's much more technical and hilly than we've been expecting. It will turn out that this particular stretch of trail is more muddy than most of it, and the hills are among the biggest we'll encounter. But for now, I have a sense of foreboding for the race tomorrow.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">A sense of foreboding is exactly what I had last year on Labor Day weekend. Life with The Doctor had been good, and it just kept getting better. Early in 2010, we went to Hawaii together, and then in July we went to France. We had gotten along so well at home, and now it turned out that we traveled well together as well. We came home from France, and then had an epic month of bicycle riding in August. Life seemed almost too good to be true. And then in the course of an afternoon, it started to fall apart. The Doctor's son, we learned that weekend, was hooked on some serious drugs. Heroin. Narcotics. You name it, he was using. The Doctor yanked him out of college and sent him to rehab. But as the son started his withdrawal from drugs, The Doctor started his withdrawal from life. I saw it, little by little, but couldn't quite comprehend. Or maybe I handled The Doctor's withdrawal the same way that he handled his son's drug habit: seeing it but not really knowing for sure, and not wanting it to be true, because then you have to deal with it.</span><br /><br />On race morning, it's time to just deal with the trail. It will be what it will be. <br /><br />Benji and Amie and I get to the starting area early, listening to NPR in the dark in the warm van while waiting for the sun to come up and the wind to die down. There's little pomp and circumstance at the start of the race, and then we're running. The race configuration is a lollipop, where the first and last 1.75 miles are on the same asphalt stretch of road before we hit the loop of trail that we'll run two laps on. Amie takes off and is soon a few steps in front of me, but then as we climb the first of two not insubstantial hills, we're together again. We stay together and chat about how these hills are going to look at the end of the race, and then we hit the trail, and I watch as Amie takes off in front of me. I'm happy with this, since I know that I really need to run the trail myself. It's too easy to fall if you're not completely concentrating.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">It's easy to fall off the wagon, also, and that's the elephant that sits in every room when the son comes home from rehab in early December. He's drug-free and sober, ready to lead a clean life. He says all the right things, shows the right attitude. He goes to his daily meetings. He gets a job, says he just wants to work and ski for the rest of the winter. It all seems good.</span><br /><br />The trail is booby-trapped with rocks and roots, but I manage to stay on my feet. People are passing me like I'm standing still. In principle, I'm okay with this; I have no delusions of finishing this thing fast at all. In practice, the passing starts to get to me. The problem is that I like a margin of at least five or six feet between me and the person in front of me so I can see what's coming. But when people go around me, one after another after another, it blocks my vision and destroys my comfort zone. Twice, I stumble and fall - just little falls, a skinned knee, nothing major. It's a big distraction, though, so I decide to start just stepping off the trail and waiting while people pass me. It's not efficient, but it's better than going down.<br /><br />But then, I go down hard. It hurts. It's a full-on body plant, and I'm not even sure what happened. The odd thing is that it happens when I'm entirely alone. I take a moment to get up, brush myself off, and then I'm running again, a little more skinned up, a little worse for wear, but not damaged badly. I think that I really need to be more careful. An aid station comes up, and I like the chance to stop for a moment, take a gel, drink a cup or two of water, and then start to run again. Really, how much more can I fall?<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">But falling is easy to do. In only a week or so, the son starts skipping meetings, claiming that he doesn't have time. He gets a second job, this one in a restaurant, and we start to think, uh-oh, not a good environment. We see him on a Sunday in early January, though, and he seems good - vibrant, happy, alive. Laughing. But appearances are so deceptive. Just two days later comes the call: he's using again, and has been using since a week after he got home from rehab. He's shooting up heroin again, there's cocaine, who knows what else.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">So The Doctor does what he has said he would do: tells the son he's done rescuing him, and he walks away. He walks away entirely. Tough love, the ultimate. Everyone says it's the right thing to do, but "everyone" doesn't have to deal with the emotional aftermath. On the surface, The Doctor seems to be dealing with things, but underneath, who knows what is going on?</span><br /><br />After the aid station at the visitor center where we were yesterday, we run onto the muddy and hilly part that we pre-ran yesterday. I get through this part just fine, and I think I'm home free. But the trail becomes covered with leaves, and the leaves hide the rocks and roots, and soon, I've done a second full-body plant. Oh Lord, it hurts. Somebody not far behind me sees me go down and helps me up, and makes excuses on my behalf - it's the hidden rocks and roots. I just think I'm inept, but I appreciate the concern and the absolution.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">For the next month, I feel The Doctor moving away, withdrawing, becoming more sad and more alone and more removed, and there is nothing I can do or say to reverse the trend. I think this is his primal scream, his way of dealing with his ultimate loss. His son is gone. Physically, the son is back in rehab once again, but he's lost to his father. No matter what, the father-son relationship they had is forever gone, to be replaced by what? And it's while I'm worrying about him, trying to help him, suffering with him, that he pushes me away and says "I want to be alone". Which, of course, means that suddenly I'm alone, too.</span><br /><br />Just when I think I've got it under control - I'm taking it *so* easy - I go down hard a third time. It's almost an exact replay of the second fall, only it hurts that much more this time. Again, somebody helps me up; again, somebody points to the leaf-covered trail. The good Samaritan offers to stay with me, but I assure him I'm okay, that I just need to walk a moment. So I get up and start walking, and then it all hits me: the loneliness, the sense of failure, the pain of it all. Out of nowhere and everywhere comes a deep sob, and suddenly I'm stopped on the side of the trail, crying so hard that I'm barely able to breathe. I wonder what the hell it is I'm doing out here, and I'm afraid of the miles ahead, and I want to quit. I don't know if I can go another lap on these trails. I'm afraid of hurting myself badly; I'm afraid that I'm already hurting too badly, emotionally, spiritually, to go on. But there is no easy way out, and only trail in front of me and trail behind me, so I gingerly set out again. This time, I am outrageously careful of the leaf-strewn path, and I slow to a walk through any thing that looks like gnarly roots or rocks. Little by little, I get my head back in the game, and pretty soon I'm at the start of the second lap, and I think, yes, I can do this.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">In The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz tells us "Don't take things personally". I've been trying to do that with The Doctor and his disappearance from my life, but it's hard. When you're in a relationship, and the other person takes off, how can it not be at least a little bit about you? So instead of being a good new-ager and taking this advice to heart, I've been thinking negative thoughts, and coming up short. I'm unloved, and probably unlovable. Why else would The Doctor leave me precisely at the time when you would think he would need someone the most?<br /><br />So now that I've been alone much of the time on this trail, I've picked up a party, and it's a personal pity party. It's a potluck, which means that anything and everything is fodder for this mental feeding frenzy. There's barely room on the trail for everyone who comes: the father I didn't have growing up, the boyfriends I didn't have in high school or college, my first love - who turned out to be a cheating bastard, the girlfriends who were once BFFs but who disappeared from my life without so much as a goodbye, the husband who abandoned me for his car clubs, the babies I never got to have, the grandchildren I'll never hold on my lap, and finally the guy I thought I might marry and spend the rest of my life with but who disappeared down his own rabbit hole after his son broke his heart. It takes a lot of energy to entertain a party of this size. There's not really much energy left over to watch for rocks and roots.</span><br /><br />And then I'm down. Hard. A total face plant. I didn't see it coming: how could I? I was too busy with the pity party. But clearly the racing gods are unhappy that my head is not in this race, and they've offered the ultimate comeuppance. I'm certain that my nose is broken, and suddenly, nothing much else matters. The party has scattered, and there's just Renee - the angel who was behind me when I went down - and me, sitting on the side of the trail, waiting for help to arrive.<br /><br />But help doesn't magically appear, and after twenty minutes or so, we decide to get up and try to walk to the nearest aid station. I feel bad for ruining this woman's race, but she is exceedingly kind, and I need this kindness right now. Oddly, as we walk along, I no longer trip and stumble over the trail. It no longer scares me. I'm intent on keeping my nose from bleeding too much, and still I'm doing a better job of staying on my feet.<br /><br />Eventually, Renee says, "you know, it's only 9:30 in the morning", and then "we could walk the rest of this thing and still be done before the cutoff". As I grow more steady on my feet, the idea takes hold. I think about my 50 states goal and how few options there are for Kentucky marathons. I think about coming all this way to go home without a finisher's medal. I think about how I'm actually seeing the scenery now that I'm walking.<br /> <br />By the time we reach the next aid station, at mile 16, there are only 10 miles to go, and I've made up my mind. Renee takes off at a run. The folks at the aid station give me a Ziploc full of ice and a handful of ibuprofen and a new batch of paper towels for my still-bleeding nose. I ask them to send word to Benji and Amie, who will be waiting a long time for me at the finish line, and I head off to complete the thing. The pity party is gone. Twirling thoughts of The Doctor and his son: gone. Just me and the trail.<br /><br />Just me and the trail and all the good people who encourage me as they pass me. They all exclaim as they go by, and many of them say "I saw all that blood on the trail back there!" (It must have been a prodigious amount.) Around mile 18 or 19, Lee falls in step behind me, and keeps me company until we get off the trail with less than two miles to go. The miles have flown by; I am not all that tired, nothing like a marathon that I've run, and nothing like a marathon with this many hills. I'm just moving forward.<br /><br />The racing gods aren't done with me yet, though, as I find on the final stretch to the finish. Once we hit the asphalt, I've decided to run again, just to get this thing done. At some point, I look down to my Garmin to see how many miles I've covered, and in so doing I step off the pavement, twist my ankle, and fall. It's the ultimate of adding insult to injury. I had protected my hands from scrapes by keeping my gloves on even when it got warm, and finally took them off when I hit the pavement. So now, on my final approach to the finish, I've scraped my hands to smithereens, too. Sigh. There's no pride left, though, just a need to get up and finish. So I get up and start running again.<br /><br />Amie is waiting at the finish line. There's very little hoopla, just a narrow chute, a modest medal, and a short walk to the community center where I can wash up and get some post-race food and drink. We hang around long enough so that I can thank Lee properly for his company, and then we're on our way home, where I'll start the process of healing all that's broken.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">In the end, it turns out that dealing with a broken heart is a lot like dealing with a broken nose. At first, you have to stop and sit by the side of things and just let the blood and tears flow. They will subside, eventually, even though at first the torrents seem completely unstoppable. When you finally start to move again, it will be with baby steps, much slower and more cautiously than you're used to, but this is okay. It's what feels right, just now, if anything feels "right". You'll quit thinking, and you'll just let the pain wash over you, because you know that you can't heal until you've accepted the pain. You believe that at some point you'll feel like getting on with things again, but for right now, you'll accept the kindness of friends and strangers alike. It's how you get moving again. <br /><br />I asked a friend once, not long ago, when I first saw The Doctor moving away from me, "how many times can you get your heart broken?", and she replied, "as many times as you're willing to risk it". That's a lot like running marathons. When you finish one, you are tired and hurting and you think you can't possibly ever do this again. But when you get a little distance from the pain, and you give your broken self a little time to heal, you know that you'll get through it, and at some time you'll be willing to risk it again. It helps to be able to laugh at yourself a little along the way, and with a nose like Bozo's that's not so hard to do.</span>Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-27557149390070839082010-12-04T20:12:00.001-08:002010-12-04T20:12:56.058-08:00We Are MarshallIt's Sunday, November 7th, and I'm at mile 20 of the Huntington Marshall University Marathon in Huntington, West Virginia. Mile 20 is that place where you have to start to really dig deep, and you know that it's all mind over matter. It has turned out to be a perfect marathon day: I've seen a few time and temperature displays in the last few miles, and they have varied from 40 degrees to 44 and back to 42. The sun is shining bright in a cloudless sky, and there is absolutely no wind. I'm having an okay day, although I'm a bit disappointed with my pace right now - but I'll get to that. The tough thing is that I'm struggling to find the motivation to pick it up for these last six miles. And then I remember: the football. I've been looking forward to the football for months, ever since I read about it on the race website. And with that thought, I know I'm going to finish this thing strong.<br /><br />But....let's start back at the beginning. And to start back at the beginning takes us back to Friday night, with Leann picking me up at the oddly remote little airport in Charleston, the capitol of West Virginia. It has taken me, quite literally, all day to get here. And we still have an hour's drive to Huntington.<br /><br />The hour goes by quickly, though, as does pretty much all time spent with Leann. We laugh, tell stories, and laugh some more. Then we get down to business and start to look for food, which is more of a challenge than you might think. We get off the freeway in Barboursville, just a bit east of Huntington, as we've spotted the signs of the ubiquitous chains: Applebees, Chilis, Ruby Tuesday, etc. Surely we can find something decent to eat at one of these places. Surely, that is, if any of these places were still open. After many circuitous laps of the maze that is the roadway around this shopping center area, we settle on dinner at IHOP. At first I'm thrilled: breakfast! Then I realize that we'll most likely be back here for real breakfast in about 12 hours, so I decide I should have dinner food instead of pancakes and eggs. As I eat the bland turkey sandwich, I think: first mistake of the weekend. There's a reason IHOP is known for breakfast food, and not dinners.<br /><br />But the weekend company more than makes up for the food disappointment. Leann and I continue on to Huntington, and then across the river into Ohio where our Comfort Suites hotel room awaits. It's late when we arrive - midnight or so - and Melissa arrives moments later. It's a slumber party!<br /><br />Saturday morning arrives, and there's just no other way to put it: it's cold. Really cold. The sky is dark and cloudy, and the wind is whipping around, and it's cold. It seems like bad karma to complain about the cold, what with my recent history of way-too-hot race temperatures, but it's just the God's-honest-truth. Besides, I don't really have to complain. My two thin-blooded companions for the weekend are both from the South, and they handle the bulk of the complaining. I figure this helps me conserve some karma. They are both, after all, much faster runners than me, so they can afford the karma thing more than I can.<br /><br />We spend the day doing typical pre-marathon stuff: searching out food (the IHOP, that beacon of breakfast food, is too crowded Saturday morning, so we opt for pancakes and eggs at the Bob Evans instead), going to packet pickup, finding my refrigerator magnet, getting provisions for race morning at a local supermarket, and - of course - fretting about the weather. We drive a good deal of the race course, and confirm that it is, indeed, as flat as advertised, which is not an easy feat given that we are in West Virginia, and other than this one little stretch of earth that is the city of Huntington, it appears that there are no other flat spots in the state whatsoever. We even drive down the road across the border into Kentucky just for grins. Then we fret about the weather some more. And then we go in search of food again.<br /><br />One of the great benefits of this race is that your race entry fee includes a complimentary pasta dinner, so we head back to the packet pickup locale on the Marshall University campus. The pasta dinner is well run: ample quantities of spaghetti with marina sauce and a lettuce salad on the side. Pretty basic, but since it's free, nobody is complaining. Besides stoking up on carbs, we are expanding our social circle at this dinner. We meet fellow v-teamer Mark Kramer here, and fellow Taper Babs and her husband Tim. We also meet a few Marathon Maniacs: Greg and Pascal. There's nothing like pre-race chatter with other runners to get you stoked up for a marathon. Before heading back to the hotel, Mark directs us to the local Cold Stone Creamery so that we can complete our carb-loading with yummy ice cream. Even though we're all freezing, nobody passes on the ice cream.<br /><br />Race morning finds us scraping the windshield with our room keys. Frost. Man, is it cold! But we've all bundled up, and the heat builds up in the car quickly. The outside temperature gauge on Leann's car varies from 26 to 29 on the way over into Huntington. It's dark, and it's cold. But we keep telling ourselves that this is far better than a hot marathon. It's got to be.<br /><br />One advantage of running a small marathon that starts and ends on a college campus is the accessibility of the rec center and a place to a) stay warm until just minutes before the race start, and b) use real flush toilets. Marathons tend to bring your view of life down to essentials. Warmth and flush toilets. We're just about ready to head over to the start line, and I decide to avail myself of the flush toilets just one last time, so I tell Leann and Melissa to take off without me, figuring that I'll find them at the starting line. Sadly, I won't see either of them again until after the finish line.<br /><br />The start line is a zoo. It's not a huge race, but with a half marathon starting at the same time, the starting area is crowded. I do see Pascal - the Marathon Maniac from last night's dinner - so we line up together and chat for a few minutes. Just before the start is signalled, I spy Lynne from the Taper Madness group, and call out to her. She and I are chatting, and end up rolling over the start line - wherever it is - together. The thing is, I never do see the official start line. This race is chip timed, but there is no chip mat at the start. This means that you "eat" the time you spend getting across the start, but since I'm more interested in chatting with Lynne, I miss the opportunity to capture the time it takes me to get across the start.<br /><br />But steps into the race, I take off. I feel ready to run, and, quite frankly, I figure the harder I run right now, the faster I'll build up some heat. I've worn a large black garbage bag as a skirt to keep my legs warm, and now as we start, I decide to get rid of it. But that's easier said than done. I tug on the knot I've tied at my waist, and instead of tearing, the knot just gets tighter. I start to wonder if I'll have to wear the plastic skirt for the entire race! A few strategic pokes with my fingernails, and I make headway, and finally tear the thing off. Who knew that plastic bags were so durable? It's crowded for a short time, but we have pretty much the entire road, and before you know it, we're at the Mile 1 marker. First mile: 9:30. With the delay to cross the start line, I figure that I'm probably running around a 9 minute pace. Mile 2 proves out my theory: 9 minutes flat. I've forgotten my heart rate monitor this trip, so I am running completely by perceived effort, and after the second mile, I settle in to a solid 9:15 pace. It feels good. It feels natural. All systems go.<br /><br />It's chilly, but not too chilly. My legs (I'm wearing shorts) are a little cold, but otherwise I'm fine with a long-sleeved shirt, singlet, and a second (throwaway) long-sleeved shirt. Gloves keep my hands warm, and a headband keeps my ears warm. I'm actually very comfortable after just a few miles.<br /><br />The first 3 miles are a loop that takes us east of Marshall University and then u-turns to return us back to campus again where we cross the starting area, just heading in the opposite direction. Just after Mile 4, we take a detour into Riverfront Park, crossing through the 20 foot high floodwalls that protect downtown Huntington from the Ohio River. The river doesn't look dangerous at all this morning in the early, cold sunlight: mist rises from the water like a dream. We don't get this view very long before getting directed back onto the city streets.<br /><br />Much of this race is through parts of Huntington that are just plain ugly and poor. But those sections serve as connectors to the prettier parts of the city, and whoever designed this course clearly understands where those pretty parts are. And whoever designed the race also understands how to supply a race with lots of fluids. There are aid stations every mile or two for the length of the course, something that is a treat, especially in a race of this size. <br /><br />My solid 9:15 pace takes a small hit at Mile 6 where I have to stop and wait at an aid station while the volunteers try to catch up to the demand for water. If I had not just taken a gel, I would have skipped this stop, but I figure that I can afford the time. I have no time goals at all for today. My only goal is to finish strong, and I know that in order to do that I need to stay conservative and I need to stay on my nutrition plan. It's also clear - from even before the race starts - that I'm going to need a port-a-potty stop sometime in the race, so I try to keep myself from obsessing about a short delay now when I know I'll have a longer one sometime down the road.<br /><br />The race moves along, and now we're running along a parkway that will take us to our first lap around the very pretty Ritter Park, and it's our first chance to see the race leaders coming back in the opposite direction. I look for Melissa, and I look for Leann, but I don't see either of them. The lap around Ritter Park is nice: a solid, crushed gravel surface. Even though it's early November, it seems just past peak leaf-viewing season here, and there are lots of trees and pretty leaves in the park.<br /><br />After the lap around Ritter Park, we head back west, and now I get to see runners behind me. Again, I look for familiar faces and see none. I pass Sara, a 50-stater I know from Duluth, and we exchange greetings. Just before Mile 12, I spy a port-a-john without a line, and finally take my break. I only lose a couple of minutes at this stop, but it changes the entire race. Before the stop, my pace is like clockwork: 9:15 all the way. After the stop, I cannot buy a pace that's faster than 9:30 or 9:40. <br /><br />It's a disappointment to see the miles click by at this slower pace, but as much as I try to will my legs to move faster, this is, apparently, the new pace for the rest of the race. The miles get lonelier and lonelier as we head out through some of the not-so-scenic parts of Huntington. Just around Mile 16, we make a u-turn and head back into the center of town. By now, the weather has turned perfect. The sun is shining brightly, there is no wind whatsoever, and the temperature is heavenly. I ditch my throwaway shirt.<br /><br />Even though I'm moving slower than I'd like, I am managing to pick off people, one at a time. We go back through Ritter Park - this time in the opposite direction, and then head back over to Riverfront Park. Throughout the day, I've been doing mental math. Early on - when I owned that 9:15 pace - I started thinking that I might just run my fastest marathon of the year today. Now, with my post-port-a-let slowdown, I'm adjusting my projection, and not coming up with anything that is very motivating. Until, that is, I remember about the football.<br /><br />Have you heard the story about the 1970 Marshall University football team, the one where the entire team and the coaching and administrative staff died in a tragic plane crash? And how the entire football program went through a crisis after that, but the community - both college and town - rebuilt the team? Yeah, that one, the Marshall University team of "We Are Marshall", the team cheer that inspired the movie that portrayed the events. Well, this marathon finishes in the Marshall University football stadium, and one of the most unique aspects of the race is that you get the opportunity to run the final hundred yards of the marathon right down the center of the football field, carrying a football.<br /><br />You could say that I've been looking forward to this. You could say that it was one of the deciding factors when I chose my West Virginia marathon. You could say that it's the thing that changes my lame 9:40 pace for the last few miles into an accelerating pace in the final miles of the marathon, from 9:29 to 9:24 to an 8:53 mile 26 pace, my fastest mile of the day. You could say all of those things and they'd be true.<br /><br />The last mile of the race takes us through the campus, and although the brick surface is hell on marathon-fatigued legs, this detour is perfect. The campus is pretty - not stunning, but college-red-brick-pretty. We run past the memorial fountain that is dedicated to all the souls lost in that tragedy in 1970. Runners earlier in the day left flowers at the fountain, a tribute. <br /><br />I've been following two guys, and trying like crazy to catch and pass them. One is in a red shirt and black sweat pants, the other in a black shirt and red shorts. Finally, finally, as I pour it on in this final mile, I creep up behind them and finally, finally, I sprint around them. To my complete surprise (and bafflement), one of them yells my name as I run past. What? I turn to look, and see that I've caught up with Pascal. What a long strange trip this has been: to cross the starting line with him, and now to converge at the finish line.<br /><br />We run across a street, pass mile 26 (oh, that sweet mile marker!), and into the stadium. The steep ramp down into the stadium is hard on these tired legs, but I'm so excited to take my football from an outstretched hand that I ignore the pain. I grab that ball, and I feel like I'm every famous football player I've ever seen run down the field. I feel like I'm carrying the ball for each of those lost souls from 1970. I get all choked up and almost start to cry, but I've learned over the years that it just doesn't work to run and cry at the same time, so I choose to keep running. The final one hundred yards of a marathon have never seemed so short, or gone by so quickly, as these hundred yards.<br /><br />How good I feel at the end of this marathon more than makes up for how lousy I felt at the finish of my last marathon in New Hampshire. There are Marathon Maniacs and 50 Staters hanging around the finish area, and I feel right at home with them. Leann follows me across the finish line shortly, and we head back to the hotel where Melissa has already showered (more than one reason we call her Speedy!). Before long, we are scattering back to our homes, promising to meet again soon for another long run.<br /><br />Every marathon has its own set of memories, some better than others; some you'd like to forget as soon as you stop running, and others you want to live on and on in your memory. I know as I cross this finish line that this marathon will be the latter kind of marathon. I want to go back and run that final hundred yards again and again, even if I have to run the full 26 miles again to earn the right. In my dreams, I am grabbing the football again, and I'm flying down that field with the sun shining brightly overhead. It turns out that this marathon, which started out as just another checkmark (the 42nd, to be exact) in my journey across the 50 states, is something larger, much more meaningful. Maybe the spirit of the 1970 football team infuses everything and everyone who runs in this stadium. As I leave Huntington behind, I can't help but feel certain that all of us who ran here today can say with pride "We Are Marshall".Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-65264196038628578692010-10-03T20:00:00.000-07:002010-10-03T20:01:37.605-07:00Clarence DeMar Marathon 2010Devotees of the Boston Marathon know the legends of that race well, and few of the legends are better than that of Clarence DeMar, who won the race an unequalled seven times. The first of these victories - in 1911 - was at the age of 22; the last of these victories - in 1930 - at the age of 41. Four of these times he set a course record. Along the way, Mr. DeMar, who found himself working up the road from Boston in New Hampshire, earned a master's degree from Boston University - by walking, running, and hitchhiking the 90 miles each way each week. Could there be a better inspiration for a marathon?<br /><br />Back in 1978, the folks in Keene, New Hampshire, decided that this was, indeed, a great inspiration, and they organized to form a marathon in Clarence DeMar's honor; 2010 represents the 33rd annual running of the event. The Clarence DeMar Marathon is a marathoner's marathon: short on frills, easy on the entry fee, but full of all the things that a runner truly needs - things like aid stations (staffed by the local cross country team) and accurate mile markers. These things alone would all lead me to choose the Clarence DeMar for my New Hampshire marathon, a choice I made many years ago, when I first started down this crazy 50 states quest. The fact that the marathon is in the fall - in the peak of fall foliage season - was a bonus. The added fact that my friend Leann also wanted to run the race this particular fall closed the deal.<br /><br />Leann and I meet up at the Manchester, NH, airport on a warm Friday afternoon, and head directly out to do some sight-seeing along the way to our hotel in Brattleboro, Vermont. Our drive takes us through the southern tier of New Hampshire, all ablaze in fall colors. The leaves are a few weeks shy of being at their peak, which means that every truly colorful tree catches our attention. We take the advice of the nice ladies at the information booth at the airport and make a detour up to the historic mill town of Harrisville. We stop next to a beautiful, placid little lake, and I announce "I want to move here!" as we step out of the car. It's a sentiment I'll repeat many times over the next few days.<br /><br />I've managed my running shoe rotation badly leading up to this marathon. This means that I have brought two choices of footwear for the race: an old pair of shoes with more than 300 miles on them, and a brand new, fresh-out-of-the-box pair. I'm reluctant to start out a marathon with the old shoes, but not quite daring enough to go with the new shoes without at least putting a few miles on them. That means I do something Saturday morning that is out of the norm for me: run. Lucky for me, Leann normally puts in a few miles the day before a marathon, so I have a running partner. We drive around the Brattleboro area, looking for a suitable place, and stumble upon Fort Dummer State Park. The park is closed for the season, so we park at the fenced-off entrance, and have the leaf-covered, shady road through the park pretty much to ourselves. Well, except for the snake that we roust. It's a lovely short run, and the shoes feel great. Time to go sight-seeing!<br /><br />We spend the rest of the day enjoying fall in New England, starting out with a trip to a local diner on one of the many scenic byways outside of Brattleboro, where we do an admirable job of carbing-up for the race on Sunday. Breakfast consists of scrambled eggs, hash browns, half a waffle, and a couple of pancakes. Mmmm. We meander around the hills, seeking out covered bridges amid the foliage. By mid-afternoon, we've made our way back into New Hampshire, and to Gilsum, where the race starts. The race is billed as a net-downhill course, and we've decided to scope out the race course. It sure feels a lot more like rolling hills in the car than like a constant downhill, and that worries me some. But the scenery - especially in the first half - is spectacular: heavily wooded with trees that are turning, the scenic Ashuelot River on the left hand side of this narrow rural road. This, I think, might just be one of the prettiest marathons I've run.<br /><br />Sunday morning we are at the Keene State College location bright and early to board buses that will take us out to Gilsum. Friday and Saturday were both warm days, but the forecasted cooler weather has hit New Hampshire, and it's pleasantly chilly as we wait in Gilsum for the race start. Every time I shiver or say "brrr!", I follow up with "but that's not a complaint!" I'm praying for the cooler temps to hang around until I finish this thing.<br /><br />Leann has informed me that this is merely a training run for her (she has several more races - including a couple of ultras - coming up in the next few weeks), and that she plans to run it slowly. "The plan is: no miles faster than ten minutes per mile." I think that sounds fairly reasonable for me, also, given that I have a lousy base coming into this thing, after cracking my knee back in late June. Leann and I have run a few marathons together in the past, and I love her company. When she asks me my plans, my reply is "just to hold on and try to finish this thing", although I'm actually thinking that I'll tag along with her as long as possible.<br /><br />Final race instructions from the race director include a message about mile measurements. Because there is road construction in mile 13, we will have a short detour there, which adds a couple hundred feet to the route. In order to keep the same finish line, the race crew has moved the start line up to make up for the extra distance we'll run later. But they haven't bothered to move all of the mile markers, so our first mile will be short, and mile 13 will be long. Leann and I agree that with the downhill start, and race nerves, and now this short first mile, we'll come in somewhere under ten minutes, but otherwise, she is dedicated to her game plan. The RD yells out the starting command, and we're running.<br /><br />As we leave Gilsum, I thank the race directors for the downhill start. We soon make a couple of turns, and then run across the Gilsum Stone Arch Bridge, a historic landmark which is billed as having the highest vault of any dry-laid bridge in New Hampshire. The bridge spans the Ashuelot River, which we'll follow for the next ten or so miles. It's pretty, with round river rocks and clear water and just a bit of sunlight making it through the heavy foliage overhead.<br /><br />We pass mile one, and hit our watches. 8:42. A tad faster than the 10 minute pace that Leann has in mind. Ah well. We run along, and now I'm watching my feet. This road is asphalt, badly cracked and pot-holed. We noticed the bad roads on our drive yesterday, so are extra careful today. Mile two comes up quickly, in 9:05. Leann makes noises about needing to slow down, but I find myself struggling to keep up with the pace that she's setting, and the next couple of miles go by in 8:47 and 9:10. I look at my heart rate monitor, and it tells me that I'm not working all that hard, so I just go with the flow.<br /><br />Finally, around mile 5, we settle into a pace zone that we'll pretty much hold through mile 18, with our splits averaging around 9:50. This is a nice comfortable pace, and we chat away. I'm wearing a 50 States Marathon singlet, and that always attracts attention and questions. One woman, Carmen from New York, joins us and adds to the conversation as we talk about other marathons, other states, plans to finish. <br /><br />The road is not closed to traffic here, but there are few cars, and we start to recognize most of the cars as race supporters. One guy in a Jeep lead-frogs along the course with us, and blasts music for our benefit as we go by. The vibe reminds me of why I like small races.<br /><br />Carmen sticks with us until mile 12, when we run our first mile that clocks in over ten minutes (10:08), and then she takes off and we don't see her again. The first 10 or 11 miles of the course have been a steady downhill, more pronounced in the early miles but still a nice grade, but mile 12 goes uphill noticeably, on a stretch that parallels a pretty golf course. The little detour at mile 13 comes along, as advertised, and then we're through the halfway point in 2:04 and change. Not exactly a ten minute pace, but a very comfortable first half.<br /><br />The second half of the race course winds around many residential districts in Keene, and it just doesn't compete in terms of scenery or support or joy. The temps have climbed a little, but are still bearable; the terrain is much flatter now. Leann and I run along, side by side, out of conversation, just working at the task at hand. I'm feeling remarkably good given my lack of training. And then Leann finally says, "at eighteen, I'm going to go back to my original plan, and do a run-walk combo to make this truly a training run". I'm not interested in run-walk - I just want to get done with this thing, so at the 18 mile mark, we split company.<br /><br />The next mile is a lonely one, still in the residential zone. At mile 19, we enter Wheelock Park, where we get some more shade and a change of venue: we're on a paved bike path. Mile markers disappear, and I'm grateful for this since it feels like I'm slowing down quite a bit. I've started to count my steps - something I do to keep my mind occupied, and to keep track of where I am in each mile - and I know that I've missed the marker at 20, and now 21. I start to like this: it's better to not know exactly how much I've slowed. Finally, back on city streets, I see a marker for mile 22, and hit the split button on my watch. 29:58 for the last three miles, almost exactly a ten minute pace. I'm immensely relieved to learn that I haven't really slowed much at all.<br /><br />But then there's mile 23 to look forward to. This was the biggest revelation when we drove the course yesterday: the monster Mount Everest in the 23rd mile. It seems downright sadistic of the race organizers to put a hill of this steepness at this point in the race, but there it is, staring me right in the face. I have been dreading this sucker all day long, and now that it's here, I do the only thing I can: I scale the thing. I do not slow to a walk, but a fast walker could pass me at this crawling pace. But I do not walk. I scale the thing, and start dreaming of the finish line.<br /><br />The problem with big hills late in a race like this is that they destroy your pace. It takes me 10:49 to cover mile 23, and I'm quite amazed that it wasn't closer to twelve minutes. But the hill has conquered me, and I just can't get my legs to move. Mile 24 is the slowest of my day at 10:57. I've been chasing a guy in a "100 Marathons" shirt for a long time, and now I come alongside him, and we exchange greetings. Chasing this guy improves my time in mile 25, but I'm crawling again in the final mile.<br /><br />Finally we make the last couple of turns to the finish. I've been chasing a younger woman for a mile or so now, and I have delusions of catching her before the finish line. It's not meant to be today, and I finish a second behind her in 4:17:49. It's not one of my faster efforts, but given the level of my training, I couldn't ask for any better today.<br /><br />Leann comes loping across the finish line just a few minutes later, and she's in much better shape than I am. I think the run-walk thing was a good idea. Me, I'm bonking big-time until I swallow a Pepsi in about three gulps. The sky is nice and cloudy now, and it never did really get hot today. For that, I'm extremely grateful. Next up: showers at the college gym building - something that has rarely felt this wonderful.<br /><br />Once revived by the soda and the shower, Leann and I head out to complete our sight-seeing. We follow our tourist map and head south out of Keene to see six or seven more covered bridges. When we've exhausted the supply of bridges - and nearly the supply of daylight - we make our way to the Kimball Farm Ice Cream Restaurant for fish-and-chips, and then ice cream. It's just starting to drizzle as we pull away from the restaurant, on our way back to Manchester. The rain makes it feel like fall, my favorite season of the year. Running in the fall: the stuff legends are made of.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-34456797586308507672010-08-23T22:04:00.000-07:002010-08-23T22:05:47.650-07:00Leadville Trail 100 Mtn Bike Raceaka Crewing for John<br />August 14, 2010<br /><br /><br />Here's the thing about Leadville: it's never not cold in the morning. So this morning in mid-August at 5:30, as John gets ready to ride down to the start line, the question is how to stay warm until the race starts. He decides to wear his green down parka, and I'll pick it up from him when I get there. Frank - the Leadville friend we're staying with - and I take off by truck a few minutes later.<br /><br />But the start area is a zoo. Incredible. Bikes and cyclists everywhere. People have claimed spots in the start chute, and left bikes strewn across the road. I've never seen anything like this, even after seven Ride the Rockies and three trips to the Tour de France. We split up (Frank and I are joined by three more friends in this search). It's impossible to find him. Who knew there would be so many people wearing green down parkas in mid-summer? Finally, in desperation, I climb up on top of a garbage can, and scan the crowds. I shout "JOHN!" No luck. So I try again. "ARMSTRONG!!!" Well, that gets a few more looks, and it yields what I'm looking for. There he is, smiling and looking ready to ride. He points behind him to indicate that he's ditched the jacket. I will pick it up after the race starts, before heading out for my first assignment as his crew.<br /><br />The race starts. It's exhilarating. It's a thing of beauty, actually. The bikes start to roll down the hill, and it's like watching synchronized swimming, or birds in flight - large flocks of birds in flight. I'm awed. Who knew?<br /><br />I find Frank and friends after the start and we go look for the parka, but it's just not there. I'm bummed. I feel like I've failed at my first crewing task. But no time to worry about that - I have to get to the first aid station.<br /><br />Pipeline Aid Station<br /><br />Here's the direction that Frank gives me, before he goes off to watch the race at other vantage points: don't get boxed in parking at the aid stations. So when I see the cars assembling, I find a place to park and make sure I have plenty of room and am facing the right direction for an escape. Then I gather up all the supplies for the first aid and start hiking.<br /><br />The basket I'm using is my grocery shopping basket; I love this thing. It does not collapse, and it holds just enough. But I've loaded it up, and it's a tad heavy. Here's what I carry: pb&j sandwich halves in baggies, chocolate chip cookies (ditto the baggies), a fresh bottle of cytomax, a fresh bottle of water, my own bottle of water, a bike tool thingy, some clif shots, some packets of powdered FRS, sunscreen, chain lube, a rag or two, a can of Big Air, some Advil and my own breakfast muffin. On top of this all is a camelbak that John will pick up at this station. On one shoulder is my camp chair, on the other my camera. I'm also carrying my cup of lousy convenience store coffee. It seems like a long hike with all this stuff.<br /><br />But once I see the tents, it's all worth the effort. This is like the coolest block party ever - and at 7 a.m. There's a buzz of anticipation. Tents set up, aid stations set up, people just looking down the dirt road, waiting for the action to start.<br /><br />The helicopter signals the arrival of the front riders. This is deja vu Tour de France. I'm expecting something less than Tour de France competitiveness, but I'm wrong. The front runners come through at warp speed, pedaling by so fast that you can't really see faces, numbers. Good thing to have a camera so that later you can say, oh yeah, I saw so-and-so go by. The third or fourth group of riders to go by grab their food from people standing right next to me, in musettes just like the ones you see at the Tour. Only this time, one of the guys spins a bit and goes down in the middle of the trail, right in front of me. It's all adrenaline, all panic, all let's-get-him-up-and-sorted-out. He's gone in an instant but it makes me nervous all the same.<br /><br />The trail is flat here, so the riders are coming in at a pretty good clip. At this point in the day, they all look the same - helmets, sunglasses, long sleeves, leg warmers. Thank God for the numbers that are attached to the front of all the bicycles. I start focusing on looking for John's number: 125. Numbers fly by, so close but not quite. Number 1125 goes by. No dice. More numbers, a couple of tandems (whoa! talk about strong relationships!), and just a few women.<br /><br />I see John and step onto the trail and yell his name over and over until I'm sure he sees me. I've got this huge basket full of stuff and start shoving stuff at him, but he just wants the cookies and the fresh bottle of cytomax. He says no to the camelbak. He takes off his leg warmers and hands them to me while a woman standing next to me holds his bike (that's what kind of crowd this is). I'm so nervous about getting him what he wants that I don't ask, but then he volunteers, "I'm feeling pretty good". Well, good then. And he's off again.<br /><br />Twin Lakes Aid Station<br /><br />I've heard from the folks at Pipeline that I'll only have an hour or maybe an hour and 15 minutes before he arrives at Twin Lakes, so I know I have to beat it. I have the camp chair packed, so as soon as John pedals off, I pick up my stuff and high-tail it back to the truck. It's a hike. I am kicking myself for not trying to park up closer.<br /><br />Just as I start to pull out of the parking place, two women knock on my window and ask for a ride to Twin Lakes. "Of course! Jump in!" Their husbands have both just been by here, too, and the person they rode with is waiting for her man, and they are - as I am - worried about getting to the next aid on time. We drive as fast as we can.<br /><br />But here's the thing about the distance between the first and second aid stations: by trail, it's only 13 or so miles, and by road, it's many more. Not only that, but that parking at Twin Lakes is far worse than at Pipeline. The parking lot is full, so we have to park on the road and then we start the hike up to the dam.