Derry 2013 Race Report

The fog on my sunglasses was not evaporating.  I had pushed them down to the edge of my nose to let the biting wind defrost them, but it was too cold now and instead of clearing, the fog on the lenses froze.  I took them off and tried to rub the fog and sweat off with equally sweaty and frozen gloves creating a kaleidoscopic smear.

The Derry race was beginning its expected and heartless assault.

I tried to focus on my posture and stride and form but my legs were aching and I felt myself hunching into the cold, leaning, trudging.  I felt awful.  We weren’t even half way.  We hadn’t entered the consuming and giant hills that begin at mile 9 and last through mile 12.

But, apparently we had turned a corner and come out from under cover because there was a biting headwind flash-freezing the sweat in my clothes.  I had thought I was overdressed in the first few miles where cover and a tail wind conspired to force me to shed my hat and gloves and to unzip my sweater and the topmost of my two long sleeve tech shirts.

I had been dripping, soaking through the material, grossly overheated in the winter sun.  Now I just as quickly re-zipped and slapped the sodden hat back on my head with wetted gloves.

I’ve run this race at least a dozen times and it still has the ability to make me miserable.

…

Brian and I drove up in the morning with the temperature just teasing into the double digits Fahrenheit.  The forecast was for mid-teens and a stiff breeze.  Otherwise it was a beautiful sunny day in the home town of Robert Frost and his Westward Running Brook.

This time of year it’s not uncommon to get some interesting weather.  We’ve run the race in colder weather and raging snow storms.  That just the way New England is in January.  We contemplated what and how much to wear.  We visited the outside porto-potties listening to and feeling the icy wind gust up and around our shivering legs.

Brian and I are both recovering from years of hardcore training and both trying to find some peace in our relationship with running, racing and our local friend the Boston Marathon.

We wanted to go out slow, but neither of us could manage to find any comfortable pace in the early miles.  We kept looking at our red-lined heart rates and wondering whether it was the cold or the hills or we were actually working that hard.  For the first couple miles my heart rate was in zones that don’t even exist.

Finally, somewhere in the 4^th mile, Brian pulled off down a dirt road that I’ve seen him use before as a bio break.  I thought that was a grand idea and pulled over to bless a large tree a half mile further down the road.  This gave me a chance to relax a bit and try to settle down into a sustainable pace for the next couple miles as I battled overheating.

The middle miles were miserable as my legs were aching and tired from the early abuse and the wind turned my sweat to ice.

Then we hit the hills.  Full miles of uphill battling through miles 9, 10, 11 and 12.  I slowed and did some walking and invoked my run-walk cadence learned in my mountain and ultra-marathon dalliances.  I knew the hills were coming, but that did not make these monsters any friendlier.

Happy to be out the back side of the elevation gain, I began to get a little form back but now it was really cold.  We were heading directly into it with no cover.  My hat was frozen solid with great hunks of ice.  I pulled the hood of my fleece up to see if I could melt it a bit to no avail.

Through the final miles it was hard, but not too bad.  I was passing people who were suffering worse than I and even managed to stretch out a little kick in the final mile.  It helped to be so familiar with the course.

In an odd moment, as I took the corner into the last short, steep hill into the finish my iPod shuffled into a Bruno Mars song that I must’ve gotten for free from Starbucks because I don’t even like Bruno Mars.  Picture me huffing and frozen at the end of a 16 mile monster of a race, suffering from the wrong music at the wrong time.  I powered through the finish and went off to find some warm food.

…

You know I don’t like race reports.  So here is my alternate race report in free verse..,

Frozen plumes of wet New England breath,

Coat the world,

And sting the chest

 

Monk-like we stumble,

Tired, we strive,

Frozen, wet sweat stinging the eyes

 

Dry, crisp, biting cold,

Sucked deep,

And coughed wide

 

Stark low sun,

Entreats from shallow horizon,

Kissing the cold dirt and snow

 

Grizzled and bearded,

Beaten and wind-burned,

We smile fiercely at the ice, our tormentor

 

The weather can’t break us,

We are made of stronger stuff,

We are wood, and bone, and steel and stone

 

We are indestructible!