2011 Boston Marathon

One reason that the marathon is such an interesting race is that it is so unpredictable.  When I ran my BQ (Boston Qualifier) in Philadelphia in November 2009, I kept waiting to hit the dreaded wall.  But it never came.  In fact, the last 10k was my fastest, and I felt like I could have run both faster and farther.  Today's marathon was a whole different story.  I felt fine through the first half of the race, but somewhere between miles 15 and 16, the big muscles in my upper legs started cramping badly, making it really hard to even approximate decent running form.  The last 10k was slow and painful, and when asked by a volunteer at the finish whether she could do something for me, I said, "yeah, please just put me out of my misery".  The amazing thing, though, is that I think I felt better today at the halfway point than I did in Philly.  You just never know how your body will react to the distance.  You just have to wait and see.  Maybe that is part of the appeal of the marathon ... that and the fact that you can eat without guilt for 2 weeks after the race.

If I wore hats, I would take mine off to the city of Boston.  What an event!  In spite of my disappointing time (3:28:30, considerably behind my goal of 3:15:59), this was an unforgettable experience.  I was amazed at how many people came out to support the runners, and I was even more amazed at their level of enthusiasm.  Consider that at many points on the course, there is a constant stream of runners for over 3 hours.  Yet, you always had the sense that they were there cheering for YOU.  I wore a Virginia Cavaliers shirt, and there was a constant stream of "Go, Virginia", and "WAHOOWA!".  There were very few vacant stretches from Hopkinton to Boston.  And the last 3 or 4 miles were just unreal.  I am sure that I would have run close to 4 hours if it weren't for the encouragement of the crowd.  The volunteers were great too.  They treated all the runners like VIPs and if you thanked them for volunteering, they would respond with "my pleasure" or even "my privilege" ... Chick-Fil-A employees perhaps?

I also have to take my hat off to my wonderful wife.  Jes managed to round up four unruly kids, pack up, check out from our hotel room, and drive to two separate spots on the course to cheer me on.  The first was near our hotel in Natick, at about the 8 mile mark.  The second was on the 3rd hill in the Newton district at about mile 19.  From there she had to drive into the jam packed city of Boston, find our hotel and then fight the crowds to get to our meeting spot with four kids in tow.  And I am thankful she did.  I was in no state to try to get to the hotel by myself.  I couldn't even remember the name of the street it was on.  I love you, Jes!

Those are my high level thoughts from the race.  I wrote down the full marathon day story for kicks and grins.  Here it is.

After experiencing the logistical nightmare of the 2006 Marine Corps Marathon, I decided to leave fairly early.  I got up at 6:30, showered, and got dressed.  I made a race day decision to wear my short sleeve Virginia shirt instead of my long sleeve Shamrock Marathon shirt, which turned out to be the right call.  Jes and the kids threw on some clothes, and after checking to make sure I didn't forget anything, we left promptly at 7:30.  The trip to the drop off point was uneventful.  The organizers of the marathon planned this part really well.  The drop off point is in Hopkinton State Park in a place where lots of cars can get in and out easily.  From there, we boarded a bus that drove us back the way we came, out of the park to Hopkinton High School, the site of "Athletes Village".

I had a good hour to kill in Athletes Village.  For 45 minutes, I was mostly focused on two things: fueling up and keeping warm.  The temperature wasn't too bad, but it was very windy.  I was shivering despite the black warm up suit that I was wearing.  I felt sorry for the few people I saw who were wearing only their marathon gear, presumably to avoid the hassle of the bag drop.  They looked absolutely miserable.  With about 15 minutes to my scheduled "depart from Athletes Village" time, I figured I would hit the porta-potties and then hike the .7 miles to the starting corrals.  In retrospect, I should have picked a different line.  As it turned out, our line had only 2 working porta-potties.  I wasn't paying enough attention to notice that other lines were moving faster than mine.  As we got close to front of the line, the guy next to me and I were speculating on why no one had yet come out of the 3rd porta-potty that should have been serving our line.  We never did find out, but we came up with several theories, the most plausible being that either the thing was broken or someone was camped out inside trying to stay warm.

    Trying to stay warm in Hopkinton


I eventually had my turn, and after warning the people in the back of the line to find another line, I started making my way out of Athletes Village about 10 minutes after my corral had been called.  I stripped down and dropped off my bag at the bag drop buses, which was a quick & painless process.  You could sense the excitement during the walk to the starting line.  I heard some people joking that they hadn't trained at all for the event, which made me feel a little better about my level of preparation.  The race volunteers were very strict about getting people into the right wave and the right corral.  I got into corral 6 of wave 1 right after the national anthem, about 5 minutes before the start of the race.