<br /><br />We're almost to the road side of the dam, and Frank calls me. "Where are you?" he barks, and "has John come by yet?" While we're trying to figure out where we are in relation to one another, he shouts, "Go John Go!" and then back into the phone, "He just went by - did you give him his aid here?!" Noooooooo! I can't believe that I missed him. It's only been 48 minutes since he left Pipeline! I feel lousy because it feels like I've failed in my job crewing, but more than that I'm worried about him making the climb up to 12,600' and back down again on the little nutrition he took at Pipeline. There's nothing I can do now, though, but just wait.<br /><br />What a zoo this place is! It makes Pipeline look like a ladies luncheon. Frank and his group of cohorts are here, but preparing to take off, so I settle in with my hitch-hiking friends. Everyone here is from somewhere else: Texas, Virginia, Philadelphia, Tennessee, wherever. I'm wearing this year's Boston Marathon t-shirt, and it gets lots of comments. The woman from Philadelphia strikes up a conversation, and soon we're exchanging marathon stories. I tell her about running Delaware earlier this year, and about the guy we saw carted off at the finish line. "Oh yeah", she says, "that was the guy who died." I tell her that I had read that he survived. "Yeah, but only for a few days", she replies, and then fills in the rest of the story - how the guy's kidneys had shut down and that they kept him alive several days after the marathon but his kidneys never started working again. <br /><br />What a weird thing to learn here, but not that out of place. This is, after all, a mountain bike race, and as we're standing here waiting for our riders, the Search and Rescue folks go up the trail to retrieve someone who crashed. I don't really worry that much about John - he's a very strong and safe rider - but I also know that it's a risky sport.<br /><br />This Aid Station is both mile 40 and mile 60. The riders are all outbound when I get here, but soon there's a flurry, and two homebound cyclists tear by on their trip back into town. They go by so fast and so unexpectedly that they are not even a blur, more like a thought. A race official is near me, and I hear him tell somebody who it was: Levi and Jeremy. Oh boy. This is a race! My mental math tells me that they are on a record pace, but I wonder if I'm missing something. Lance set an insane course record here last year, so it can't be that likely to fall again this year.<br /><br />A few more front runners go by on the return trip, and then the action all goes back to the people just getting to mile 40. A buzz goes through the crowd, and I look at my watch: the cutoff is close. There are intermediate cutoff times along the course, and pretty soon a few guys come walking by, pushing their bikes, day done because they couldn't get here fast enough. There's a woman (a rider forced out of the race here due to missing the cutoff) who is crying and making quite a scene; I wonder what the rest of her story is. Most of the guys seem to take it in stride. And then it's back to waiting - just waiting for the riders to go by in the opposite direction.<br /><br />The hitch-hiking women have both also missed their husbands on their outbound journey, and are as anxious as I am to see their guys on the return trip. I go up on a hill to survey the scene, and talk to a family who asks about my Boston shirt while I snap a few photos. They tell me that they live in Hopkinton, and the son - probably in his late teens or early twenties - tells me that he ran the marathon for his first time this year. We have a nice chat, then I climb back down the berm and get busy fretting over John's arrival.<br /><br />I've added some stuff to the basket for this stop: a no-longer-cold Coke, as well as some potato chips, and, of course, another fresh bottle of cytomax. The cantaloupe that I brought as a surprise is still back in the truck, in the cooler, but I just don't have the energy to go back there. I'm tempted, because I'm still wearing the jeans that I appreciated earlier in the day, and I'd love to change into my shorts, but it's a long hike. I can survive in jeans.<br /><br />The day could not be more glorious. Bright sun, and not much wind out here. Virtually no clouds in the sky. I start to recognize numbers coming down the trail. The guy standing next to me asks who I'm watching for, so now I have a second set of eyes searching for "125". There's a woman who goes by with some frilly stuff on her helmet; I remember seeing here way back at Pipeline, and she was right in front of John. There goes number 1125 again. Finally, he's here!<br /><br />I shove a Coke at him, and start babbling apologies for missing him outbound. He takes some potato chips and another bottle of cytomax, but little else. When I take a break from my babbling, he says it wasn't a big deal. But then he adds, "my legs are toast". I realize just before he rides off that I haven't even asked how the last 30 miles have gone! <br /><br />Pipeline Aid Station<br /><br />The hitchhikers do not join me for the return to Pipeline, so I make a beeline for the truck. Well, actually, it's not even close to a beeline, but rather a long and dusty race-walk. I'm determined to get back to Pipeline before John gets there.<br /><br />Traffic at Pipeline is minimal, and I'm able to park much closer than earlier this morning, so I throw a new ice-cold Coke and a new bottle of cytomax into my basket, and I'm back at the trail quickly. In fact, so quickly that I actually have ten or fifteen minutes to wait before John arrives. The mood at Pipeline is much subdued from earlier today. The cyclists are pedaling by much more slowly, and starting to look just a little ragged. By now, I'm able to recognize most of the numbers coming in before him. Just after the woman with the frilly stuff on her helmet, number 125 rolls up to me.<br /><br />I've learned, finally, to ask "what do you need" before shoving stuff in John's face. So now, he answers "To be done". I think "ouch" - there are nearly 30 hard miles left in front of him. But I can't ride it for him, I can just offer up sustenance. So I shove the drinks at him, and he takes some food and a couple of Advil. He lubes his chain - he and his bike are both covered in dust - and then he takes off. And I take off, too: back to Leadville.<br /><br />Finish in Leadville<br /><br />Given that the last part of this race contains a lot of climbing over 29 miles, I know I have at least a couple of hours before I can expect John at the finish line. So, for once today, I have a leisurely time getting to my next vantage spot. I park several blocks away from the finish, and spend some time organizing the disaster zone in the back of the truck. Finally, I change into shorts. It's a glorious day, have I mentioned this? Bright sun and not a cloud in the sky. This is Leadville at its finest.<br /><br />But here's the thing about Leadville: it's never not windy. So when I eventually get my act together and tote my camp chair up to the race course and park myself in a nice shady spot to cheer on the finishers, I find myself getting chilled quickly. This is Leadville, 10,000 feet. So I move into the sun, and I clang my cowbell, and I yell, over and over, "Nice job!" or "Great finish!" I mean it every time. I'm awed by the power and the charge and the strength of these folks as they push it in to the finish.<br /><br />Now, all day long I've been trying to gauge when John will arrive at any given point, and by now my time-math is getting fuzzy, but one thing is clear: the expected time that he gave me this morning - ten hours and thirty minutes - is bogus. Sandbagging. Because I'm here, and I'm figuring miles from the last aid station, and I know he's going to blow that time.<br /><br />All day, folks rolled through the aid stations in a certain order, but here at the finish, they are way out of sequence. It seems that Powerline - the last big nasty climb of the race - has taken a severe toll on the field. I recognize the number of one of the guys I've seen multiple times, so I figure that I'll see John in about 15 minutes. I watch for the woman with the frilly stuff on her helmet, but she doesn't go by. So I'm almost caught without my camera ready when he rolls into my viewfinder just a couple of minutes later. Done!<br /><br />I make my way to the finish area just as John walks out of the chute, and he's all smiles. He's finished in 9:45, which turns out to be good for second place in his age group. It was, he says, a perfect day. The trail was perfect (there was rain earlier in the week, so the trail was packed but not muddy), the weather was perfect (sunny, but cool for the riders, not too hot). In fact, the insane course record set by Lance last year (30 minutes faster than the old course record) was broken again today by both Levi and Jeremy.<br /><br />The only thing I'm feeling bad about is that lost green parka. But John says, follow me, and we walk partway up the block to a little coffee shop. He walks in while I hold his bike, and he walks back out with the parka. He had, wisely, stashed it inside, in the back, early in the morning. All that's left now is to head back to Frank's. John chooses to ride the mile or so back to the other side of town. I walk back to the truck, and then drive cross town. And here's the thing about Leadville today: the bike rocks. John is comfortably back at Frank's, lounging in a recliner by the time I even get to the truck. It's a great day to be on a bike.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-32358778322583712712010-05-31T17:09:00.000-07:002010-05-31T17:14:55.414-07:00I'm Alive (Delaware Marathon 2010)Sometimes the only way to make sense of a story is to start at the end, especially when the finish changes the way you look at the entire experience in the rear view mirror. That’s the case with the Delaware Marathon. Crossing the finish line changed the way I will always remember the day, but not in any way that I could have conjured up in my mind as I ran the 26.2 miles. When you approach a marathon finish line, only to have that finish line blocked by paramedics who are performing CPR on a downed runner, and then they yank up the gurney and sprint off to the ambulance with that gentleman as their passenger, your focus changes, suddenly and violently. You no longer think about the pain in your legs and feet, you no longer experience the unique joy of finishing another marathon (in a new – to you – state), you no longer look for the volunteers at the finish line to get your medal or glass of water or to point you to the food or the port-a-potties. No, suddenly, you look at your friend – the friend who has covered the distance with you – and you think, thank God we’re okay. And you think, thank God I’m alive. I’m alive!<br /><br />So, everything else pales in the haze that covers the weekend, but it makes you appreciate the life in the thing. Suddenly, every single detail is more important than it was a moment ago. Suddenly, none of it matters a bit. The only thing that matters is that you survived, and that you can smile when you think about the experience.<br /><br />The weekend starts with a huge smile – Leann offers to pick me up at the Philadelphia airport, saving me a few more hours of travel and a sizable hassle (train from the Philly airport to the Amtrak station, transfer to a Wilmington-bound train, then hooking up in downtown Wilmington – something that we were soon to discover would not be all that simple, anyway). So, instead of all that, I exit the secure part of the airport to find Leann waiting in the chairs for me. Yes!<br /><br />Here’s the thing about spending time with Leann: you laugh a lot. You laugh so much and so hard that you get the hiccups and tears run down your face. Later, you can’t even remember what you laughed about, but at the time it was hysterical. That’s the way the drive from Philly to Wilmington goes: all 20 or so minutes of the drive.<br /><br />And here’s what makes the weekend a huge success, no matter marathon finish line dramas or disappointing times: all that laughter. What else matters, really?<br /><br />This is a weekend of travel in an old East Coast city, which means that streets are not on a grid – at least not for long – and even if they are, they change names every few blocks just to keep you guessing. So it takes two people with full attention to drive and navigate. Because Leann has already scoped things out, we find the Comfort Inn easily, and get checked in. Our room opens to a courtyard, complete with swimming pool. It’s early afternoon, and we both notice the sunbathers at the same time. Women in bikinis. Because it’s warm. Hot, actually. With full sun. This is not, we already know, going to be a good marathon. Well, not for us runners. It will be a dandy day for the spectators. For us runners, it will be a day of survival.<br /><br />We spend much of Friday and Saturday trying to navigate through Wilmington. Good thing there are lots of graduate degrees in Leann’s car, because I’m not sure we would have ever made it to the start line otherwise. It takes three or four maps, and lots of retracing ground we’ve already covered, but we do find our way through the city, and manage to even drive most of the course late Saturday morning. It’s a good thing, too, because the drive sets our expectations for something that wasn’t really clear from the race website: this course is hilly. Not (for the most part) Pike’s Peak type hills, but definitely hilly. And did I mention, the sun is shining and it’s warm?<br /><br />The highlight of the day on Saturday is the breakfast we stumble into. We try to do the economical thing, and head to the Comfort Inn breakfast room. But between the empty coffee urns, and the kid scraping the burned waffle out of the waffle iron, and the empty chafing dishes, it’s not in the cards. Just down the road we spy Lucky’s Coffee Shop, and decide to give it a try. It’s the best decision we make all weekend. Lucky’s is a proper diner, complete with vinyl booths and chairs, and coffee cups that get refilled every time you blink. The menu features such treasures as scrapple and chipped dried beef in gravy (my dad called this “SOS”). But it also features all the pre-race carbs one person could hope for: pancakes and potatoes and toast. Breakfast for two of us, when it arrives, covers a 4-top table completely. Life is good.<br /><br />The race starts and ends at the Tubman Garrett Riverfront Park in downtown Wilmington. Well, just the other side of the train tracks from downtown Wilmington. This is no small distinction, since traffic in and out of the park is greatly restricted by the train tracks and road closures (due to the race and other events in the park) and the general poor design of the roads within the park. We’ve scoped things out in advance, though, so on race morning we park in one of the recommended lots that will allow us easy ingress and egress before and after the race, and walk the short distance to the start line.<br /><br />Here’s a thing about running a ridiculous number of marathons in order to complete a circuit of the states: you start to recognize people at races all around the country. The Delaware Marathon is no different. As Leann and I make our way to the port-a-potties early Sunday morning, I spy Sara, a woman I know from last year’s Steamboat Springs Marathon (and that whole experience with The Professor). We talk briefly, then see each other multiple times on the course. And there is Steve Boone, the president of the 50 States Marathon Club: he is easily recognizable with his wild white locks. There’s Tutu guy, in his completely pink get-up; it’s been awhile since I last saw him, but I read about him occasionally in the running publications. And there’s the guy I see over and over again at races – most notably at the Flying Monkey – but can never remember his name or where he’s from. Still, it feels like a community rather than some random event in some random distant city.<br /><br />And so the race starts with the firing of a cannon, the loudest send-off I’ve ever experienced in a marathon. The race is a two-loop affair, and each loop takes us through a wide variety of neighborhoods and terrain. The race director clearly tries to showcase the riverfront park, but the park feels like a failed attempt at urban renewal. The park comprises many office buildings, an outdoor arena, and some shops and restaurants that are pretty quiet and empty when we visit on Friday and Saturday. It’s one of those urban projects with the right spirit but poor execution, and it just doesn’t have the vibrant downtown feel that the developers were after. In the marathon, we head southwest to the limits of the park on an interior road, out to the limit of the park, and then head back toward the start/finish on the boardwalk that parallels the Christina River. We cross the start/finish, and head onto the streets of Wilmington. The next bit of the race takes us through what we not-so-jokingly call the ghetto – an ugly, deserted, decrepit area. Ugh. The best thing about this part of the course is that it doesn’t last long, and then we’re dumped back onto Walnut Street, one of the main roadways through the downtown Wilmington business area. None of this part of the course is particularly nice, or scenic, or pleasant. We run past a church with funeral placards outside on the cars lined up, and that pretty much sets the mood for this part of the race.<br /><br />But much of the race is pretty, and it turns so when we cross a bridge across Brandywine Creek that takes us into Brandywine Park. The park – also home to the local zoo – is lovely, most notably because it is heavily shaded. The flip side is that the road surface is pocked and uneven, which makes for cautious steps. To make matters worse, we have to navigate across a cobbled road, and then across a wooden footbridge. The footbridge sways with the motion of all the runners, and I almost have to stop and walk – it makes me lose my sense of balance. But what waits on the other side of the bridge is worse than the bridge itself – it’s the mile or so long climb that will take us up to the highest point on the race course.<br /><br />The consolation prize to this climb is that it takes us to the prettiest part of the race. Lovering Avenue becomes Kentmere Parkway, and that takes us to Bancraft Parkway. These are all old, lovely, wide, tree-lined streets with stately homes and beautiful gardens. Leann and I compare notes on which houses we like best. These pretty streets soon give way to Little Italy and several commercial blocks. I read the restaurant names and wish we would have had our pasta-feed in this part of town last night.<br /><br />After Little Italy, the course mostly doubles back on itself, and takes us back down to the riverfront where we get to pass “Go” but not collect $200 – we get to go back out and do it all again. Almost on cue, the sun, which has been mercifully hiding behind a thick bank of clouds this morning, comes out to blast us as we pass Go. So much for those dreams of an evenly split race. As soon as the clouds burn off, the wind picks up. There are two good things about this. First, the course meanders around so much that we never run directly into the wind for very long. Second, the wind – a good stiff breeze – has a cooling effect. It is, no doubt, also a slowing effect, but by this time, slowing is a given. We appreciate the cooling.<br /><br />I’ve never run a multi-loop marathon before, and I’m not sure I’m crazy about it, especially when the second lap is, well, just plain hot. To be sure, we look forward to the shady and scenic parts, but the rest just seems annoyingly repetitious. The uphills seem longer and steeper the second time around, and the downhills seem almost non-existent. Thankfully, the volunteers are always the one constant that I enjoy – the race is stocked with plenty of good water and Gatorade.<br /><br />There are many races going on at the same time (the marathon, the early-starters, the half-marathon, and the marathon relay), and most of these have slightly different course routes. The race course doubles back on itself many times. This all means that by just a few miles into the race, it’s impossible to know where you are in the grand scheme of things. We pass each other and wave and say hi, and yet I have no idea if most of the marathoners are in front of me or behind me.<br /><br />Leann and I dutifully hit our split buttons at every mile. From the first mile (9:26 – the fastest of the day), I know it’s going to be a slog. My lower back and hamstrings feel tight as I pass the start line, so the slow splits are no surprise, but disappointing all the same. We average just under 10 minute miles in the first half, but the sun and wind do a whammy on us in the second half, and we slow down to almost 10:30 miles. My training runs have finally been a bit faster in the last couple of months, so this feels like a setback.<br /><br />But Leann keeps things fun and upbeat as we run. Around mile 10, she tells me that she’s been running each mile for a family member or friend with a name that starts with the corresponding letter of the alphabet. This seems like a good distraction, so I use the next several miles to catch up. Mile 1, in retrospect, was for my niece and nephew Annie and Adam; mile 2 for my brother Bob; etc. I struggle with a few letters, and we share family stories of relatives with oddball names. But Leann comes better prepared, and by the time we get to the letter “Q” and she has a name at the ready, I start to think that the game is as much work as the running. It’s my turn, but I have to say “I got nothing”. Like my stomach, my mood is turning.<br /><br />I rally with a long recitation for “S” – Sharon (Mom), Sue, Scott, Stan, Sandy, Sherri, Susie, Stacey,…and I’m just getting warmed up – but it has to wait, though, since the letter “S” falls just as we start that last long blasted hill coming out of Brandywine Park. On our first lap up out of the park, we passed a cyclist who was down, being attended to by paramedics – we later learn that this was the lead cyclist – so we’re both grateful to get past this spot on our second lap with no more casualties.<br /><br />The one beautiful thing about this race course is that the finish is mostly downhill. As we head down the last mile or so – heavenly downhill – Leann says, “I have no kick today”, to which I reply, “this IS my kick”. It’s nice to know that we’re both equally toasted by the heat and the hills and the humidity and the headwinds. Still – kick or no – it feels like we both do pick it up a tad as we round the final corner and head to the finish line. We are both ready – very ready – to be done with this race.<br /><br />You already know how this story ends. All of it, the heat and the hills and the aching legs and the disappointing splits and the slower-than-hoped-for finishing time of 4:25:57, takes on a different perspective as we cross that finish line. When we saw the forecasted warm temps for the day, we knew it would be a day of survival, but we didn’t imagine that merely surviving would take on so much meaning. In the days following the race, I’ll look not for race results or race photos or my finisher’s certificate, but rather for any information on the guy we saw at the finish line. Several days later, there will finally be a notice: he survived. Actually, not one, but two, men collapsed at the finish line. Both had heart attacks, and both survived. Any way you want to slice it, it was a very successful day. I’m alive. We’re all alive.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-75895942315364885032009-06-29T22:51:00.000-07:002009-06-29T22:52:21.151-07:00The Green Ribbon State Marathon<strong>Vermont City Marathon 2009<br /></strong><br />Paul Theroux, my favorite travel writer, once said, “Travel is nasty”. In an interview about one of his books – a travel book, of course, not his fiction writing – he told the interviewer that there was nothing so tedious as a discussion of the comings and goings at airports, and all the waiting in between, et cetera, et cetera. And so, dear reader, I shall spare you the tedium and frustration of my trip to the Vermont City Marathon, with the endless airline delays and postponements and missed connections and the impromptu night at the Hotel Intercontinental at O’Hare (yes, in Chicago, a city that I had planned to simply pass through). I’ll start my story of the Vermont City Marathon with my arrival in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday, May 23rd, at around 1 p.m. Nevermind that my original arrival time was scheduled about 20 hours earlier. Nevermind at all.<br /><br />The first thing that I notice when I arrive at the airport in Vermont is how green and verdant this place is. It’s a greenocopia! Trees, grass, plants, flowers, everything as far as the eye can see. And as far as the eye can see is quite a ways – what with mountains in the background and water in the foreground, and – yes, say it with me – green everywhere. I’ve heard of the Green Mountains; have seen the name on the map; I just never imagined that the name was quite so literal. <br /><br />Leann – who enticed me to run this thing this year – meets me at our hotel (she has, in my absence this Saturday morning, made a trip to visit her friends with their menagerie of critters, including a trio of pigs named Clyde, Clyde, and Clyde), and we commence on our own tour of exploration (as well as the mission to procure bagels and such for the morning). We drive the course as best we can (and as much as we have the patience for), for the course map and our driving map are not necessarily in synch. But who, really, cares? After all, we’re running this thing for fun, and to bag yet another state, and to see the local flora and fauna, so who really needs this level of preparation?<br /><br />Late afternoon, we head to the expo and pasta dinner where we meet up with fellow TMer Doug (who was my host and guide in Hartford, CT - holy cow [or perhaps not, the cows also belong to Leann’s friends, with names like Stanley and Earl – that is, the cows, not the friends], have I already run a marathon in Connecticut?). Our little threesome has a great pre-dinner TM get together, catching up on all the news that’s fit to print (or not). We manage to score pre-dinner dessert at the Ben & Jerry’s booth at the expo, but otherwise make quick work of the place, even though there are lots more exhibitors than I would have imagined. We head to the pasta dinner, which is adequate but not really worth the $25 price of admission. Making it all worthwhile are the companions who join us at our table. There is the couple (gay, at least I think so, tattooed and pierced accordingly) from New York, with all kinds of advice about running NYC; on the other side of the round table is the couple (non-gay, and I think they were a couple, of sorts) from San Francisco, willing to advise us on any left coast running. The SF guy, in particular, is memorable. Everything he says is a bark, a command, a declaration. Ya gotta just love the guy…or else you might want to talk to your NY or NJ friends and order a hit.<br /><br />Race day morning arrives. Leann and I have decided on our course of action for getting to the start on race morning, with opportunities to change course in the event of nerves taking over: we’ll take the shuttle to downtown from our hotel, but – in case the shuttle is tardy in picking us up, we come prepared to drive. Luckily (and wisely) for us, the shuttle arrives outside our hotel fairly promptly (even though it seems hours late), and we are deposited downtown, close to the start line, with ample time for multiple passes through the port-a-potty lines, along with time to check our stuff at the bag check. We have time to scan the crowd – at the appointed time/place – for Doug, but he doesn’t show. Because the first race I ran “with” Doug was in his hometown of Hartford, and I was responsible for our missed connection in the morning (my own dallying in port-a-let lines), I feel doubly responsible for making the connection this morning. It – surprisingly – starts to rain as we wait for Doug to appear. Leann is tough, and just deals with it. (I suspect that with the normal humidity in New Orleans, perhaps she doesn’t even notice that wet stuff is falling out of the sky.) Me, on the other hand, I’m a wimp, and I don a poncho that I’ve brought along (flotsam from the Myrtle Beach Marathon a few months ago). We scan the crowds again for Doug. No Doug. We do see our NY buddies (kinda hard to miss all those tattoos) (happily they don’t notice us), as well as the guy from San Francisco (we don’t approach him, on account of not needing to have a greeting barked at us this early in the morning). Still no Doug. The countdown for race start is approaching, so we ditch the meeting spot in favor of a place somewhere behind the start line. Sorry, Doug. We waited!<br /><br />The race start is a mess – it’s nearly impossible to cross the line between the staging area and the start corral – but who really cares? We’re only here to bag the state. I ditch my poncho – who really cares if I get wet? It’s a comfortable temperature. It seems like an opportune time for us to discuss our anticipated pacing, seeing as how Leann and I have been talking in general terms about running together today. We quickly agree that we’ll play it by ear (or perhaps by foot); we both expect to run this thing somewhere between 4:15 and 4:30. Good, that’s settled, and now we’re moving across a start line. Leann provides color commentary as the local DJ provides endless babble. Thankfully, I will have only Leann’s commentary after we clear the start area, and I can tune out the DJ.<br /><br />And so, Leann and I set off on a 26.2 mile journey. For me, the odd thing is how comfortable I was running the entire New Orleans Mardi Gras Marathon with Leann, even though I rarely run with others at all, and never before with anyone for an entire 26.2 miles. I’ve been looking forward to running Vermont with her, no matter what that means in terms of time or pace. Oddly (again), I have no qualms about this, even though she is clearly the faster of the two of us; I know I slowed her down at Mardi Gras, but I also know that we had a great time there. Happily, I know I can handle a faster pace today; I also know that I’ll be quite okay if Leann decides she needs to ditch me at some point in order to take off to run her own race.<br /><br />We quickly settle into a comfortable pace, with commentary about everything around us….the DJ, the crowds, other runners, the terrain, the green, the rain, the scenery……..everything. When we’ve run for more than ten minutes without seeing a mile marker, we determine that we missed the one mile split. The race course is a bow-tie arrangement with multiple loops, and this initial section takes us south along a grand old street in Burlington that essentially captures the antebellum spirit that I was looking for earlier this year in Jackson, MS. Who knew we would find such mansions here in the frigid and inland north? Leann and I both admire the widow’s walks that adorn many of the homes along this stretch of the route. It’s early; we have plenty of energy to notice such features. We do manage to catch the mile two marker; we’ve accumulated a time of 19:04 so far. We both do the math (just over 9:30 per mile), and are both happy with our start. We go back to chattering away.<br /><br />By now, we’re running north again, soon to transverse the pedestrian mall on Church Street for our first time, and to cross the start area for our second time of the day. The DJ is still spewing on with whatever DJs find to spew on about. By now, we’ve clearly missed the 3 mile marker, and we’re starting to wonder if the course is only marked every other mile? The rain, which was light at the start and for the first few miles, is now falling with more of a sense of urgency.<br /><br />The next section of the course takes us on our first serious foray up north of the downtown section of town. As the rain falls more heavily, and as we leave the downtown area for the second time, I hear my name from the side of the road. It’s incredible, but there she is – Emily, a woman I met in Laramie a week ago at a 5k, and she’s shouting my name. Emily is a younger woman, a native of Laramie in exile in Vermont at present; the Professor introduced us at the 5k in Laramie, and I just mentioned that I would be running in Burlington this weekend. Emily is – obviously – not running today, but came out to support another friend of hers (also from Laramie) who is also running today. With nearly 8000 runners in this race, the odds of spotting her – especially on this rain-sodden course – are incredibly small. And yet, there she is, shouting my name. It’s a great early-race boost.<br /><br />This section is one that Leann and I neglected to drive yesterday, so it’s all new discovery today. The road (highway 127) is completely closed to traffic, which makes it nice. The rain is falling pretty seriously, which makes it not so nice. But this is a clear out-and-back route, so Leann and I start watching seriously – in both directions – to see if we can spot Doug. Unfortunately, we don’t see him. But, with so many runners, and this early in the race, it’s difficult to scan each runner’s face as they go by.<br /><br />The turnaround comes just before the mile 6 marker; by now, Leann and I have gotten into a rhythm of catching each marker as we pass it. Without noticing, we’ve gradually sped up from our initial 9:32/mile pace to one of 9:11. My heart rate – the guiding light for my pacing in marathons – is so low that it’s not even a factor or concern today. The rain – and accompanying cool temps – can take all the credit. The rain has lessened as we head back into the downtown area just after mile 8, but now the puddles on the road are an issue. I look intently for Emily again, but don’t spot her. That’s okay; I’m so busy trying to keep my shoes from becoming waterlogged that watching the side of the road takes substantial effort.<br /><br />We soon pass the start area for our third time of the day, and, thankfully, the DJ has stopped broadcasting. It’s a good thing, or else I think Leann might have taken drastic measures. We retrace our steps and end up heading down the pedestrian mall on Church Street again, now in the opposite direction. Leann is, quite suddenly, spouting gibberish: New York! Beijing! I think that perhaps the rain and the early miles have fried her brain. But then she points under our feet, and I see the city names carved in the granite tiles we’re running on. Aha.<br /><br />Now we head out for our serious loop down south. This time, instead of the genteel mansions with the widow’s walks, we follow an industrial street. We no longer have the full use of the road, and the standing water from the rain is an on-going issue. But it’s okay; we’re on familiar ground – this is a part of the course that Leann and I have covered in our course tour (not to mention comings and goings) over the last day.<br /><br />The rain lets up some; we run on; we talk. After our burst of semi-speed in the north loop, our pace just naturally scales back to a more manageable 9:30 or so level. We’re very comfortably trotting along, but the new challenge is the road surface itself. We noticed this during yesterday’s tour: the road is quite broken and potholed here, so it requires some serious attention to footing. The scenery along this stretch is probably the least interesting of the entire course, so watching the road is not all that difficult.<br /><br />Around mile 11, we veer westward, over to Lake Champlain, and on to some of the prettiest 15 miles that any marathon can offer. The good news is that we’re finally off that miserable stretch of road. The bad news is that now we’re on a much narrower bike path. The views along the bike path are quite lovely, especially on the stretches that front the lake. But with 8000 runners (3000 in the marathon and 5000 in the relays), that makes a lot of traffic on a narrow path. The rain stops altogether, then spits and feints a bit, and finally starts again as we head back into the downtown area. This time around, it’s a bit of a relief, as we’ve been dreading warmer temperatures. The rain keeps things nice and cool.<br /><br />And cool is good, as we approach the toughest part of the course: the Assault on Battery. That is how the race literature refers to the 6 block stretch along Battery Street right at mile 15, where the road climbs precipitously. The bad news is that this is clearly the steepest and longest climb of the race. The good news is that it’s only 6 blocks long. The better news is that we’re right back in downtown Burlington, so there are lots of people here to cheer us up the hill. The best news of all is that there is a crew of drummers out at the base of the hill, beating out a rhythm that does nothing less than propel you straight up the hill. Even today, in what has become a steady rain again, the drummers are pounding away, the most invigorating beat imaginable. Leann – who humiliates this Rocky Mountain denizen with her mountain goat climbing ability – says “see you at the top”, and takes off to truly assault Battery. As for me, I’m a little intimidated until the beating of the drums gets under my skin, and then that energy just starts my legs churning. I’ve been afraid that Leann will totally embarrass me, but I’m able to keep her in sight, and reach the crest of the hill after she’s had just a short recovery period, waiting for me. I think, if that’s the worst that the day has to throw at us, life is good.<br /><br />And, indeed, life is good from here on out. Although we’ve barely passed the halfway point in the race, it feels like the hardest work is done. We head north again, on a long slog of roadway that Leann and I drove yesterday. Today, I’m grateful for the detours off this main thoroughfare that take us through some nice, homey, tree-lined residential areas. I’m impressed by the number of people out in one of the cutout sections – an entire subdivision with tailgate parties happening, despite the early wet conditions. (When I visit these new locations for races, I always assess the area; would I, could I live here? The answer for this race – for Vermont in general, and this particular residential stretch in particular – is a resounding yes!) The rain finally stops altogether, and the sun makes its (somewhat unwelcome) appearance. Leann immediately protests this occurrence – she has much more experience with rain, sun, heat, and humidity. But the streets are (mostly) treelined, so the steam room effect is not nearly as bad as it might be.<br /><br />Back out on the main, heavily traveled road, we see the guys in front of us pushing a car across the road. Yes, those are racers, complete with bib numbers and chips on their shoes, but they’re pushing a car. Wha??? This happens almost directly in front of us. We see, very quickly, what has happened: a car with a poorly set parking brake has lost its mooring in a driveway across the street, and drifted onto the race course. We applaud the guys – who could have just let the car block the race path, but who took time (and not a small amount of effort) to put things right again.<br /><br />Now we’re at the northernmost place on the course, and we have a short and steep downhill pitch – on badly pitted and potholed asphalt – to the bike path that will take us back south to the finish line. A guy passes us – one of the few people we will concede ground to in the second half of the race – and he just seems to be having a great time. He assaults the downhill, and we follow suit.<br /><br />We are at mile 22, and the rest of the course is just absolutely beautiful. The bike path follows the contours of Lake Champlain, and provides ample views of the waterfront. It doesn’t hurt that we’re on a gradual downhill grade to the finish. By the time we hit mile 20, we’re on a solid 9:30 or so per mile pace, with very minor deviation. It’s felt like a very good, comfortable pace for some time. But now, with the sun shining, and heat radiating off the ground, it’s a bit harder going. We pick up the effort for the next few miles, although our pace for miles 22 and 23 are right on track with the previous 21 miles. It’s tougher going now, owing to the fact that the bike path is narrow and a bit uneven, and we’re passing lots and lots of runners who have run out of steam. Leann has drawn the tougher duty on this section of the race, needing to weave more than I do to avoid the people we’re passing. This stuff takes concentration! We’re not talking much, just working on getting to the finish.<br /><br />For a while now, people have been shouting out “Go 4-6-7!” as we pass them. I finally glance over at my running partner and confirm that it’s her bib number. Nobody yells “Go 2-4-3-5!” (my bib number), and I wonder (not for the first time) if maybe I really shouldn’t put my name on my shirt one of these days.<br /><br />We hit splits for mile 23 (9:36), and Leann calls for mercy. Same effort + tougher conditions (heat, humidity, dodging people) = roughly the same pace. We back off the pace almost imperceptibly (mile 24 is 9:44), and it helps us both recover a little. But now we can almost smell that finish line. We are churning along through mile 25 (9:09 – at this point, our second fastest mile of the day), and then somehow we pour it on for mile 26. This finish is convoluted – we scoped it out yesterday – the race course does a big u-turn at the end, and sends us from the asphalt bike path onto a wooden boardwalk (briefly, thank God), then across some grass, and then onto a concrete path for the finish. As we hit the wood (my huge fear – long story from a million years ago: falling on a wooden boardwalk, splitting my chin, winding up in an emergency room, etc.), we see the 26 mile mark, and we both hit our split buttons: 8:56, our fastest mile of the day. Leann manages to grunt out “stupid”, and from deep recess in my brain, I respond with “Stupid is as stupid does”. But at least no hospital visit today. So much for an easy training run. We’re both now racing for the finish – not really racing each other, or even the clock, but making that plunge for the line. How can you not plunge for the line? People are calling out “go blue!”, and I realize that they are cheering for both of us, since we are – completely unwittingly – dressed almost identically. We look like the freaking Bobbsey Twins, if you get right down to it. Why did it take 26 miles for me to realize this?<br /><br />The finish line finally comes into sight after all these last minute twists and turns, and we lunge across it. More people yell “go 4-6-7!” If this race were to go much longer, I might get an inferiority complex! As it is, I’ll discover, through our finishing times and placement as well as the finish line photos, that Leann has the better finish line surge – she clearly bested me at the line. But I’m quite thrilled with a time of 4:07:21, which is far faster than I imagined running today. It’s now sunny and warm, and my marathon partner and I can finally enjoy the beautiful day that it’s become.<br /><br />The finish of the Vermont City Marathon is, amazingly large and crowded. The organizers put on a fine spread for the full marathoners (and they police the food tent so that the relay runners only have access to a smaller array of goodies). Leann and I head through the line, and I grab a little of almost everything – the sweetest orange slices ever, cookies, cereal bars, Dixie cups of chex mix, Vermont cheddar cheese in yet another Dixie cup – oh, yum!, and, of course, more Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. It almost pains me that we have a late lunch planned down the road from Burlington – the spread is among the best I’ve ever seen at a marathon finish.<br /><br />But we do have more sight-seeing and partying to do, so we take the shuttle back to our hotel. After some quick showers, we head down the road to Waterbury and a great little brewpub, “The Alchemist”. A couple of friends of mine – people I used to work with in New Hampshire – live in Vermont now, and we meet them for some great brews and food while catching up. The scenery along the way there and back is everything you might wish for Vermont: mountains all around, a road that follows a winding river, picturesque villages and buildings, and green everywhere. (Don’t ask about the whale tails sculpture.) It’s still light and pleasant when we get back to Burlington, so we park the car downtown and take a stroll along the streets that we ran on earlier today. Naturally, we find ourselves at the (we believe original) Ben & Jerry’s shop for a “nightcap”, and we peek in some storefronts as we enjoy our second helping of ice cream for the day. Travel, I think to myself, to somewhere as wonderful as Vermont, is quite delightful.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-48725688751494062072009-06-21T19:51:00.001-07:002009-06-21T21:29:11.576-07:00Boston 2009: the year of cold handsWhat can you say about a race that you’ve run seven times previously? That you love the thing? That it makes you crazy? That the travel is difficult, and expensive, and always worrisome? That the course itself is very challenging, and it can kick your butt, but that the fans are like no other fans in the world? That on either end of the 26.2 miles – either in Hopkinton (town motto: “where it all begins”) on race morning, or along Boylston Street at the end – and for every step along the way, it’s a celebration of running?<br /><br />That’s how Mick described my addiction to this race a year ago, when I was puzzling over my crazy compulsion to come back to Boston year after year. “It’s a runners’ festival”, he said, and I immediately knew he was right. It’s like gaining membership to one of the greatest running clubs in the world, and then being invited back year after year. Even after seven – now eight - years of running the Boston Marathon, I can still barely believe my good fortune each year when I get my confirmation card in the mail.<br /><br />It was easy to play mental games in those early years. I ran my first Boston in April 2002 in a time of 4:00:55 after just squeaking in with a qualifying time of 3:55:59. To be clear: that qualifier left not a second to spare. Early that year, I broke a rib (skiing, Beaver Creek, steep bumps) in the critical stages of my Boston training, and wasn’t at all sure I could even make it to “the show”. I startled myself with that performance – I went out and ran a comfortable pace on a reputedly tough course, with sub-optimal training – and yet I still ran the second fastest marathon of my (then very short) marathoning career. Lucky for me, the next year Boston changed qualifying standards, easing my previous 3:55 requirement to 4:00, so I had, once again, just squeaked in. Barely able to believe my good fortune, I vowed to go back to Boston to vindicate myself and shave off a mere 56 seconds so that I could say I had run Boston “sub-4”. Why did I choose that goal? Who knows. It was an easy number to quantify, I guess. And, I think, in retrospect, one that seemed imminently doable at the time.<br /><br />But it turned out not to be quite so easy. The next three years were all hot, and I don’t do so well on hot days. I suffered through 2003 and 2004 in 4:16:41 and 4:29:34, and felt like death warmed over at the end of each race. It seemed so wrong, so unfair, to be training harder each year, and yet to be going backwards in the final standings. The third hot year – 2005 – I managed my race much better, but still finished in a disappointing 4:04:00. The consolation prize that year was the fact of my highest age-group placing to date. Still, it wasn’t sub-4.<br /><br />2006 looked like the year it would happen; the weather was almost picture perfect – by marathoners’ standards, anyway. Cool and cloudy all the way. My training was solid. But it just wasn’t my day, and I knew it all the way, so when I crossed the finish line that year, I felt like I had failed. That I had run a time identical to the previous year (4:04:00) was no consolation. I should have been much, much faster!<br /><br />The next year, 2007, was the year that Boston almost didn’t happen, owing to a Nor’easter that rampaged in New England during marathon week. This was also my first Boston without Mick. Given the cold, wet conditions, and the absence of my biggest cheerleader, I had low expectations for the day. So, of course, dear reader, you see the punch line before I can even type it: I ran a breakthrough Boston time of 3:57:25. Finally. I had my sub-4 at Boston. Time to retire from the race.