Bostomarathon
So as you know by now, I got it done. It was definitely my most difficult marathon yet in the aggregate - none of the extreme duress of the last few miles of my first New Jersey Marathon, but the bulk of this was very slow and tedious. It's not a surprising result, considering my inadequate training, and my only hard goal was to get through it to get the experience of running it, so I'm satisfied with the race.
I got up at 4:00 to get my stuff together and have breakfast. I hadn't slept long (this is a reiteration from two posts ago) because I was kept up for hours by the driving east rain splattering all on the porch and in particular the plastic lid of my compost vat. I was also kept up by being worried that the compost lid would be taken up by the wind, leaving the compost to be rained in and become a miasmic nightmare beyond all imagining. (Perhaps it has become so just from the rain coming in the cracks. I don't really want to check.) Anyway, in my preparations I put on my trash-bag-with-holes-in-it-because-I-don't-have-anything-waterproof-I-can-run-in over my running clothes and then my rainjacket over that and went out in the tropical-storm-like conditions to wait for the 96. It didn't arrive. (Strike 1.) I thought maybe it was a holiday schedule (it was after all Patriots Day) and looked at the schedule and found the bus then wouldn't be there for another hour, so I decided to walk to Davis in the conditions. As I passed past Tufts and was between two bus stops, the 96 passed by. (Strike 2.) Also my boots were started to rub against my Achilles, and once I got to Davis and investigated, I found that this had drawn blood. (Strike 3.) Inauspicious.
At the Common, I got into a long line of runners waiting to get into a bus. I waited out there for maybe a half hour, but that was all right because I got to just calm down, and it wasn't raining as hard anymore. The bus ride took hell of time because we took a detour route - the guy I sat next to assumed this, anyway, for the reason that this would prevent any single route from getting totally bogged down by buses. Once we got to Hopkinton High School, we had to stay on the idling bus for about 20 minutes, during which time everybody, all well-hydrated of course, had to go to the bathroom super-bad. After we were finally released into the wild, I beelined for one of the arrays of portapotties and had to wait for what seemed like another interminable stretch of time, in actual bladder pain, in the rain. Things started to improve once I got over to the big tent (the "Athletes' Slum Village") where I could hardly get inside, it was so packed, but I was able to find enough area to change into my racing shoes and stow my rainjacket. I proceeded to the bus that would take my bag back to Boston, submitted the bag, and headed on down the long road to the starting corrals; luckily on the way there was a parking lot stuffed with portapotties and I was able to take one last pit-stop without much of a wait. The rain had tapered almost completely by then, rather like my training, and so it was actually fairly nice. It was sort of intermittent for a while into the beginning of the race.
Being #2767, I was in the second corral (which is laughable given my actual performance) and it was a fair distance up to it. I was feeling psyched to get going with the race. The start was fairly quick and it didn't take long at all for me to get to the starting line. The first mile was fairly slow, 7:45, but then the next several miles, on the gradual downhills that are supposed to make you go too fast thereby undermining your performance later in the race and yea it for me would be even so, all went by faster than 7:10. I didn't really think much of this because my legs didn't feel particularly springy or fast, so I figured I could just maintain this effort pretty easily later and not slow down much more than I wanted to, which was to about 7:30. On maybe mile 6, I was at 7:25; 7 was 7:30; it kept climbing gradually to well beyond the slowness I was targeting. And the running was getting more and more tedious. Not painful or difficult particularly, just kind of boring and endless. The consolation was of course seeing all the scenery I was passing through and all the variety of spectators and runners and the occasional row of high-fives. But I was inexorably continuing to slow down; eventually I got all the way into the 9-minute range. I knew I was in for more of an ordeal.
The Wellesley turnout, around halfway in the race, was legendary as apparently always, just super-loud, the side of the road totally packed with Wellesley girls screaming for what seemed like a full mile. I saw one male runner stop in for a kiss. I was not in the mood myself. I probably had a Cheney-like snarl on my face throughout this time.