   Psyching myself up on the way to the starting line


During the first few miles of every marathon, it is funny to watch the guys pulling over on the side of the road to dispose of some of the excess water that they took in before the race.  In my experience, this is unnecessary, because the feeling goes away after a few miles - for me, it was at about mile 3 this year.  The first 10 miles of the race took us through the towns of Hopkinton, Farmingham, and Natick.  That part of the course consists of rolling hills, fairly similar to what I'm used to from running at home in Bristow, Va.  In some sense, this is nice because it adds variety and some easy sections, i.e. the downhills.  I felt pretty good during this part of the race.  My primary concern was that I felt hot.  My original fluid intake plan was gatorade every other mile.  Due to the heat, I decided to take water on the other miles.  I also took some of the other things that people were handing out like cold wet wipes and ice cubes.  Once I entered Framingham, I started looking for Jes & the kids.  That kept me distracted for about 3 miles until I finally saw them and got a big boost.  Somewhere near the end of this section of the race, I decided to abandon the stretch goal of 3:10 and shoot for 3:15, because I wasn't quite running 3:10 pace at that point and I didn't feel like I could speed up safely.  My splits for the first 10 miles were 7:34, 7:11, 7:18, 7:10, 7:22, 7:16, 7:15, 7:20, 7:17, 7:22.

Somewhere around mile 12, we entered Wellesley, which was a spectacle worth the price of admission:
http://www.runnersworld.com/boston2008/wellesley/.

    Still running strong in Wellesley


I knew that the uphill Newton section of the course started at about mile 16.  I was trying to stay relaxed and planned to take it easy on the uphills.  My splits from miles 11-15 were 7:31,7:18,7:25,7:24,7:36.  Right at the end of that stretch, maybe around mile 15, I got a big pulsing cramp in my left hamstring.  I've had the same symptom before but not until much later in the race, so I knew I was in trouble.  Around the same time, my watch lost satellite reception, so I had no idea how fast I was going anymore.  The 4 uphills in the Newton section really weren't that bad, except that they added my calfs to the list of cramping muscles.  I ran into Jes and the kids on the third uphill, at which point I knew my original goal was not feasible.  Jes did me a huge favor by rubbing down my legs.  I gave the kids high fives and hugs and moved on - 7 more miles to go.  At this point, I started setting mini goals.  My first was to run all the way up heartbreak hill without stopping.  I can't say that I ran up it all that fast, but I did make it up without stopping and was rewarded with a nice downhill and more cramps.  My next goal was to break 3:40.  My legs were constantly cramping at this point, so I thought I would have to walk a significant portion of the rest of the race.  The crowd kept me in it, though.  There were a few points where I stopped, walked & stretched for a bit, but the encouragement from the crowd got me moving quickly.  At about the 24 mile mark, I realized that I could make 3:30 if I pushed it.  I hobbled through that last stretch, and the huge mob of people on the last half mile stretch helped me across the finish line.

    Approaching Jes & the kids on the 3rd uphill in Newton


As it turned out, my watch had recovered satellite reception about 33 minutes after losing it so I do have some of my late mile splits, even though they don't exactly line up with the mile markers on the course: 8:22,8:25,8:24,10:24,8:42,8:40.

    At the finish line.  Apparently I looked up at the wrong time.


I felt pretty awful after finishing.  I wanted to eat, but I had trouble getting anything down, least of all the way-too-sweet gatorade recovery drink that they gave us.  It seemed to take forever to make my way through the post-race gauntlet of water-blanket-recovery drink-food-bag pick up-family meeting area.  Unfortunately, Jes hadn't yet arrived so I wandered around aimlessly for a bit.  That's where I had the most painful incident of the race: I got a massive charley horse in my calf when I tried to step up onto a curb.  It was pretty obvious that I was in pain.  Some lady asked if I needed medical attention.  I just needed to wait about 30 seconds for the muscle to relax.

At that point, I figured I'd have to make my way to the hotel on my own.  So I got my warmup gear back on, taking off my shoes to make the process easier.  A nice woman came and asked if there was anything she could do for me.  I asked her to help me get my shoes on and then call Jes on her iPhone.  Thankfully, Jes was not far away by this time, so I just waited for her to come rescue me.  Seeing her and the kids was an even more welcome sight than the finish line!

It was far from the perfect race, but like I said, it was a great experience and just made me want to come back and do better next time.