<br /><br />But, of course, with addiction, there is always a reason to have just one more go at it, one more excuse to repeat the experience. In 2008, I had serious health issues, and thought I might have to retire from running altogether, or, at the very least, retire from marathons. So, I justified to myself that I needed to return to Boston “just one more time”. It was, I told my friends and family, my “Boston Swan Song”. I would carry my camera and capture photos of every landmark along the way that had come to represent the Boston experience to me. I would stop and smell the flowers. I would have a beer on Heartbreak Hill. I would high five every kid along the route, and kiss the girls at Wellesley. Yes, I did all this, and ran my slowest Boston to date (4:38:59), and followed it all up with an emergency appendectomy back in Denver a day or so later.<br /><br />Ever in search of a new reason to return to the Runners Festival, in 2009 I settled on one that would – possibly, with luck and some hard work – serve me for the next three years: a goal to run Boston ten times in a row. After all, 2008 marked my seventh consecutive, so I just need three more. At the St. George Marathon in October 2008, I ran a qualifying time for Boston 2010. Now the pressure hit: to be able to show up healthy enough to finish a marathon on April 20th, and then, later in 2009, to run just one more qualifying time. If all goes well, I won’t even have to think about a new raison d’etre until sometime after April 2011.<br /><br />And so, in April 2009, I board a flight headed eastward. We marathoners typically fret over the race day forecasts; this time around, I find myself in the unusual position of fretting over the local forecast. Our mild spring has turned, on the eve of my departure for Beantown, into a veritable winter wonderland, with nothing short of a blizzard in the forecast for my travel day. Being a Nervous Nellie about travel and connections and such, I consider, for a short time, heading to the airport on Friday afternoon in hopes of getting out of town a bit early, but it’s just not gonna happen: I can’t get my act together that quickly. Lucky for me, that works out just fine. I time my Saturday morning drive to the airport earlier than normal, and when I get there, it seems that all systems are go. The plane I’m on – the one that takes off eastward only a few minutes late – is full of people who sat on the tarmac for hours and hours Friday night, only to be turned back because of weather and crew schedules. Happily, I land in Boston (with an easy connection through LaGuardia) right on time late Saturday afternoon.<br /><br />It turns out that this is to be the weekend of easy connections – airline and otherwise. While negotiating the connection at LaGuardia (not a simple one, requiring a shuttle bus ride and a second trip through security), I meet up with another Boston-bound runner, a woman from Denver. It’s my good fortune to make a friend simply by offering to share the complex connection experience with her, and we exchange contact information for potential races back in Colorado after this weekend. Once on the ground in Boston, I have one of those six-degrees-of-separation experiences that can make you become a true believer if you’re not already so inclined: folks from Chattanooga (obviously in town for the marathon) that I meet on the T turn out to be friends with Ian (No Twitch), one of my Taper Madness buddies. Even better, they know my hotel at Kenmore Square, and, once off the T, they point me in the right direction. It all seems easy and familiar and very, very homey.<br /><br />It’s too late at my arrival on Saturday for me to accomplish much other than a quick walk to a grocery store for some supplies. My hotel room does, quite accidentally, look out over Fenway Park. Although I’m not a huge baseball fan, there’s something about the energy of the Saturday night game that is just undeniable, so I open my curtains and take a few photos of the bright lights of the stadium. One thing is clear: I’m in Boston again!<br /><br />Sunday is all about friends and connections. Just as it should be. My good friend Nan drives down from Maine to share brunch with me, and to fill me in on her plans to enter a PhD program in the fall. Nan drops me off at the Hynes Center so that I can hit the race packet pick-up and expo. I’m able to coordinate this with Michele (1L) and her friend Jody, so the three of us have a successful (read: spend lots of money) shopping experience (of course, all – ahem – essential running gear). (Note to self: shopping at an expo with like-minded friends is not so easy on the credit card.) The day passes in a blur of activity. Michele and I practically walk right into Paul (Stihl Going) as we make our way back to the hotel after our expo experience; Paul and his friends are just leaving the Sunday afternoon Red Sox game, and are passing directly in front of our hotel.<br /><br />Sunday night finds us at a pasta dinner that Michele has arranged, another Taper Madness event, along with a few other running friends we’ve all collected along the way. It’s my first chance to meet Betsy and Matt, and another chance to see Beth, as well as the rest of the crew. The pasta is great, the shared wine is unexpected and tasty (thank you Betsy for ordering!), and the company is, as expected, exhilarating. But we all have a race to run Monday morning, so the evening ends early, and Michele and I head back to our hotel, the Buckminster.<br /><br />Michele – a native of Natick (the fourth town along the Boston Marathon course) – has run the race countless times, but has never taken part in the downtown Boston experience with the requisite yellow school bus ride out to Hopkinton and the hours in Athletes’ Village there. So this year, she has joined me at the Buckminster, and together we make our plans for race day morning. This Sunday night, we both assemble our gear for the morning. Everything is going just fine, with only one problem: I can’t find my gloves for race morning. I’m certain that I packed them; in fact, I can actually see myself pulling them out of the basket in my bedroom back in Denver, and dropping them into my suitcase. Then where the heck are they? I empty my suitcase for an umpteenth time, doublecheck the dresser drawers in the hotel, but they are just plain missing. Dang. The expo is long since closed, so that’s not an option. Dang again.<br /><br />On race morning, Michele and I stop at the Dunkin Donuts just a few steps down from the hotel for giant cups of joe to go, and then hoof it to Boston Commons to catch our bus. It’s cold – a good thing on race morning. But I’m annoyed that I have no gloves. I try to keep my hands warm around the big coffee cup, but it’s too well insulated, so it’s a poor provider of warmth. By now, Jody has joined us, and we start the long wait for buses. I watch all the people around us, envious of the gloves that everyone seems to be wearing. Everyone, that is, except me.<br /><br />Eventually we make it onto a bus, and then out to Hopkinton and Athletes’ Village. Have I mentioned that I’m nervous before a race? Well, yeah. That, combined with my seven years experience at this race, makes me anxious to get to the start line as early as I can. We spend a little time in the village, have lots of photos taken together, and then I dump my extra clothes at the baggage bus, wish Michele and Jody good luck, and head up to my corral. Have I mentioned that it’s (blissfully) cold this morning? Well, yeah. That fact, if it holds, might make this a great race. If only I had gloves – I would be extremely happy!<br /><br />The race gets underway, and then I’m on autopilot. This all feels so familiar – in a very good way. Still, it has an aura, one of the ultimate running event. I can’t quite believe my good fortune to be here yet again. Every year, as we start to run this stretch out of Hopkinton, I feel like a bit of an imposter. Every year, as we run this stretch, the crowds on the side of the road make me feel welcome and at home.<br /><br />My expectations for the day are not really even formed as we start running; what do I want out of this day? Well, hopefully, to run somewhat faster than last year, when I took my time and made a photo journal of the course. Also, hopefully, to run a bit faster than my last several marathons, which have all been pathetically slow, but each one has been just a bit faster than the last. Finally, as always, I just want to have a good marathon day – which means I pray to not have a death march at the finish, and to finish strong. That might not seem so much to ask, but – and trust me on this – anyone who has ever run a marathon can attest to the fact that it’s huge.<br /><br />Somehow, I end up on the left hand side of the road coming out of Hopkinton, right in the middle of the crowd. That has never happened before, and it screws up my ritual of high-fiving all the folks who line the road on the right hand side of the road there. Rather than darting across the road, I just settle in and run along. It is going to be, I’m already recognizing, one of those days where the race just happens on its own.<br /><br />There is a beeper going off somewhere near me, and I figure that somebody has configured a watch or heart rate monitor to sound at some interval. There is so much noise at first – the announcers, the crowds, the people around me – that you can’t hear it clearly. But once we get out of the crowded start area, I hear it more definitively. It’s really annoying. The noise seems to come from directly behind me, and I keep expecting the owner of the noise to pass me along this stretch, and then the annoyance will end. But other then a few brief silent interludes, it keeps sounding. So very annoying.<br /><br />The first mile marker comes up, and I’m pleased to see a time of 9:07 on my new Polar watch. My old trusty Timex died on the weekend of the Little Rock Marathon, and I thought it just needed a new battery. By the time I replaced the battery and realized that the entire watch was kaput, not just the battery, it was too late to get a replacement from Timex in time for Boston. So the replacement I bought just last week is a Polar watch (largely because of the heart rate monitor), but I haven’t really had time to get to know it at all yet. I consider myself lucky to have even gotten the thing configured with the HRM today, and I feel good that I can take a split with it.<br /><br />Other than that incessant beeping that seems to be coming from a source near me, my only other complaint in the opening mile of this race is the fact that my hands are cold. I’ve decided to wear a long-sleeved technical shirt, figuring that I can take it off and tie it around my waist later when (and if) it warms up. But my hands are still freezing. I look at the gloves that people have started to discard along the way, and have fleeting thoughts of stopping to pick up a pair to wear for a mile or two. But thoughts of my own perpetually runny nose and how I handle it with my own gloves prevent me from doing anything quite so foolish. I figure that I will just deal with the cold hand syndrome.<br /><br />It’s not until midway in my second mile that I have a revelation: the annoying beeping is coming from my own watch. Oh crud!!! How in the world am I supposed to deal with that for 24+ more miles? I think that I should have spent some more time with the Polar manual before wearing it today. But I’m afraid of screwing up my splits for the day, so I dare not to press any buttons on the watch. I try to accept that I just have to live with the never-ending beeping. Lord, help me through this race! I pray that the people around me don’t find this nearly as annoying as it is to me.<br /><br />For no reason in particular, I veer to the left of the course today. I feel like someone on a train, just taking in the scenery. The mile markers go by rhythmically; after the first mile, my next few splits are 8:59, 9:00, and 9:08. These times are far better than my previous four marathons this year. What makes it particularly sweet is that I don’t feel like I’m working at all, and my heart rate is staying nice and low. What a treat.<br /><br />But really, today I’m more concerned with my splits every 5k along this course than I am about each mile. Boston has timing mats at every 5k mark along the course, and they post your time on the BAA website in real time as you cross each mat. My new beau, The Professor, is also a marathoner, so he knows the Boston drill. He has, for the last several weeks, been telling me that he will be “watching” me run this race by sitting at his desk and watching my 5k splits as they are posted. Vainly, I want to run nice even splits. When I cross the first 5k mat in 28:01, I know that I’ve started too quickly; it’s just not going to be possible to maintain that kind of pace on this rolling course, especially with those hills in the last half of the run.<br /><br />The watch beeping continues. I finally decide to try to address it, so I start pressing buttons on the Polar. I never figure out how to turn off the damn beeping, but I do discover lots of interesting information, just not the controls I’m looking for. I’m still worried about screwing up my splits, so I finally give up on my quest. Besides, by now I’m starting to tune out the beeping. The headwind, in any case, is carrying the sound somewhere far to the west of the race course.<br /><br />The 10k mat arrives, and I pass it in 57:23, which makes for a net time of 29:22 for this 5k. I think of The Professor, and wonder what he will make of the fact that I’ve slowed by more than a minute. But, quite honestly, I’m still fairly pleased with my splits, since these middling miles are always the toughest for me on this tough Boston course. Today, I do not feel left behind on the uphill surges quite as much as I normally do. Today, my heart rate is staying nice and low, and I’m feeling fine. Except, of course, for the fact that my hands are still cold. I still have not given in to the temptation to stoop down and pick up a pair of discarded gloves. But I can’t say it hasn’t been a temptation.<br /><br />In every marathon, there are little goals or markers along the way that you look forward to. These goals make the miles melt away. Today, one of my markers is Michele’s mom. Michele has provided a description of her mom, and precisely where she will be, just outside of Natick at the “Entering Wellesley” sign, on the left hand side of the road. Maybe I’m running on this side of the road all day in anticipation of seeing her. Moments after I see the Wellesley sign, I see a woman who meets Michele’s description to a “T”: black jacket, short dark hair, old-fashioned webbed lawn chair. I make eye contact from a little distance, and the woman smiles at me. I smile back, and run directly up to her. “Hi!” I say. “Are you Michele’s mom?” The woman gives me a startled look, then shakes her head, saying no. Oops! And I was so certain. Ah well. I can practically hear the Wellesley women from here. It occurs to me that the purpose of a marker is to give you a place to run towards, and it doesn’t really matter all that much beyond that.<br /><br />I’m on autopilot now, just enjoying the day. I enjoy the screaming of the Wellesley crowd, and than I watch guys get kisses from the Wellesley women. I love that last downhill stretch after the college into the town of Wellesley, and check my time at the halfway point: 2:03:22. This is, by far, my fastest marathon of the year, and also my most unexpected. I feel good; my heart rate is in check, and the day is still cool. What more could I ask for?<br /><br />Well, I might ask for gloves, but that seems a bit out of the question. We have picked up a pretty substantial headwind, but my only complaint about that is the fact that my hands are still cold. I’m kicking myself for not wearing a pair of socks on my hands.<br /><br />My 5k splits have settled into a consistent pattern. At 15k I clock a net 29:42, and at 20k 20:53. I think about The Professor “watching” me, and it’s like having a camera on my shoulder. My 25k mark is a net of 29:41, and I feel happy that I’ve stayed so consistent throughout.<br /><br />But now I’m screaming down the hill into Newton and the 16 mile mark, always my most emotional place on the course. For my first 5 Bostons, this is the point where Mick would find me on the course. I had grown so accustomed to having this place to look forward to that I started to take it for granted. But two years ago, when he was first running for mayor, he did not come to Beantown with me. Last year – since I felt so lousy anyway, and he had a better offer in France for the same weekend – I had no expectations that he would be with me. Today, The Professor aside, there is nothing that I’d like to see more than his tall lanky body, wearing his dorky sunglasses and (no doubt) a goofy cap, waiting for me at the bottom of the hill here – or on the start of the climb that leads up and over the freeway, out of Newton. But, of course, that is a ship that has sailed. There is no Mick. Just a tough stretch in a tough marathon course.<br /><br />But this is perhaps my favorite part of the Boston course, and perhaps why I keep coming back here, wanting to get it right. The uphill stretch starts here, and it’s a measure of your readiness for the race: how you handle these hills. People who started far in front of me, people who went screaming past me on the downhills, people who have the speed but not the guts: this is where I start to pass them. This is where they start to walk. This is where I’ve learned to start digging deep.<br /><br />Perhaps that’s what I love about this race: that you are required to dig deep for five tough miles, but that you are rewarded far out of proportion in this stretch. The people who line the race route in Newton pay you back in spades for bothering to be out here today. It’s also here, at mile 20, that I see Beth – my second marker along the course. Today, Beth comes out and jogs up hill with me, and updates me on my fellow Tapir runners. Paul went by, she says, not having a great day. Michele is up ahead of me, as is Bill Rodgers – but Bill Rodgers is not so far ahead of me as is Michele. Running with her gives me a boost, and then she peels off.<br /><br />I hit the 30k mark with a split of 30:56, which is, in my estimation, not bad for an uphill stretch. I think The Professor should be pleased when he sees that my 35k split is 30:49. Even though I’ve slowed from the start, anyone who knows this course will recognize that my splits are remarkably even. I’m starting to really look forward to talking with him about this race, especially since, at this point – cresting Heartbreak Hill and heading into the last 7k of the race, most of which is downhill – I’m feeling really strong. This is why we run these races – to have these incredible last 10k experiences. Today is the first time I’ve had one of these days in a long time. Today is the first time I’ve felt like I’m racing towards the finish in over a year.<br /><br />People have started to encourage me with a cry of “Go Pink!” on account of the fact that I’m still wearing my long sleeved very pink shirt. I love it. I remember, out of nowhere, that I had planned to put my name on my shirt one of these days, but completely forgot today. Ah well. My 40k split is 28:42, which is the second fastest of the day, and I’m ecstatic. The Professor has got to love that!<br /><br />Everything about this race is familiar, and yet each time I run it, it’s all new. Today I see the stretch past Fenway in a new way; I’ve been walking here these last few days. We run directly in front of my hotel, and despite my joking ahead of time, I’m not at all tempted to stop early. I can taste this day coming together, can taste this finish that I had no reason to even hope for. As the miles have melted away, I’ve tried to do the mental math, and a new goal has gradually planted itself in my brain: to run sub 4:10.<br /><br />Now, that number has no particular significance, just any old number drawn out of a hat. Only that number is faster than anything I’ve run in some time now, and suddenly it’s taken on a significant meaning to me. It’s what makes me pick up the pace a bit (my last five miles are not my fastest of the day, but pretty close to it), and to run with all my heart for the finish line. It’s what makes me feel like I’ve just conquered Everest when I cross that line in 4:09:39. Success. It’s like the hokey motivational poster. This is what success looks like. It’s not a PR, or a BQ, or even one of my fastest races. But it is – by far – the best effort I could put together today. And I’m extremely happy with that.<br /><br />But it’s chilly (good for racing, bad for standing around at the finish), so I get my bag from the bus, put on some warmer clothes, and start the walk back to my hotel. I call The Professor as I walk, imagining that he will be, if not impressed, at least pleased with my 5k splits. “Oh, are you done already?” he says. “I’ve been so busy at work that I forgot to look at your splits.” Ah, so that’s how this will go. But I don’t let this get to me – not yet, I can’t let anything get in the way of this good feeling. It was a good marathon. It’s a good day.<br /><br />Michele and I get back to the Buckminster at almost exactly the same time (both she and Jody have had very good days, too), and we head out shortly (after quick showers) to meet up with the rest of the Tapir group. After a missed cue or two, we find Paul at the Cheers bar, and have a great time over beers and burgers. It’s cool and rainy when we leave the bar, and my legs are toast from all the running and now all of tonight’s walking. But the T stations along the race route are still closed, so we’re consigned to walking; we use this as an excuse to stop for ice cream on our way back to the hotel.<br /><br />Michele has an early flight in the morning, so she’s up and out of the hotel while I’m still (mostly) asleep. But I need to get moving, too, so I get up shortly after she takes off, and shower and pack up my stuff. It’s always surprising how scattered my stuff can be around a hotel room after such a short time. I double check the closet, the bathroom, the dresser drawers. Certain that I have everything packed, I pick my suitcase off the floor as I put on my coat. There’s a dark blob on the carpet. I know, even as I bend down to check it out, what I’m going to find: my gloves. These will be so nice to have for the next race.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-35395606038769407922009-06-10T22:32:00.000-07:002009-06-10T22:33:54.320-07:00Closing doors (Myrtle Beach and Little Rock Marathons)Back in 2007, when I started my tour of marathons in the south, I had high expectations. I had been running pretty well – in fact I had just run my PR the previous December in Tucson (that’s the south, too, right?). So I signed up for the inaugural ING Georgia Marathon. But race day turned out to be hot and humid, the race was poorly organized (water and Powerade were lacking on the course), and the hills were just brutal. It was a death march. Later that year, in December, I went to Rocket City in Huntsville, AL, and encountered another warm and humid day. And another death march. I thought it impossible to have a three-peat, but on January 3rd of this year, I ran the MS Blues Marathon, in Jackson, MS, on yet another warm, muggy day, with more brutal hills. You guessed it: yet another death march.<br /><br />A sane person might have suffered through the latter miles of the MS Blues race and thought “I’ll never run in the south again”. But not me. I thought, “I just want to finish off this southern tier of states, so I’m gonna do the rest of them all as quickly as possible!” You know the definition of insanity? Yeah. Me.<br /><br />So instead of going home and licking my wounds, I went home and got busy making plans. First, to run the Mardi Gras Marathon in New Orleans at the first of February, following that up with Myrtle Beach in South Carolina on February 14th, and finally, capping the South by running the Little Rock Marathon on March 15th. I’ve told you about the Mardi Gras Marathon – the first of my southern marathons that was not a death march – it was actually a great experience, all thanks to Leann. But still, NOLA was warm and humid by the end of our run, and I was still happily anticipating closing the door on the South after the next two runs.<br /><br />I had not anticipated that another door would be closing hard behind me at the same time: that Mick and I would split. As Dan Fogelberg said, “Somehow I just didn’t see it was coming, it took me by surprise”.<br /><br /><strong>Myrtle Beach Marathon</strong><br /><br />On the night before I fly to the east coast for the Myrtle Beach Marathon, I get a call from Mick’s sister. She asks me to have him call her when he gets to my place. What the heck? He hasn’t mentioned anything to me about coming to Denver tonight. But, then again, he often shows up with little notice - but rarely with no notice at all. Tonight, I can’t reach him on his phone, so I sleep uneasily, expecting to hear the key in the lock, and to have him wake me. But he never shows up. I get up on schedule, and head to the airport, a little uneasy about the entire experience. Over the course of the next several hours, I think about how little Mick and I have seen each other lately; well, to be brutally honest, we’ve seen less and less of each other since he was elected mayor nearly two years ago. I chalk it up to busy schedules, conflicting paths in life, and I think that once I get done with all these marathons and he gets done with the mayor gig in Aspen we’ll be able to spend more time together. Somewhere along my travels, Mick and I connect by phone, and it seems all the uneasiness was for naught, and everything seems normal again. Once I land in Charleston, I have some driving to do to get to Myrtle Beach. I forget all about my earlier worries, and start getting my mind set to run a marathon the next morning.<br /><br />It’s a busy couple of days in Myrtle Beach. I’m rooming with Michele and Melissa (“M&M”), and when I get to our hotel suite, which looks out over the Atlantic Ocean, I’m amazed at how these two friends seem exactly like the Bobbsey Twins, down to their matching necklaces and almost identical green sweaters. How is it that I never noticed this before – that they are twins in more than spirit? My arrival in Myrtle Beach is late afternoon, though, and soon we all head out for a pre-race dinner with fellow Tapir Chuck and his wife Allison. I met this lovely couple a year and a half ago in North Carolina, and it’s a delight to see them again. They have chosen a great little local place with exceptional Italian food. We eat, we catch up, we laugh, we talk about marathons and all things running. It’s a great evening. The perfect cap to the night is the stop we (M&M and I) make at the local supermarket to get ice cream for dessert back at the hotel.<br /><br />Race morning arrives, and we’re all relieved that it’s not raining, since rain has been in the forecast until sometime in the last 24 hours. M&M and I get to the race start together, and when the race start sounds, Melissa takes off like the rabbit that she is. Michele is intent on running this one easy, so we end up running together, at least for the first many miles. This is a treat for me, since it means she’s slowed down to run my pace – well under her capability. Soon I see Larry Macon – a 50-stater who just set the Guinness record for most marathons run in a year, and whom I met in Mississippi – and I call out to him. Michele and Larry and I run together for awhile, and it feels like we’re the pied pipers of this race – our little entourage grows and grows, and we all talk and laugh; the first two miles of the race go by in the blink of an eye. At some point in the first mile, fellow Tapir Chuck passes us, and we call out to him. He slows to chat with our little group briefly, then we wish him well, and he’s gone.<br /><br />We leave Larry behind after a couple of miles, and the group breaks up, but then reforms itself. These first several miles just melt away. A few miles after we leave Larry, we hook up with a couple of younger women from Michele’s home Atlanta area, and we all run together for a while. By the time that we leave these two young women, we’re approaching mile 7. Mile 7! It’s come up so quickly that it hardly feels like we’re in a race!<br /><br />This stretch reminds me exactly of why I’m here. This is southern beach city at its best (or worst, depending on your point of view). On our left are tall hotels fronting the beachfront; on our right is a non-stop promenade of beachside businesses: t-shirt shops, bikini stores, tattoo parlors, game and video arcades. You can smell the suntan oil in the air – even on this slightly gloomy February day – and I am transported back to Daytona Beach on a spring break trip in the late 1970s. This is everything I wanted for a beach marathon.<br /><br />Somewhere around mile 8, the course (a figure 8 design) doubles back on itself, and we cross a chip timing mat. We leave the beach road and run along a street with more shops, fewer beachside businesses, and lots more breakfast restaurants advertising cheap eats. Michele has left me in her wake, and it might be lonely running if not for the half-marathoner who falls into step next to me. My 50 States singlet has attracted Charmaine’s attention, so I have a running partner for most of the rest of this first half of the effort. We chat about everything under the sun – running and life and families and whatever women find to talk about. The good news is that the rest of the first half passes quickly. The bad news is that once Charmaine and the rest of the half marathoners part ways from us full marathoners, it gets lonely very quickly.<br /><br />Thank heavens for the 50 States singlet. People continue to approach me and talk to me for the next several miles. Now we’re heading north along the same road that we started out on today (our original journey on this road went southward). I like this stretch of road. The Daytona-like high rises and t-shirt shops give way to a more gentrified beachfront. At first there are fancier hotels, set back further from the road, and then we hit the residential neighborhood. There are beach access points along this stretch of road, and we can now hear the surf. In fact, as the tall buildings give way to private homes and apartments and condos, we have a much better view of the ocean. I think to myself, “this view alone was worth the trip”. I mentally make a note to come back here later for a walk on the beach.<br /><br />But the weather is starting to play havoc on my plans for the day. As in all of my Southern death marches – even though the temperature is mild today – I’m fading in the second half. Chuck had talked about coming back on the course after he finished the half, and I’ve been looking for him between miles 18 and 20, but as a light rain starts to fall, I realize that a rational human being would not stay out in this weather after racing 13+ miles. The crowds along the side of the road are, quite logically, thinning. It’s starting to get very wet out here.<br /><br />Around mile 20, the course moves off the coast, and now we get the triple whammy: a flat and fairly boring inland road, driving rain, and the final six miles of a marathon. I tell myself that this is far better than a death march in 80-some degrees and high humidity, but it’s still a mental game to get to the finish. With less than a mile to go, I catch up with two women running together, one wearing a t-shirt with “My First Full Marathon!” emblazoned on the back. She’s clearly younger than me, with much wider hips, and my competitive spirit is engaged. It’s also clear that the friend she’s running with is a good cheerleader, getting crowd support for the first-timer. I decide I can’t let this woman cross the finish line in front of me.<br /><br />So I pick up the pace, and target this duo. I close in and pass them with about a half mile to go. Aha! I think. I’ve got it in the bag! But I’ve timed my surge poorly, too early. It doesn’t help that this stretch of roadway is nice asphalt where the rain has pooled, and I can’t seem to avoid the puddles, and now my feet are soaking. The first-timer and her cheerleader stage a surge of their own, and they pull in front of me as we race through the chutes to the finish line. Yet another blow in the south, and yet another reason to try to get the heck out of Dodge as quickly as I can. But my finish time – 4:29:08 – doesn’t suck as badly as my last few finish times, so I can’t complain.<br /><br />It’s wet and not getting any drier as I navigate the finish area. No M&M, and we haven’t really talked about what to do post-race, especially in the event of inclement weather. Thankfully, the race organizers give out rain ponchos at the finish. Unfortunately, the ponchos can’t keep me from starting to chill – wet feet and all – almost immediately. When I can’t find M&M, I check the finisher’s board and see that both of them have completely blown away their sandbagging estimates for the day, so I’m confident that they’re okay. I head for the bus and our nice, dry hotel.<br /><br />M&M have, it turns out, taken refuge in the massage tent, and they arrive back at the hotel shortly after I do. The rest of the day goes by in a blur – the heavenly hot showers, the hugely satisfying southern meal, the evening spent in front of the tube, watching some inane movie with good friends, finishing off the ice cream.<br /><br />Sunday morning comes early, and I drop off M&M at the Myrtle Beach airport before heading out on the two hour drive back down to Charleston. As we approach the MB airport, we see scads of cyclists on the road, and I realize now that the race organizers pack the weekend full of events: today is the bike race. I think that Mick might have liked to have come to this race, and that we should have planned accordingly and brought our bikes along to ride today. But that didn’t happen, so I make do by calling him and chatting a bit about the race and South Carolina. At any rate, he’s at a bike camp in California, so it wouldn’t have worked out – at least, not this year. I think to myself, “we’ll come back and do this event together some day”. And then I head down to Charleston and the long flight back to Denver.<br /><br /><strong>Little Rock Marathon<br /></strong><br />Little did I know, on leaving Myrtle Beach, and mentally making plans for another bike trip with Mick, that he was making plans of his own….and that his plans didn’t include me. Barely two weeks after I get back from Myrtle Beach, he tells me that our eight year relationship is over. How could I not see something so momentous coming? The news is devastating. I feel like the world is ending, and I don’t know if I can handle this.<br /><br />But a good friend tells me to “get back out there” immediately, and recommends signing up for eHarmony. So I sign up, and immediately regret the action. Ugh! “Matches!” Matches that have absolutely nothing at all to do with me – or so it seems. It all seems like a terrible idea, and I contemplate closing my account after just a day or two. But then after just a couple of days, eHarmony delivers a match that seems promising. This new guy – a professor - seems to feel likewise, and we quickly start chatting on line. The night before I leave to fly to Little Rock for the marathon there, The Professor calls me for the first time, and we talk for hours. It all feels a little surreal, and a bit too good to be true. I’ve gone from utter devastation to a not-so-cautious hope in just a matter of weeks. Given this whirlwind, leaving Denver to run yet another marathon – the last of my southern states – seems the most sane thing in the world.<br /><br />Little Rock is, thankfully, just a single flight away (on a small regional jet) from Denver so I don’t have to worry about connections, and leave at a sensible hour on Saturday morning (for a Sunday a.m. race). My seatmate – a native of Little Rock - points out that General Wesley Clark is sitting just a few rows behind us. Until this moment, I’ve completely forgotten about the political aspect of Little Rock. But that’s all about to change.<br /><br />After landing in Little Rock, I get on the hotel shuttle that will take me to the Peabody Hotel. The Peabody is the host hotel, and is located within a short walk of the marathon starting line. The shuttle is full of other marathoners, and we start chatting in the way that runners always do, about the race tomorrow and running in general, and other marathons we’ve completed or plan to run. Everyone is also buzzing with the General Wesley Clark sighting, and then we are interrupted by a very chatty – and informative – shuttle driver. Do y’all know, he asks, that the vice president is staying with us at the Peabody tonight? Uh, no. Somebody asks, do you mean <em>the</em> Vice President – Joe Biden? Yep, one and the same. There is, it seems, some meeting scheduled at the hotel at which Mr. Biden will be the featured speaker. And that means that the hotel will be abuzz with energy….and it will be swarming with Secret Service. Ah, no wonder General Clark was headed to Little Rock. Isn’t everyone of import going to Little Rock today?<br /><br />Well, the one person of import who is not in Little Rock today is Melissa. Melissa and I had planned this marathon together many months ago, but that was long before her son Cole’s soccer team had the Cindarella tournament of their young lives. So instead of bagging another state in her 50 state marathon quest, Melissa is filling her role as a soccer mom in Florida. It’s as it should be. Before getting on the plane to come to Little Rock, I was a little sad that I’d be on my own, especially after my own emotional storm of the last couple of weeks. But Little Rock has taken care of that….nothing about this weekend is set up to leave me feeling lonely in the least.<br /><br />For one thing, it’s hard to feel lonely when you’re stuck in the hotel lobby for hours and hours, waiting for the Secret Service to allow us access to our rooms. The lobby is a happening place! The contrast is remarkable: runners and political players. We runners are all dressed in jeans and t-shirts (it’s fun to see the wide variety of events represented by the t-shirts) and running shoes; the political players – arriving for the formal dinner – are all decked out to the nines – tuxes and evening gowns and lots of bling. And then, as if the pandemonium in the hotel lobby is not enough, the famous Peabody Hotel Duck Walk begins, with Bart Yasso (of Runners World) as the honorary duck master.<br /><br />The duck walk is an old tradition at the Peabody hotels. The legend involves a few southern men, a failed hunting trip, and plenty of alcohol. The duck walk itself is mostly hype and showmanship, but it’s still fun to watch the ducks as they exit the indoor fountain where they while away their days and waddle off on a red carpet to the elevator that will take them to their evening nesting spot up on the top of the hotel.<br /><br />After the duck walk, I hook up with Karin (runnershnog) and Ken for dinner, and they very graciously treat me to pizza at Gusanos. It’s always fun – and illuminating – to meet TMers in person. Karin is running the marathon in the morning, and Ken (her husband) is her biggest cheerleader and fan. I love hearing about their work - they are both PhDs and professors/researchers (I think there is a theme growing in my life – apparently I like hanging out with highly educated people!), and they both clearly love what they do. Ken is chatty and engaging, and he loves to give props to Karin. Karin surprises me – she is much quieter – maybe even a little shy - than her written persona would have me expect. They are a delightful couple, clearly very supportive of one another. Karin is planning to run quite a bit faster than me on Sunday, so after we finish the pizza, we wish each other luck, and we head off to our respective hotel rooms.<br /><br />It’s late when I finally get access to my hotel room, and it’s not until that time that I discover that my running watch has died. It’s too late to head out in search of a new battery, and so I have to wrap my head around the thought of running the marathon blind – no heart rate or pace information to guide me. For someone who loves collecting, analyzing, and studying mile-by-mile data during and after the race, this adjustment will take a little time. But really, what choice do I have?<br /><br />In the morning, I discover just what a phenomenal hotel the Peabody is. While the hotel room service breakfast doesn’t officially start until well after my cut-off time for eating before a marathon, the staff here accommodates my request for my usual toasted bagel with cream cheese, orange juice, and coffee – all delivered to my room at exactly the time I request. In fact, they even call ahead of time to make sure I’m ready for the food to be delivered. By this time, I figure that even if the race is a complete bust, I’ve already had a magnificent time in this town.<br /><br />But luckily for me, the good stuff keeps happening. Race day weather is coolish and humid, but not so cold as to be uncomfortable waiting for the starting gun. I meet a woman, Denise, while waiting in the bag check line at the UPS trucks, and the two of us make our way to the starting area together. It turns out that we’re nearly the same age (but, owing to a difference of just a few years, she is not in my age group), and we’re planning to run this thing in about the same time, around 4 ½ hours. When the starting gun sounds, Denise and I are chatting. We fall into an easy pace together, and – as it turns out – we stick together for the next 24 miles.<br /><br />The course winds around Little Rock and makes numerous loop-the-loops, not necessarily my favorite kind of course. But today, it’s just right. The course crosses the Arkansas River a couple of times in the early miles, passing by the Clinton Presidential Library. After that, the rest of the first half is a moving tour of all the major political and governmental landmarks of the city. We pass by the State Capitol more than once, from different approaches; we pass by the Governor’s Mansion (yes, that’s where Bill and Hilary got their political start); we pass by the Little Rock Central High School, famed for the school integration battles back in the 60s. I’m awed by how much history there is here, all packed into such a small city.<br /><br />My panic over my watchlessness has subsided, mostly due to my friendly and generous running partner. As we pass each mile marker, Denise calls out our split. We’re running exactly in the range that I would have expected to run alone – 9:something for most of the miles. This course rolls slightly in these first 13 or 14 miles, so we see a little variation, but otherwise we’re running a nice steady pace. <br /><br />At mile 14, the race course turns upward, and there are two miles of solid climbing. You can see the field of runners start to fall apart; it’s a serious hill here. Somebody in the crowd says, “well, yeah, you know now why this part of town is called the Heights”. Oddly, the hill doesn’t really phase either Denise or me; we both just keep chatting and plugging along. We have, by this time, covered just about every subject under the sun. We’ve talked about our respective homes, careers, and families. We’ve talked about injuries and health issues and other running friends. Mostly, we’ve talked about marathons and running. It isn’t until here – just past the halfway point, after 2 hours of running together – that we discover we’ve met before. Suddenly, as Denise is recounting her story of running the Deadwood Mickelson Trail Marathon a couple years ago, I recognize her. “Hey!” I say, “I remember you now!” We talk a bit, and it comes to us both at the same time – how we ran together for a couple of miles in that race, right in the middle of it. It’s a very weird, small world.<br /><br />Normally, when I hit hills early in a marathon, I have a sensation of going backwards as the crowd surges forward in front of me. But later in a race, I can usually hold my own, and often find myself leaving others in my wake. This is true today. Denise and I have been running very steadily, and although we slow a little on this stretch, we are suddenly passing many who have slowed much more than we have. We reel in runner after runner, and it feels pretty good. This hill goes on for a long time, more than 2 miles of solid climbing. Midway up the hill, George, one of the runners we reel in, pulls into a cadence with us, and joins in our conversation.<br /><br />It would be hard to not notice George, even if he didn’t companionably join in the conversation. George is pro-basketball-player-tall, 6’8” or 6’11”, something like that, so he clearly stands out in a crowd. In fact, I had noticed him at the start line, just in front of us, since he was wearing a Mount Desert Island Marathon windbreaker – just like the one I wore to the start line. From here on out, we are a group of three.<br /><br />We gradually overtake the 4:30 pace group. Marie, the pace group leader, is chatting away, and does an incredible job keeping her minions fired up as they approach each mile marker. Our introduction to this is at mile 16; when Marie spots the sign, she bellows out, “Do you see what I see?” and the rest of the troop responds with a near-military enthusiasm. It’s very inviting, and we end up running near this group for the remainder of the 26.2 miles.<br /><br />This stretch of roadway is beautiful, heavily wooded, and clearly an exclusive part of town. We pass through grand old residential areas, and an upscale little boutique area, and then back through yet more wooded residential area. Although it’s taken us two miles to summit this part of the course, we descend much faster. When we’re back at a lower elevation, we turn northwest, running an out-and-back along a parkway, turning southeast in the direction of the finish. We can now see all the runners ahead of us who are that much closer to the finish. I’m starting to get the itch to pick up the pace; while I’m having a fun time running with my companions, my body is screaming for some variety. This is the point in a marathon where I like to kick up my effort a little; in my last several races, I have not had the energy to do that at this point. Today, I feel that I have a little surge left in me. I take this as a minor breakthrough.<br /><br />So, after covering 24 miles together, I tell Denise that I need to change the pace a little. She’s in pain, and wants to stop to walk, so she bids me farewell, and I pick it up. It’s painful, but feels better at this new, slightly elevated pace. I’ve lost George as well, but I’m like a horse headed back to the barn, and nothing is going to stop me now.<br /><br />Well, nothing except the harriers at the top of the last little hill along the course, offering Dixie cups of beer. I slow down and accept a cup, and it tastes great. I may end up making a habit of this. There’s something about the bitterness of beer - after all those miles of Gatorade and gels - that is just perfect late in a race. Yum.<br /><br />When I talked to Melissa on Saturday night from the hotel, she asked me to run mile 24 for her since she wouldn’t be here to share the experience. Then her boys got into the game, and I had a list of dedications for various miles along the way. I wrote these on a little slip of paper that I squirreled away in a pocket of my shorts, and I’ve shared them with Denise throughout the day. Denise got into the spirit of the thing, and together we dedicated mile after mile to various friends and family. Mile 2 was for Melissa’s son Cole, and miles 9 and 13 were for her twin boys Adam and Kevin. We ran a mile for my mom, who has had a bunch of health issues lately, and we ran several miles for members of Denise’s family. Now I run mile 24 for Melissa, and plan my last dedications for the last couple of miles. Mile 25 I run for Mick, and for all the marathons that he shared with me over the last eight years; mile 26, I decide, is for “hope”, since I’m in the city of the man from Hope, and my hope extends from the new Obama administration to this new thing with the new guy, The Professor. There are lots of things to be hopeful for, and I feel it very acutely this weekend. <br /><br />Shortly before the 26 mile mark and the final 90 degree turn that will take us onto the stretch leading to the finish line, I spot a woman standing in the middle of the road, attempting to hand something to the runners as they go by. Then I see there are several women doing this. What the heck? It’s far too late in the race for more gels. I get a little closer, and one of the mysteries of the course map is revealed to me. There is a notation on the map that nobody I’ve asked can explain: “Lipstick Stop”. Now I get it: the women are handing out lipstick wands – they have a choice of colors! – and there are signs reading “get ready for your finish line photo!” It strikes me as one of the funniest – and most fun – things I’ve encountered in a long time. I grab a nice pink lipstick, stop for a look in the mirror that the woman proffers, and get ready for the finish.