Sun Marathon
A good day in Utah.
I have gotten out of the practice of writing race reports.
How does this work again?
Oh yeah, now I remember…
I’m supposed to start with a high-stakes moment in the race, describe it in compelling detail, get you breathless and hooked, and then, pull the rug out and leave you with a cliff-hanger.
Make it compelling, hook the reader in right up front. Give them enough information to ride the ride and promise them a satisfying resolution.
Then go back and fill in the messy details, exposition and clutter.
And there should be some sort of thread. A thought or expression that provides a bit of backbeat to keep the bits entangled and syncopated, like you do.
…
The guy wearing the race tee shirt, a peach-colored, minimalist, cotton affair, had been trading places with me as I fought my way up the long hill at mile twenty-four.
On any given day it would not be a long hill or a challenging hill, but, hey, did I say ‘mile twenty four’?
When we made that hard left turn into that uphill, I was thankful for having driven the course the day before because I knew where the top was. I knew what happened next. Once I got to the top of that hill and made the next right it was downhill through some neighborhoods to the finish line.
I do love a downhill finish.
I had been trading places with mister race shirt because when we took that turn, they mixed us head-long into the 5K and 10K runners and pushed us over to an uneven cement sidewalk.
But, I made it here, to this point. This was where I wanted to be. Within spitting distance of the finish line with my legs still under me. I knew I had time in the bank. Maybe as much as 5 minutes. Maybe as little as 2.
I knew I could lose some, but not too much.
I needed to keep running.
Keep moving.
My head was good.
My legs were wrecked.
Finally, that right hand turn.
The neighborhood sidewalk. The downhill.
I fought my wobbly legs off the damn sidewalk into the friendlier asphalt bike lane.
I looked at my watch for the 500th time.
Looks like I have 4 minutes. And somewhere around a ½ mile left?
A goddamn 800.
Two laps of the track.
How fast can I run an 800?
How slow can I run an 800?
I’m hunched into the shallow descent, holding on for dear life, cursing the finish line that won’t be conjured into view no matter how much I will it to.
Mr. Race Shirt is chatty.
“Great Pace!”
Silence
“Are you running the 10K?”
I grunt “No” with as much ‘leave me the fuck alone’ as I can manage.
“Marathon?” He asks incredulously.
I grunt “Yeah”
He says something else.
I don’t care.
800 meters. How long will it take me?
I used to be able to cover 1600 meters in 6 minutes.
How much buffer do I still have left?
Should I try to sprint?
I’m unsteady.
Keep the legs turning.
Keep moving.
Keep running dammit.
This is what you trained for. This is where you wanted to be. In the late miles with a chance. Where it’s not about training anymore it’s about grit and willpower.
And being alive.
…
I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing epic race reports.
I thought I should right this one up, for a few reasons. First, it was a good, positive race for me. A step forward in a lot of areas, and there’s always value in reviewing the whys and wherefores of a successful campaign.
Second, I’m stuck in Vegas with the snowpocalypse camped over my house in New England, and this is probably the safest, if not best, use of my time. (I laid out my damp race clothes on the floor to dry, so the maid service may die from fumes.)
And, finally, I’m bad at documenting, née, celebrating wins. My neurodivergence folds them up and tucks them away so I can chase the next shiny object. I suppose that protects me from ever having to dwell in any one place for too long. Keep moving so the dragons can’t catch you. But rightly these are those memories, the ones you’re supposed to be making, so you should probably try to remember them.
I’m a little hesitant because from an objective point of view this race result is mediocre at best, but if you know the context, well, it’s something.
How did we get here?
Let me explain…no let me sum up.
It all started a few years ago. I was doing hill repeats early in the year, training for some race, and my left knee went ouchy-Mc-ouchy. The ouchy turned out to be some sort of “Stress-fracture-like-bruise on the condyle” for which my doctors were disinterested in finding a solution.
I fought it, like you do. Trying everything. But I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to stop. That ‘The Journey’, the adventure, might be over.
So,I rode my bike, like you do. Did some hiking, like you do. Lifted weights, like you do. I got sad and I got fat, like you do.
My doctor was stern with me about my blood pressure and lipids.
One day, I tried a little running. Very slowly. Short distances. Flat surfaces. Just to see if anything was salvageable.
Trying to forget all the history. Trying to be a new man, student.
I made a deal with the universe. I said “Please, just let me run 5 miles pain free. That’s it. That’s all I want. Give me that and I’ll be satisfied.”
And slowly, I got there.
You hear stories about people learning how to walk again after an accident.
It was like that. Baby steps. Consistency.
I kept going, like you do. A little longer. Maybe just a little faster. A Little bit more effort.
Every time the knee started to talk back I’d back off a little.
Cautious, like a baby. Listening to my now over-60-year-old-body and coaxing it like a frightened horse back to the starting chute.
No hills, no strength work on the legs.
But miles.
Beautiful, wonderful, miles.
Mostly pain free.