By mile 16, the local topographical minimum before all the hills that culminate in Heartbreak Hill, I was likewise at a low point. I was dragging at almost 10:00 miles, feeling like my ankles were going to crumble, and turning over in my mind the options: (1) continue the agonizing slog, (2) walk - the whole rest of the way would be nice - but that would take maybe 3 hours more, (3) drop out of the race. I started walking and continued for a fair distance before getting running again. Luckily around this time I went by some raisins being handed out; then some orange slices; this was better fuel than the Gatorade I'd been having previously through the run. (BTW, I decided to hold onto the cups I drank out of and also the food containers I ate from, partly because I'm like that, and partly because I wanted to see just how much refuse I would produce. I ended up with at least 10 cups. I think this was at least not the primary factor in the slowness of my race.) The real turning point was when there was PowerGel being offered, and miraculously there was also, I think, a funky !!! song from their new album playing, which certainly helped my mood. I had a vanilla PowerGel and then a coffee one, and while those are both somewhat gross flavors, they were wonderful at that point. They allowed me to keep running with less discomfort and more energy. I kept walking intermittently and occasionally stopped to stretch, usually while I was having a drink, but I ran up the entirety of each of the four soul-crusher hills, including Heartbreak Hill, and they felt not too bad. It was sort of good to have them as smaller-scale challenges that I could summon my will for.
Once I got onto Beacon St at Cleveland Circle, even though the air had become noticeably drier and fresher, I started being pretty draggy again, and it was once again fairly interminable, but I kept on going, and once I got to Kenmore Square and past othercriteria cheering me on and there was only about a mile to go, I found myself pretty effortlessly speeding up to what I guess was close to my original target speed, and for the first time in the whole race I was passing people. For the whole race up till when I started walking, everyone I encountered had passed me, which makes sense because of course I started in a group that was faster than I planned to go anyway, and later on as I slowed down more and more people who were previously slower but now faster caught up with and passed by me. While I was having my walking sessions, I finally got far enough back in the pack to be running, when I was running, with those of about the same speed. But anyway, coming into Back Bay, down under Mass Ave, around the Hereford corners and into the home stretch, I opened up my stride and passed probably hundreds of people (as opposed to the nine or ten thousand who had previously passed me - I can't quite wrap my mind around the scale of this race) and had a 3:53:47 finish that, while not a sprint, felt good and fresh. (Overall pace per mile was thus 8:55.) Of course there were huge crowds about, but I was sort of in a groove and not really thinking about them. After finishing I had to keep walking for several blocks as volunteers did various things such as giving me a bunch of food, removing my timing chip, and installing a heat blanket on me. I was taking it real slow but I don't think my muscles were in as much pain as after my previous marathons. ("Probably because you ran so much slower." "Oh, right.") I stopped to do an Indonesian squat stretch, which felt awesome, and a couple of volunteers very nicely asked if I needed assistance, and this actually happened a couple of other times too.
I continued over to and down Berkeley St to retrieve my bag from the bag bus, and then I discovered via MC that in John Hancock Hall nearby were free massages. After several shortish queues and one descent of stairs, which many other runners complained about heartily but I actually found pretty OK, I got some hot chicken broth, which was totalicious, and proceeded to get a massage, which was really helpful on the muscles. The masseuse also showed me some good hip-muscle stretches, since I had been having issues with my right hip during training (though luckily almost never during the race - while my left hip was actually in worse shape around Boston College). After that I changed thankfully into the dry clothes I'd been lugging around in my bag, and proceeded out to catch the train and bus home. I walked east to Arlington St to get to the Arlington T stop, where I discovered that the Arlington St entrance was closed and the Berkeley St entrance was the only way to enter, so that the name of the station was for the moment rather criminally (to my legs) misleading; I proceeded to circumnavigate the block back to Berkeley. Thence it was a relatively easy set of rides back to Medford. And that was my marathon experience.