<br /><br />This last 385 yards, I decide, I will run for myself, plain and simple, just my own celebration of life and what it takes to come out and cover these 26.2 miles. This town supports the marathon in a big way – much more than I expected for a city of this size – and the folks who line the finish line area seem to applaud my self-indulgent gesture. Without a watch, I’m not really sure at all what kind of pace I’m on, so it feels good to see a time under 4:30 on the clock as I cross the finish line. (My official time will be 4:28:17.) To my surprise, I turn to see George finish just a few strides behind me. He grabs me in a big sweaty bear hug and says “thank you! You pulled me in those last two miles!”<br /><br />The 4:30 group comes across the finish, and then Denise, and we all share in the glory of the moment, and have our photo taken together. But the glory is a fleeting thing, and within a few minutes, my little conclave of running friends is drifting out of the finish area, and heading back to our hotels to catch our respective flights home later in the afternoon.<br /><br />The Peabody has been more than accommodating, and as a standard practice, they offer marathoners a late checkout. This, alone, is worth choosing the hotel. I have plenty of time to limp back to the room, shower, and then check out before setting out on my afternoon activity.<br /><br />Many people have recommended the Clinton Presidential Library to me (“the double-wide”, on account of the library’s unfortunate resemblance to a double wide trailer), so after getting a late lunch, I hobble over to the library. True to reputation, the collection is compelling. I try to take it all in, but it’s overwhelming. I’m alone now, on this mid-winter afternoon, and something about the political connection starts to get to me. This is my first marathon post-Mick, and now I walk through the exhibits thinking how much Mick would love this. He would be in his element. When I see the Lance Armstrong autographed yellow jersey from one of his first Tour de France victories, I think of what it would be like to share this experience with Mick, and suddenly I can’t stay here any longer; I’m about ready to cry. I leave the museum, and start my journey back to Denver.<br /><br />I stop at a gift shop on my way back to the hotel, thinking that maybe I’ll find a souvenir fitting for the new guy – The Professor – since we’ve agreed to meet in person this coming week. But nothing seems right. I don’t really know The Professor at all yet, and all of the tchotchkes in the gift shop seem perfectly suited for Mick, not for this new person. So I leave empty-handed, then go back to the hotel, and take the shuttle to the airport.<br /><br />It’s dark as we take off for Denver – it is, after all, still winter even though it’s been pretty mild weather this weekend – and I watch the lights of Little Rock fade away in the distance. My mind is too full for me to be able to read, so I turn on my iPod and plug in my headphones, and try to sleep a little. On the way to Little Rock just yesterday morning, I had a hard time reading – my head was so full of thoughts of The Professor and the possibilities and the excitement of a new romance. Tonight, I try to bring those thoughts back around, but the last 24 hours keep intruding. I’m thinking about General Wesley Clark and VP Joe Biden and the entire Clinton experience. I can’t help thinking how much Mick would have loved this, and how much I would have loved sharing this experience with him. There will be time – and marathons – to share with someone new in the future, maybe The Professor, maybe somebody I haven’t even met yet. For tonight, I’ll take a little time to mourn what I’ve lost. I lean my head against the window and cry, just a little. And then we land in Denver, and I pack up my headphones and iPod, and I head back home, alone.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-56192276033813312852009-02-08T19:20:00.000-08:002009-02-08T19:23:18.903-08:00Twin Sisters of Different MothersMardi Gras Marathon 2009<br /><br /><br />Just after my parents’ wedding, in January 1955, they left a cold and snowy Iowa – near the banks of the Missouri River – for a honeymoon trip that traced the path of the Missouri to the Mississippi all the way down to New Orleans. My childhood was peppered with stories of that great city – of the wide river, and how the city buried their dead above ground, and of the fascinations of the French Quarter. When my father died before my second birthday, the collection of slides from that wedding trip became one of my few connections to him. I knew I needed to see New Orleans for myself.<br /><br />But, as Robert Frost said, “way leads on to way”, and somehow, I never found my way along that particular southern path. When Katrina hit in 2005, I rued this truth, fearing that I had missed my opportunity. But early this year, fate – in the guise of my 50 state marathon quest, as well as a very generous TMer – intervened, and I found myself registered for the New Orleans Mardi Gras Marathon.<br /><br />That generous TMer was Leann, who offered not only a place to stay, but transportation as well, not to mention full guide services, and, at the last minute, a running partner for the entire 26.2 miles. In the weeks leading up to the marathon, I came down with a nasty case of bronchitis, and I wondered about my ability to finish the run. But I never doubted that I would finally make the trek to the Big Easy. I just wasn’t going to miss the chance.<br /><br />So on February 1st, in the wee dark early hours, I woke up in my own suite of rooms in Leann’s very homey abode, and shared bagels and bananas and coffee with my host. After so many pre-marathon meals in look-alike hotel rooms, it seemed weird to be sitting at a kitchen table, sharing our meal. Leann had already shown me that New Orleans is a very compact city, and the drive to the Superdome, where the race started, would be easy and short. We took our time, and left for the drive with plenty of time to spare.<br /><br />Or at least we thought. The traffic getting into the Superdome parking was all jammed up, and even the unflappable Leann started to get nervous. There was really no reason to worry – it’s a chip timed race, so who really cares when you cross the start line? But there’s something about toeing the line that makes it “real”, and we were both of a mind to do that. The good thing about the crawling traffic into the Dome was that we were able to see that the ample bank of port-a-lets was, thankfully, not also jammed up with long lines. We finally got inside the dome, quickly decided that there was no time to check bags for the finish so we stripped of everything except what we would wear for the race, and we hurried to the start line. We got there in time to make a quick pass through the port-a-lets, then squeezed our way forward as far as we could, saw a Coast Guard helicopter flyover, and then we were off.<br /><br /><em>But this is not a story of just a race – it’s a story of an experience, one in which I was treated like royalty. And if I was royalty, then Leann is the queen. On Friday night, she picked me up at the airport, and we headed straight for one of her chosen local joints for a seafood dinner. It was late – around 9 p.m. – when we arrived at Deanies, but the place was hopping, and there was a 30 minute wait. So we put our names on the list, and Leann said, “come on, I’ll show you something”. We crossed a parking lot, climbed a little hill, and she pointed: “see that? That’s the 17th Street Canal. It broke just up there.” I’m awed. In town for something like 15 minutes, and I’m looking at the infamous canal, a canal that tonight it seems so benign. Leann points out more things – the huge pumping station that the National Guard put in after Katrina – and tells me the lake (Lake Pontchartrain, that huge body of water that I’ve seen heretofore only on maps of a hurricane-stricken city) is just beyond them. Some of her favorite restaurants used to occupy that lake front property. No more.<br /></em><br /><em>Back at Deanies, I ask Leann’s guidance on ordering, and we both end up with something that I can only call the “crawfish extravaganza”: a sampler plate of crawfish etoufee, crawfish au gratin, crawfish hush puppies, and fried crawfish. When we sit down at the table, the waitress sets a bowl of boiled potatoes in front of us. I’m mystified. I’ve had bread, pickles, tortilla chips, olives, and all kinds of things offered up as appetizers before, but never boiled potatoes. Leann encourages me to taste one, and I quickly figure out that this has been my loss. The dark-skinned little orbs have been boiled in a spicy mix, and are delicious. I’ve been in New Orleans for about two hours now, and I’ve already fallen in love with the local food. How could I have taken so long to get here?<br /></em><br />Leann gave me a tour of the city on Saturday, so I recognize a little bit of the first part of the run, and within the first mile, we are turning onto Bourbon Street for our jaunt through the French Quarter. If I wanted to complain about anything in this race – and I don’t, but it seems di rigueur – it would be that the course goes through the Quarter too early, when the pack is still all bunched up, and it’s still very crowded. But really, what’s to complain? Going slowly helps me to appreciate the architecture and the funky businesses and to recognize some of the storefronts that I saw yesterday. I point my camera over my head and shoot. Given my lousy weeks leading up to this marathon, there is no pretense that I’ll do anything other than survive. So I’m carrying my camera, and I’m ready to enjoy the experience.<br /><br /><em>On Saturday morning, after Leann feeds me a breakfast of strong coffee and good fresh fruit (fresh Luzziana strawberries – who knew they were ripe this early anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere?), she drives me to the French Quarter. We wander down the streets, we pop into a few shops, I stop to take pictures of musicians and voodoo fortune tellers and fine old French architecture. In the weeks leading up to this weekend, I have sent Leann a photo, from my parents’ honeymoon slide deck, of the Café du Monde. Leann leads me to this august tradition of the Quarter, and I first try to reproduce my mom and dad’s photo, and then we grab our tables, where Leann orders beignets and coffee for us. Earlier, at Leann’s house, she asked if I needed milk for my coffee. No, I answered, I drink it black. Now, when the waitress asks her about our coffee orders, do we want milk, she answers yes. She looks at me and says, “sorry, that’s just how you have to have it here”, and of course, she’s right. The coffee (with milk, thank you very much) and beignets are perfect.<br /></em><br />After we make a short tour of the Quarter, we head out towards the Garden District, on a long out-and-back on St. Charles. Leann offers a running commentary as we run, pointing out parade viewing stands and noteworthy city buildings. Before we hit St. Charles, we pass through Lee Circle, where there is a statue of Robert E. Lee. Leann points out the fact that Robert E. Lee has his back to the west. Later, when I get home, I will find a photo in my parents’ collection of this same statue, taken from their hotel room. It amazes me how little things have changed over the course of 54 years.<br /><br /><em>After our beignets and coffee, Leann and I walk briefly along the riverfront. It’s massive, the river, with the city butting up next to it, and I finally get the significance of a large collection of the photos in the honeymoon slides: the river defines the city, maybe only in the way that London is defined by the Thames or Paris by the Seine. But it’s too massive, this river, and it’s the day before a marathon, and we have more sightseeing to do, so our stroll along this stretch of waterfront is short.<br /></em><br /><em>From the Quarter, we drive to the Garden District. Leann takes me down streets that we won’t run on Sunday, to give me more flavor. The architecture is exceptional. We pass by Emeril’s, and by Commander’s Palace, and by all the genteel antebellum mansions that I was expecting to see in Mississippi. But even with the mansions, the district comes off as modest, more substance and diversity than show. Now I recognize the New Orleans that I saw just a week ago in the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, and on every street corner I see the house where the movie was set. We emerge onto St. Charles, and a streetcar passes by, and I feel like I’ve been here before, the scene is so familiar.</em> <br /><br />Today, on Sunday, we run directly down St. Charles. Leann and I comment on the homes along the route: I like that one, did you see those trees, what about that one? Leann fills in lots of details about many of the buildings along the way. Somewhere along the way, a woman on the side of the road yells out something, and Leann says, “a student”. We reach the lovely campuses of Tulane and Loyola (home of the touchdown Jesus – ask Leann), and then we turn off St. Charles for a lap through Audubon Park.<br /><br />It’s a lovely park, and Leann’s home training ground. She points out fabulous trees, and she tells me about the alligator that lives in the lagoon in the park, and assures me that he is “in the mud” for the winter. It’s an educational tour through the park – Leann also points out the Cypress trees on the edge of the lagoon, and tells me about their “knees”, regaling me with a story about them. A woman on the sidelines calls out to Leann (“another student”) and then a man calls out (“a colleague”), and I’m starting to think that Leann knows everyone in this city.<br /><br />Before we exit Audubon Park, we hit the “Blood Sweat and Beers” water stop, manned by people in ghoulish costumes, offering – along with the usual water and Gatorade – malted beverage. It’s a bit early for me to have a brewski in this race, so I decline. I’m kind of thinking about that sleeping alligator, figuring that it’s best for me to keep my wits about me just now.<br /><br /><em>On Saturday afternoon, after our tour of the city, we head back to Leann’s house, and stop at a local supermarket to pick up a King Cake. Leann gives me a rundown on the significance of the confection, and we meander through the market for a few other things. We walk through the seafood section, where Leann eyes the humongous shrimp that look like they’ve just been hauled out of the water. The price reads $4.99 per pound; Leann declares that this is expensive. I’m starting to understand why, when she was in Denver last fall for a conference and we got together for dinner, her only request was “sorry, no seafood restaurants, I get it fresh”.<br /><br />We check out at the front of the supermarket, and the cashier looks at us and says, “you guys are twins, right?” We look at each other and laugh. The woman looks incredulous, “well, you’re sisters then”. It’s a statement, not a question. We laugh again But somehow it’s starting to feel true.<br /><br />Our next stop is the Mardi Gras store next door, where there are more beads and costumes and things in purple, green and gold than you can imagine. Among the other things that Leann teaches me this weekend is the fact that Mardi Gras is a season, not a single day. I’m getting into the spirit of things, and just have to have some souvenirs. We’re still laughing as I try on numerous masks. “Subtlety is not the goal”, says Leann, and the mask I end up with is anything BUT subtle.<br /></em><br />Back on St. Charles, we’re now on the other side of the streetcar tracks, and I finally stop to take a photo of the green streetcar going by. A woman, all in pink, runs up next to us and asks if we want a photo taken of us running together, and I say sure, and hand her my camera. She sprints away in front of us. Leann says, “see, you should never give your camera to someone faster than you”, and for a minute I think all my weekend photos are history. But sure enough, Miss Pink stops up the road a bit and snaps a couple of pictures of us. It’s that kind of city, that kind of race. Friendly folks. Then someone yells a greeting to Leann. I say “student or colleague?” For once, it turns out it’s just a friendly fan.<br /><br />Around mile 10, we see Leann’s daughter Susie and her SO Adam. We stop, take photos, chat for a minute, and the silver-tongued Adam says “don’t you guys ever break a sweat?” I’m starting to feel the effects of the miles, but this makes me feel like it’s all a piece of cake.<br /><br /><em>There’s a theme in Leann’s family, and that is one of laughter. Shortly after we get back to her place on Saturday afternoon, her daughter Anne and her three grandsons arrive, and it’s pure pandemonium. These boys (ages 6, and twins at 3 ½) know the drill with King Cake, and before they are even inside, they’re clamoring “I want to get the baby!” It’s everything a visit with 6 and 3 year olds should be, including Leann watching the boys run outside and sprinting as she yells “put the knife down!”, and Anne asking “did he just bean his brother with that rock?” Later, my most vivid memory of Anne will be her laughter. If Tolstoy was right and all happy families are really happy in the same way, then, judging by this family, it’s a very good way. It’s clear they all love each other, and that they love to laugh.<br /></em><br />We finish retracing our steps down St. Charles, circling around Robert E. Lee once again, and then we’re passing by the Superdome again. This marathon is a shoelace course where the first and second halves are discrete loops with some out-and-back mixed in, but you pass by the start/finish at the halfway point. It’s gotten a little warmer – the start was deliciously cool – and my heart rate is constantly in danger of going too high. Around mile 12, I tell Leann that I have to slow down, and that she should go ahead since she’s clearly capable of a much faster race than I am. Happily for me, she says “you’re setting the pace today”, and we slow down together.<br /><br /><em>But where would we be on Sunday without a proper pasta dinner on Saturday night? In the week before the race, Leann sent me a message saying, “Food! Why should I make all the decisions about food! Here – you decide where we should eat!”, and she attached a bunch of links to websites of some of her favorite local digs in the city. After looking carefully through the proffered sites, I chose Mandinas. So Saturday night we head over there for our pre-race feast.<br /><br />And feast it is. We start out with a rich gumbo – full of seafood, and topped with rice. It’s practically a meal in itself. And then the main course arrives – angel hair pasta in a bordelaise sauce with about ten pounds of perfectly sautéed shrimp on top. While we eat, there is a party going on next to us – a group of about 15 women, and four of them are wearing tiaras. When they finish their meal, they have a gigantic King Cake for dessert. Only in New Orleans.<br /></em><br />After the halfway point, we head north towards City Park and areas that were harder hit by Katrina. These are not the prettiest parts of the city, but seeing the remains of the devastation somehow makes it more bearable than just running through a regular rundown area. Maybe it’s a fascination with disaster. Maybe it’s the history. Maybe it’s that I feel like I’m in hallowed ground. It all feels like running through halls of history.<br /><br />Or maybe it’s the costume guy. We’ve seen Costume Guy multiple times in the first half of the race, and now we’re following behind him again. I decide that I desperately need a photo of this guy, so we pick up the pace and chase him down. It turns out that not only is he flamboyantly dressed – full Mardi Gras gear, tutu, tights, sparkly shoes and wand – but he’s the nicest guy ever. He stops so I can capture him in all his glory. We run together briefly, and he tells us that he’s run a gazillion marathons, many of them here in his home town in full costume. I figure that he’s a city treasure.<br /><br /><em>The first place that Leann takes me on Saturday morning is up around City Park, and through some of the surrounding Gentilly District just to the east. This is part of the city particularly hard hit by Katrina, and Leann calls it a jack-o-lantern area. There are vacant lots where houses once stood, and crumbling homes that still have the National Guard graffiti – spray-painted X’s with shorthand containing the information about when the National Guard came through, how many bodies they found, and such. But the encouraging thing is that there are also houses with lights on and cars in the driveways. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to live here, in this ghost town. But people are doing it. I take no pictures. It breaks my heart to see it, and I don’t really want to remember the city in this particular way.<br /></em><br />Around this time, we pick up a third person in our little entourage. The guy runs just behind Leann and me for miles and miles. He’s breathing heavily, so it would be hard to not notice him back there. Finally, after miles and miles and miles of this, Leann asks him to introduce himself.<br /><br />But it turns out that our third wheel speaks no English. I ask him what language he speaks, and he offers up several: Italian, French, Spanish. While my cognitive powers are starting to slip, I’m able to conjure up enough French to learn that he’s from Italy, and we all exchange names. Unfortunately, my cognitive powers are not sufficient to retain his name. He sticks with us until around mile 22, where he says, “thank you very much”, and he fades off behind us. Later, I’ll look for him in the results, and sure enough, there he is, about ten minutes behind us.<br /><br />The road at mile 16 of the marathon, on the border of City Park, is under construction. It’s atrocious. It’s that uneven surface that is left behind after the old asphalt is prepped, but before new asphalt it laid down. The good news is that this stretch is short – only a mile or so. The bad news is that it’s followed up with the only hill in town – an overpass. It’s not that I mind the overpass – it’s short, and on an otherwise pancake-flat course, not a big deal. It’s that I find myself completely humiliated here. Leann – the flatlander – says “I only have one speed”, and she pulls in front of me. Living in the Rocky Mountain state does nothing for me today – I’m reduced to barely a crawl. Good thing it’s a very short hill.<br /><br />On the other side of the park – now that we’re finally heading south again, on the last stretch, around mile 19 – we hit the Red Dress Hashers aid station. I’ve been looking forward to this water stop for some time, and I stop to take photos. I also accept a Dixie cup of beer; what else could I do? It’s now gotten warm and more sunny than is ideal for a marathon. But the bonus is that, unlike the other side of the park, the asphalt on the road here is new and wonderfully smooth.<br /><br /><em>On Sunday afternoon, after the race, Leann will bring me back to the park for our last feast before I head home. Shrimp po boys at another local joint, “dressed”, in the local parlance, meaning served with lettuce and tomato. And can you have po boys without fries? I think not. It’s a perfect post-race meal. We sit in an enclosed porch at the restaurant, eating our meal. I’ve already taken photos of the interior of the place, for Mick: old political posters, for Hale Boggs and a host of other famous (or perhaps infamous) Louisiana politicians. While we eat, we’re watched carefully by some small birds that have found their way inside the porch, as well as a pigeon or two outside, despite the best efforts of the proprietors with the inflatable owl hanging outside from the eaves.<br /></em><br />While we run along City Park, I look over and see a graceful white bird in a lagoon. Leann has already told me that the locals believe that the wild boars that appeared in the park after Katrina have driven out any alligators. I feel not greatly relieved by this revelation. I look again at the bird, and then see a whole flock of similar birds. I ask, not quite believing, “are those all egrets?” The answer is affirmative. I have never seen more than a single egret at one time in Colorado, and each time that I do, I’m impressed by their beauty and grace. Leann says, “they’re like pigeons here”. There go a whole host of romantic ideas I have about water fowl. <br /><br />But we see just a few pelicans over the weekend, and there is no denying their grace in flight. The pelican is the state bird of Louisiana, and I don’t mind being caught rubber-necking whenever there is one on wing near us. During the race, one of these large, magical birds floats in the sky alongside us, pacing us before disappearing on a fishing expedition.<br /><br />After mile 19, we pick up the pace a little. I’ve decided that I can abandon my heart rate monitor from here on out, and it feels better to stretch out our legs. We’ve been running at a really slow shuffling pace, and I have to think that Leann is bored out of her wits – I doubt that she’s ever done a training run this slowly, let alone a race. But she’s a trooper, and in these final miles, she continues to regale me with stories, and she points out more architecture along the way – the camelback houses, and the single and double shotguns.<br /><br />I’ve done incredibly well managing my stomach and nutrition and heart rate today, but sometime after mile 24, I suddenly think “I’m going to hurl”. I’m lightheaded, and suddenly I don’t feel so well. I look down at my HRM, and discover the reason: I’m at max HR. Max. No wonder. Leann looks over and says, “are you okay?”, and I tell her, “I just hit my max HR, and I think I’m going to throw up”. Ever the sensible one, she says, “well, let’s slow down”. She doesn’t need to add the “duh”. But by now we’ve hit mile 25, and the end is in sight. There’s the freeway we will run under, and there is the Superdome, and then there is the finish line. Done. Another of my slowest marathons, but definitely one of my most fun, and the only one I’ve ever had the pleasure of running entirely with a friend.<br /><br />Over the years, I have had the great good fortune to be hosted at marathons around the country by friends and family and brand-new acquaintances. Far more people have opened their homes to me, given me transportation, fed me, and gotten up out of bed in the wee dark hours of a Saturday or Sunday morning to go to a marathon with me, whether or not they were also running. The list is humbling: Kyle and Mark at Steamboat 1999, Nan for multiple marathons (Boston and Maine), Melissa for Tampa in 2004, my mom and my brother Stan for marathons in Iowa and Nebraska in 2005, Karen and Kerby at Seattle 2005, Jonni and Jim in Dayton for the Air Force Marathon in 2006, Mary – the lurking sunflower girl – for Wichita in 2006, and Michelle twice in 2008, for the Georgia Marathon in March and then again as a waystation on the way to and from Huntsville, Alabama, for the Rocket City Marathon. There is no use in attempting to rank these kindnesses, since they were all uniformly generous and outside my expectations, and I thank all of these hosts again. But I can fairly say that I have never before had a host who so passionately and thoroughly loved her home town and wanted to show it off, and succeeded in showing it off with such gusto. For that, there is no comparison. On this weekend in early February, Leann is truly the queen of New Orleans, and I am extremely lucky to be her loyal subject.<br /> <br /><em>Before heading back to Leann’s after our po boy lunch, I get one last treat: a trip to the Metairie Cemetery. All those years ago, my mom told me about the above-ground burials, but that was not nearly sufficient to prepare me for the extravagance of the tombs. We drive into the cemetery, then park the car and walk. I take picture after picture of palatial tombs – and a solitary egret. It’s a weird and eerie experience; we talk about death and cremation and share thoughts and stories about burials – but it’s never sad. I think that New Orleans is a very good place to be buried, and maybe I should move back here when I sense my time is near.<br /></em><br />In the summer after I graduated from high school, all of my siblings save my brother Dave and I had vacation plans. So my mom and stepdad offered us this: you two kids choose somewhere to go, and we’ll take you. The caveat was that we only had a short week, and the location had to be within driving distance. I voiced my vote quickly: New Orleans! But Dave wanted to go to Colorado, and he has always been the better politician, so by the time the four of us headed west across Nebraska, I had all but forgotten my initial request. I fell in love with the Rocky Mountains on that trip, and it was not long after I graduated from college before I moved to Denver. I can’t help wondering now, though, had we gone to New Orleans then, would I have been there for the hurricane in 2005?<br /><br />In a way, I’m sad that I missed seeing the city before Katrina unleashed her destruction on the city. There are sights that I will never know as a result. But in a larger sense, I’m happy that I’m just now getting acquainted with New Orleans. The people who knew her before Katrina see ghosts: the vacant lots, the buildings that are damaged and crumbling, not yet torn down, not yet rebuilt, the missing trees, the people who will never come back. But me, I was treated to beautiful architecture, a city with fabulous food and a delightful diversity of neighborhoods and people, and a culture deeply rooted in parties and spirituality and just plain fun. Despite what Robert Frost said about way leading on to way, I don’t doubt that I’ll be back.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-28707484330024070872009-01-19T13:15:00.000-08:002009-01-19T13:16:43.275-08:00Blues in Mississippi<div align="left"><strong>Mississippi Blues Marathon 2009<br /></strong><br /><br />Let’s just get the bad news out there right up front: the Mississippi Blues Marathon was a death march. Four hours forty-three minutes and fifty-nine seconds of “creeping like snail unwillingly” to the finish line (apologies to Shakespeare). More than four and half hours of heat, humidity, and hills. Nearly five hours of asking myself, “what the hell was I thinking when I signed up for this race?”<br /><br /><em>So, what exactly were you thinking?<br /></em><br />Well, I was thinking that Mississippi in January would beat Mississippi in July. And that this would be a fun way to bag state #32 in my quest to run a marathon in each of the fifty states. And that a marathon weekend would make a nice post-holiday vacation weekend.<br /><br />And, well, Melissa was going, too, so what else could I do?<br /><br /><em>So, since you brought it up, what exactly went wrong?<br /></em><br />I’m so glad you asked! It’s pretty simple: heat, hills, and humidity! Oh, have I used that one before? Then I’d have to go with nutrition, nutrition, and nutrition.<br /> <br />Honestly, you’d think this was my first marathon, not my forty-third. Criminy. After developing a nutrition plan that worked for, oh, say, about forty-two marathons, for reasons I’ll never fathom, I completely threw that plan out the window. Blame it on the holidays. Blame it on the new year. Blame it on the humidity. Blame it on Rio. Whatever. I just blew it. On the day before the marathon, I had breakfast for dinner, salad for lunch, and an airport bagel way too early in the morning….then forgot completely about making sure I had the right supplies on race morning. I woke up with a sour stomach on race morning (see: previous day’s food), and then realized that all I had to calm it was a bagel (no cream cheese, no butter, no PB, no nothing) so stale that I could choke down only about half of it. I hadn’t made the extra effort to get my normal OJ, so I tried making do with some mango juice that ended up being too thick for my tastes. And finally, I normally eat a bit more – a small muffin or some other small pastry – to top off my fuel. But I had forgotten entirely, so I went to the race starting line with about half the normal amount of calories.<br /><br />With a gnarly stomach to start out with, and with hot and humid conditions, it was almost a pre-ordained outcome when I lined up at the starting line. I ran; I drank water at the aid stations; I sweated like crazy; I took a couple of gels; then my stomach decided it had had enough. About the time I most needed some additional calories, I just couldn’t choke down another gel. The thought of Gatorade turned my stomach about as much as the thought of more gels, so I just kept drinking plain water and popping endurolytes. And so, I bonked.<br /><br />It wasn’t pretty, but I finished. Dead woman walking.<br /><br /><em>Enough with the complaining already. Didn’t your mother teach you that rule about “if you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all”?<br /></em><br />Okay, okay. You want something nice, let me try. <br /><br />I’d like to say that the course was beautiful and scenic, and that we passed grand old antebellum mansions along the way, surrounded by sturdy ancient oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. Alas, that would make me a writer of fiction, not a mere race reporter, as that’s just not the lay of the land in Jackson.<br /><br />But we did run past the old Capitol building, and within a stone’s throw or so of the current Capitol. We ran through a cross-section of the small city: through some commercial areas, through the old downtown area, past the fairgrounds, along a scenic parkway, and through some pretty residential areas. One section of the race took us on a funky out-and-back on a road that led out of town towards the airport. Although many of the streets were old with badly cracked and pitted asphalt, we did have plenty of real estate for running – always at least a full lane to ourselves, along with good protection provided by ubiquitous orange cones and good volunteer and police presence.<br /><br /><em>That’s it? That’s all you got? You went to Mississippi and all you got is lousy orange cones?<br /></em><br />Hold on, hold on, I’m not done yet. I haven’t had time to tell you yet about the volunteers – those angels of mercy! I know it’s a cliché to thank the volunteers, but we’re talking the deep South here. The cradle of good manners. The true home of Southern Hospitality. And the volunteers here – there seemed to be about a thousand or so of them – were universally polite, supportive and friendly. They started early with the usual lies “you’re looking good” and such other utter nonsense. But they all said it with such huge smiles that it was impossible not to believe it – or at least to try to look like you believed it. Over and over and over again, volunteers said, “thank you for running in Mississippi!” And I believe they meant it.<br /><br /><em>Man, you’ve lost your story-telling abilities. Orange cones and lying volunteers. Not one decent story to tell?<br /></em><br />Well, there were about a gazillion fifty-staters and Marathon Maniacs out there. The place was crawling with them. Melissa and I went to the 50 state reunion at the expo, and got to meet lots of folks there, including Larry Macon, who just last year set the world record for the most marathons run in a single year. (And it turns out he’s an extremely nice guy who doesn’t seem at all like an alien.) Before the race got started, we had a photo parade with other 50 staters and maniacs. Along the course, you couldn’t spit without hitting a 50 stater or maniac. Around miles 8-10, I ran for a while with a 50 stater who was running his 42nd state – an Irishman who lives in St. Louis. Those miles melted away. Then around mile 14, I fell into stride with Bill, another 50 stater from Columbia, Missouri. In one of those great small-world episodes, we discovered that Bill and his wife are good friends with my sister’s ex-in-laws – people who seem like family to me. Bill and I ended up running together for about the next 7 miles or so, and those miles, too, just melted away.<br /><br />But I’m saving the best story for last. I had studied the race map enough to know that we had an out-and-back somewhere around the halfway point. I had not studied the map well enough to know that the half marathoners (who started with us, and shared the race course with us for most of the first half) would have a different out-and-back section. So when I started to see runners returning on the other side of the road around mile 11, I thought this was our big out-and-back, and I started looking for Melissa. Instead, I recognized a woman who had passed me back around mile 5 or 6; she was tall and lean and was wearing black tights and a long-sleeved blue top. (Why anyone would wear tights and/or long sleeves in this heat and humidity was way beyond my imagination.) Thinking that the out-and-back was around 3 miles each way, when I saw Black Tights, I thought “No Way! – she couldn’t have gained that much on me since she passed me!” Then while I worked through my outrage in my head (She’s clearly not in my age group, so who really cares, anyway? If somebody wants to cheat, what of it?), I started to see the notices for the half marathoners to turn around just ahead. Aha! Black Tights was a half marathoner! It made perfect sense. And it explained why I hadn’t seen Melissa.<br /><br />So in another block or two, the half marathoners did a u-turn, and the marathon field continued straight ahead. The field was suddenly very small. We crossed I-55 that runs north-south through Jackson, and made a turn onto a frontage road. I thought I heard someone yell my name, but figured I was just “hearing things”. Then I heard it again – and this time I was sure I heard it “Judy Denver!” I stopped in my tracks and turned around to see Melissa running toward me. What the heck?!? She yelled out a quick explanation – she had made the half-marathon turn by mistake and was just getting back on course – and then she was gone in a blur. I would not see her again until the finish line, where she had finished much earlier than me, despite having run several extra miles.<br /><br /><em>But what of this Blues thing? Why is the thing called the Mississippi Blues Marathon? Surely not just because of your sad experience there?<br /></em><br />Ah, yes, the true reason to run this race: the blues. Mississippi blues. The blues band playing at the expo. The CD of Mississippi blues artists that was included in the race packet. The blues guitarist playing a twangy Star-Spangled Banner at the start line of the race. The blues bands along the course – all of them great, just not enough of them. The blues band playing at the finish. And the medal – one of my all-time favorites – in the shape of a guitar.<br /><br />Come to think of it, maybe it was only fitting that I had a death march in Mississippi. How else could the blues resonate so completely? </div>Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-12244374389362404602008-12-04T21:37:00.000-08:002008-12-04T21:53:35.086-08:00Simply Perfect (Mount Desert Island Marathon 2008)It is seldom that I am at a loss for words, but that’s the effect the Mount Desert Island Marathon has on me. It’s just too nearly perfect; what can you say about something so good?<br /><br />Melissa and I meet at the Portland, Maine, airport on Friday night, and we make the 3+ hour trip to Bar Harbor in darkness. So when we walk out of our hotel room on Saturday morning, heading to breakfast and then the expo, we have a wonderful surprise. Our hotel is right on the water, and the view opens out to Frenchman Bay. From the maps I’ve studied, I imagine that I can see all the way to Nova Scotia across the Bay, but, of course, that body of land is no doubt more of beautiful Maine. Beautiful indeed: the fall foliage is at its peak, and everywhere you look, there are either trees in full flame or water or hills. The sun – weak on this mid-autumn day – is still strong enough to make sunglasses a good idea, but not strong enough to drive the chill from the air.<br /><br />In a word, this is perfect. Absolutely beautiful. And we’re just getting started.<br /><br />We breakfast at the hotel dining room – you can tell this is an old-timey resort inn just by the way the breakfast room is set up – and then wander over to the small expo for packet pickup. There are a bunch of really cool banners hanging on the walls at the expo, and we soon learn that they are part of a silent auction associated with the race: local artists have dedicated their resources to create the banners – with marathon, fall, running themes. The Mount Desert Nursery School will be the beneficiary of the auction. Melissa and I both ooh and ahh over the banners, and Melissa ends up putting bids on a couple of the banners.<br /><br />It’s a gorgeous day (well, gorgeous to me, and freezing to my thin-blooded Floridian friend), and we go exploring. We head into the town of Bar Harbor; the hotel is only a mile or so from the center of town, so it’s a short drive. The town is a delight! It’s touristy-kitschy, but not overdone, and we both have fun finding souvenirs and gifts for friends and family (er, um, and a few things for ourselves). It turns out that we spend hours wandering around. We lunch at a local place (clam chowder – yum! – this is seafood haven), then forego dessert at one of the town’s thousand or so ice cream shops in favor of a tour of the race course.<br /><br />The drive is a 26.2 mile-long stretch of more oohs and ahhs. I curse the fact that I’m driving, because I want to gawk. The race course snakes through forests of changing leaves and along the seafront of Mount Desert Island. It passes expanses of exposed and crumbling granite, and expanses of shoreline with boats anchored at harbor, bobbing in the late year sunlight. It takes us through small villages with classic architecture, and past ancient and impressive manors that sit on the shore.<br /><br />There are only two things that this race course is not (not now, not never): it is never boring or dull (there is, quite honestly, not a place on the course that is not quintessentially picturesque), and it is never flat.<br /><br />This course goes up and down, down and up, and then up again some more. The undulations are relentless. I know, as we drive the thing, that sure as the sun will rise in the morning, I will suffer. Rolling courses are not my forte. I know, without a doubt, that the only way I can survive this marathon is to run with my heart, and damn the time. There are races to be run quickly – to test your speed and skill and perseverance. And there are races to be run moderately – so that you can enjoy the scenery around you, and so that you can survive. This is a survival race.<br /><br />Melissa and I finish our tour of the race course, and head back to the hotel, where we will soon join Clay and Karen of the 50 States Club for the pasta party. The offerings of the dinner are pretty typical, but the first speaker alone – Gary Allen, the race director – is worth the price of admission. It’s clear from Gary’s words of welcome that this race is a labor of love for him – he is not only the RD, but also the founder and inspiration for this event. Gary gives a nice pitch for the banners that are now hanging in this school cafeteria; we admire the banners all once again, and take a few photographs of them; Melissa makes some changes to her bids. And then we head back to the hotel.<br /><br />Our race morning wake-up call is in complete darkness. It’s not only dark out there, it’s really cold! But we’re actually in luck today: the forecast, earlier in the week, included rain, but that forecast has given way to one that is more runner-friendly. We will have cool temps (okay, Melissa – the Floridian – will say freezing cold temps) and sunny skies for most of the day. You can’t beat that. Well, except for, maybe, the part about waiting around in dead cold at the start.<br /><br />Because we’re both a bit neurotic about these things, Melissa and I are perfect roomies for race day. We both are nervous about getting to the start on time, so, of course, we get there way early. Luckily, the parking situation at the start is much easier than we have anticipated, so we can wait in the car until very, very close to the race gun time. We just happen to run into Clay and Karen on our way to the start. We take some group photos, and we are in the middle of chatting when the gun goes off. Our day officially begins.<br /><br />Melissa, the great sandbagger, has been fretting about her ability to finish the marathon today. In fairness, she has had an uneven training cycle, building up mileage very sensibly, then dropping off altogether, and then building back up very quickly. This last week, she has had a horrible bronchial infection, causing her doc to suspect pneumonia and to send her for a chest x-ray. I thought that we were going to have to run this one next year, but the chest x-ray came back clear, and Melissa said “let’s do it”, and here we are. But in all of the build-up to the race, Melissa has been talking about walking big chunks of the marathon, and has been trying to enlist me to do the same with her. I’m just not at all convinced that I want to do the walk breaks as part of my marathon strategy, even though I think it would be fun to run and talk with Melissa. We’ve never really resolved this issue. But early in the first mile – early in the first quarter mile, in reality – the issue resolves itself. Melissa takes off at her pneumonia-inspired pace. I take off at my everyday pace. And she still ends up leaving me eating her dust.<br /><br />Somehow, I knew this would happen.<br /><br />Happily, though, it turns out that Karen and I are about evenly matched, and since we’re chatting when the gun goes off, we just take off together. We fall into a companionable pace, and we run together, and talk, and admire the scenery and the leaves and the beauty of everything around us. It couldn’t be much better.<br /><br />It could, of course, be faster, but perhaps not today, and perhaps not ever on this hilly course. This race is chip timed, but there is no chip mat at the start so the time to get to the start line gets rolled into your time. I check as we pass the banner, and 32 seconds have elapsed. When we roll through the first mile marker, I hit my split button (started with the gun) and see 10:52 on my watch. No, not a day for a fast marathon. I decide to try to ignore my pace for the rest of the race. For now, I am running and talking with Karen, and it’s just about as perfect as a run can be.<br /><br />As I know from yesterday’s drive, the course does nothing but go up and down, down and up. Karen and I run along, chatting easily along the way. A guy passes us as we climb one of the first hills, and when I see his “Obama” hat, I call a greeting to him. It’s a risk, since Karen is from Pennsylvania – a swing state – so it’s very hard to predict her political leanings. Lucky for me, she leans the same way that I do, and she echoes my greeting to Obama-hat-guy. Conversation is stoked for the next many miles.<br /><br />Although I rarely run with anyone, I find myself enjoying this experience immensely. The first eight miles melt away, even as we go up and down, down and up. I’m carrying a camera – as is Karen – and every once in a while, I hold it above my head for a photo. These photos will do the course no justice whatsoever, though; it’s one of those “had to be there” things. So I only take a few pics, saving some camera memory for the truly great scenery to come.<br /><br />Based on the pre-race drive, I know that we emerge onto the water somewhere around mile 8. The race course veers off the well-traveled highway (that is not so well-traveled in the early morning hours) onto a narrow, curving backroad at this point. It’s only a few short curves before we see the water, and I have my camera out and at the ready. But two things happen – neither of which I see coming – that change the face of the race for me. First, the battery in my camera dies just as I point it at our first glimpse of the ocean. It s a disappointment, but also a relief. I am no longer obligated to try to capture this beautiful setting with pictures. But the second change is only a disappointment: Karen tells me that she is going to slow down and walk a bit. That means I’m on my own for the rest of the race. Something that is normally very comfortable to me now seems a bit lonely.<br /><br />You would think that, with my newfound freedom from picture-taking and conversation, I would have tons more to say about the marathon from here on out. But – as I said at the outset – it’s really just too beautiful for words. The course is heavily forested from start to end, and now – starting right around mile 8 – we run along the water’s edge for mile after mile. The course curves around, following the contours of the ocean, and then turns back inland, following the edge of Somes Sound. We are treated to glimpses of wooden boats bobbing on anchors in the harbor that are just about too beautiful to be real. The foliage is probably within days of peak color – sometimes you will come around a bend in the road and be shocked by a blazing orange tree or a brilliant red bush. There are grand houses looking out onto the water, and carriage houses on the other side of the road. When the marathon is at its best, we run on narrow, winding backroads; it’s just us runners and nature – no cars, no distractions, just beauty all around.<br /><br />For miles, I trade places with other runners, including Obama-hat-guy. Mostly, other people pass me on the uphills, and I pass them right back on the downhills. It’s cool out, and I leave my long-sleeved shirt on for the entire race. This only makes the bare-footed guy that I pass and repass all that more remarkable.<br /><br />There are not a lot of spectators on the course, but the ones who are out are faithful. I see the same folks over and over and over again; even though they aren’t here to cheer for me, I grow to appreciate them more and more each time I see them. My favorite is the little girl (maybe 8 years old) who is holding a sign that reads “Finish = Beer”. I guess that her mom has put her up to this, and maybe her dad is somewhere just behind me. I see the girl and her mom and the sign no less than 4 times along the course.<br /><br />My mom always told me “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”, and it’s a wonder that – following that philosophy – on some days I can find anything at all to say. Today is not one of those days. There are maybe just plain too many nice things to be said about this race. Have I mentioned the scenery? Ah, well, perhaps. But what of the organization? This race is top-notch. The miles are consistently marked, and the aid stations appear exactly as advertised. The volunteers are wonderful. The scenery is beautiful. (Oh, uh, have I mentioned that before?)<br /><br />The odd thing is that, with so much beauty all around, I have so little to say. It’s gorgeous here, absolutely freakin’ gorgeous. We run along curving backroads that open out onto the bay, where there are boats bobbing in the gentle breeze. There are old stone borders on the roads, and then there are more trees, more boats, more water, more beautiful everything. In fact, it’s so pretty that it is almost overwhelming.<br /><br />Around mile 20, the course turns out onto a more heavily traveled thoroughfare, and we’re confined to a narrow lane on the side of the heavily cambered road. This, I suppose, is the single complaint that I can find to lodge against this marathon: the cant of the road, along with the narrowness of our lane for the remainder of the journey, make running a bit tough. I know from our drive yesterday that the toughest miles are coming – there is the biggest net elevation gain in the next several miles – but it really doesn’t feel any different to me today than the hills we’ve already covered. The sun is out, and it’s just beautiful. I run; I enjoy the scenery. What else is there?<br /><br />Well, at mile 26, there is the town of Southwest Harbor, and right there is Melissa. Folks, if you ever have the pleasure of running a marathon “with” a friend, I hope you have the fortune to run with someone like Melissa. Melissa has finished her own marathon about half an hour earlier, and yet, there she is, my biggest fan and cheerleader and coach. Melissa calls out my name (“Judy Denver!” – what else) and then runs alongside me, urging me on, telling me that the finish line is “just up ahead”. And she’s absolutely right – there it is – possibly the only flat spot on the course – the 26.2 mile banner. When I’m in sight of the chip mats, Melissa peels off, and I run the last few steps on my own – just me and a bunch of hardy Maine souls who are out on this chilly Sunday morning, cheering for us. It never ceases to amaze me: the kindness and support of strangers. The finish line clock reads 4:25:32 as I pass under it. Not my fastest marathon, but also not my slowest. Just about perfect.<br /><br />It’s too cold to stay long at the finish area – but that doesn’t stop me from having some of the post-race ice cream. Melissa and I pretty quickly find our way to the shuttle bus that will take us back to the start line. We strike up a conversation with the couple sitting in the seat in front of us on the bus, and are delighted to learn that the guy is the legendary (well, to a number of crazy runners) Marathon Maniac #2. After cleaning up at the hotel, we head into town for some last shopping and then a fabulous lobster dinner (Melissa, not a seafood lover, gets her Maine-food fix with the blueberry pie for dessert). In the morning, we will have a wonderful breakfast in town, then we’ll set out for our drive back to Portland. The scenery along the way is, as everything else has been this weekend, simply perfect.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-55490235115265878902008-11-09T22:09:00.000-08:002008-11-09T22:13:36.927-08:00Keep me from drowning (St. George Marathon 2008)<span style="font-size:130%;">St. George Marathon 2008</span><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001647/"><em>Captain Renault</em></a><em>: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca? </em><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000007/"><em>Rick</em></a><em>: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters. </em><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001647/"><em>Captain Renault</em></a><em>: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert. </em><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000007/"><em>Rick</em></a><em>: I was misinformed.<br /></em><br />It’s the desert that draws me back to St. George. Well, the desert and the fast course. My memories of the St. George Marathon, which I ran for the first time back in 2002, are of spectacular scenery and a very fast downhill finish. The beauty of the area is that of the high desert: stark moonscapes with outrageous rock outcroppings and mountains silhouetted in the distance to the east. This is like a more severe notion of home to me, coming from the high desert of Denver. And home is what I’ve been looking for, ever since I had the year from hell.<br /><br />It’s a story that pretty much everyone in my acquaintance knows: nearly six months of an undefined illness that left me just plain worn out and frustrated, followed up by an emergency appendectomy on April 23rd. While I was thrilled to be returned, virtually overnight, to good health, the process of coming back has been slower than I would like, and as a consequence, highly frustrating. After being a dedicated runner for more than 30 years, it was alien for me to take up running again post-surgery, starting from a base of zero. But finally, after a couple of months, running started to feel good again, and once again I was able to get to that zen-like meditative state. The problem was that the illness and subsequent recovery robbed me of every bit of speed that I had ever claimed. Would I ever get it back? If my daily runs now averaged just under 11 minute miles, could I ever run a sub-4 hour marathon again? I had my doubts. But I knew that if I had a chance, it would be at St. George.<br /><br />You see, the 2002 St. George Marathon was a breakthrough race for me. It was the first time that I ever completely exceeded my own expectations running, and I finished it feeling fantastic – the first time that had happened for me in a race of this distance. So this year, as I was recovering from the appy, I entered the race lottery on a whim. And when I was chosen – something I hadn’t really expected – I knew that it was the right race to mark my return to marathoning.<br /><br />As it turns out, the timing of this marathon is just absurd. I’m in the middle of a remodel/redecorating project at home, and I’m living in complete chaos. I pack my bag for the marathon while a crew of four painters goes gonzo to try to finish the job on this day, a Thursday in early October. My furniture is helter-skelter, and my bedroom – the only room in the place that isn’t going through huge changes yet – houses stacks of boxes filled with my books and family photos and miscellany. It’s overrun, and I just pray that I can get to the drawers and storage places where all of my marathon stuff is located. In the midst of the packing frenzy, a storm rolls into Denver, and it starts to rain. Huh? It was supposed to be beautiful today! Where did this rain come from?<br /><br />Finally, I am out the door and on the road to Utah. The weather has improved by the time I head out; no more rain today. I’ve decided to break up my journey by staying in Grand Junction. This allows me to listen to the debate between the two Vice Presidential candidates on NPR as I traverse the state. When I hit my car stereo’s “scan” button to find NPR, the radio stops on a Christian station and I hear (for the first time in many years) the Jars of Clay song “Flood”. I’ve always liked the haunting melody of this piece, but I’m looking for the debate, so pretty quickly I hit the “scan” button again, and find NPR. The debate makes the drive to Grand Junction go by in the blink of an eye. On Friday, I have a leisurely drive, and arrive in St. George mid-afternoon, where I join Michele at a Holiday Inn Express just north of town.<br /><br />We soon head over to the expo. It’s honest-to-God hot here – temperatures in the mid 80’s, and we both pray that tomorrow is a bit cooler, at least in the morning. Sunny and gorgeous, though, for now, is just fine with both of us. We spend some cash at the expo, then eat our fill at the pasta dinner, and soon we’re back at the hotel, making race-day preparations.<br /><br />Race morning comes extremely early, since this marathon is a point-to-point with an early start (6:45 a.m.); that means we have to be on buses out to the start by roughly 5 a.m. Michele and I walk out the front door of the hotel at about 4:30 – into a 72 degree morning. Oh boy! The early forecast for this race had the highs for the day peaking out at 92 degrees. The forecast has gone through multiple iterations since then, but this warm morning does not bode well for a fast race. We look at each other, then assure each other that it won’t really be all that bad, since the start is at a higher elevation. I think about the latest forecast that I’ve seen – one that includes a chance of rain today along with slightly cooler temps – and think that the forecasters are idiots.<br /><br />We get to the bus-boarding area without problem, and walk towards the line of yellow school buses. There are a couple of port-a-potties along our path, and we decide to make a pre-bus-ride stop. As we stand in a short line, we both notice a change in the weather. What is that? Rain? Hello? The rain in the forecast is for this afternoon! Not this morning! I decide that this is a fluke.<br /><br />Still. We’re on the bus, headed out to the race start – seated at the front of the bus – and the rain keeps falling. In fact, it seems to intensify as we drive the 26.2 miles. Michele and I both lament the fact that we’ve left our large black garbage bags in our luggage back in the hotel. Who knew that we would need protection from rain at the start line? We have been worried about heat, not rain! As we approach the bus drop-off, I notice that, in addition to the rain, the wind is whipping along at a good clip – and exactly in the wrong direction. This wind will be directly in our face. Argh! Who ordered this weather?<br /><br />I am dreading getting off the bus. After all, we have nearly an hour to wait for the start. We’ll be drenched. Criminy.<br /><br />And it is miserable getting off the bus. There are rain squalls, and a wicked wind. But lucky for us, some smart volunteers have had the foresight to supply the big black garbage bags. We each grab one, and immediately feel the benefit of the rain and wind block that this simple solution provides. We head over to the bonfires – a signature feature of the St. George Marathon – and warm ourselves. The garbage bags keep us warm and dry. Time passes quickly, and in no time at all, Michele and I wish each other luck, then part ways so that we can each run our own race.<br /><br />Because I stay long in a port-a-potty queue, I end up lining up at the tail end of the field for this race. No matter. It’s chip timed, so why worry? The only thing I miss – starting this far back in the pack – is the official race start. But it’s kind of nice, doing this slow shuffle up to the start line; nobody is pushing or hurrying back here. We’re all wearing our garbage bags as we cross the chip mats. Once we’re past the start-line floodlights and the high-pitched electronic squeal of the chip mats, the only sound is the whoosh-whoosh of plastic rubbing against plastic. For some reason – maybe it’s the rain – nobody seems to be talking back here. It’s just whoosh-whoosh and soggy footfalls.<br /><br /><em>Rain rain on my face, it hasn’t stopped raining for days…</em><br /><br />Almost immediately, the words of the Jars of Clay song come to me, unbidden. It’s raining – really raining – and that’s the most notable thing about this run. From six years ago, I remember a dark start, with a faint sunrise just staining the eastern horizon. Today, it’s just dark. Low hanging clouds all around. No promise of sunrise. Dark. Dark and rain. Swoosh-swoosh of plastic garbage bags.<br /><br />There’s a guy at the first mile marker, calling out splits, but the number is meaningless to me. I took no notice of the official race clock when I crossed the start line, so I have no idea how much time it took me to cover that first mile. Dutifully, I hit the split button on my watch, but it’s so dark that I don’t even try to see the time. Likewise with the second mile. There is an aid station at mile 3, and in the chaos of water versus Gatorade, I miss a split. I don’t even both looking at my watch; I still couldn’t see it if I tried – it’s that dark. Finally, at mile 4, the sky has brightened enough for me to see my elapsed time when I hit the split button. 38:06, or roughly 9:30 miles. I’m happy enough with that.<br /><br />But it’s still raining. I keep thinking that we’re in the desert, and this will end soon. I kept the garbage bag until just after the mile 2 marker, but once I started to feel warm, I ditched the thing. I’m feeling okay now, just a bit soggy. Even with the relentless rain, the next several miles seem to melt away. Running seems effortless, a new-old experience that I haven’t had in far too many months. Miles 5, 6, and 7 go by in 9:02, 8:36, and 8:35. This is nice<br /><br />But I know from experience that the middle miles of this race are the toughest. We hit mile marker #7 in the town of Veyo, and the other side of town holds the biggest climb of the race. It’s a solid mile or more of 7% uphill. The uphill takes even more effort than I’ve remembered from six years ago. The good news is that the climb heats me up, so I finally ditch my throwaway long-sleeved shirt, and with it, my cotton throwaway gloves. Now just in a singlet and shorts, I figure that I’m set until I reach the finish line. I finally feel like I’m racing.<br /><br />It takes me 10:49 to climb the hill at Veyo. But the hardest thing about this race is not the Veyo hill; it’s the next three miles after Veyo, where there is a gradual uphill grade. It’s just a grind. I remember that six years ago these miles nearly demoralized me. So today I just watch my heart rate and run within myself. I run 10:01, 9:50, 10:01, and 9:21 for miles 9 through 12. All in all, not bad. My heart rate is right where it should be. The only problem is that it’s raining pretty hard now and I’m soaked down to my socks and shoes. In a word, I’m freezing. I regret throwing away my long-sleeved shirt. What was I thinking? Ah yes, the rain will stop. Sometime. But I’m starting to think that sometime might not be while this race is still going.<br /><br /><em>Downpour on my soul<br />Splashing in the ocean, I’m losing control<br />Dark sky all around<br />I can’t feel my feet touching the ground</em><br /><br />My legs feel okay now, and I feel good about my ability to run this distance again. I feel like my legs are just getting warmed up, and I’ll be able to bring it home okay. But it’s the rest of my body that worries me. My arms and hands are cold. Freezing, really. Okay, numb is the best word for it. I pass an aid station, and wonder if I stopped to dry off in the ambulance parked there – would that warm me up? But it seems a wasted thought since the rain continues to fall, so what good would that be? I shake my arms and hands in hopes of waking them up. I have some dark moments wondering if I’ll even be able to finish this race. How long does it take for hypothermia to do serious damage?<br /><br /><em>Listen to the rhythm of the falling ra</em>in….no<br /><em>When the rain falls</em>…..no<br /><br />I try to conjure up some other songs about rain – maybe something in a nice cheery major key? – but the only thing I can hear in my brain is…<br /><br /><em>Rain, rain on my face</em><br /><em>It hasn't stopped raining for days</em><br /><em>My world is a flood</em><br /><em>Slowly I become one with the mud</em><br /><em>But if I can't swim after forty daysand my mind is crushed by the thrashing waves<br /></em><br />The halfway mark comes in 2:04:44, and I realize that I am seriously off the pace that I ran this race back in 2002. Ah well. Life happens. At this point, I’m just trying to hold on to even finish this thing. I figure that I might be able to pick up the pace a bit – my heart rate has been right where it should be, so I have some capacity to turn things up.<br /><br />Magically, picking up the pace not only elevates my heart rate, but it also starts to raise my body temp. It can’t hurt that the rain lightens up for a few miles, and I feel like I have a bit of a respite. Mile 14 goes by in 9:01 and Mile 15 in 8:31. Mile 16 takes us past the entrance to Snow Canyon, and we run through a serious downhill that makes me feel like we are free falling. Not only is it a fun fast downhill mile (8:15), but the beautiful red rock walls of the canyon shield us – albeit briefly – from the wind that has been in our face all these miles. The cold has gone from my core, and I now know I can finish this thing. The only question is how long will that take?<br /><br />Well, there is one other question – and that is, how long can my stomach hold out? The stomach cramps started some time back, and – as in so many other races – I’ve just figured that it’s mind over matter. I’ve slowed down my intake of gels, just to be on the safe side. After some serious cramps in miles 17 and 18 (8:38 and 8:25), I feel that they’ve passed, and I’m good to go to the finish. Just to be safe, I’ve abandoned any more nutritional intake.<br /><br />It starts to rain hard again in Mile 19. What the heck??? Just when I’m starting to feel pretty good. This is a cold, soaking rain again. Add to that the fact that in the last six years, somebody has put a big hill on the course right here! The nerve! I have no memories of a hill at this point on the course, and the experience takes a toll on me: at 9:46, this is one of my slowest miles of the day. How could I not remember this? We go under an overpass, and there are cars and volunteers hanging out here; everybody is tired of the rain. Will it never stop?<br /><br />The course veers downhill again after mile 20, and I’m starting to run with a vengeance. Although I’m liking this distance again, I’m just dead tired of the rain, the cold, and the squishing feet. My cramping stomach doesn’t help matters at all. Mile 20 goes by in a respectable 9:05, and then I bust things open in mile 21, with my fastest mile of the day in 7:55. I’m just determined to be done. We’re starting to come into St. George, and there are now people lining the roads. Miles 22 and 23 are 8:57 and 8;24; I’m in a rhythm.<br /><br />It’s been hard to appreciate the spectacular scenery here today. For the most part, it’s been camouflaged by the rain and low-hanging clouds. So it’s the people I have to remember, all of these hardy folks standing out in the rain, with their slickers and umbrellas. God bless them, every one. For as cold as it is running, it has to be much colder standing there.<br /><br /><em>Lift me up so high that I cannot fall</em><br /><em>Lift me up</em><br /><em>Lift me up - when I'm falling</em><br /><em>Lift me up - I'm weak and I'm dying</em><br /><em>Lift me up - I need you to hold me</em><br /><em>Lift me up - Keep me from drowning again<br /></em><br />Now we’re heading into the St. George city proper, and I’ve kicked it up as much as possible. I have, in fact, been passing people left and right for miles and miles, and that feels pretty awesome. It feels as if I’ve been passing people for the entire 26.2 mile journey. I have no idea how that can even seem possible, but it feels so good that I don’t question the feeling.<br /><br />Mile 24 is a fast one in 8:20, and then the stomach cramps come back in full force. I’ve been doing some mental math – very difficult when you’re at this stage in the marathon – and figured that I somehow, miraculously, have a chance of beating that 4 hour barrier. And I know that if I stop in a port-a-potty that dream goes out the window. I decide that, if necessary, I’ll just have to pull a Uta Pippig and deal with it later. The thought helps me relax into the finishing miles. Mile 25 goes by in 8:55, and mile 26 is 8:56. My gut is finally cooperating as I come down the finishing stretch.<br /><br />The rain is light now, and the road is lined with cheering people. It hits me that I am finishing the first marathon as part of the “rest of my life”, and I’m going to finish under 4 hours. I have to choke back tears. I know I’m lucky to be here running today, and I’m blessed to get this feeling back again. The final 385 yards go by in a blur of rain and poetry and song and crazy fans cheering. I cross the line in 3:58:24. It’s a far sight from the 3:52 I ran here in 2002, but it’s the best I’ve can muster on this cold, rainy, windy day, and I take it with a smile on my face.<br /><br />But it’s still raining, and it’s cold, and I’m still freezing. In short order I find Michele, who has had a stellar day of her own, and we agree that getting back to our warm and dry hotel room is priority one. I grab a little bit of food before reclaiming my dry clothes from checked bags, and then we take off. Back at the hotel, we both dry off before taking hot showers, and then we head next door for a very late lunch. Even though it’s still raining lightly, we make the drive to Zion National Park, and board a shuttle to see some of the upper reaches of the park. The shuttle driver keeps encouraging us to get off at stops along the way, but Michele and I finally cry uncle: “We’ve just run a marathon in the rain! We’ve had enough wet for one day!” The folks around us suddenly look at with some new respect. Zion is beautiful, and I’d like to hike it someday…but it seems that the weather is conspiring to ensure that “someday” is out in the future.<br /><br />Sunday morning finds me driving Michele to the St. George airport in the early morning, and, like yesterday, it’s dark when we leave the hotel. But today the air is crisp and cool. When I drop Michele at the front door of the small airport, it’s almost 24 hours to the minute from our race start yesterday. Off to the east, we can see the faint promise of daybreak behind the mountains. It’s cool enough that you can see your breath. In short, it’s a perfect day for a marathon in the desert. Then Michele takes off for her flight home to Atlanta, and I start the drive north and east to get back to Denver, through the dry high desert air.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-63626531504503049222008-09-06T22:53:00.000-07:002008-09-06T22:54:05.754-07:00Obamarama (August 28, 2008)The day has looked dubious from the confines of my office this morning: a gray, LA-like haze hangs in the air. But Mick, who has been out on his bike, reports that it’s warm, so I needn’t worry. Still, we’re going to be outside from about 1 p.m. until heaven-knows-when tonight, so I throw a raincoat and a warmer shirt into a backpack before heading out the door. The pack also contains my little digital camera, binoculars, a couple of New Yorkers (we’re going to be waiting a while is the way I see it), a wallet, sunscreen, and a few other odds and ends. (I have never been accused of traveling lightly.) As our time to leave home approaches, I’m a bit frenzied. As these things always go, work has gone crazy, and my plans to get out by noon are screwed. Not at all what I need, especially when we’re going to the event of the year, if not the decade….maybe even the century.<br /><br />You see, we’re on our way to the Democratic National Convention, to watch and listen as Barack Obama accepts the nomination. This is going to be cool.<br /><br />I finally duck out of a meeting that is dragging on ad infinitum, and at 1 p.m. prompt, we’re out the door. Mick had said that we needed to be at the gates of Invesco Field at Mile High (“Mile Hi”) by 1 p.m., but I just couldn’t get away any earlier. Besides, if Obama is not set to speak until 7 or 8 tonight, what’s the hurry?<br /><br />The event organizers have been encouraging attendees to arrive by bicycle, and that suits Mick just fine. I’m okay with the idea of riding over to the event, but am a little nervous about the trip home. It will be dark, and I’m worried about the traffic. But since getting there is going to be the easy part, I put my fears aside, and Mick and I take off on the Cherry Creek bike path. It’s an easy 3 mile ride to Mile Hi from here, all bike path, no traffic at all, so I figure that I will worry about the return trip home later.<br /><br />It’s odd to be out on my bike in the middle of the day during the work week, and it’s liberating. The 2 mile ride north from my home to Confluence Park is easy, but as soon as we make the turn to head south for the final mile to Mile Hi, we encounter a barrier just going up. “Sorry,” the guy says, when we question what he’s doing. “It’s just too crowded down there already. You’ll have to go around.”<br /><br />We look at each other. What the heck? It’s now only about 1:10, and the bike path going to Mile Hi is closed already? And where do we “go around”? We need to cross both the Platte River as well as I-25. The city worker has no advice for us, and we spend a frustrating few minutes getting turned around on the local roads. Finally we end up getting across I-25 on a backstreet, and we wind our way through traffic that has me riding white-knuckled until we reach the back parking lots of Mile Hi. Thankfully, when we get closer to the stadium, the roads are barricaded, but the guards allow us to ride through.<br /><br />All of the on-line information and event planning emails have instructed us to park our bikes at a place called Rube Park, where they will have bike security set up. But try as I might before leaving home, I’ve never been able to figure out exactly where this park is located. I’m fretting over finding the park when Mick says, it looks like we can leave our bikes here. We’ve just happened upon a bus stop, and there are already a number of bikes chained to a chain link fence here. Problem solved. (We never do figure out where the official bike parking is.) In a short time, we’ve locked up our bikes, and we’re joining the tide moving towards the security tents.<br /><br />The haze in the sky is gone, and it’s now warm and sunny. The atmosphere is carnival-like, with people arriving from all directions, and hawkers selling Obama t-shirts and Obama hand towels and Obama bumper stickers and Obama buttons. We see just one protester holding “God hates Obama” signs, and a few other preachers, who seem to not have a direct connection to the goings-on. There are a few folks giving out stuff: granola bars and Obama “10 Points” buttons and, thankfully, bottled water. The list of items that we are not allowed to bring in to Mile Hi included bottled water, but the folks handing out the water tell us that we can take the water in with us, so Mick and I each grab two bottles. It’s getting outright hot, and cold water seems perfect.<br /><br />The line snakes around a long ways, but keeps moving, and as we’re downing our first water bottles, we approach the security tents. An event worker tells us that we can’t take the water in with us. What the heck? This seems like organized chaos. We reluctantly surrender our second water bottles. The tradeoff is that we’re moving, and from here it’s only a few minutes going through the metal detectors in the tents before we emerge on the other side, inside the stadium. Sudden freedom. That wasn’t so bad.<br /><br />We’ve entered the stadium from the west, and our seats are on the east side, so we have some walking to do. It feels nice to be inside the shade of the concourse. As always seems to happen when I’m with Mick, it’s only minutes before somebody recognizes him. We join the friends, and walk together around to our section – Section 124 – and part ways. Mick grabs a burger, and we head back out into the sunshine to find our seats.<br /><br />When we emerge inside the stadium, we realize that the seating is assigned only by section, and from there it’s open seating. This can’t be too bad – we’re nearly on the 50 yard line of the field. We walk up a few stairs and scope it out – although there are lots of people here, it will be a long time before it starts to fill up. We choose a couple of seats on the aisle, and turn around to take in the view.<br /><br />We both stop short. We look at each other, then back to the stadium floor. It hits us at the same time: these seats are about as bad as they come. We’re staring directly at the back of the stage that has been built on the stadium floor.<br /><br />Oh boy.<br /><br />Mick eats his burger as we digest this information. There’s really nothing to be done about it, but it’s still a bit surreal. To be at the event of the century, and to have no view of the front side of the stage itself.<br /><br />Oh well.<br /><br />It doesn’t take long before we’re both ready for a break from the sun. Given that there are really no “good” seats in this section – actually, on this entire side of the field – we figure that our seats won’t matter a whit. We head back into the shade of the concourse.<br /><br />For now, this is where the action is, anyway. There are tons of booths selling official Obama gear: t-shirts, bumper stickers, hats, car magnets, posters, buttons, typical campaign stuff. There are all of the typical stadium food vendors (minus the beer stands). Mostly, there are the people. <br /><br />Mick and I grab some more food (greasy pizza slices and too-sweet fresh-squeezed lemonade this time), and find a spot on the stadium walls to park ourselves for a while. The breeze is cool, the concrete warm, and the shade heavenly. We pull out our New Yorkers, and split our time between eating, reading, and people-watching.<br /><br />From our vantage point, we can see out to Colfax Avenue, where there is a steady stream of people making the pilgrimage from downtown. (We start thinking that maybe Colfax will be the best route for our trip home.) Inside, it’s also a steady stream of people. There are people of every kind you can imagine. Many of the people, like us, are dressed in comfortable clothes – shorts and t-shirts. More than I can believe are dressed up. It’s hot, and there are men wearing suits, and women wearing dresses and spike heels. It seems that half of the people are talking on cell phones as they go by. There are people with babies and a few young kids, but mostly adults – but adults of all ages, and the group spans the socio-economic spectrum. There are many more African-Americans here than I’ve seen gathered in one place in some time, but I guess that’s not a surprise. One thing that we all have in common is that we are all – very proudly, for most of us – wearing our large holographic credentials around our neck. It’s required, of course. But I doubt that any of these are going directly into the trash when the day is done. They’ll make the ultimate souvenir.<br /><br />At 3 p.m., we hear the festivities get underway out in the stadium. The Yonder Mountain String Bang performs a few numbers. Somebody sings the national anthem, and somebody else leads the crowd in the pledge of allegiance. The speeches start, and they seem to drone on from the beginning. I have an ear tuned to a TV monitor nearby, but Mick is sprawled out on the warm concrete floor, napping. Me, I keep watching the throngs of people moving around me. <br /><br />Eventually, the concrete floor gets hard, and Mick and I figure it’s time to head back into the stadium to join the festivities. It’s sometime after 4 when we make our way into the sun once again. The stands are filling up, but, unfortunately, our view is still of the back of that stage set. Darn it anyway. <br /><br />But that, thankfully, is just about the last negative thought that I have on this day. For, once I’m in the stadium, and once I start to listen to the speeches and to the excitement and to the cheers of the thousands of people filled with hope, there’s no room in my heart for anything other than positive thoughts.<br /><br />The section we’re assigned to has filled in since we were out here earlier, and we quickly find seats among Mick’s friends from Pitkin and Garfield and Eagle Counties. Down on the stage, the Colorado Democratic voice in Washington is getting a chance to address the national audience. John Salazar speaks, and then Diana Degette, and finally, Mark Udall. The speeches are all very short and crisp, and the unifying theme is the effort of every speaker to mention the name Barack Obama as many times as possible, short of just chanting his name over and over.<br /><br />It’s hot under this sun, even though it’s approaching late afternoon. The drinks salesman makes his round, and we dutifully plunk down our $3.50 each for bottles of water. Too bad they are not selling beer; it could have been a huge revenue generator.<br /><br />At 5:30, Sheryl Crow takes the stage, and it’s a nice performance. She plays just three numbers, starting, appropriately, with “A Change Would Do You Good” (she changes the lyrics to “a change would do US good”) encouraging the crowd to sing along. She plays a couple more numbers, and keeps the crowd very much engaged. We watch her on the huge JumboTron, and are thankful that at least we have this view. Heaven knows, I have paid a bunch of money to see her in concert before, so I guess I shouldn’t complain about the view when the seats are free, and the sound system is good. (I can’t help thinking that she’s better off without Lance Armstrong.)<br /><br />At some point, even though our view is otherwise non-existent, we realize that we have a perfect view of the TelePrompter. How odd. We see all of the words right before they are spoken, even the songs. It makes this unique experience just a bit more surreal.<br /><br />There are more speeches. More musicians. There’s will.i.am, and his contingent, doing the “Yes We Can” number that was made so popular on YouTube. More speeches. There’s a large group of military leaders (generals and admirals and other officers) who parade out onto the stage, with a rousing speech from one of them. There’s Stevie Wonder to perform a couple of numbers. There’s a granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and there are children of Martin Luther King, Junior, on this 45th anniversary of his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington. Michael McDonald is the last musical act, playing and soulfully singing “American the Beautiful”, more fitting than ever given that the words to the song were written by Katharine Lee Bates after she visited Pikes Peak in the late 19th century. The caliber of the speechmakers heats up. Howard Dean speaks. Al Gore takes the stage, and he’s truly a great statesman-orator. Too bad he didn’t have this presence back when he won the (popular) election against W.<br /><br />Finally, the sun sinks below the west stands of the stadium, and we have a nice breeze, and it becomes a beautiful late summer evening in Denver. We could not have asked for more.<br /><br />Joe Biden makes a short speech, and then we get the de rigueur but still inspirational parade of ordinary citizens who are backing Obama. They amaze me, every one of them, with their poise and their stories and their convictions. I can’t decide who is my favorite; maybe the woman who professes to be a lifelong Republican voter who is voting for Obama this year, or maybe the guy named Barney Smith who says “I want leadership in Washington who will look out for Barney Smith, not the Smith Barneys of the world.”<br /><br />Finally, we see Michelle Obama take her seat, and we know that the Real Deal is about to start. We’re armed for it. Earlier this afternoon, they came around handing out flags, and Mick and I each got one. More recently, they’ve handed out “Change” placards. The anticipation in the air is almost palpable. The stadium is filled to capacity: you can’t see a single empty seat anywhere. The only experience that I’ve had that was remotely like this was way, way back when I lived in Des Moines in the late 1970s, and a young Pope John Paul II made a visit to the Living History Farms there. Okay, that autumn day was different in many ways from this day, but the experience of people who share a common belief, and a hope, and a dedication to a cause, making a pilgrimage to see their leader, was the same.<br /><br />Dick Durbin takes the stage to start the Real Deal, and after his brief address we’re watching the video of Senator Obama’s life story, rapt. When Senator Obama takes the stage, the energy is amped up to near-explosion levels. And what a treat is in store! Probably, if you’re reading this, you’ve seen the speech, so I can’t embellish on the content. The only thing I can add is that the stadium was completely captivated for the entire speech. We hang on every word. Senator Obama has become a great orator, and this is a fine moment for him. It’s a fine moment for all of us who hope he will bring the change he promises to Washington. It’s an incredible experience, all this shared hope.<br /><br />When the speech ends, I look around and realize that not a soul has moved from a seat yet. Many have been here since 1 p.m.; it’s now past 9 p.m., and nobody is moving to get out of the stadium. Fireworks are exploding overhead, and we crane our heads overhead as we watch the confetti fall to the ground. The white bits are little 5-pointed stars of crepe paper, and everyone in our section is soon mesmerized, trying to catch a few of these whiffs of paper for souvenirs. The fireworks continue, the confetti keeps falling, and a clergyman offers up a closing benediction. And then we’re on our way home.<br /><br />I’ve been fearing this ride back home, and it does take us a while to get back to our bikes. But the incredible thing is that Colfax Avenue – one of the longest, busiest avenues in the world, directly through a major city – is closed to traffic. So we take the more direct route home – maybe 2 miles from door to door – and ride without traffic, and are back at my place by 10:15. The thing I feared the most about the day turns out to be the easiest thing of all. We find other people in my building arriving back home at the same time, and we are all in some kind of spell. It was that kind of experience.<br /><br />In fact, Mick and I are so jazzed that we come back upstairs to my place, and turn on MSNBC to watch the post-convention coverage. There’s nothing new here, just confirmation of everything that we just witnessed. At 11 p.m., the post-convention broadcast ends, and they start a replay of the Dick Durbin speech, leading to the video and then Senator Obama’s speech once again. The speech plays on until well past midnight, but I stay on the couch, just as attentive as I was a couple hours ago. I listen until the message has been delivered in full again. It’s easy to sit through this again. Although I know that the real process of the election is only poised to begin in a few days – all the nastiness, the negative ads, the acrimony, the ugliness of a process that is still better than what exists in most of the rest of the world – for this brief moment, I can believe and revel in the peaceful process of democracy in action.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-41039519178108251952008-06-27T06:22:00.000-07:002008-06-27T06:24:51.132-07:00Ride the Rockies 2008There is a rhythm to life on Ride the Rockies, and on Saturday, June 14th, it takes me little time to fall into that rhythm once again. This really should not be so surprising, since this is my seventh consecutive annual bicycle trek through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Still, it amazes me how quickly this moving village of over 2500 people feels like home.<br /><br />The rhythm of camp life begins in mid-afternoon today, as on each subsequent day, with choosing a campsite and setting up the tent, always on school grounds or in a public park. This is easy camping – soft grass for a mattress every night – and the things that go into finding the perfect spot are easy to quantify: shade, no overhead lights, and proximity to bathrooms. The last item of importance is almost impossible to scope out in advance: a lack of noisy neighbors. Today, in Durango, I find a perfect shady spot. This is important, since Durango is in the southwest corner of the state: a region of high desert, where the warm, furnace-like temperatures are a welcome relief from the cold and wet spring we’ve had in Denver. After I pitch the tent, I figure that maybe I’ve made a mistake, based on the obnoxious rowdiness of a bunch of guys nearby. But they are a friendly group, and we soon become friends – they invite me to go to the beer garden with them before Mick arrives – and I know that this is the right way to start the week.<br /><br />After setting up camp, the next step is always – always! – the very important task of finding food. It takes a lot of calories to fuel a ride of 427 miles, and by the end of the week, it will feel like ferreting out and eating all that food takes a ton of energy. For dinner, the choices are typically a community dinner (of varying quality – the best is the southwest feast of grilled chicken and veggies and tortillas and Anasazi beans in Cortez) or a local restaurant, where the challenge is finding one of good quality without a long line. On this Ride the Rockies, my favorite restaurant is a pizza place in Crested Butte that offers a wide selection of beers (I have a new organic brew from the Deschutes brewery - yum) and the best French fries this side of the Atlantic. On the first night, in Durango, we find a good Italian eatery with no waiting line. In a typical day, we eat and eat and eat. On a long day, the eating seems to know no bounds. On the longest day of RTR 2008, I run into Joe, my seatmate from the bus ride down to Durango, at the final aid station of the day. Joe is a stocky, yet fit guy, and he’s eating a banana. He looks at me and says, “I never thought I would say this, but I’m actually tired of eating”. That about sums it up.<br /><br />Every afternoon at 4:30, we seek out the cycling seminars. Sometimes we go to the seminars to escape the weather (this year, it’s always the brutal heat outside), sometimes just to try to win some schwag (Mick scores a pair of $169 sunglasses for a <em>wrong</em> answer to a trivia question this year), and sometimes we go because the topic of the day is interesting. This year, in Cortez, the cycling seminar has a record attendance – and it’s all due to the speaker: Bob Roll. Bobke does not disappoint. We get there early and snag front row seats, and Bobke keeps us all laughing for a good 30 or 40 minutes with his tales of life as a professional cyclist and TV commentator. How can you not love that?<br /><br />Lights out at Ride the Rockies comes early, when the sun goes down. My personal approach is to have my morning stuff – bike clothes, cold weather gear, fleece, toiletries, etc. – all within easy reach of my sleeping bag before I go lights-out. The noise level in camp varies as the week wears on. Early, there is pent-up energy, nervousness, excitement, and it seems that every night there are loud talkers outside of our tent. What is it with men and cell phones in tents? They don’t seem to get it that everyone within a one mile radius can hear their conversations. By mid-week, though, everyone is dead tired by the time it gets dark, and silence falls across the campsite like a blanket. On the last full night, there is a blip of noise again – people partying, celebrating the long miles covered. Who can blame them? As for me, I always plan to read at bedtime, but with the exception of the first day – before we’ve done any riding – I’m almost always too tired to stay up late.<br /><br />Which is not a bad thing, since the camp comes to life early – way too early for me, some days – on Ride the Rockies. There are crazies who get up and on the road by 5 a.m. Not me. But when there are long days of riding – lots of miles and/or lots of vertical to scale – an early start is the only way to survive the day. Our earliest start this week is 6:30, on the day we ride from Montrose to Crested Butte, a distance of 92 miles with 6100 feet of vertical. Our latest start is in Crested Butte, where it is quite literally freezing (there is frost on the tent when we get up) and we don’t start riding until 8:30.<br /><br />Breakfast is critical, especially on those long days, and my favorite stops on Ride the Rockies are in the towns that have active organizations like Kiwanis (Montrose) or Optimist Club (Buena Vista): these folks know how to do breakfast for the masses. These are the all-you-can-eat feasts of pancakes and scrambled eggs and oatmeal and fruit and OJ and coffee. I’ll get up a little earlier any day of the (RTR) week for these breakfasts. On the other days – days of breakfast burritos and cold fare and school groups that can’t handle the crowds – I make a practice of finding the guy in the coffee van and paying the two bucks for a big cup of joe. It ain’t Starbucks, but it sure makes my day.<br /><br />After breakfast, it’s a scramble to finish packing up camp and load all of our gear onto the trucks. There are three semis that transport gear from town to town on Ride the Rockies, and Mick and I are nearly always on the Late Truck. It’s a kind of badge of honor. (Really, what is with all those people who start riding in the cold and dark? It makes no sense to me. Isn’t this <em>vacation</em>?) I think that maybe the best part of every day on Ride the Rockies is the moment you dump your big, over-stuffed, hugely heavy bag onto the truck, and you’re suddenly free – almost weightless. Just you and your bike and whatever you have stuffed into your jersey pockets and your Bento box. Freedom on two wheels. The road as life.<br /><br />Or maybe the best part of each day is when you finish your ride, and - assuming you get into camp early enough – you can park your bike and head to the showers (Mobil shower trucks with propane tanks that mean you never run out of hot water) after setting up camp all over again, and then – on those oh-so-perfect days – you have time to find a spot of shade and read a book for a few minutes before starting the whole process over again. The only thing awaiting you is the waiting in lines.<br /><br />Waiting in lines is a part of the culture of Ride the Rockies. We wait in line for breakfast, and we wait in line for the community dinners. We wait to get into restaurants. At the aid stations, we stand in line for the free bananas and oranges and water and Gatorade (hallelujah for purple Gatorade at every aid station this year). We wait for the port-a-potties and the Mobil showers, and we wait at the aid stations to buy our PB&J sandwiches and cookies and smoothies. If you are not a patient person, you might be miserable on Ride the Rockies. But then again, it’s in the lines where we run into friends, so how bad can it be, really?