Of course right after the race I felt no desire to run any marathon ever again. Now the stupidity has crept back into my brain and I want to run Boston again sometime after I have the chance to actually train properly for it. And at least I set the bar good and low this first time!
I got up at 4:00 to get my stuff together and have breakfast. I hadn't slept long (this is a reiteration from two posts ago) because I was kept up for hours by the driving east rain splattering all on the porch and in particular the plastic lid of my compost vat. I was also kept up by being worried that the compost lid would be taken up by the wind, leaving the compost to be rained in and become a miasmic nightmare beyond all imagining. (Perhaps it has become so just from the rain coming in the cracks. I don't really want to check.) Anyway, in my preparations I put on my trash-bag-with-holes-in-it-because-I-don't-have-anything-waterproof-I-can-run-in over my running clothes and then my rainjacket over that and went out in the tropical-storm-like conditions to wait for the 96. It didn't arrive. (Strike 1.) I thought maybe it was a holiday schedule (it was after all Patriots Day) and looked at the schedule and found the bus then wouldn't be there for another hour, so I decided to walk to Davis in the conditions. As I passed past Tufts and was between two bus stops, the 96 passed by. (Strike 2.) Also my boots were started to rub against my Achilles, and once I got to Davis and investigated, I found that this had drawn blood. (Strike 3.) Inauspicious.
At the Common, I got into a long line of runners waiting to get into a bus. I waited out there for maybe a half hour, but that was all right because I got to just calm down, and it wasn't raining as hard anymore. The bus ride took hell of time because we took a detour route - the guy I sat next to assumed this, anyway, for the reason that this would prevent any single route from getting totally bogged down by buses. Once we got to Hopkinton High School, we had to stay on the idling bus for about 20 minutes, during which time everybody, all well-hydrated of course, had to go to the bathroom super-bad. After we were finally released into the wild, I beelined for one of the arrays of portapotties and had to wait for what seemed like another interminable stretch of time, in actual bladder pain, in the rain. Things started to improve once I got over to the big tent (the "Athletes' Slum Village") where I could hardly get inside, it was so packed, but I was able to find enough area to change into my racing shoes and stow my rainjacket. I proceeded to the bus that would take my bag back to Boston, submitted the bag, and headed on down the long road to the starting corrals; luckily on the way there was a parking lot stuffed with portapotties and I was able to take one last pit-stop without much of a wait. The rain had tapered almost completely by then, rather like my training, and so it was actually fairly nice. It was sort of intermittent for a while into the beginning of the race.
Being #2767, I was in the second corral (which is laughable given my actual performance) and it was a fair distance up to it. I was feeling psyched to get going with the race. The start was fairly quick and it didn't take long at all for me to get to the starting line. The first mile was fairly slow, 7:45, but then the next several miles, on the gradual downhills that are supposed to make you go too fast thereby undermining your performance later in the race and yea it for me would be even so, all went by faster than 7:10. I didn't really think much of this because my legs didn't feel particularly springy or fast, so I figured I could just maintain this effort pretty easily later and not slow down much more than I wanted to, which was to about 7:30. On maybe mile 6, I was at 7:25; 7 was 7:30; it kept climbing gradually to well beyond the slowness I was targeting. And the running was getting more and more tedious. Not painful or difficult particularly, just kind of boring and endless. The consolation was of course seeing all the scenery I was passing through and all the variety of spectators and runners and the occasional row of high-fives. But I was inexorably continuing to slow down; eventually I got all the way into the 9-minute range. I knew I was in for more of an ordeal.
The Wellesley turnout, around halfway in the race, was legendary as apparently always, just super-loud, the side of the road totally packed with Wellesley girls screaming for what seemed like a full mile. I saw one male runner stop in for a kiss. I was not in the mood myself. I probably had a Cheney-like snarl on my face throughout this time.