<br /><br />Some of our friends on Ride the Rockies are like the couple in “Same Time, Next Year”: people we only see once a year, but then they are our best friends all week long, and we keep an eye out for each other. This year, some of the friends I see over and over again through the week include Joe (my seatmate on the bus from Breckenridge to Durango at the start of the week), Barb (Ariel’s friend from California who is doing her third RTR), Chandra (the young woman from Boulder whom Mick and I met several years back doing a training ride up to Ward a week or two before RTR, and we’ve seen every year on the tour since then), Jim (a system administrator who works for my client – but I only see him on Ride the Rockies), and Judy (my personal clone, another Judy from Denver who wears the exact same Colorado state flag jersey as me on the first day). We’re introduced to Judy by our RTR friend Jill, who is from Aspen, but whom we rarely see except on RTR every year. This year, we run into Jill on the first day, just as we’re all loading stuff onto the Late Truck in Durango, and so we all ride together for the first part of the day. It feels good to connect with friends this early in the week, but it doesn’t last long: Jill has a bout of bad luck coming out of the second aid station, losing control of her bike as she comes across the rumble strips, and taking a bad fall. It turns out that she has broken her hip, requiring surgery at the hospital back in Durango. Her week ends before it’s really begun. <br /><br />It’s a dangerous business, riding all these miles, but we count ourselves lucky to survive all the miles with only minor complaints. Since I have done so little training (appendectomy, seven weeks ago), I’m especially worried about surviving this ride, but I do. It helps to have a massage tent with a big staff of massage therapists to help work out the kinks. I take advantage of the service just twice this week, but I’m convinced those two sessions help me finish the ride. In addition, Mick and I both visit the medical van almost every day, getting bags of ice for our knees (me) and feet (Mick), along with cadging some samples of Advil. If you pay enough attention throughout the week, you’ll hear about the road rash, the broken bones, the heart attacks, and all the other maladies that riders suffer. If you’re lucky enough, none of these things will happen to you.<br /><br />But no matter all of that. Ride the Rockies, at its core, in its soul, is about riding.<br /><br />On Day One, we ride from Durango to Cortez, just 48 miles with a net elevation loss. We rode this route in reverse a few years ago, so I am mentally prepared for the route. Kind of. Sort of. Our Sunday morning is just about perfect, with a little downhill out of Durango before we cross the idyllic Animas River, passing the Durango-Silverton Train as it starts its morning journey up into the mountains while we ride out of town in the other direction. Then we have a healthy little climb (there’s a total of 2,900’ feet of climbing today, despite the net elevation loss) before we hit the high elevation point of the day and start our long gradual descent into Cortez. Too bad that we have stiff headwinds for the trip; it makes this long downhill feel like work, a lot of work. Although it’s a short day for RTR, I feel like my effort is way out of proportion with the numbers that go into my log. I start to have serious doubts about my ability to ride the entire route this year.<br /><br />The Day Two ride is Cortez to Telluride, a 77 mile route that takes us up a long gradual climb over Lizard Head Pass (10,222’) before we descend down into Telluride. Every time I’ve ever been to Telluride, it has rained, so today I am prepared for cold and wet. But it turns out to be a beautiful, perfectly clear day. While it’s a long, gradual uphill – about 5,900 feet of climbing – the only steep parts are at the top of Lizard Head Pass and a second summit just a few miles past Lizard Head. The descent into Telluride would be great fun if not for the road damage. Still, I hit my fastest mileage of the week on this stretch of road – 45 mph - and figure that’s quite fast enough for me.<br /><br />Day Three is another ride we’ve done before, and I’ve had plenty of rotten weather on this stretch, too. We start out heading downhill out of Telluride with some pretty heavy traffic and narrow roads that have no shoulder. But we survive, and then we have a nice gradual climb up Dallas Divide (8,970’). The weather couldn’t be more perfect. The normal headwind into Montrose is barely a breeze today, and Mick paces me into town with miles and miles averaging 21-22 mph, which is extremely fast compared to my normal riding speed. It feels like we’re flying; it’s almost disorienting to get off the bike in Montrose. Including the climb up Dallas Divide, we cover 65 miles in just under 4 hours with 2,100’ of vertical; for me, that’s a great day.<br /><br />I’ve been dreading Day Four. We’ve ridden most of this route before – the part from Montrose to Gunnison – multiple times, and it has never been easy. Normally, this ride ends in Gunnison – a 65 mile day. For this RTR, they’ve tacked on the climb up to Crested Butte at the end of the day, making a 92 mile day with 6100’ of climbing. That’s just one long day.<br /><br />The climb out of Montrose up Cerro Summit (just 7,950’) is not steep, but there is a notorious headwind going up that mountain pass, and there’s just no getting around it. Mick paces me out today, so that part of the ride – while obnoxious – is no surprise. Mick paces me frequently on most of our Ride the Rockies adventures, but even moreso this year. He keeps things light and fun by watching the mile markers along the side of the road, and yells back to me, “Thirteen (or twelve or nine or …) more sMiles to go!” counting down into the next aid station or the next town. <br /><br />A few years ago, we did this climb, but the descent side of the pass was a road under construction, and it completely sucked – riding down a steep road that was dirt and gravel and tar. Today, we get the benefit of that road construction from the earlier year: the descent is on a new, smooth, beautiful road, and it’s the most fun I think I’ve ever had on a descent. There’s a second climb – Blue Mesa Summit (9,288’) – that is steeper, but by the time we hit this climb, the winds have died some. I actually like this climb a lot, especially the short descent into a canyon and the second little push to the top before descending down to Blue Mesa Reservoir.<br /><br />The last time we rode this route, we hit nasty rain along the reservoir, so I’m mentally prepared today. But the weather gods are smiling on us for this stretch of roadway, and we get a long gradual downhill with a healthy tailwind to push us through. It’s very sweet riding, all the way into Gunnison. But oh, what a nasty surprise awaits us there. The final 30 miles of our day are all uphill, all into a very gnarly headwind with temperatures that are furnace-like. No stretch of road on RTR has ever seemed so long, or so slow, or so painful to me. I swear like a sailor, and curse the wind (quoting Jimmy Buffet’s “Goddamn, son-of-a-bitchin’ fuckin’ wind!”), but in the end all there is to do is to keep riding. Although I’ve never been to Crested Butte before, as we approach the little mountain town, I decide that I hate the place, without reservation. I will never come back to this God-forsaken place again. As I get off my bike, I look around for cardboard and magic marker so that I can make a “Bike for Sale – Cheap!” sign. When I can’t find the supplies easily, I go with plan B, and head for food and beer.<br /><br />For Day Five, we have a rest day in Crested Butte. We get to sleep in, and when we crawl out of the tent at 8 in the morning, it’s full sun and beautiful mountains all around. We go downtown for a leisurely breakfast, and stop in a funky little bookstore before making our way back out to our camp at the school. What a great little town. Have I mentioned how much I love it here? I look in the real estate office windows, thinking I might just have to move here.<br /><br />Day Six starts out with frost on the tent. Brrrr! But it’s another long day with lots of climbing – 76 miles with 5,900’ of vertical – so we can’t really dawdle too long. Since I suffered so much coming into Crested Butte, I’m expecting a nice long downhill for starters, but we have a headwind leaving town, so we have to pedal downhill. Who designed this route anyway?<br /><br />But I’ve been looking forward to the next part of the ride more than anything: along the Taylor River, up over Cottonwood Pass (12,126’) which is both literally and figuratively the highpoint of this year’s tour. We rode this route several years ago, but had thunderstorms, lightning, rain, mud, you name it, every variety of miserable weather possible. Today we have every variety of beautiful weather possible: sun, cloudless sky, no wind, beautiful roads. This pass has only been open for the summer these last eight days, and that – combined with the fact that the last 14 miles to the top of the pass are dirt and gravel – means that there is very light traffic. Even with the lousy weather last time we rode this, I knew that this was one of my favorite spots in Colorado. With today’s lovely weather, it’s a certainty: there just are not many more beautiful spots in this world. Although we climb non-stop for nearly 40 miles, I’m in great spirits; when people pass me and ask how I’m doing, I burst into song. Bizarre, yes. Spontaneous, yes. The funny thing is how many people actually sing to me in return. When you add the 20-some mile steep descent down the other side of Cottonwood Pass into the equation (this section, thankfully, is paved), you can hardly design a more perfect day on the bike.<br /><br />Day Seven: well, I burnt myself out yesterday, and it’s a shame, since today’s ride is nearly as wonderful as yesterday’s. We start early again today, because we have 69 miles to ride with 4,400’ of climbing, and we want to be in Breckenridge for the closing ceremonies at 2 p.m. That means we have to work hard to summit Trout Creek Pass (9,346’) in the early miles of our ride, although I would love to stop continually to take pictures; it’s just that scenic. The descent off Trout Creek is not steep, and before you know it we’re working on the second climb of the day. I’m out of steam, so I crawl. Mick paces me for a while on the flatter parts of the climb to Hoosier Pass (11,542’), but when we get to the last aid station before the summit, I decide I will need extra time and I take off on my own while Mick grabs a smoothie. The traveling DJ is at this aid station today, and just before I take off, he plays John Denver’s <em>Rocky Mountain High.</em> It seems that I hear this song at this point of the week every year on RTR, and never has it seemed more fitting than today. This next stretch turns out to be one of the steepest climbs of the week, and it takes every thing I have to make it to the top, but it’s glorious when we get there. Mick and Chandra and Barb and other people I’ve seen off and on all week are there, too. It’s a beautiful summit to end the week with, and then there’s a lovely ten mile descent into Breckenridge to the Finish line. But who is in a hurry today? It’s sunny and beautiful; a great day to be on a bike. <br /><br />It makes me long for next year already, and I start thinking about getting ready for Ride the Rockies 2009. That’s another element of the rhythm of life on Ride the Rockies: you can’t wait to finish each day’s ride, but then when the week rolls to a close it seems all too soon. Like every other year, I file away thoughts about how much better prepared I’ll be next year. Then I load the bike on top of the car, and retrieve my bag from the Late Truck once more, and head back home to Denver.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-47003873303524339752008-02-13T15:19:00.000-08:002008-02-13T15:20:58.262-08:00A Tale of Two RacesIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times… Truer words have never been written, albeit they were written far in advance of the events that heralded the meaning for this report. Two marathons run within just three short weeks of other could not have been more different…<br /><br /><strong>Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey Marathon (Nashville, Tennessee; November 18 )</strong><br /><br />This is not a goal race for me, I’ve simply been cajoled into coming to Nashville in order to a) check off yet another state in my quest to run a marathon in each of the 50 states, and to b) spend the weekend with a bunch of friends from Taper Madness – not necessarily in that order. The weekend gets off to an even-better-than-expected start with the Saturday festivities. Michele and Paul and David pick me up at the airport, and ferry me to packet pickup where we all meet Trent, who is not only a TMer, but also the RD for the Monkey Marathon. Later we head to our pasta dinner and meet up with even more old friends that we’ve never met in person before: Kathleen and Ben, Ian and a buddy of his, Dallas, Rich (Ric’s friend) and Trent and the rest of his family. We break all kinds of training and pre-race rules by indulging in beer and wine with dinner, and polish off the evening with the little Italian deli’s famous cookies. By the time we are safely back in the hotel and tucked into bed, I figure that the weekend is already a success, no matter what race day brings.<br /><br />What race day brings is fog and a beautifully cool morning. When we arrive at the start line at the edge of Percy Warner Park, the fog is so thick that it completely shrouds the hills that await us. We know that the hills are not insubstantial – they are the stuff of legend, even though this is only the second year for this marathon – because we caught a glimpse of them on Saturday afternoon. Somehow, it suits me just fine to have them hidden. What you can’t see can’t hurt you, right?<br /><br />After meeting up with the rest of the Taper Madness crowd at the race start (including Lynne and Matt and Rhonda) for intros and photos, we listen as Trent warms up the crowd with his stand-up comedy routine (“If you finish this race in les than three hours – there’s something wrong with you! Go run it again!”). Then the race is underway, and we all take off running across a field – a very odd way to start a 26.2 mile journey. It’s surprisingly crowded on the grass path that leads us across the field and onto the asphalt road that will be our home for the next several hours – or maybe it just seems that way because I’m worried about my footing. By the time we get to the road, I’ve lost track of most of the rest of the TM group, and am just struggling to keep up with the threesome I think of as the “TaperWomen”: Michele, Lynne, and Rhonda.<br /><br />The fog is thick. There are trees and colorful fall leaves around, I’m certain, but the only thing that registers immediately is the hilliness. The TaperWomen pull me up the first big hill, and I wonder how bad this day might be: they all seem to be able to chat and laugh as I concentrate on getting up this monster. My legs – a bit cold in the morning fog – are not happy with the way things are starting. Finally, we reach the top of our first major climb and I say “wheeeeeeeeeeee” and start my free fall down the hill. This, to me, is why you run hills: for the fun of going downhill without restraint. But it’s also the thing that distinguishes me from my running compatriots in most hilly races – I tend to suffer on the uphills and charge on the downhills, which typically puts me on a different game plan than the other runners. Today is no exception. While I’ve been sucking wind on the uphill, just trying to keep up with the TaperWomen, the downhill changes everything. When the freefall ends and I start up the next hill, I look around, but have lost the TaperWomen. I figure that they will overtake me on the next uphill, and continue chugging along.<br /><br />But I’m on my own for a while now. Up and down, just enjoying the sights and the people running around me. Every once in a while, on a switchback, I’ll glimpse the TaperWomen just a few steps behind me. I feel kind of bad that I’m not running with them, but I have hit a groove and don’t want to risk it to stop to wait for them. I am certain that they will soon catch up to me.<br /><br />In the meantime, I spot Trent up ahead, and I turn up the heat a bit to try to catch up to him. It would be fun to run with him for awhile, so I figure it’s worth the hurt I put on my HR for a short time to close the gap. Just when I think I’ve caught him – right at an aid station at mile 3 – he stops to talk with some of the folks at the aid station; I guess his duties as RD don’t stop just because he’s running the race. With all the activity at the stop, I decide to continue on. It turns out that this would be my only chance to run with him for the day, and it’s gone.<br /><br />Eventually the TaperWomen catch up to me – at least, Michele and Rhonda do. Just before the next aid station, I hear voices approaching from behind, one of them the unmistakably peppy voice of Michele. We all run a few steps together, but then I lose them again while they walk through the aid station. I’m on my own for just a short time, though, as they overtake me before I’m another mile down the road. Finally, we get down to the business of running together somewhere just past the halfway point, and it’s nice to be part of a group. This happens to me so rarely during races that I really enjoy it when it happens. Alas, our group run does not last long, as we hit a serious climb; Michele takes off like Sir Edmund Hillary on a mission, Rhonda does the sensible thing and walks, and I trudge along.<br /><br />I’m enjoying this run much more than I thought I would. Truth be told, I really don’t like loopy courses very much, but the way that this day plays out makes this very atypical. The heavy fog lasts through the mid-point of the race, and by the time it lifts and we see sunshine, everything looks different. There are clearly signs that we’re covering the same ground a second time – and in reverse – but it’s as far from boring as you can get. In fact, with the flying monkeys in the trees and the falling leaves and the fall colors and the relentless hills, it could not be any less boring.<br /><br />Rhonda catches me once again as we hit the really tough miles – the no-man’s land from 15 through 18. We run along together, up and down, down and up, and chat. Rhonda was my first V-Team roomie at the original Indiana Thingy, and this is the first time that we’ve seen each other since then; as a runner, she has progressed something like 1000%. I’m SO impressed with her today – she’s plugging along, working the course. The miles melt away as we run and talk. But when a monster hill looms in front of us at mile 18, Rhonda bids me farewell – she’s walking this one. My running pace isn’t that much faster than her walk, and I figure that she will catch me again soon enough, but for now we’re each on our own.<br /><br />In the meantime, I’m starting to think about how incredibly good I feel. This could be one of those magical days, if this were a normal race course and not one of the hills-from-hell courses. Everything feels good, and that’s unusual at 18 or 20 miles into a marathon, especially one with hills like this. I’ve started to steadily pass people, and am ready to crank up the volume. But then, just as I pass the 20 mile mark, another woman passes me by, quite breezily. Huh? That’s not supposed to happen on my “good days”! As she leaves me in her dust, she says, “just think of it as 10k left to go”, and she’s far too cheery. That’s MY line that she just uttered! Suddenly, I’m not at all happy with how this day is going.<br /><br />At first I think that Miss Chipper has left me far behind, but as I pick up the pace a bit, I find myself trailing her by a steady margin. More hills remain: the last bit of the race is mostly downhill, but there are a few little climbs left. Miss Chipper is accompanied by a pacer on a bicycle, and I wish with all my might that Mick was here right now, riding next to me, encouraging me. I think I might catch her, then I think I am toast. Over and over again, I start to close the gap; over and over again, she opens it back up. My heart rate climbs into the danger zone, but I don’t care: all I can focus on is catching and passing this woman. After all, wasn’t I ahead when she passed me back at mile 20?<br /><br />In the end, it turns out that this is one race that is just a bit too short. For a moment, I think I can catch her, but she widens the gap just as we turn off the paved road for the final push to the finish across the grass field. There’s no way. Rather than despair over the loss in this duel, I decide to enjoy the fruits of the fabulous day that I’ve had, and I float in to a finish of 4:24 even. While the time is not fast, it’s quite a bit faster than I had dared to dream today. What better way to spend the day than this: a beautiful race course through a park dense with fall foliage, in the company of friends? Just about nothing could spoil a day like this.<br /><br />But then………at the airport on the way home, the “nothing” happens. David gives me a ride to the airport, and we stop in the main terminal for chicken sandwiches. David heads off to his gate, and I head off to mine, but a short time later my stomach goes south. Food poisoning. Ugh. It’s an ugly plane ride back to Denver (thank God for understanding flight attendants). It’s a perfectly awful way to end an otherwise perfect weekend.<br /><br /><strong>Rocket City Marathon (Huntsville, Alabama; December 8 )</strong><br /><br />The food poisoning turns into a nasty viral infection that just settles into my bones. There are only three weeks between the Monkey and Rocket City, and by midway through the second week, I have not run a step and, more importantly, still feel tired and weak. When I finally venture out the door to run, it’s not pretty; I’m slow and tired and just don’t feel “right”. I almost cancel my plans for Rocket City, but – foolishly, as it turns out – decide that no matter what, I know how to survive 26.2 miles. It’s one of the most stupid decisions of my adult life.<br /><br />Rocket City is a Saturday race, so I fly into Atlanta on Thursday night, and stay with Michele. It feels like “home” here – it seems like only a few months ago that I camped out with the Keanes for the Georgia Marathon. Lucky for me, when I arrive in “my room”, I think of how nice and pleasant it is to be in this lovely home again. I do not think about the heat and humidity of the Georgia Marathon, and how that was one of the most miserable races of my career. Little do I know that March’s experience is about to be eclipsed.<br /><br />The pre-race day is standard: a drive over to Huntsville, getting to see a bit of the country that I haven’t seen before; a fun little expo; a good pasta dinner with a very entertaining Jeff Galloway as the keynote speaker. Michele and I have shared hotel rooms several times this year, so the routine has become standard. Early to bed, early to rise. As soon as the alarm rouses me early Saturday morning, I turn on the TV to the weather channel. And as soon as the weather channel is on, Michele and I both groan. It’s warm out – already – and the humidity is off the charts. A wise person might have just crawled back into bed. Alas, I am not a wise person.<br /><br />It’s warm enough at the start to not require warm-up clothes. That is disconcerting, but for some reason, I do not disparage. It starts to rain on us, lightly, just as the starter’s gun is fired. For a moment, I think that maybe we’ll have a little rain and it will clear the air. False hope. Michele and I run together for the first mile – she wants to go out slowly, and running with me helps to ensure that, since I’m much slower than she. We turn in a respectable first mile – at 9:12, this is right where I would typically want to be in a race, and perfect for Michele. But the race is already pretty much over for me; it will just take me a little while before I understand that. My heart rate – the one thing that is infallible in guiding me in these races – starts to creep out of control as we start the second mile. I try to stick with Michele, but can’t, and soon I fade back as I watch her move forward with the crowd.<br /><br />In fact, I watch the entire crowd move on past me. I fade, and fade, and fade, something that will continue for most of the rest of this race. My pace falls off, my heart rate soars, and I gradually realize that running this race was the stupidest thing I could have done today. Covering 25 more miles when you already feel lousy is a very, very tough thing.<br /><br />There is not much to say about this day. Huntsville is a decent enough small city, but there is not much in the way of scenery. We run through residential areas, then along the side of a busy road alongside a commercial district. In the second mile, there are some right-to-lifers out in force, holding graphic posters. (While I respect your right to advocate your position, I do believe that there’s a time and a place. Nobody in this race is headed for an abortion today.) There are a few people out in the residential areas, but just a few. We run into accordion players several times on the course; is this a big thing in the south? At a few aid stations there are small crowds of people, cheering. Mostly, I just slog through, in pain.<br /><br />The bib numbers for this marathon are seeded, based on submitted times for recent marathons. Because I put my Tucson time from last December on my entry form – my PR and by far best-ever performance – I have drawn the absurdly low bib number of 51. Autumn, our TM pal who is far faster than me, is wearing bib 50 today. At the beginning of the day, it seems funny to me, a bit out of place. As the day wears on, I feel increasingly embarrassed. I pray that people do not notice my relatively low bib number and notice how far back in the pack I am running, and fading even there. I feel like an imposter.<br /><br />I have never felt this bad this long in a marathon. It’s a struggle to keep running. At first, I keep thinking it will get better at some point. It doesn’t. For a few miles before the course makes a big turn around mile 15, we run into a stiff headwind. I tell myself my fading pace is because of the wind. But once the wind is at our back, my pace still drops. It doesn’t matter what I do – my pace falls. My heart rate soars. Every step is a struggle.<br /><br />Hope springs eternal, and I think that maybe I can pick up the pace when I hit mile 20. Another mile, same mistake. At this point, I realize that it’s going to be painful all the way to the finish, and I should have never started this day. After listening to Galloway last night, I had thought about following a Gallowalk plan today, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. At mile 20, I think it might help, so I start walking for a minute or two in each mile. But the walking doesn’t feel any better than running, so after a few miles I figure that the more I run, the faster I can end this horrible experience.<br /><br />So I gut it out. I use every trick I know, and when those fail me, I just pray for the thing to be over. The mind is a wonderful, resourceful thing, and the beauty of it is that after the race is over, I can barely remember these godawful miles. Finally, I see the finish line, and the best moment of the entire race is here: the end.<br /><br />One of the great things about Rocket City is the organization, and the finish line exemplifies that. A volunteer greets me, and helps me navigate the finish area. Michele magically appears, and helps guide me to the hotel entrance, which is straight ahead. It’s a sweet setup – the finish chute funnels directly into a back door of the host hotel where the drinks and food are waiting. Today I just want to get to a bathroom, because I think I’m going to be sick. There’s a commotion behind us, and Michele tells me, “you don’t want to see”, and she gets me to the ladies room. Thankfully, the nausea has passed, so I don’t hurl. Michele fills me in on all the people who look even worse than I. Today, misery doesn’t really love company.<br /><br />There’s a big spread of food, and Michele makes sure that I grab a bunch, even though none of it looks good to me. We head back up to our room, and I tell Michele that the only thing I want is a Coke. Somehow, a cold Coke and a glass of ice materialize in my hands. Autumn is waiting in our room, showered and looking fresh. She looks at me, and before she can ask, I say “well, that sucked.” Laughs all around. I mainline the Coke, and start to feel somewhat human again.<br /><br />Autumn rides back to Atlanta with Michele and me, and during the drive, we discover that it’s her birthday. Ever the party girls, we celebrate with a stop at a convenience store for Gatorade and chips. When we reach Atlanta, Michele and I stop to pick up chicken sandwiches before heading directly to her daughter’s junior high school basketball game. After the Monkey experience, I’m nervous about the chicken sandwich. But it goes down easily, and then Shannon’s team dominates the game. It’s a perfect way to end an otherwise perfectly horrible day.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-29646438808427447452008-01-10T10:44:00.000-08:002008-01-10T10:46:45.311-08:00Ode to Joy (Ridge to Bridge Marathon 2007)Many years ago, when I first started running, there was a full-page Nike ad that I clipped from a late 1970s-era Runners World. It showed a lone runner on a beautiful stretch of road, somewhere in the heavy forest of the Cascades. That photo spoke volumes to me, about the beauty and the solitude of running, of the connection with the great outdoors. That photo was how I saw myself as a runner – or the runner that I wanted to be – and it has long been my model of the perfect run. Sometimes, today, I run on roads like that one, in my adopted state of Colorado, and I’ve grown so accustomed to the scenery that I often don’t even notice it. But it’s different when I travel. The scenery is new again, and sometimes – when it’s a really good run – I take the time to look around. This past weekend, in North Carolina, I took the time to look around. And I know that if Nike had been born in North Carolina rather than in Oregon, the photo in that ad would have been taken on the twisty, windy, heavily forested roads of Highway 181, just south of a wide spot in the road called Jonas Ridge.<br /><br />Lucky for me, David Lee, a member of the local North Carolina Brown Mountain Running Club, recognized the allure of this road; last year he organized the first Ridge to Bridge Marathon, all along the Highway 181 route from Jonas Ridge to Morganton. Lucky for me, a fellow Taper posted reports of the race on this forum, and I took the time to click on the “Photos” link on the event website. What I saw there was a pictorial description of a perfect run. Lucky for me, the marathon was such a success in its inaugural year that it was back again this year, accepting an even larger field – nearly 150 runners. Lucky for me, I am one of those runners.<br /><br />When I arrive in Morganton, the host town for the marathon, late Thursday night it’s cold, foggy, and raining. Friday morning brings more of the same. But I’m determined to drive this course, because one of the most notable features of this race route – other than the spectacular scenery – is the huge drop in elevation. I’ve seen the elevation diagram on paper, but I want to see it in person before I set off early Saturday morning. Finding the race route is easy – with the exception of the final 1.5 miles, this race all takes place on Highway 181 – and I make the drive through the drizzly weather out to Jonas Ridge early Friday afternoon.<br /><br />Even with the dreary weather, I know this is going to be a beautiful run. When I get to Jonas Ridge and turn around to drive the course in proper order, I adjust the radio station in my rental car. I’ve settled on a classical music station, and they’ve been playing pleasant stuff on my outward drive. As I start the drive back to Morganton, tracing the steps I will take in the morning, the station starts to play a new recording of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. This symphony is long, and they are playing only the final movement: Ode to Joy. I’m not sure that a better piece of music exists. I know immediately that this will be a great race. I try to take note of each twist in the road, each big drop, each uphill, but it doesn’t really matter. I just know that this will be a beautiful run. The music swells on the car radio as I drive back into Morganton, and the rain lets up, and the sun emerges. This is really all I need to know to prepare for the morning.<br /><br />Saturday morning wakeup call is an early 4:15, to allow time for breakfast and the bus ride out to the start. I’m staying at the Holiday Inn – the host hotel for the event – and, like pretty much everything else associated with this race, this morning’s breakfast is top-notch. The hotel has laid out a 4:30 a.m. buffet of bagels, cream cheese, pastries, fruit, juice, cereal, coffee: anything a marathoner might want. Fellow Taper Chuck joins me for the drive over to the finish area, where we’ll catch the bus to the start line. Chuck and his wife Allison invited me to join them for a pasta dinner Friday night, and already it feels like we are old friends. <br /><br />Did I say everything associated with this race is top-notch? Just checking, because I can’t say it too often. The buses that take us from Morganton out to Jonas Ridge are not yellow school buses, but luxury liners with comfortable seats. The bus driver enjoys entertaining us, and between the banter and the chatter with new running friends, we are at Jonas Ridge in no time at all. At Jonas Ridge, there is a convenience store that has just changed hands, and the grand opening is today. The new proprietor has gamely agreed to host this small band of runners while we wait for the race start time. This is a real treat, as it is quite cold and dark outside, and quite warm and bright inside. And did I mention the flush toilets?<br /><br />As I wait inside, I start to get into my pre-race zone. But then I notice Katie (“bit” on Taper Madness) prepping for the race. Katie was my inspiration for this race – not only did she run it last year, but she won the darn thing! I met Katie in Boston earlier this year, and when she sees me, she recognizes me, too. Funny how small the world is, and how comforting that can be. A bit later, I find Chuck, wandering around the cool and dark parking lot outside, getting into his own zone. It’s nearly race time.<br /><br />Just before 7 a.m., David Lee leads us, Pied Piper-style, across the cold parking lot, across the road, and to the barely visible start line that has been spray-painted on the road in front of the Jonas Ridge Post Office. It’s still completely dark out, except for the bright light cast by the nearly full moon. Instead of the national anthem this morning, we get a prayer; somehow, it seems much more fitting. And then, just moments later, the start is sounded, and we are running.<br /><br />It’s only a few steps until we’ve left what little light there is in Jonas Ridge, and we’re completely reliant on the moonlight – and the white lines demarking the shoulder of the road – to guide us. The race director has outfitted all of us with glow-stick bracelets, and with bright hand-held LEDs to keep us safe in these early miles. We’ve been instructed to run on runner’s left – facing traffic. We’re a very small field – especially when you take into account that a number of runners have availed themselves of an early start – so it’s no time at all before we are spreading out.<br /><br />This is magical running. We are going (mostly) downhill, with a few small rollers up here at the start of the course just to keep us honest and to help us warm up. The moon is bright in the cloudless sky, and it’s a perfect temperature for running – high 40’s, I’d guess. I’m running with a long-sleeved shirt that I intend to ditch along the way, but for now it feels pretty darn good. The wind – what little there is – is at our backs. Who could ask for more?<br /><br />These first miles feel effortless. I think “Ode to Joy”, and I know it was the perfect omen for today. I watch carefully for the mile markers, and there they are. I have to flash my LED at them for the first few miles, but once I know what I’m looking for, they are easy to spot. I can’t help but wonder why a tiny marathon can get the mile markers right, but some of the big marathons just don’t get it?<br /><br />In the pre-race instructions, David Lee told us that the course has been measured using the “shortest distance” method, which means that if you stick on the side of the road (facing traffic, which he has asked us to do), you will be running more than the standard 26.2 miles. While running the tangents would be more efficient, it’s also more dangerous, since this public road is not closed to traffic during the race. I choose to go the extra distance – it’s just simpler, and doesn’t involve the risk of working the tangents. But early on, I get behind a few runners who insist on running the tangents. Only thing is, I don’t think that they really get the concept – that the straightest line through these curves will be the shortest. Instead, several people in front of me dart from side to side of the road. It’s more zigzag than tangent running, and it makes me very nervous on their behalf. At this early hour, there is not a ton of traffic, but there is enough. It’s a very dangerous strategy.<br /><br />I run behind one couple for mile after mile after mile. He looks quite a bit older, with salt-and-pepper hair; she has some serious blonde hair and very flouncy pink shorts. They run side by side, and they dart back and forth across the road. They must think they are running tangents, but what they are really doing is running a zigzag version of the race course. I think that they are, in all probability, adding distance rather than subtracting it. I’m very nervous for them every time that they cross the road.<br /><br />The early miles are all still in darkness, but the dark quickly gives way to daybreak. The first aid station – at mile 3 – comes while it’s still dark, but soon after that it’s getting light enough to see without our little LED lights. We’re in the country, and other than a few friends and family who follow runners down the road, there is really no fan support in this race. I’m happy with that – to me, this is running at its purest, its most joyful. Just a beautiful mountain road and my running shoes and a few friends. I don’t need much more to be in rapture.<br /><br />On this race course, there are aid stations every three miles in the first half, and then every two miles after that. I’ve grown accustomed to aid stations every mile or two for the length of a marathon, so today I carry a bottle of water with me for the first half of the race. It’s cool enough today that I’m not so sure I really need it, but the biggest benefit is that it allows me to take gels when I want, not where the aid stations are located. It stays cool and humid for a long, long time, so dehydration is not a threat. When I come to the aid stations, I take water, even though I don’t really need it, and I end up spilling more of it on me than I consume. At the first aid station, David Lee is there, offering water, Gatorade, and encouragement. It’s clear that this race is a labor of love for him.<br /><br />It gradually becomes light, in an early-Saturday-morning kind of way. There’s not a lot of traffic on this road, but a surprise is the amount of big rig truck traffic that passes us early on. It’s slightly disturbing, but then it’s gone. There is enough of a shoulder that we can run safely. The highway patrol keeps things under control by driving slowly up and down our stretch of road. Even the cops are friendly here – waving and smiling when they go by.<br /><br />The road twists and turns, and somewhere around mile 7 or 8, a turn in the road has us running directly into the rising sun. Hello, sunshine! I reach up to my hat, and pull my sunglasses down. It’s still cool, but the sun is full-on. What a spectacular day!<br /><br />The road is mostly downhill – and serious downhill in places – but it occasionally takes time to level off or head uphill a bit. On one of these short uphills, I pass Miss Pink Shorts and her white-haired mate. Pink Shorts seems very young, and is laboring way too hard going up this minor incline. I have a feeling that she is going to have a tough second half in this race. When we start back downhill, though, both she and White Hair blow by me like I’m standing still. But they dart back and forth across the road again, and I marvel at this strategy. For a while I lose them in the distance ahead.<br /><br />Around mile 10, I ditch my long-sleeved shirt, and the temperature is perfect for my singlet and gloves. The race director’s wife is patrolling this stretch of road, and she drives by just as I take off the outer shirt. “I’ll take that for you”, she yells at me from an open BMW window. I toss the shirt in her general direction, but miss the window by about an inch. Lucky for me, somebody behind me grabs the shirt off the road and tosses it into the car, yelling ahead that I’ll owe him a fee later.<br /><br />Just after I’ve abandoned the long-sleeves, our beautiful, full-sun autumn day takes a dive into a cloud bank. We round a corner in the road, and run directly into fog. Off go the sunglasses. It is wonderfully cool.<br /><br />Through the halfway point, we run down, down, down. More than once, I think “this is pure joy”. There is no work in this running, only perpetual motion, fueled by gravity. Then abruptly, at mile 13, the road flattens out. It feels like it we’ve headed directly uphill. Even though I know this is not the case, and I’ve known that this upturn is coming, it changes everything. The work starts now.<br /><br />My pace falls off considerably. I’ve passed the halfway point of this race in 1:51:47, the fastest that I’ve ever run a half marathon (later I’ll figure that it was just a second faster than my first half in Tucson last December). That’s an average of 8:32 per mile, and it has felt effortless. But now, mile 14 comes in at 9:29, and that will be my fastest mile until I hit mile 21. It’s a wake-up call.<br /><br />The road remains beautiful: heavy forest on both sides of the road, changing leaves, low hanging fog. The field of racers has spread out considerably, and there are stretches where I see nobody else at all. I’ve left Pink Shorts behind as soon as the road turns upward just a little bit, and I’ve lost track of White Hair. Now Miss Purple Shorts decides to play hop-scotch. This woman passes me at a good clip, and then within ten minutes, I pass her back, as she stops to walk. This happens over and over again. Finally, around mile 15 or so, she goes by me one last time before I overtake her again. “You’ve been pulling me for many miles”, she says to me. “And you’ve been humiliating me for all those miles, blowing by me like that”, I return. “Well”, says she, “that’s about to end”, and truer words were never spoken. Her day is nearly done, and she does not pass me again.<br /><br />My water bottle is nearly empty at the half, but I discover that it serves a purpose in addition to just supplying me with water. Now that I’m getting a bit tired, the sloshing in the water bottle tells me that my form is going off, and that I’m doing an imitation of a washing machine. I almost drop the bottle at the aid station at mile 12, but figure that this visual and audio feedback is worth the effort of holding onto the bottle. Finally, around mile 14, I drop it at an aid station. Running free!<br /><br />Somehow, though, while I am running mostly on my own along this stretch, the next few aid stations come with crowding issues. At both miles 16 and 18, I am just getting set to make a pass when I reach the aid station, and in both cases, another runner stops directly in front of me. Ack! Don’t these people know that the last thing I need right now is to alter my stride. I show some restraint and I don’t swear out loud, but this annoys me all the same. There are too few people out here running to have crowding issues at aid stations!<br /><br />The one Big Uphill of the day starts at about 16 ½ miles. I have started to hum the “Ode to Joy” theme to myself in these tough miles, and it propels me forward. How can you not be inspired by this music? The Big Uphill climbs about 300 feet over a mile and a half, with a false flat in the middle. I pass several people who choose to walk the hill. I take it slow – the only way that I can – but it’s not nearly as bad as I’ve been anticipating. Still, at 11:02 for the mile, it’s by far my slowest mile of the day.<br /><br />After the Big Uphill, the course becomes a straight, rolling road again. Why does it feel like we go uphill far more than we go downhill, even though the uphills don’t look that long? Leading up to mile 20, a couple of guys pass me. It’s disheartening, even though I know that my pace has dropped off dramatically. Still, they are moving away fast enough that I know I need to let them go. As I approach the mile 20 aid station, I think, at least I won’t have anyone stopping directly in front of me. But one of the guys, who has passed the aid station long before I arrive, has a change of heart, and turns around. He runs back to the aid station and stops directly in my path. “Can I get a second cup of water?” he asks the volunteers, while forcing me to come to almost a dead standstill while reaching for the same cup of water. Sheesh – what is it with these aid stations?!?<br /><br />The mile 20 aid station incident and a check of my watch both serve to spur me to pick it up. I’ve been working in these hills, but my splits have been slower and slower. At mile 20, I realize that there’s a good chance that I might not break four hours today if I don’t get my butt in gear. So I kick it up a notch.<br /><br />I pull out every trick in the book to pick it up now. I hear “Ode to Joy” in my head, and I will the metronome there to increase the tempo. I count steps. I watch my heart rate climb. And I choose people to pick off. I wish I could say that this is all pure joy, but what it is is pure work. On a beautiful race course late in October, I remember how to work in the last miles of a race, something I was starting to lose after several slow-finish outings. Once my split times start to come down, <em>that</em> is pure joy!<br /><br />The sun is shining now, and the air temperature has inched up. But we have a treat at mile 23 or so, with another nice stretch of downhill. I’m passing people now, finally, and it feels good. Near mile 24, we cross the road for the first and only time today, in order to make a right-hand turn off highway 181. Traffic has gotten fairly heavy (this is a beautiful race course, but maybe not one for people who are not comfortable running into heavy traffic), and the road crossing is scary, but – as it turns out – well protected by the local police force.<br /><br />We run a few steps on a side road, and then are directed onto the greenway. What a welcome change! This is an asphalt bike path that parallels a river, and it is completely shaded. The huge canopy almost completely obliterates the sun, and the coolness is very welcome. I think “<em>oh what joy!”</em> This portion on the greenway does not last for long, and then we cross <em>the</em> bridge (remember, this is the Ridge to Bridge Marathon, right?) before heading past some soccer fields to the finish. Now there are a few fans, and there are people offering encouragement. Just before I turn the last corner to cross the finish line, I see Chuck and Allison, and they are cheering me on. I glimpse Chuck’s medal as I rush past, and I know that he has had a good day.<br /><br />My own finish line comes at a time of 3:55:41, which I chalk up as a pretty darn good day. David Lee is there to shake my hand, but then he gives me a hug as I thank him for a well run race. Only a race director could welcome the chance to hug one sweaty body after another. The symphony in my head continues, over and over, while I take in the finish. Katie is the women’s winner again this year (setting a new PR and a new course record as well), and Chuck has turned in a pretty substantial PR. My time is not a PR, but it is good for a win in my age group, and a nice bit of hardware to take home. Happiness comes when you have a good day in a marathon, but true joy comes when everyone you know has an equally good day. At the Ridge to Bridge Marathon, it’s nothing but joy.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-58407438205590542622008-01-10T10:43:00.000-08:002008-01-10T10:44:13.781-08:00A Little Longer Than I Thought (Hartford Marathon 2007)Sometimes, the clock just moves at a different pace, and not one that meshes with my internal clock. That, in a nutshell, is my story of the Hartford Marathon: how nothing seems to go off on time, and how everything takes just a little longer than I planned. With a flight out of Denver planned for late Thursday afternoon, it takes me just a few extra minutes to get out of the house. Somehow I manage to drive into the Pikes Peak parking lot at DIA with – seemingly - plenty of time to get to my flight on time. But the shuttle driver is not at all in a hurry to get to the terminal. He dawdles and stops to wait for entire families to unload cars and then casually saunter to the bus stop. He waits as one guy runs back to his car for something he’s forgotten, and then takes a leisurely stroll back to the shuttle bus. I start looking nervously at my watch as we sit on the tarmac in the parking lot before he finally starts the journey to the terminal. When he stops at a stoplight where we have the right of way and generously signals for a car to turn in front of us, I almost scream. Somehow, I end up getting checked in on time, and to the gate on time, but it takes a bit longer than I thought.<br /><br />My flight to Hartford takes me through Charlotte, NC (don’t ask, airlines these days), and the flight out of Charlotte is delayed. Why be surprised? We’re already scheduled to land in Hartford at 11:58 p.m. This delay means that we land about 20 minutes later than planned. I tell myself this is not so bad – what with the two hour time difference between Denver and the east coast, it’s not that late “my time”. But then there are no cabs at the Hartford airport, which means that it takes more than an hour longer than I thought it would to get to the hotel. When I reach the Crowne Plaza, I get a rookie front desk clerk. Even though I’ve prepaid this room for the two nights I’ll be here, it still, amazingly, takes nearly twenty minutes before I have a key to a room. It’s quite a bit later than I thought. My important sleep night has just been hosed.<br /><br />With the late arrival at the hotel, I decide to sleep in as long as I can, even though I’m planning to work on Friday. (Thank heavens for the flexible work week and virtual offices: have laptop, will travel.) But a fire alarm goes off in the early morning, and it sounds long enough and loud enough that it finally gets my attention and gets me out of bed. It turns out to be a false alarm, but not before I’m fully awake, well before I’ve planned to be up. This – my abbreviated night of sleep – will turn out to be the single thing all weekend that takes less time than I’ve planned.<br /><br />My bad luck seems to end when Doug Branscombe arrives at the Crowne Plaza at lunch time. Doug has generously offered to be my tour guide today, and what a delight that turns out to be. Doug treats me to a very fitting pasta lunch (yummy acorn squash raviolis), and then takes me on a tour of the race course. Since he’s run the marathon in the past, he knows the turns and the backroads, and clues me to where I can expect to have fans, and where I can expect a sparser field. This is one of my favorite things to do: drive the course the day before, and imagine what it will be like to run these same roads in less than twenty-four hours. If you’re not jazzed about the race before you make the drive, you can’t help but be fired up after you drive the course. Driving the course is the one thing this weekend that ends well before I’m ready for it to be done.<br /><br />After picking up race packets at the convention center, Doug drops me at the hotel and bids me adieu until the morning. I head back to work for a little while longer, then hoof it back over to the convention center for the standard pasta dinner. When I get back to the hotel, I make my normal race preparations, and in the midst of this, turn on the tube to catch the latest forecast. The weather today – Friday – has been pretty abysmal. It started out rainy and cold, and then ended up just cold and windy. I figure that with my history of hot and windy marathons this year, I will not sweat the weather for this one. The one thing that is not in the forecast is hot weather. I’m content with that, so I channel surf a bit and light on a cable channel airing “Forrest Gump”. In fact, just as I stop to watch for a moment, I hear “Run Forrest Run!” and figure that this is my omen. I stop surfing and settle into bed, watching this well worn flick. But we’re not talking commercial-free TV, and the movie seems to go on without end. Finally, at 11 p.m., I turn off the tube, even though Forrest is still running. Just one more thing taking a bit longer than I would like this weekend.<br /><br />Race morning arrives, cool and bright. The weather this morning is a good portent for what is in store: it’s 39 degrees outside, and the sun is rising, right on schedule. The TV forecasters are calling for gnarly 20-mph winds, but for now it’s pretty calm. The only storm brewing is the one that I have with the hotel.<br /><br />On Friday, I asked the front desk of the hotel to arrange for a late checkout. After all, the marathon starts at 8 a.m., checkout time is at noon, and I’m no Greg Fastady. My flight back to Denver is not until 7 p.m., so I will absolutely need a few extra hours. On Friday, the front desk tells me to call back Saturday morning. Dutifully, I make the phone call at 6 a.m., only to be told “we’re not doing any late checkouts today”. Huh? After getting good and lathered up over this while trying to frantically pack up my bag before heading to the race start, I call back down and ask to talk to a manager. After a bit of wrangling, I’m able to get the late checkout. For an additional fifty bucks. What a racket. But what choice do I have? I’ve figured that the east coast urban marathons might be more expensive than my Midwest runs, but this really takes the cake for being more than I had planned.<br /><br />But I’m here to run a marathon, not to whine and quibble over my travel woes, so I head out the door at about 6:45 to walk over to the race start in Bushnell Park. It’s a pleasant walk, just the right distance, but just a bit too cool for comfort. I have hopes. The sky is clear and the wind is calm and it seems like it might be a perfect day for a race.<br /><br />I’m supposed to meet Doug in the park, pre-race, so that we can run the first few miles together. Doug is running the half, and he feels good about his prospects, so I’m touched that he’s willing to run a slower pace with me for the first few miles, until the two courses split. I’m looking forward to seeing him again this morning, but I get caught in a 20-minute line for the porta-potties plus a trip to the far end of the park to check my warm clothes at the UPS trucks, and by the time I arrive at our meeting place, he’s given up on me. There are just too many people here today for a chance meeting, and we never do meet up during the run, even though I search the crowds for his face while the pre-race announcements are made. If I weren’t so damn worried about making sure I get back to the hotel and checked out in time to avoid them tossing all my stuff into the street, I might enjoy the pre-race program. Like so many things this weekend, it goes on much longer than I would like it to. In addition to the regular announcements, we get the announcer relaying a marriage proposal from one marathoner to another (the answer is yes), and then a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner by a 13-year old middle schooler whose voice just blows me away.<br /><br />We finally get underway about 5 or 10 minutes late. Why am I surprised? This is the story of my weekend. But really, what do I have to complain about? It’s a perfect day for a marathon. We start out running due east, directly into a sun that has just passed the horizon and is full into our faces. It’s crowded for the first mile or so, but the crowd is moving. It’s a short distance to where we turn through a traffic circle, moving the sun to our sides, and we’re shielded by the downtown buildings. I’m recognizing streets, buildings, landmarks from Doug’s tour of the course yesterday. I’m feeling a little stiff, but hope that once I warm up the running will feel better. It’s a good day for a run.<br /><br />One of my least favorite things about this race is the way that the miles are marked. The markers are yellow strips across the roadway, with the appropriate mileage and the de rigeur “Greater Hartford Marathon” logo. If you know what to look for – as I do, owing to the course tour yesterday – you can spot them. But you have to be looking directly for them, and if – God forbid – you should be looking ahead of you rather than directly down at the ground, you would most likely miss the markings.<br /><br />But today, I know what to look for, so I spot the first mile marker. I hit my split button and when the time flashes 9:33, I think, “oh well, crowds – sun in your eyes – a slow first mile – no big deal”. In a short amount of time, we are crossing the Connecticut River into East Hartford. The next few miles tick by at a pace that seems closer to my expectation. 8:56, 8:57, 8:48. My legs still feel a bit off, but I’m still hoping that I might have a good day.<br /><br />The half marathoners leave us between miles 3 and 4, and now the marathon heads out on an extended out-and-back through East Hartford and South Windsor. We will run north to the 11-mile mark, and then retrace our steps for much of this route before heading back over into Hartford proper at around mile 20.<br /><br />This is the part of the course that most surprised me on the tour Friday, and it’s my favorite part of this race. While I’ve been expecting an East Coast urban marathon, this large portion of the Hartford Marathon is nearly rural. We run through a lovely residential area, with acreages and horse farms and sheep farms and nurseries, large houses (all decorated elaborately for Halloween, with jack-o-lanterns and newly blooming mums) with long driveways and huge oak trees. Doug has counseled me that this is where we will have support, and he was absolutely spot on. There are people out cheering, and there are (surprisingly) many, many musical acts for entertainment, too. And in case you’ve forgotten, there’s a race going on. The first thing to get your attention focused back on the race is the flashing lights of six motorcycle cops leading a couple of pace cars, and then the “wow, I never get to see these fast guys” experience of having half a dozen or so Kenyans go sprinting past you in the opposite direction.<br /><br />Too bad that my own race is not going quite as fast. After my first four miles, my pace starts to fall off, just a slow, gradual fall. I keep willing my legs to go a bit faster, but I’m monitoring my heart rate, and I seem to be working hard enough, but by mile 10, my pace has fallen to an average of nearly 9:10/mile. 9:10 will (just) get me a 4 hour marathon. I’m always on the hunt for a sub-4 race, and I think I have a good shot at it today. After all, Hartford is reputed to be a fast course – it’s mostly flat – and the weather, even as we approach the halfway point, is holding. Cool and sunny. Just perfect.<br /><br />I pass the halfway point at 2:00:02, and think that sub-4 is easily within my grasp. All I need to do is hold steady and run a good second half. The wind is starting to swirl now, but in the second half of the race – particularly after mile 17 or so – the course twists and turns so much that it makes the wind a non-issue. It’s a good day for a fast race.<br /><br />But somebody needs to give this message to my body, since it is clearly not cooperating. After the turnaround at mile 11, I get a strong sense that I’m in the back half of today’s field, and I can never shake that feeling. The larger issue is that I feel fine and my heart rate is right where it should be, but somehow the splits come in slower than my expectations. I will my legs to turnover faster, but there are some days when the legs will only go so fast, and I’m starting to accept that this is one of those days for me.<br /><br />As part of the total package, my stomach is going south gradually, too, and I’m starting to contemplate stopping in a port-a-potty for the first time ever in a marathon. I keep a constant running calculator going in my head after the halfway point, and as each split comes in slower than expected, the realization that sub-4 is probably not in the cards today grows in strength. I’m having sporadic code-brown type cramping, so I stop taking gels, and start drinking water only sporadically. At mile 20, I’m searching desperately for a port-a-potty, prepared to give up precious minutes. But the waves of cramping abate when I stop eating and drinking, and at some point I know that I’m out of never-never land. The question now is just, when does this thing end?<br /><br />The fan support in this race is missing at the most critical time – in those miles from 20 through about 24. This is also the only part of the race course that has any real hills. They are not monster hills, but after 20 miles of flat, even the railroad overpasses and freeway ramps are pretty hard to handle. I think, in passing, that this course might be better run in reverse.<br /><br />When I looked at the race description before registering for this marathon, I was drawn by the names of a couple of streets that are part of the race route. There is Pitkin Street, which is familiar because Aspen, my home-away-from-home, is in Pitkin County. And then there is Charter Oak Avenue. I grew up in an Iowa town of the same name, and just moved my mom from Charter Oak a few weeks ago. When Doug drove me on this race course on Friday, I took somber notice of the street signs and all of the associated business names. It all seemed to hit home.<br /><br />Today, I cannot find either street to save my soul. I’ve been running for nearly four hours, and I know that I should be on Charter Oak Avenue by now, but I don’t see a single sign indicating where I am. Thank God – and the wonderful volunteers – that I know I’m on course, but my mileage-addled brain has reached that dull-as-a-rusty-nail state. The only thing that I can contemplate at this point in the run is the race finish.<br /><br />And, of course, the race finish finally looms in front of me. A cool thing about the Hartford Marathon is that you run through a stone arch that leads into Bushnell Park and the finish line. A miserable thing about the Hartford Marathon is that you have to make a sharp left-hand turn into the park, and run uphill to cross under this arch, all in the last quarter mile of the race. But still, those things do not diminish the joy of finishing the marathon in a time of 4:04:41. It’s not a horrible time, but just a bit longer than I’d planned on.<br /><br />The aid stations in the Hartford Marathon are plentiful and well staffed and well stocked with water and Ultima. In fact, there are almost too many aid stations, if that is even possible. Hartford does organization extremely well. Except at the finish line. The well intentioned organizers have decided to make a “green” statement at the finish line, and they do not have bottles of water or Gatorade for us; instead, they have a ridiculous long pipe outfitted with multiple drinking fountain spigots. The thought is good, but the execution truly sucks. If ever you need your own bottle of water, it’s at the finish line. With no fluids available, I don’t stick around long in the finish area, even though there is a big spread of food. Besides, I have to get back to that &^*)% hotel before they kick me out!<br /><br />It doesn’t take long to get back to the hotel and shower and check out, and then I go out for a very late breakfast. Hey, nothing is going on time, so why should I not have breakfast just because it’s the middle of the afternoon? The food is okay, but the coffee is not so great, but I remember seeing a Starbucks a few blocks back, so I head over there. I have plenty of time before I need to get to the airport for my flight, and spending some quiet time at Starbucks with my magazine and a good cup of coffee sounds like the perfect way to while away an hour or so on this cool autumn afternoon. When I find the Starbucks, though, it’s closed. I’m an hour too late. Surprise, surprise. <br /><br />Eventually, I make my way back to the airport (thanks again to Doug!), and the flight from Hartford to Washington Dulles takes off on time. But, of course, the Denver flight from Dulles is delayed by twenty minutes. It seems that this time warp will never end. It’s a long flight, and I try to stay awake to watch the latest Harry Potter movie, but my body craves sleep, and I give in. I’m a bit groggy as we land in Denver, but I’m wide awake again when I hear the captain announce, “Welcome to Denver. We’re happy to announce that even though we were late getting out of Washington, we made up time en route, and we’re ten minutes early at the gate here in Denver.” When I step off the plane, I walk out of the time warp and back into the crisp cool air of Colorado in October. Sometimes, it is so good to be back home.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-2215070440411488952008-01-10T10:42:00.001-08:002008-01-10T10:42:53.567-08:00Land of Enchantment (New Mexico Marathon 2007)It’s pitch black out when we start running north along Tramway Boulevard on the east side of Albuquerque. The only light in the sky is a very faint hint of sunrise, silhouetting the Sandia Mountains to our east. The only sound is the rhythmic footfall of nearly 300 people out for a run with me early on this Sunday morning. Nobody is talking; it’s as if there is magic in the dark morning air, and nobody wants to disturb it. After all, we’re in the land of enchantment. And at the start of the New Mexico Marathon at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, September 2nd, it all feels very magical to me.<br /><br />It feels magical partly because the morning has been surreal: a wakeup call at 3 a.m., then a short walk to the Hotel Albuquerque in Old Town, followed by a bus ride to the staging area for the race. At the staging area, we have been treated to musical serenade by a solo guitarist, whose music has been thoughtful and beautiful and respectful of the residential area where we awaited the start of the race. He was seated on a small patch of grass, surrounded by a circle of luminaria. This feels magical partly because I’m running on a route that is familiar to me: when I’ve visited my uncle and cousins in the past, Tramway has been my destination and my running route. It’s rare that I run a marathon where I feel that I know the route already. And it’s magical because I’m running – pure and simple. No politics, no work, no worries about anything other than putting one foot in front of another and listening to my own breath. No worries at all. <br /><br />The morning is perfect. It’s cool with a slight breeze that swirls around and brings us little bursts of cooler air. Tramway is punctuated at regular intervals by the major east-west cross streets, whose names I recognize from trips to see Uncle Dwight and my cousins: Indian School Road, Menaul Boulevard, Candelaria Road. It’s so dark that the only time you can see anything at all is when you pass under the streetlights at these intersections. I’ve done a lot of my running over the last few months in the dark at night, so I feel right at home in the darkness this morning.<br /><br />If there is a mile marker at mile one, I miss it, so the first split I take is at mile 2: 17:31. I’m surprised, and pleased, since the elevation map has shown the first 8 miles to all be uphill, which fits my recollection of the terrain along Tramway. If I’m running 8:45s going slightly uphill, there’s a good chance that I can finish this race in 4 hours. Normally, I don’t set out on a marathon with a particular goal in mind, but prefer to just see what the day brings. But after a couple of grueling – and slow – uphill races this summer, a fast (by my standards) race today would do wonders for my ego.<br /><br />The real work of going uphill on Tramway starts in earnest after the two-mile mark, and the splits I take for the next several miles start to look a lot more like I expected for this part of the day, with an average of well over 10 minutes per mile. But the truth is, I’ve expected this and it doesn’t really concern me at all. I know that the race is a net downhill course, with a drop of nearly 600 feet from the start to the end. Six and a half miles of nicely steep downhill await me after these uphill miles, and I’m looking forward to them.<br /><br />It feels good, running this morning, and I have that “it’s going to be a really good day” feeling. I caution myself about getting too optimistic too early, but it just feels good. We’re running on the roadway, with nice smooth asphalt, although when I’ve run here before it’s been on the bike path that parallels the road and that goes for miles and miles. The darkness remains for at least the first hour of the race, and then after that, we have high clouds and early morning daylight, while the sun works to crest the Sandia Mountains. The temperature remains perfect.<br /><br />Just after the eight mile mark, the course turns downward, and I go to town. While running on the uphill part of Tramway, I’ve been passed by scores of people as I managed my pace by my heart rate. Truth be told, I’m getting more in tune with my body and I could probably run within my range without the heart rate monitor (HRM), but it serves to confirm what I feel in my breathing and general effort. On the uphill sections of this race, I’ve kept my pace in check – quite slow – in order to keep my heart rate within my target range. But now that the course has turned downhill, it’s a different story. I pour it on, and gravity does all the work. I’m flying, and passing back all those folks who went around me in the last six miles.<br /><br />The other thing that happens shortly after the eight mile mark is that the course makes a broad sweeping left-hand turn, so that we end up running directly west. The view is stupendous. Here on the east side of Albuquerque, on the flanks of the Sandia Mountains, we are higher than my hometown of Denver. We pass the high point of the race course here – over 6,100’ of elevation – and our attention is now turned westward. The downtown Albuquerque skyline looks like so many Legos off in the distance, and I’m a bit awed that we will finish this run today even further to the west, in Old Town, where there are not many high structures. There are hot air balloons off in the distance, little dots in the sky. It’s a breathtaking view.<br /><br />These miles are magical; no wonder they call this the land of enchantment. I keep a close eye on my heart rate while I push the pace. The weather is still perfect – cool, with the soft light of daybreak. I start to pass the people who surged past me when the course turned uphill many miles back. First one, then another, and then another. I pass the couple I talked to in the port-a-potty line; he is wearing a Georgia Marathon t-shirt today, and we had a good yuk about the heat that crippled all of us (and me in particular) back on that grueling day in March. Thank God it’s cool here, we said. And it’s still deliciously cool now. It’s perfect.<br /><br />These are some of the best miles of my marathoning career. I turn in a couple of sub-8 minute miles, and although I don’t really trust the mile markers, it’s a blast to hit my split button when the clock reads 7:57 and 7:42. I don’t think I’ve ever run a sub-8 mile in a marathon before, and the odd thing is how easy it feels. This part of the race goes by way, way too quickly.<br /><br />The only real problem with this part of the race is that I just can’t seem to drop a number of other runners with whom I keep trading places. The most annoying is the tall guy wearing purple Race Ready shorts who shuffles every step along the way. I try to run with my internal rhythm – counting out the steps from mile to mile – but this guy’s shwuh shwuh shwuh with each footstep makes it difficult. Another bothersome runner is the younger guy wearing the golden t-shirt. He’s a much faster runner than me, but he takes walk breaks every 4 minutes, so I’m constantly passing him, only to have him go around me a minute or two later. There’s also the shirtless short guy with the gray shorts. The world might be a better place if he kept his shirt on; he’s definitely not a candidate for a cover shot on Runners World. I’m not really sure how it is that we keep trading places, but that’s exactly what happens. Over and over, I go around these guys only to have them all pass me further down the road.<br /><br />One of the few complaints I have about this race has to do with the mile markings. Early on, I missed a couple of mile markers, and chalked it up to the darkness. In these middling miles, I’m not so sure; I watch for the markers, but they don’t always appear. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of a painted notation on the roadway, but the mile markers are not always coincident with these. So it is that we approach the halfway point, but there is no clear marking for the 13.1 mile point on the marathon course. This seems like an especially gross oversight, since there is a companion half marathon that started here – 13.1 miles from the finish. Would it be so difficult to put up a “half-way point” sign? As it is, I see a painted marking on the roadway and mark a split, accepting that it’s most likely not 100% accurate. My watch reads 2:02:45. I figure that if I can run my patented negative split, just averaging 9 minute miles, that I’ll easily finish the day in under 4 hours.<br /><br />What I haven’t counted on is the heat. It comes on, sudden and brutal, without warning. Just past the halfway point in the race – where the course turns flat and shadeless – the sun makes its debut for the day from behind the mountain range to the east. The clouds have burned off, and there is no shade. Here at altitude – just like at home – the untempered sun is relentless. After averaging 8:30 per mile for the last six miles, I find myself running progressively slower and slower miles while my heart rate – well in control for the first 13 miles of the day – is now dangerously in the red zone, even though I feel like I’m crawling. The painful process of adjusting my goal begins, going through revision after revision. My day – my beautiful, “maybe this is going to be one of those really great days” day – is done. And I have miles and miles left to run.<br /><br />The saving grace is the fact that the heat seems to treat all of us equally. I continue to run with the same group of people I’ve been with for miles and miles, continuing to trade places over and over again. The race literature advertises aid stations with water and Gatorade approximately every two miles, and the aid stations materialize on schedule. They use little Dixie cups, so early on I’ve started to yell ahead “water please! Two cups!”, and the volunteers are eager to make me happy. I spill as much water as I drink, and it feels good, cooling.<br /><br />There are several miles through non-descript neighborhoods as we continue westward. At mile 18, we turn onto the Bosque bike path, a beautiful urban asphalt trail that runs parallel to the Rio Grande River. This part of the course reminds me of the bike path where I run at home – a remote and wilderness experience in the heart of a major city – but I can’t much appreciate the beauty. It’s just too hot. I’m suffering. And the finish is still a long ways away. It doesn’t help at all that there is not a single mile marker along this 4-mile stretch of the race course. It feels like it will go on forever.<br /><br />I’ve been hoping to see Mick at some point today. We’ve come to Albuquerque together, and he – God bless him – got up with me at 3 a.m., keeping me company while I forced down my early breakfast, applying Bodyglide for me to those pesky areas on my back that I can’t seem to get on my own, and helping me to get my bib number pinned on straight. When I left him at the hotel at 4:15, he was studying the course map, trying to figure out how to ride out to meet me on his bike. I’ve been expecting to meet up with him at any point for several miles, perversely enjoying the fact that as I click off each mile, I have something left to look forward to.<br /><br />Albuquerque strikes me today as a very fit city. Everywhere we go – even back in those early, dark miles out on Tramway – there are people out exercising. What this race lacks in standing-on-the-side-of-the-road-clapping fan support, it more than makes up for in kindred-spirits-going-the-opposite-direction support. Nowhere is that more pronounced than on the Bosque bike trail. I would suffer much more on this hot stretch in the marathon if it weren’t for the multitude of people showing support. Here on the bike path, there are runners and walkers and cyclists, and many of them – heck, most of them – yell out encouragement or offer high fives or thumbs-up when I go by. I keep my eyes peeled for Mick, reminding myself that he pulled out his Triple Bypass jersey from this year before I left the room. It’s bright red, and he wanted to make sure that I could spot him easily. Finally, somewhere between miles 20 and 21 (although I haven’t seen a mile marker since mile 18), there he is.<br /><br />The timing couldn’t be more perfect. Just seeing him lifts my spirits. I yell out at him, and he quickly turns and comes back to ride beside me, offering me water from the bottle on his bike. It’s nice and cold – oh so nice after the lukewarm offerings of the latest aid stations – but I’m worried about drinking too much and getting the sloshing-stomach effect, so I just take a couple of sips before handing the bottle back.<br /><br />Mick asks how I’m doing, and I try to answer, but I find that I can’t talk. My heart rate is in the red zone now, and I just don’t have anything left for non-essential functions. I’m really doing okay, but the realization that I don’t even have the spare cycles to utter more than a couple of words is a bit disturbing. There is a scary feeling of not being able to draw a deep breath. Mick gets this, and he tells me not to talk.<br /><br />Except, he asks, is there anything you need?<br /><br />And the request I’ve been praying about for the last hour or more now crosses my lips: “ice!”<br /><br />Mick says that there’s not much near this bike path, but that he’ll try. And then he’s gone.<br /><br />The section on the bike path continues until mile 22, and then there are a few twists and turns before we eventually get onto Rio Grande Avenue, heading south again. Our hotel is on Rio Grande. I know that the finish is near the hotel – just past it, and somewhere in Old Town near the grand old Hotel Albuquerque, where we boarded the buses back in the sweet coolness earlier this morning. Just nearing Rio Grande gets me jazzed; I know that once we get on this road, we’re headed back to the barn.<br /><br />Mick shows up again, and miracle-of-miracles, he has ice. And lots of it! Later he will tell me that he found a Safeway, and filled a large plastic bag with ice from a soda fountain, and grabbed the largest cup he could find. For now, all I care about is that he’s holding out a cup to me, and it’s filled to the brim with sweet, delicious, cold ice.<br /><br />I chew on the ice. I put ice cubes down my sports bra. I hold ice cubes in my hands. I bathe my arms in ice. And I pour the melting, icy water from the cup wherever it will go – my face, my mouth, my legs. It’s all good. It’s a new lease on life. Nothing has been this grand this late in a race ever in my life.<br /><br />And it keeps coming. Incredibly, I empty the cup and then ask Mick for more. And then some more. Finally, after, three large cups, I’m finally starting to feel that my core temperature is under control. This coincides with the 26 mile marker, so I toss my empty cup to Mick, who yells encouragement. I look at my watch. Holy crap. If I’ve got a snowball’s chance of meeting my latest goal, I’ve got to kick it in.<br /><br />That latest goal has been the result of making many adjustments over the last several miles. These are the games we play while running this crazy distance. Four hours is no longer viable? How about 4:05? That would – at the very least – be a Boston qualifier. But it’s quickly no more realistic than four hours was. So what about 4:10? That sounds good. But as the splits come in at nearly 11 minutes per mile, that becomes a fleeting thought. How about 4:15? Well, when you hit mile 26 in 4:17:37, the only thing left is to aim for sub 4:20.<br /><br />So I kick it in. And, truth be told, it doesn’t really matter that much: 3:59 or 4:05 or 4:20. The reality is this: crossing the finish line – and doing it in style, giving it everything you have – is the only thing that matters. I’m well off my goal today. The finish line announcer blunders while trying to read my bib number. The crowd at the finish line is miniscule. Still, it doesn’t matter. I finish in 4:19:29, and I feel like a champion when a kind volunteer puts a medal around my neck. Is it so important to wish for anything more? This is grand.<br /><br />But, okay, yeah, I want it all. The fast time, the Boston qualifier, meeting a goal. So I experience a tinge of disappointment after all, even though on another level, I’m happy just to have state #26 behind me. I just wish I could have done it in grander style.<br /><br />But the land of enchantment does not disappoint, at least not entirely. The medal for this race is the prettiest that I’ve ever received. Mick is by my side, and I use him as a crutch, since I’m pretty light-headed at the finish, and I’m not so steady on my feet. I have the pleasure of knowing that I gave this everything that I had. We hang out in the small post-race area, enjoying a brief rest on the cool grass before walking back to the hotel. The awards ceremony starts, and we stick around for a few more minutes. Even with my slow time, I’ve still taken third in my age group, and I receive the coolest piece of southwestern pottery. Mick offers to put the award in his backpack as we walk back to the hotel, but I decline the offer. There’s something magical about carrying this little piece of pottery. I want to hold on to this feeling as long as I can.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-63361800392922724962008-01-10T10:36:00.001-08:002008-01-10T10:41:41.401-08:00Running on Empty (Pikes Peak Ascent 2007)Four a.m. comes very early this morning, but I have set two alarm clocks – just in case – and they both go off almost simultaneously, making it impossible to ignore them. The alarms wake me out of a sound sleep, which is not normal for the night before a big race, when I typically toss and turn, sleeping fitfully and having multiple race anxiety dreams. Not so last night: I was dead tired and so my body and mind both surrendered to total sleep. It’s not like I’m a stranger to the alarm clock these days, since I’m working eleven hour days and still trying to have a life: training, playing piano, paying my bills, occasionally seeing a movie, etc. What gives in this equation is sleep. And time with Mick and family and friends. And quality of anything.<br /><br />But I’ve become accustomed to rolling out of bed without enough sleep, so I am up and out the door in near-record time. Thank heaven that I’ve done this enough times that I’ve learned to prepare and pack everything – and I mean everything, from laying out my clothes down to slicing the bagel and sticking it in the toaster oven – the night before. I’m not feeling bad at all when I pile myself and all my race accoutrements in the car and pull out of the garage.<br /><br />Driving to Manitou Springs in the total darkness is also something I’ve become accustomed to – today marks my sixth Pikes Peak Ascent (“PPA”) – so I find the empty roads and starless skies familiar and somehow reassuring. I’ve been here, done this before. So I settle into the rhythm of the drive, and turn on the radio, expecting to find NPR to keep me company for the next 75 minutes or so. But it’s too early for NPR, so I flip over to KBCO for some music and find Jackson Browne singing “Running on Empty”:<br /><br /><em>Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels</em><br /><em>Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields</em><br /><em>In sixty-five I was seventeen and running up one-o-one</em><br /><em>I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on</em><br /><em>Running on - running on empty</em><br /><em>Running on - running blind</em><br /><em>Running on - running into the sun</em><br /><em>But I’m running behind<br /></em><br />I’ve always loved this song, and I welcome the driving beat of the music, so for a moment I think “what a great omen – a running song for the road!” But then I listen to the lyrics a little more closely as I drive along and start to wonder. Can a song about running on empty really be a good omen before a long race?<br /><br />There are few people on the roads, so the drive is easy, although I find myself almost nodding off in the car. The initial burst of activity before getting into the car has kept me wide awake for the first half of the drive, but now I’m yawning and wishing that I could pull off and take a nap. In fact, I’m yawning and spacing out so much that I miss the turnoff for Manitou Springs and end up driving many miles out of my way before realizing my mistake. Not to worry, I make it to the start on time, but with not a minute to spare. So much for the benefit of getting up early.<br /><br />My goal for today is the same goal that I’ve had for the last several years: to get to the top in under four hours. The closest that I’ve come to that goal is the 4:07 performance that I turned in two years ago. Last year, after spending 4:10 to reach the top, I vowed that I would train more specifically this year and finally meet that goal. But life got in the way, as it always seems to do. For the last few weeks, I’ve tried to convince myself that the increased number of uphill runs that I’ve done over the last few months would get me to my goal. But then, late yesterday, I used Matt Carpenter’s pacing calculator to figure out where I would need to be at various points on the course to make sub-4 hours today. The results of punching in the numbers didn’t seem too daunting…until I read his warning: “Without training in very high altitude (12,000-14,000’), expect to lose some serious time…” Given that the bulk of my altitude training has been at 6,000-10,000’, I know, going into the race today, that my chances for sub-4 are slim. But a person can still dream, right?<br /><br />The weather gods are smiling on us today, and it will turn out to be the best weather of any of my PPAs. Cool and partly sunny at the start, with clouds that will eventually burn off or move on over the plains, no wind, no rain, no snow: ideal running weather. You couldn’t order more perfect conditions. With weather like this, the race start goes off exactly on time, after the requisite singing of “America the Beautiful”. This race is not chip timed, but the road is wide at the start and it only takes 15 seconds for me to cross the start line, and then we’re climbing. As the folks on the street shout every year, “you only have one more hill to go!”<br /><br />When I think about running PPA, I always divide the course into four sections, each about 3 miles long, with a 1.2 mile preamble that goes through the town of Manitou Springs. This preamble is all uphill, too, but having a wide street to start out on, and then turning onto a narrower street that becomes a single lane driveway, helps spread out the field before funneling us all onto the single track Barr Trail that will be our home for the next 12 miles. Having paved roads is a luxury for me, since I’m not a stellar trail runner. Lots of PPA runners grumble about this section of the race, but for me it’s always a welcome way to get started on the uphill journey. Today, I reach the first turn (onto Ruxton Street) ahead of the calculator, but I take that with a grain of salt. Running on this “easy” part of the course has never been my problem. Keeping a pace up high is quite a different story.<br /><br />The first real trail section of the PPA is steep, with lots of switchbacks. The good news is that the trail is quite nice here – no roots, and just a smattering of rocks. A few years back, I started running this section with my heart rate monitor (HRM) as my guide, since I had lost momentum up high too many years in a row. I want to run a controlled race, so today it’s all by HRM. That means that I end up walking most of the first section. I have not brought the pace calculator splits with me, so after the turn onto Ruxton, I don’t have any reference points until I reach Barr Camp – and that’s not until halfway up the mountain. This is fine with me, because I just concentrate on HR and upward motion, and I feel really good through this section. Because it’s tough to pass on this narrow section of trail, once the initial order is established, that’s pretty much it until we get up higher. I pass a couple of people, and a few people pass me, but there’s not much shuffling going on quite yet.<br /><br />The second section of the trail is the easiest – and as a consequence, it is my favorite. The trail widens a bit, but more importantly, it flattens out considerably, and it even goes downhill in a few places. Looky me, everyone, I’m actually running again! The running stretches don’t always last for long, but today, it feels really good to pick up the pace whenever possible.<br /><br />This race has been quite different for me each year that I’ve run it. The first few years were all about discovery; the next couple were about trying to do well, and getting frustrated in the process – with other people, with the weather and conditions, and with my own performance, in about that order; and last year was all about just trying to enjoy the experience and survive. (This race is always about survival.) Once I decided to just have fun in the last couple of years, I had a great time chatting up people along the run. But today is different. There is a small amount of chatter going on around me, but mostly everyone is lost in his or her own race. And so it is for me, too. Although I end up passing and re-passing several people multiple times on my way up the mountain today, it’s a very solitary experience.<br /><br />At 1:27 on my watch, I’m passed by the first couple of runners from the second wave. PPA has a wave start: people with a self-reported anticipated finishing time of 4:30 or faster are assigned to Wave 1, which starts at 7:00. Slower (or theoretically slower) people are assigned to Wave 2, which starts thirty minutes later. Every year, the fast people from Wave 2 (either sandbaggers, or (typically young) people without race history) end up passing the slower (i.e., me) runners from Wave 1. Typically, this happens in the final three miles of the race. Today, the first guy goes by me at less than 90 minutes into my day. That means he’s covered a distance in 57 minutes that took me 87 minutes. It’s not the greatest confidence booster.<br /><br />At least partly because I’m not talking with other people, and because I’m working hard at capturing my splits, I start doing some mental math at around the “9 Miles to Go” and “8 Miles to Go” markers. (The mile markers on Pikes Peak are all “so many Miles to go”, not miles covered so far. The first time you run this race, it seems odd. But once you get above tree line, it makes perfect sense.) And I’m not so sure I like the results. Even at these early markings, the numbers are saying that I’ll need to average approximately 18 minutes/mile for the next 8 or 9 miles. While that might seem incredibly slow to the untrained eye, on Pikes Peak, nothing computes the way it might on flatland without the altitude factor. From past experience (not to mention the pace calculator I consulted last night), I know that the final three miles will all be 20+ (more like 25) minutes. I start to grapple with the very real possibility (probability?) that my day is already done, and that sub-4 hours is already out of my grasp. I push the thought away. I push onward, upward.<br /><br />I reach Barr Camp, which pretty much demarks the end of section two and the beginning or section three, in 2:07. The traditional wisdom – not to mention the pace calculator – says that you need to be at Barr Camp by 2:00 if you want to have a chance at a 4 hour ascent. This is not a good sign. While my heart still clings to the possibility of a sub-4 hour race, my head is already accepting the reality: this is just not the day.<br /><br />It’s a toss-up as to whether the third or fourth section of the race is harder. Votes in favor of section three will tell you about all the rocks and roots, and the fact that this section gets steep again, even though it’s in deep forest, so it doesn’t look all that daunting. I’ve tried to run this part before, but it’s pretty much not worth the effort, what with all the rocks and roots. Better to play it safe and walk at a crisp pace. So that’s what I do today. It’s surprising that I continue to pass people from Wave 1, but the truly amazing thing is the number of people from Wave 2 who pass me along this stretch. Why are so many fast people running in the second wave?<br /><br />Sections three and four start to venture into very high altitude, and I start to feel it early on, although I pretend that it’s a non-factor. But I pass the A-Frame (which is the demarcation between sections three and four) at 3:06 instead of the pace calculator time of 2:50, and I finally accept that sub-4 was only a dream today.<br /><br />Section four of the race is all above tree-line, and in many ways is more runnable than section three – largely because there are no more roots to trip over, and because the trail sometimes flattens out between switchbacks. It gets votes as the most difficult section of the race owing to the altitude, and to the fact that there are many places (particularly in the final mile) where the rocks are so steep that scrambling is really the only reasonable approach. Today, more than ever, the rocks and the steepness of section four do me in. For reasons that I can’t quite yet grapple with, the altitude starts to affect me big time, and I worry about my balance. My head spins. I soldier on the best that I can, but it’s really, really hard.<br /><br />And so, my goal morphs as the day wears on. First, I change my goal from sub-4 to course PR. When that hope fades, I change the goal from course PR to somewhere in the top three of my PPA times. The next stage in the mutation of my goal is “oh please let me finish faster than my previous slowest time.” Finally, there comes a time when all I want to do is finish the damn thing.<br /><br />In the end, I struggle at the top of Pikes Peak today as I have never struggled before. My head is spinning, and by the time I’ve climbed to the upper reaches of the trail, I’m using my hands almost as much as my feet whenever possible. I’ve worked hard at passing these people for miles, and now I just don’t care anymore. On one of the final switchbacks of the trail, I wobble precariously on a rock, and a volunteer – one of the many EMTs who line the course – says to me, “you did that just to scare me, right? Right?!?” I don’t really have an answer for him, but the moment passes, and I don’t tumble off the side of the mountain, and pretty soon – not soon enough – I cross the finish line in 4:26 and change. That represents my worst time on this course by more than 12 minutes, but given my state of mind, I don’t really care at all. I’m just happy to be done.<br /><br />At the finish line, I’m toast, and I know it. I move over to the side to make room for those finishing behind me, but I just need a minute to get my breath. A volunteer hands me my medal, and it slips between my fingers, which are just not working quite right. When I bend over to pick it up, a host of volunteers come to my aid, asking if I’m okay. I wave a guy off, then try to start walking again, and another volunteer comes up to ask again if I’m okay. This one – a woman – grabs my arm and doesn’t let me out of her grasp until we’re past the cog railway tracks. At first I keep trying to tell her I’m okay, but then she asks how old I am, and I have a hard time answering, and it occurs to me that maybe some help is a good thing. (It’s a weird thought: that I’m climbing into the old-enough-to-really-worry-the-volunteers category.) She parks me, telling me “wait right here”, and goes off to get both Gatorade and water, then finally lets me go – but only after she watches me drink them down. By now I’m able to motor on my own, and I grab a few grapes and a few pretzels before reclaiming my checked bag and claiming my finisher’s jacket, and then climbing into the first van I can find that is heading back to Manitou Springs. After taking four and a half hours to reach the summit of this mountain, I’m heading back down in something less than ten minutes, a phenomenon that gives “it’s the journey, not the destination” new meaning.