By mile 16, the local topographical minimum before all the hills that culminate in Heartbreak Hill, I was likewise at a low point. I was dragging at almost 10:00 miles, feeling like my ankles were going to crumble, and turning over in my mind the options: (1) continue the agonizing slog, (2) walk - the whole rest of the way would be nice - but that would take maybe 3 hours more, (3) drop out of the race. I started walking and continued for a fair distance before getting running again. Luckily around this time I went by some raisins being handed out; then some orange slices; this was better fuel than the Gatorade I'd been having previously through the run. (BTW, I decided to hold onto the cups I drank out of and also the food containers I ate from, partly because I'm like that, and partly because I wanted to see just how much refuse I would produce. I ended up with at least 10 cups. I think this was at least not the primary factor in the slowness of my race.) The real turning point was when there was PowerGel being offered, and miraculously there was also, I think, a funky !!! song from their new album playing, which certainly helped my mood. I had a vanilla PowerGel and then a coffee one, and while those are both somewhat gross flavors, they were wonderful at that point. They allowed me to keep running with less discomfort and more energy. I kept walking intermittently and occasionally stopped to stretch, usually while I was having a drink, but I ran up the entirety of each of the four soul-crusher hills, including Heartbreak Hill, and they felt not too bad. It was sort of good to have them as smaller-scale challenges that I could summon my will for.
Once I got onto Beacon St at Cleveland Circle, even though the air had become noticeably drier and fresher, I started being pretty draggy again, and it was once again fairly interminable, but I kept on going, and once I got to Kenmore Square and past othercriteria cheering me on and there was only about a mile to go, I found myself pretty effortlessly speeding up to what I guess was close to my original target speed, and for the first time in the whole race I was passing people. For the whole race up till when I started walking, everyone I encountered had passed me, which makes sense because of course I started in a group that was faster than I planned to go anyway, and later on as I slowed down more and more people who were previously slower but now faster caught up with and passed by me. While I was having my walking sessions, I finally got far enough back in the pack to be running, when I was running, with those of about the same speed. But anyway, coming into Back Bay, down under Mass Ave, around the Hereford corners and into the home stretch, I opened up my stride and passed probably hundreds of people (as opposed to the nine or ten thousand who had previously passed me - I can't quite wrap my mind around the scale of this race) and had a 3:53:47 finish that, while not a sprint, felt good and fresh. (Overall pace per mile was thus 8:55.) Of course there were huge crowds about, but I was sort of in a groove and not really thinking about them. After finishing I had to keep walking for several blocks as volunteers did various things such as giving me a bunch of food, removing my timing chip, and installing a heat blanket on me. I was taking it real slow but I don't think my muscles were in as much pain as after my previous marathons. ("Probably because you ran so much slower." "Oh, right.") I stopped to do an Indonesian squat stretch, which felt awesome, and a couple of volunteers very nicely asked if I needed assistance, and this actually happened a couple of other times too.
I continued over to and down Berkeley St to retrieve my bag from the bag bus, and then I discovered via MC that in John Hancock Hall nearby were free massages. After several shortish queues and one descent of stairs, which many other runners complained about heartily but I actually found pretty OK, I got some hot chicken broth, which was totalicious, and proceeded to get a massage, which was really helpful on the muscles. The masseuse also showed me some good hip-muscle stretches, since I had been having issues with my right hip during training (though luckily almost never during the race - while my left hip was actually in worse shape around Boston College). After that I changed thankfully into the dry clothes I'd been lugging around in my bag, and proceeded out to catch the train and bus home. I walked east to Arlington St to get to the Arlington T stop, where I discovered that the Arlington St entrance was closed and the Berkeley St entrance was the only way to enter, so that the name of the station was for the moment rather criminally (to my legs) misleading; I proceeded to circumnavigate the block back to Berkeley. Thence it was a relatively easy set of rides back to Medford. And that was my marathon experience.
Of course right after the race I felt no desire to run any marathon ever again. Now the stupidity has crept back into my brain and I want to run Boston again sometime after I have the chance to actually train properly for it. And at least I set the bar good and low this first time!