<br /><br />The bus ride back down to Manitou Springs takes nearly an hour, and I end up having great conversations with other veterans of the race along the way down. It’s surprising how quickly I start to feel like myself again. When I get off the bus, a couple of guys come up to talk to me, and to ask me about my finishing time, since they recognize me from the run, and want to congratulate me on running strong. It’s a weird feeling, to have done so poorly compared to a goal, and yet to feel so bland about it. I think about the saying that is attributed to Albert Einstein: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And I know that this race, for me, represents a bit of insanity.<br /><br />After I get home, I call Benji, to tell him how my day went. The first words out of my mouth are “I ran a personal worst!” Benji is calm, and asks all the right questions, and we work through the day together. Truth be told, there are plenty of times that I think I could get by without his coaching these days, since I know his system and could probably cobble together a plan on my own. Part of my reason for sticking with Benji is that I like having just one thing in my life that I don’t have to think much about on my own; Benji does the thinking, and all I have to do is run.<br /><br />But the real reason that I stick with him is for how he handles these bad races. He has a great way of analyzing all the things going on in my life on any given day, and of rationalizing how those things affect my running. It’s not excuse-making, just classic cause-and-effect analysis. Not for nothing did he pursue a doctorate degree in biopsychology. Today, we talk for a long time about my crazy work situation and the hours I’m burning and the fact that I’m skimping on sleep. “Sleep deprivation does not mix well with oxygen deprivation,” he says; is this just another way of saying that I’m running on empty? We talk about how much longer the work craziness will continue, and then we start to make plans. One year, he says, when your work situation settles down, we’ll get you properly trained for this race, and we’ll even have you take some time off work so that you can spend a month or so before the race up at altitude. But for now, we’ll work on recovering, and then we can get back to real marathon training by mid-week. By the time we end our call, I’m feeling downright hopeful that maybe someday I’ll finally get this race right. Today, I’m not so hopeful as to think I can make that happen next year, but someday. Someday means that I still have hope.<br /><br />On the way home from Manitou Springs – after the late breakfast at Uncle Sam’s Pancake House and before I dial in to yet another conference call for work, something that was delayed on account of the race – I stop at a Starbucks for a shot of caffeine to keep me awake during the drive northward. Starbucks’ brilliant marketing sucks me into buying a Grateful Dead CD – a compilation of stuff that I pretty much already own on other albums. But today it’s worth the price, since the music is perfect for my mood as I drive through the afternoon sun. Jackson Browne may have gotten my race right this morning, but the Dead get it right this afternoon, and I sing along to the lyrics of “Touch of Grey”:<br /><br /><em>Every silver lining’s got a touch of grey</em><br /><em>I will get by, I will get by, I will get by, I will survive.</em>Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-57204873679608002002008-01-10T10:36:00.000-08:002008-09-16T22:04:08.831-07:00Leadville Trail Marathon 2007Why I chose to run this marathon will always be a bit of a mystery to me. After all, I didn’t really need another marathon in my spring training cycle; I had already run the Georgia Marathon in March, Boston in April, Fargo in May, and the Deadwood Mickelson Trail Marathon in South Dakota in early June. I didn’t need another Colorado Marathon in my quest for a marathon in each of the fifty states; I already had two marathons in Steamboat Springs and two in Denver. I didn’t need a demanding mountain trail race; I had already run the Pikes Peak Ascent many years consecutively (including a registration for that race for the following month), along with the Imogene Pass Race and the Golden Leaf Half Marathon, both grueling runs at altitude.<br /><br />In the end, I suppose I chose to run Leadville for the same reason that Sir Edmund Hilary chose to climb his mountain: because it was there.<br /><br />Because my entry in the race came late, on a whim, I end up approaching it solo. Why ask anyone to join me when the whole thing is lunacy to begin with? Lucky for me, Nattu Natraj is also running this race, and I’ve asked him if we might run the first part of it together. Nattu just started running a few years back, and after we met through a running message board, I ended up cheering him on in his first half marathon up in Fort Collins. He was a complete newby back then. He’s a completely changed runner today, at the beginning of July 2007. By now, he’s completed many marathons, but his claim to fame is his performance in several of the most difficult ultramarathons on the planet, including the Marathon des Sables, a week long multi-stage run through the Moroccan desert, and the Badwater 135 last summer. Right now, he’s getting ready for his second assault on the Badwater 135 later in July. I count myself lucky to have him agree to run a bit of this race with me.<br /><br />Race morning comes early, but it’s a rare treat to wake up (even though extremely early) in my own bed. It’s late enough when I leave home that I can grab a scone and coffee from the local Starbucks, and the traffic on the way to Leadville is pretty much non-existent. When I arrive at the race start, I park right in front of the race headquarters, and I’m one of the first people inside picking up my packet. The whole vibe of the thing (very low key) matches my expectations of my effort on this perfect Colorado summer day. I almost have enough time to take a short nap in my car.<br /><br />I hook up with Nattu early on, and I’m amazed at the fan club he has developed over the last couple of years. Everyone seems to know him, and he’s generous with introductions. Is this the same guy who was worried about finishing a little half marathon a few years back? Apparently not.<br /><br />The race starts uphill on a side street in Leadville, and the very small field spreads out quickly. I’ve attached myself to Nattu’s elbow, and I’m thrilled to hear him say “okay, I’m gonna walk now” after we’ve gone just a short distance. I’m all over the walking thing. Even though it’s not far back to the start line, we’re dealing with a pretty steep slope, and – oh yeah, forgot to mention this bit – the race starts at an elevation over 10,000 feet. I’m all for walking, especially if I can foist the idea off on somebody else.<br /><br />We walk for a while, then we jog for a while, then we walk again. The first mile is mostly paved roads, but soon enough we find the trails and the forest. The trails quickly become single track, and Nattu lets me go in front of him. Trails have always required a lot of attention on my part, and soon I’ve lost contact with Nattu. I am, very naively, thinking that perhaps I’ve dropped the super-ultra-guy. Nattu has talked about how this race is just a training run for him, so he’s not planning to push it. And, after all, the last time we ran a race “together” (the Imogene Pass Run a few years ago), I finished a bit in front of him.<br /><br />The trail is a bit gnarly, but I manage to “run” much of it. (In this case, “running” – rather than walking - is more of a mindset than a pace.) The race course is essentially an out-and-back, but with a few twists. The first quarter of the out-bound race is all uphill, and after the first mile, it’s on a single track trail through forest. The first aid station is at the top of this section of trail. The second quarter is a rolling loop around Ball Mountain, almost all on narrow single track; after you circumnavigate the loop, you’re right back at the first aid station. The third quarter sends you downhill on a dirt service road behind the old several old mines. The footing on this section of the race is very good, and the downhill feels great to me. The final quarter of the out-bound section is where things get tough. It’s all severely uphill, on a very rocky and rough track that is all exposed, ending at the top of Mosquito Pass at around 13,200 feet of elevation. Then we turn around and do the whole thing in reverse.<br /><br />I reach the top of the first quarter section feeling okay, and survey the goods on offer at the aid station. Ya gotta admit, the offerings at ultramarathons (although this race is “only” 26.2 miles, it’s sponsored by a group of folks who are used to working ultramarathons) is much better than the offerings at “normal” marathons. There are PB&J sandwiches (cut into bite-size pieces), brownies, homemade chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, pretzels, jelly beans, M&Ms, and a few other foods; along with the normal water and Gatorade and some good ole Coca-Cola and Sprite. I grab some grub, and head out onto the loop.<br /><br />The loop is tougher than it looks on paper. While you don’t gain or lose any net elevation (after all, you end up right back where you started), you’re constantly going up and down. The loop is mostly exposed, and most of the trail is narrow single track. There are some challenging up-and-down sections on rocks through some trees. One thing about this section is that, when it opens up, you can see the runners around you very clearly. I’m definitely not gaining on anybody. I’m happy to see the first aid station come into view again.<br /><br />The next quarter section is a delight. Downhill running on a solid, generous surface. Did I say delight? I could do this all day long.<br /><br />Unfortunately, it doesn’t last all day. At the bottom of this section of downhill, there’s another aid station, and it’s kind of like the last fort before heading across the hostile plains. There are people here taking breaks in chairs the volunteers have set up. There’s another fine array of food on offer, and I grab a little bit to eat before crossing the stream that demarks this section of the race.<br /><br />The last quarter of the outbound section is the place where the wheat separates from the chaff. I am not prepared for this…not at all. The trail – actually, a jeep road – is all loose rock and scree, and the footing is extremely bad. But even moreso, it’s steeply uphill. And, did I mention, we’re approaching truly high elevations here? Partly up this steep grade I start to feel sick, and have to stop to walk. People are passing me, and I’m not surprised at all. The steepness has stopped me in my tracks. People I passed on the downhill section go by me. We’re also just starting to meet people who are on the homeward bound section of their journey. That, in a way, makes me feel better – as if I’m getting closer to the end of my own race. Wait – I’m not even halfway there. I guess I’m jumping the gun.<br /><br />At some point in this section, Nattu powers by me. He’s looking incredibly strong. I’m feeling incredibly weak. I realize now that I should have known that he’s really got the pacing thing down, and I should have made an effort to stay on his shoulder rather than pushing forward, only to die at this still-rather-early stage of the race. Passing me in the other direction, I see Henry, who works at the Boulder Running Company, and who seems to run many of the same races that I run. I also see Steve Skadron, an Aspen City Council compatriot of Mick’s. I knew that Steve was a runner, but it’s a surprise to see him here today.<br /><br />Approaching the 13,200’ summit of Mosquito Pass, I find myself light-headed and very much battling the altitude and the uneven footing and the steepness. It’s become very cold up here, with a nasty top-of-the-mountain wind. Still, I power on, and am very happy when I reach the turnaround point. There are a few folks sitting in chairs that the aid station workers up here have set out, and although the thought of sitting is very appealing, I’m more anxious to get down from this altitude and to be done for the day, so I keep moving.<br /><br />The “back” portion of this out-and-back is more downhill than uphill, but it’s still extremely hard – harder than I have bargained for. The first quarter is now steeply downhill, on very unstable footing. I struggle, and get passed left and right. I’m a pretty good downhill runner on solid footing, but on trails, I suck. I have little choice but to let the other runners go by. Even so, I twist my ankles both multiple times, and end up limping through more of the section than I’d like to admit.<br /><br />When I hit the solid road of the next section, it’s much better, even if it is pretty much all uphill. A woman Nattu introduced me to earlier today passes me, and it’s clear she’s in much better shape for this than I. I’ve traded places with her a few times, but at this point, she’s dusting me but good.<br /><br />I love seeing that first aid station again when it comes into view. I grab some vittles and set off on the loop around Ball Mountain, running it in backwards order this time. It’s every bit as hard as I remembered from the first circumnavigation. Even worse, the uneven trail seems much harder this time around. A few more people pass me. I just want this thing to be over.<br /><br />After grabbing some de-fizzed Coke at the first aid station again, I’m finally on that final quarter back down into Leadville. What surprises me is how long the downhill section through forest goes on. I’m virtually running alone, and, on these tired legs, I’m really afraid of falling. So I run some, and walk some, always taking care with my footing. I’d like to improve as a trail runner, but today I’m guessing that doing that in a 26.2 mile race is not exactly the right strategy. I trade places with another runner a time or two, and it mostly just makes me happy to know I’m not the last person out here.<br /><br />As we get closer to town, I keep expecting to see Mick. He has told me that he will be here for the finish of the race, and since it’s taking me much longer than my anticipated time, I’m guessing that he will greet me before I get to the finish. Although it seems forever before I find him, it’s still wonderful to see his long lanky profile on his bike at a point where the trail I’m on meets up with the bike path out of town.<br /><br />Seeing Mick gives me a bit more fuel, and it gives me a huge burst of spirit. Soon, I’m rounding the final turn onto the paved road that will lead me back to the start/finish line. It’s a straight shot from here, and finally the footing is good and solid, and I’m running to beat the clock. It has started to look like I might be on the far side of seven hours on this run today, and that just doesn’t sit well. So I run as hard as I can. There are a few people out at street crossings – there is really no traffic at all – and their cheering buoys me. A block or two from the finish line, I see Nattu out of the corner of my eye, and he yells encouragement to me. He has long since finished his day with a course PR.<br /><br />One of the most wonderful things about running small races is that, even though the crowds at the finish line are small, you know that the cheers are for you, only you. Today does not disappoint. There are not a lot of people yelling encouragement, but I know that each of them is there for me. I manage to eke out a small margin on the seven hour monster, and finish in 6:55:14. Somebody hangs a medal around my neck, and Mick is there, on his bike. I grab some Gatorade and some food from the finish line assortment of goodies – knowing that I really did earn it all – and then it’s time to head home from this high small town. By the time my car hits the city limits, I’m already trying to figure out how to train for this thing to do better the next time I run it.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-70831705792021934602008-01-10T10:34:00.000-08:002008-02-14T19:24:08.797-08:00Ride the Rockies 2007This is my sixth Ride the Rockies. You would think that I would learn to train a bit better for it, but some lessons come hard. Ah well, because of the course configuration – a combination of hard-easy-hard-easy days – I am actually able to ride myself into shape in the seven days of the ride. So what exactly makes up those seven days? Come along and ride with me…<br /><br /><strong>Day 0, June 16: Registration in Frisco</strong>. Not yet an official Ride the Rockies day, but still, when you arrive at registration to pick up your jersey and bike number and wrist band and luggage tags and route map, you are thrown into the spirit of the thing. First cycling seminar: Alison Dunlap, telling us all about hydration and nutrition and stuff you should already know for the ride. But it’s not really about lessons, it’s about immersion, and for that reason alone, it’s good to start the ride with a stand-up presentation from a recently retired pro cyclist.<br /><br />Oh yeah, did I mention that I ran the Mount Evans Ascent this morning on my way to Frisco? Details, details.<br /><br />This marks the first year of Ride the Rockies in which Mick and I actually don’t have to set up a tent for our first night. Instead, we stay with Mick’s friends Linda and Steve, in Dillon, just over Swan Mountain Road from the Summit County High School, which serves as tour HQ for today. Not only do we have an entire suite in the house to ourselves, but Steve and Linda cook up a wonderful dinner for us. Barbecue chicken and corn, salad, fresh bread, and some nice red wine. Yummmmm.<br /><br /><strong>Day 1, June 17: Frisco to Steamboat Springs</strong>. 99 miles, 7 hours, 4700’ climbing.<br /><br />This is the first year that I decide to forego keeping detailed statistics of the ride each day, and instead, I’ll rely on the route handbook for the elevation gain, and just estimate my time in the saddle each day. Wow. How liberating.<br /><br />Today, Mick and I are up and on the road before our hosts are out of bed. We pass legions of riders coming across Swan Mountain Road as we backtrack to the high school to drop our gear and start our ride. Breakfast is a quick pancake feast at the school, and then a mad scramble to get on the road. The good news is that by arriving late for the weeklong parking, we actually get to park close-in – we’re in the paved lot, by the gear trucks, while everyone who arrived and parked yesterday is out in the dirt. Funny how things you fret over (will there be a parking space for us?) turn out so well.<br /><br />And then we’re riding. It’s .2 miles - less than a quarter mile - to the stoplight out of the school lot, and then back onto Swan Mountain Road and straight up. I tell Mick to go up ahead, since I’m woefully out of shape for this climb, and we’ll reconnoiter up the road. Point-two miles into the ride, and I’m working hard. Crap. I start to think that maybe running up Mount Evans yesterday morning was a bad idea.<br /><br />But at mile 2, the climb is over, and Mick is there waiting for me, and we’re freewheeling down the other side of this mini-pass. Better yet, the next 40 or so miles are a delight – slightly downhill with a tailwind and a nice shoulder, and we breeze along. If only I knew then that this was the last we would see of a tailwind for the entire week…. But I’m getting ahead of myself.<br /><br />We hit Kremmling, and stop at what I expect to be a lunch stop. But there are not many food vendors there, and the PB&J line is just too long, so we grab just a snack and then are on our way. But it’s painful from here on out. If you’re paying attention, that means almost 50 miles of pain.<br /><br />This is a cruel ride, and I’ve only done it once before, on Ride the Rockies a few years back, in the opposite direction, so I’m not really prepped for what comes next. Out of Kremmling, we lose the shoulder. The road is a narrow, heavily traveled 2-lane stretch that rolls. But that’s deceptive, because it’s a net uphill pull, not to mention that we encounter a nasty, hot headwind. So while it looks like we go up and down, we’re actually climbing most of the time, and even when we head downhill, we have the headwind to contend with.<br /><br />Plus, I’m bonking. Finally, we hit an aid station just before we tackle Rabbit Ears Pass, and it has a good selection of food vendors so I can refuel. I had started to wonder if the food vendors were not along for this year’s RTR. Thank God for the PB&J lady and the smoothie vendor. Restocked, we climb Rabbit Ears – slowly for me, but I get it done – and have a pretty wonderful descent into Steamboat Springs. The winds are still nasty, so what could have been a really fun, let-it-rip ride turns out to be much more controlled, but that’s still okay – it’s still fun.<br /><br />In Steamboat, there is one last nasty bit for us – the finish of the day is uphill to the high school. That’s okay; we’ve been here before, so we’re prepared.<br /><br />Another first for us this year is that in Steamboat, we stay with my friends Lynn and Jim. Lynnie and Jim retired a couple of years ago, and moved to Steamboat. They built a new house, but I haven’t been there yet – I’ve only read about it in Christmas newsletters. But they’ve invited us to stay the night, and what an incredible treat it is!<br /><br />The house is – as I expected – beautiful, with views to die for. Lynn and Jim are cat people, too, and I finally get to meet their umpteen kitties (I could tell you how many, but then Jim would have to kill me). My friends cook us a delightful dinner – barbecued chicken, wild rice, salad, a mixed veggie stir fry, and plenty of red wine – and we eat out on their deck, watching the sky over Steamboat turn a really fantastic pink.<br /><br />Lynnie and Jim are early risers, so they are up with us in the morning, and Lynnie cooks us up a fantastic breakfast (cheese omelets, whole grain English muffins, juice, coffee) before Jimmie drives us back to the high school. The only bad thing about our stay in Steamboat is that it’s way, way too short.<br /><br /><strong>Day 2: Steamboat Springs to Craig.</strong> 44 miles, 2 hrs 45 min riding, 700’ climbing.<br /><br />Today should be an easy ride – less than half of yesterday’s total miles, with a net elevation drop. But one thing gets in the way: headwind. <br /><br />Do you see a theme here? Have you read about North Dakota, or about South Dakota? Headwinds have become the story of my life.<br /><br />So once again, I draft off Mick for the entire day. It should be easy, it should be fun, but it isn’t. It’s a hard ride again, all 44 miles. And I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet – but another theme for the week is developing – it’s hotter than heck. Oh boy.<br /><br />And one last treat for the day: an uphill finish. In fact, a particularly nasty couple of in-town blocks getting to the school.<br /><br />It’s also a return to reality for Mick and me. After two fabulous days staying with friends who have given us exceptional accommodation, we’re camping today. Mick finds us a spot in some shade, and then he rides off to get us some more sunscreen – it’s brutal out here! – while I head off for massage.<br /><br />Later, we head over to the community dinner in the park. The pasta stand has just sold out, so we get to have barbecued chicken for dinner!<br /><br /><strong>Day 3: Craig to Rifle</strong>. 89 miles, 6 hours riding, 4400’ climbing<br /><br />It’s a brutal day. That’s all there is to it.<br /><br />The first part of the ride is nice, since we’re on the road early, realizing the miles we have to cover today. We ride along the Colorado River – close to its source – and it’s lovely.<br /><br />But then, as the day wears on, it gets hard. There are two major climbs today, and although neither is all that steep, both go on and on. And guess what? We get a head wind, all the freakin’ day long, and it only gets worse as the day wears on, which gets really fun when the temps turn hotter than Hades. To round out the trifecta of fun stuff on this day’s ride, we’re on a two-lane road most of the day with heavy truck traffic. There is lots of mining and drilling activity in this part of the state, and it seems like all of the trucks who service those activities go by us on the road today.<br /><br />The best moment of my day comes at the penultimate aid station of today’s route. We’ve taken shelter in one of the few shaded spots at this stop, but Mick and I have had to separate so that both of us can get some shade. Have I mentioned that the sun is brutal? Anyway, in between us are two middle-aged men, riding together, taking part in a private conversation, and I can’t help but evesdropping. The conversation goes something like this:<br /><br />First guy: Well, it’s hard to say what will happen with Jane and Dick. She seems really unhappy, so maybe this is for the best.<br /><br />Second guy: Yeah, you never know what goes on in another relationship.<br /><br />First guy: For me, I can’t imagine life without Mary. It’s going on 27 years, and it just keeps getting better every year.<br /><br />Second guy: Exactly. It’s only been 17 years for me and Alice, but I feel the same way.<br /><br />First guy: I look forward to seeing her every day when I come home from work.<br /><br />Second guy: I can’t imagine growing old with anyone else.<br /><br />….and so it goes. I wonder if these guys’ wives know how the husbands feel? I feel like I’m listening in on the most intimate, romantic conversation of all time, and I only hope that the men are truly as tender with their wives as they seem to be based on this conversation. I feel almost ready to cry with the emotion of it.<br /><br />And then the guys leave the shelter of the small building we’re sitting behind, and a woman next to me starts bitching about the heat, and the traffic, and the food, and everything that is wrong with Ride the Rockies in general and today’s ride specifically. Kinda spoils the moment. I think Mick recognizes how wrong this is, and comes over from around the corner, and we get up to ride into the furnace that is Rifle.<br /><br />For dinner tonight, there comes a time when we’d gladly take another helping of barbecued chicken. Only problem is: the community dinner in the park runs out of food early, and there are hardly any restaurants in Rifle, so we end up taking the shuttle over to Glenwood. We have a delightful non-BBQ chicken dinner at the Hotel Denver. This might have been the conclusion to a beautiful evening, if not for the fact that the shuttle does not come back for us – as promised – and we have a very scary hour or two thinking that we’re stranded in Glenwood. I’ll spare you the details, but in the end, it all turns out fine: we get back to Rifle (albeit very late), throw our sleeping bags out on the lawn in front of the school, and finally get some shut-eye. It’s been a very, very long day.<br /><br /><strong>Day 4, Rifle to Glenwood Springs</strong>. 36 miles, about 2 hrs 45 min; 2200’ climbing.<br /><br />We ride – mostly – the backroads from Rifle to Glenwood. Even though this means we’re on rough asphalt roads for much of the day, with steep little ups and downs, it’s a huge relief after the busy highway riding of the last several days. I tell Mick to ride ahead early in the day, and it’s nice to just go at my own pace for awhile.<br /><br />Maybe because it’s such a short day, we keep running into people we know on today’s ride. There’s a community of people on this ride that we see every year, and some of them I never see at any other time. There’s Chanda from Boulder, and there’s Jill from Aspen, and Bill from Aspen, and then today we also meet up with Barb and Leishia, Ariel’s friends whom I met last year on Ride the Rockies. To be honest, at the start of the day (or rather, at the end of the day yesterday), I was not having that much fun on this ride. Something about today’s ride – maybe all these friends along the route – changes all of that. It’s good to be on Ride the Rockies again.<br /><br />It helps to have plenty of time in Glenwood to get grounded again. Because the ride is short, we have time to set up the tent, have some lunch, shower without rushing, get another massage, and have a nice dinner. Maybe the best thing of all today is that – while waiting for our seat at the restaurant for dinner – we head over to a book store where I can get a copy of Janet Evanovich’s latest book. It’s always good to have laugh-out-loud material to read on Ride the Rockies.<br /><br />After dinner, we go in search of ice cream. We walk a couple of blocks, and I’m almost certain that I’ve seen an ice cream shop here before – it must be nearby. I decide to ask the first “locals” I see for help. We’re stopped at a stoplight, and a couple is crossing the street, walking towards us, and he’s carrying a cup that looks like it once contained a strawberry shake. I size them up, and figure them to be locals. In Glenwood, I expect the locals to be either blue-collar red-necks or else hippies. Rather shallow expectations, I know, but there you have it. This couple falls into the hippy category. She has longish blond hair, and is wearing a sundress, big sunglasses, and the weirdest bedroom-slipper type shoes with big pompoms. It’s the shoes that catch my attention and make me certain that they are locals. He’s just a regular joe – baseball cap, t-shirt, baggy shorts, sunglasses, and salt-and-pepper curls hanging out from under the baseball cap.<br /><br />They reach our corner, and turn to walk the same direction that we’re headed. I open my mouth to ask about ice cream at exactly the same moment the pompom-shoe woman turns to say something to Mr. Ballcap. And as soon as she speaks, I recognize them: Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. I’m so stunned that my question doesn’t make it out of my throat. Instead, we follow these “locals” up the block, and by the time that I figure out that it’s okay to ask “where did you get the ice cream”, we’re in front of the shop. Goldie and Kurt keep walking up the block, holding hands, and sharing a quick smooch. Just like any other local couple. Nobody at all recognizes them.<br /><br /><strong>Day 5, Glenwood Springs to Aspen</strong>. 43 miles, 3 hours riding, 2800’ climbing.<br /><br />The day gets off to a rough start: Mick goes to claim our bikes from security, and finds that I’ve blown a tire. He changes the tire for me, but by the time I’ve found a replacement tube, we’re late. I’m not a happy camper because the food situation this morning isn’t to my liking: no pancakes or other good, hot carb-loading food. We start riding on empty stomachs. I am not a happy cyclist when I have to ride on an empty stomach. I’m already thinking that the day is going to blow, largely because this is a route that I already know well, so it’s just not that exotic, and now the food situation has me even more surly than normal. <br /><br />But we make it to Carbondale in pretty good time, and instead of going to the aid station, Mick takes us off-route, to a diner he knows. My mood starts to brighten. I get coffee, and life is looking up. French toast and hash browns – real, cooked-to-order, hot breakfast – and I’m getting pretty darn happy. We get to use actual indoor plumbing, complete with flush toilets, rather than the port-a-johns, and it seems like life is pretty good. Then the waitress takes my water bottle and fills it with the diner’s crushed ice, and I’m in heaven. How could I ever have thought that this day would be anything but good?<br /><br />Mick gets us back on track, and then I discover another delight: there is a brand new stretch of bike path here, and it’s so new that I didn’t even know it exists. The bike path takes us off the heavily traveled highway 82, and then even further off the sparsely traveled back roads, until we’re on the other side of the Roaring Fork River. Over here, it’s nothing but wildflowers and trees and the river babbling alongside. Even when we eventually meet up with the old part of the bike path, the RTR route takes us on a slightly different trajectory than we take when we ride this stretch on our own. By the time we reach Aspen, I’m very, very happy. It’s not exactly like riding into town for the first time, but it’s definitely riding into town with fresh eyes.<br /><br />The rest of the day is odd. Mick heads off to do what the mayor of the town does when RTR arrives. Today’s camping is at the Aspen High School, which happens to be just a hop skip and jump away from Mick’s sister’s house. We take advantage of the proximity, and camp out in Molly and Don’s spare room. It’s a rare delight to have a shower all to myself in the early afternoon. We know that, because of the altitude here, it will be a cold night outside, so we take special comfort in our inside lodgings.<br /><br /><strong>Day 6, Aspen to Leadville.</strong> 61 miles, 5+ hours riding, 5700’ climbing.<br /><br />It’s another odd day on this RTR. It seems that this year is full of them.<br /><br />Mick has a meeting later in the day, so a staff person is picking him up in Leadville early in the afternoon. Because he needs to get there quickly, we take off separately. I have a weird, lonely pancake breakfast at the high school, and then ride out of town on my own.<br /><br />Today’s ride goes over Independence Pass. While I’ve driven this road a gazillion times, and ridden partway up it multiple times, I’ve never ridden the entire pass. It’s a cool road, but it is narrow and two-lane for most of its length, so it’s fairly scary to ride (to me, at least; there are tons of people who train up this hill on a regular basis). I’ve been looking forward to the ride because there will be traffic control. And while it’s kind of weird to start out without Mick, the reality is on a climb like this, we would soon separate so each of us could ride at his/her own pace.<br /><br />The climb to the top of Independence Pass begins right outside of town, and goes on for twenty miles. While stretches can seem relentless, the road does offer a number of stretches of flat or even slightly downhill for recovery. There are aid stations along the way; I start to stop at the first one, but it’s so crowded that I just turn back onto the road and keep going. Today I’m in a mood to just get to the top; no dilly-dallying.<br /><br />The ride is more delightful than I had dreamed. It helps immensely to have the traffic control on the road; as it is, there are so many cyclists on the road that it’s a bit crowded. But what amazes me is how much I love the ride down. On the downhill side of the pass, there are just a few tight switchbacks in the first mile or so heading downhill, and then the road turns into one of those lovely long sweeping descents. As much as I was looking forward to the climb, I was anticipating this descent, and it does not disappoint.<br /><br />The Independence Pass experience ends with an aid station in the tiny town of Twin Lakes, where I run into Barb and Leishia again. I grab some quick calories, and then I’m back on my bike. We’ve done the rest of this ride many times before – the deceptively tough climb into Leadville – and I just want to get it behind me. Inevitably, I end up getting rained on as I ride into town. This is my third RTR overnight in Leadville, and the third time that it’s rained on me while riding into town.<br /><br />I’ve covered a lot of ground today, and yet it’s relatively early when I get to Leadville. In fact, I end up running into Mick at the high school in Leadville; he shows me to the spot where he’s set up the tent, and then he’s off to his meeting. At over 10,000’ of elevation, Leadville is our highest overnight of the week, and as always, it’s cold here. I climb into the tent and warm up in my sleeping bag while reading, waiting for a squall to pass. When the sun comes back out, everything in the tent becomes toasty warm.<br /><br />Barb and Leishia have offered to take me under their wings for dinner later in Leadville, but I’m kind of enjoying my solo day, just going at my own pace. It’s mid-afternoon when I’m showered and cleaned up, and also starving. So I head into town and have a combination lunch/dinner at the town’s brew-pub. I’m devouring my book, and am happy to be alone, reading.<br /><br /><strong>Day 7, Leadville to Frisco</strong>. 32 miles, 2 hours riding, 1500’ climbing.<br /><br />In all of my years on RTR, I have ridden every single route mile, including every “optional” side trip. I’ve taken particular pride in this, especially since I was so under-prepared in my first year that I seriously doubted my ability to get through the week. No skipped side trips. No shortcuts. No cheating.<br /><br />But today….well, today is different. Mick got back to the tent after dark last night, and this morning we take our sweet time getting up and going. It’s very cold outside – there is, in fact, serious frost on the tent. I’m in no hurry to get out into the freezing temps! When we finally crawl out of our sleeping bags, we hurry up into the school. We wait in a long line for a so-so breakfast, but the advantage is that when we come back outside, the sun is up, warming and drying the frost. Maybe because we’re a little out of practice from all of our days inside this week, but it seems to take us extraordinarily long time to pack up our stuff. By the time our bags are safely on the trucks and we are ready to roll, we are, once again, among the last to leave the campsite.<br /><br />The route today starts out with a loop around Turquoise Lake. I’ve not ridden around the lake, but Mick knows the road, and we are warned: it’s rough, cracked asphalt, a roller-coaster. I study the map and inwardly groan. Mick takes a different approach. He just says, “we’re not doing that”. And so we don’t. Our first skipped miles.<br /><br />We take the shorter route on the bike path that snakes around town, and in just minutes, we’ve rejoined the day’s route, only about 20 miles short. My attitude is cavalier. The rest of this day will be a repeat of a ride that I like – we’ve done this stretch of road, over Fremont Pass, on the final day of RTR at least two other times, so it’s very familiar. The climb is a nice one, not too challenging, but tough enough to get your attention, and the descent is the kind I like, a mostly straight road with nice long sightlines. When we get to Copper Mountain, we turn onto the bike path through 10 Mile Canyon, still going downhill, and we coast all the way to the finish line at Frisco. Another Ride the Rockies under the belt.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11504334.post-33297622000254929822007-07-05T14:34:00.000-07:002007-07-05T14:36:33.380-07:00Mount Evans Ascent 2007It’s been a few years since I last ran the Mount Evans Ascent. The last time I ran it, it started out as a nice June day, but turned into a raging blizzard above 12,000 feet. I was on pace for a PR on the course on that particular day, but after the snow started to fall and swirl and it became complete whiteout conditions, I felt lucky just to finish the race. (Just one runner finished after me that year, before they closed the race, so I truly was lucky to finish the race.) <br /><br />That race was in 2003, and while, for some perverse reason, I’ve always liked this race, I have not been back since. In 2004 the race was not held, and then for the last two years, the race has fallen on the same day as the registration for Ride the Rockies. But this year, RTR is a loop route, beginning and ending in Frisco. An easy drive from Denver. And Mount Evans is right on the way. What could be more natural than fitting in a little run on the day before the big ride begins?<br /><br />It’s all good in the planning stages, but the reality sets in at about 7 p.m. on Friday night, when I am still sitting at my desk, working, while at the same time starting to panic about all the things I have to do before (theoretically) getting to bed early so that I’m well rested for the race start. Criminy – I have to prepare for a week on the bike, camping on the way, as well as for an epic run! Somehow, I manage to pull it altogether: get packed for RTR, get packed for Mount Evans, find some pasta for dinner, load up the car with the RTR camping gear, and make sure that my stuff is all ready for a very early up-and-at-‘em on Saturday morning.<br /><br />Saturday morning is no nonsense for me – do not hit the snooze button, not even once. Up at the sound of the alarm, pre-marathon type meal even though I’m not at all hungry and have to choke down the food, feeding meds to my 16-year old cat Oliver (happy birthday, old grumpy!), and loading the bike and last few items onto and into my car before starting on the drive up to Echo Lake. I’m amazed that it goes as smoothly as it does. I arrive and quickly find a place to park, hike the mile or so from parking up to race start area, and pick up my bib and chip (first time for me that this race has been chip timed). There’s plenty of time for regular pre-race nervous activity – slathering on sunscreen, going thru the port-a-potty line eighteen times, taking a small glass of water, and eyeing the other runners. As we line up for the race start just before 8 a.m., I overhear a conversation between some of the rank-and-file guys and Anita Ortiz. I’ve seen Anita’s name time and again over the last few years – she’s a legendary Colorado trail/high altitude runner – but have never really seen her in person before. Kinda cool to start a race behind a local legend. She’s unassuming and, if you didn’t know her bio, you might never pick her as the favorite to win the women’s race (she finishes second woman – and fifth overall – how’s that for some serious competition).<br /><br />Ah then, the race takes off. Uphill. All uphill. How could I have forgotten? What was I thinking? This thing is nothing other than a sufferfest.<br /><br />It’s a sufferfest from the get-go, and never relents. In the last few years, they’ve increased the capacity in this race a bit, but the only relevance of that fact for me is that it just means there are more people on the road to pass me. And pass me they do.<br /><br />It takes a long time for the field to make its way around me. It feels like the entire city of Denver has gone by. This is not a surprise, though, since I feel just like a complete slug. Huh. Maybe the Fargo/Deadwood combo in three weeks – with Deadwood just two weeks ago – really did take something out of my legs. Who woulda thunk it?<br /><br />In case you missed the previews, this race starts at Echo Lake, at an elevation of around 10,000 feet, and goes up 14.5 miles on the Mount Evans highway to an elevation of 14,000-something. This road is billed as the Highest Paved Road in North America. And the uphill on this Highest Paved Road is just relentless.<br /><br />Ah, race amnesia. It’s a glorious thing. If I had not completely forgotten how painful this race is, I might not have paid good hard-earned U.S. greenbacks to enter the thing. Today, however, race amnesia is a thing of the past. Today, it’s just all a slow crawl up the hill.<br /><br />So I do the only thing I can: I just run. Slowly, but I do run. There are only four aid stations on this race, and the first one comes at mile 3. I pride myself in running the entire way to mile 3 – and then taking a gel and some water at the aid station, walking as long as I can rationalize it – but later wonder if I’ve been a complete fool. Maybe I should have taken some walk breaks earlier.<br /><br />After the mile 3 aid station, I finally start to run again. I’m slow. It’s uphill. It’s a grind. But I do manage to pass a couple of people. (How many passed me? Let’s not go there.) When I trudge around others, people ask me if I’ve done this before. Yes, I answer, several times. These folks all look at me like I’m looney-tunes. I get the impression that they will not be signing up again next year.<br /><br />I manage to run (if you can call it that) the rest of the way to the mile 6 aid station. At mile 6, once again I take a gel and walk through the aid station as I drink a cup of water. Still slow, still shuffling along. But I do remember this road, this course, and I know what to expect. It’s a small comfort. <br /><br />Part of the small comfort comes from knowing that mile 7 flattens out a bit – at least marginally. So far, it’s been a perfect day, weather wise. Nice 50-something temps and cloudless skies at the start. But we’re at high elevation, and the weather is bound to deteriorate as we climb the mountain. Now at mile 7, I’m starting to get chilled. I put on my gloves, but it’s not enough, so I put on my jacket, too. Ah, perfect.<br /><br />But then mile 8 climbs again, and I start to get overheated. I end up taking off the gloves and the jacket again, and stowing them in my camelback. Another excuse to stop and walk.<br /><br />As I watch my Garmin, it becomes clear to me that I can walk faster than I can run. Weird. But hey, who am I to argue with Garmin? Walking feels better, too, so why put myself through the grief of running?<br /><br />Well, the fact that mile 9 is mostly downhill is the one good reason that I come across to run again. I force myself to run this, and to run it hard. “Hard” is a relative concept, and although I’m not really going that fast, the effort feels gargantuan to me. Still, it feels good to finally be covering some tracks in this race.<br /><br />Having been here before, one of the motivators for running mile 9 hard is that I know that the steepest part of the race awaits me. Nope, this section has not (magically) gotten flatter over the last few years. As soon as we start steeply uphill, I start to walk. Why fight it? Garmin tells me that I’m running 17+ minute miles, but am walking 15-16 minute miles. Walking feels easier. Why try to make sense of it all?<br /><br />There’s another brief downhill at mile 11, and I force myself to run here again. As soon as it starts uphill again, though, I’m walking. It’s getting cool again, so once again, the jacket and the gloves go on. I’ve tried the run-walk thing for the last few miles, but I have not been able to find a rhythm. Now, I try to keep some momentum by not watching the clock, and just counting strides, and that finally seems to work. Count to 25 walking, then count to 25 running, and then walk again. Perhaps not documented as a race strategy in any of the running literature, but in the high altitude, twisting, winding switchbacks on Mount Evans, this strategy seems to work for me. Pretty soon, I’m passing people, and very few pass me in return. It’s too late in the day to have a big impact on my overall finish in the race, but at least this way I feel good as I turn those last few corners and power my way across the finish line in a time of 3:35:59. It’s a full five minutes slower than my previous slowest time in this race, but I’ll take it. Some days it’s good just to finish.<br /><br />The oddest thing of all about these uphill races is that as soon as you pass the finish line, you end up back in line, waiting to get into a shuttle that will take you down the mountain, negating all that work you just did to get up high. But that’s okay – it always is. It’s always cold up here at 14,000 feet, and today the weather is turning. By the time you get to the summit, you’re ready to turn around and get back to lower altitude.<br /><br />In the shuttle on the way back down to the start, I’m greeted by views that I failed to notice while crawling my way to the top. The clouds have moved in, and there’s a lightning strike on a nearby rock outcrop. Over here, there’s a herd of mountain goats, and over there, a bunch of long-horned sheep. The views out east to Denver are amazing, and to the west, to the Continental Divide, it’s spectacular. The dropoff down to Lincoln Lake is, as always, scary, but then the trip through the thousands-of-years-old bristlecone pines is gone in a flash. At first, it seems like a long ride down, but then, magically, they’re dropping us at our cars. If it weren’t for the medal around my neck and the lead feeling in my legs and the sweat crystallizing on my body, I might not even know that I ran a race this morning.<br /><br />And what of it, anyway? I need to get to Frisco to get registered for a little bike ride that starts tomorrow morning.Judy Denverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17867794705283182624noreply@blogger.com2