And I got to thinking, like you do, that I always do better with a race goal. So I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon. I got a long, slow, low-mileage training cycle in and ran the race. It was miserable. I walk-jogged most of it.
But I finished.
Check off the box. Take the medal. Add a shirt to the pile.
Maybe I can do this again?
Maybe I’m not dead and buried?
So I signed up for another race, like you do, and started on a nutrition plan. I lost the weight. Got lean. Trained through another slow, low-volume cycle and ran the Napa Valley marathon. We had a pretty good race. Still had to walk run the end but came in faster than the first one.
So I signed up for a 100K trail race, like you do, and commenced to build some good trail volume. A spring and summer of joy in the woods with the dog, breathing the good air, pulling the good Earth energy up though my feet.
That is, until I caught a toe 3 weeks before the race and broke my shoulder, yah know, like you do.
But, by now, I was starting to feel pretty good. I was seeing tempo paces that I hadn’t seen since before the injury and the knee was hanging in there. So I signed up for another race, yah know, like you do, and said, “Let’s get after this one and see if I can qualify!”
Oh the folly!
Oh the hubris.
(Insert snide comment about monkeys and backs here)
I picked the Mesa Marathon because it was a downhill course in a warm place in February, (this was before Boston added the penalty minutes for downhill races).
I put in another training cycle. Still keeping the volume low enough to not tweak the knee and still staying off the hills.
My thinking was, I had been turning in long tempo runs of 30 seconds or more faster than my goal pace, so according to the old math it should work. If I could stay on pace early and make it past 20, I would have a chance to gut it out at the end.
You know, the old ‘marathon miracle’.
But that’s not what happened. I went out hard and my legs were cooked before I even got to the half. I didn’t have it. But I felt like I was close. I was missing something. I just needed a little more speed, a little more volume.
My reasoning was that I had the pace, I just wasn’t strong enough.
So I signed up for another race, like you do.
Did another training cycle. Did more speedwork. Focused on strength.
Got to the starting line and went out hard and again lost my legs even earlier. I walked off the course, wet and dejected at 15 miles.
I needed a mental reset. I had asked to be able to run 5 miles pain free and here I was getting greedy.
Karma’s a bitch.
Here’s the thing. I was being rational for the athlete I was 10 years ago. But I was being irrational for the athlete I am now.
What I have learned, learned the hard way, like I do, from these past four years is that the real struggle is to stop competing with memories. Stop competing with that other guy from the past. To wipe the slate clean and make friends with this new guy.
And to stop fighting my 63-year-old body, expecting it to be beaten into submission. Into youthfulness.
To learn, instead, to work with it and, in doing so, to become something new.
Maybe even something better.
And as defeating as going out hard and blowing up at back-to-back marathons is, I was learning.
And that’s what the journey is. That’s what it’s always been. It’s learning.
So, I signed up for another race, like you do.
This one would be the Sun Marathon in St. George Utah. Tim is working his way through the 50 states and needed company. Then Gary said he was in town for a conference and would tag along too.
Now, the question became, how would I internalize and apply what I learned?
First, thing I needed to address was hills. I was getting taken out by even the smallest elevation change. I needed to bite the bullet, move off the flat rail trail path and out onto the elevation choked, narrow, icy, New England roads. Back to my roots. Back to where it all began. Like Rocky running through the streets of Philly at the break of day.
Back to the familiar forge.
Second, thing I wanted to do was to race more. Actually feel the feels and make the decisions with people breathing down my neck, on bad roads and in bad conditions.
That is where you find truth.
Third, I wanted to work at least two 20 milers into my training. I don’t know if this is superstition or a valid training strategy, but I told coach that’s what I wanted. 20 miles. Out on the road. Out in the cold. Out on the hills. 20 miles.
And I did all those things.
But the biggest thing I did was to reset my mind. Stop competing with that other guy. Get up every day and, as corny as it sounds, embrace each workout as a gift, and run with joy, knowing how privileged I am to be able to still do what I love.
For this race my ‘A’ goal would not be to qualify. My ‘A’ goal would be to run a smart race and finish it, still running. And if, big if, I needed to put a time goal on it, let’s pick a round number.
Instead of swinging for the fences, I would aim for simply getting under 4 hours.
To some of you 4 hours will sound incredibly slow. To some of you it will sound unattainably fast. To me, I speculated that if I had not crashed in those previous races, 4 hours would be about right.
I hadn’t seen the soft pink underside of 4 hours since the knee injury.
It felt right, like good goals do.
So, train better, race better and, most importantly, enjoy it.
Take the next step.
…
The Race was Saturday. We flew in Thursday Night and drove the 2 ½ hours from Las Vegas to St George Utah.
St. George is a southern Utah boom town of a couple hundred thousand souls. Everything seems to have been built in the last 10 years. Tract housing, strip malls, little businesses. We asked around, but nobody could explain all the growth. The locals said it was tourists.
Friday was a free day, so we drove the course, like you do, and it frightened us a wee bit.
The elevation map showed a consistent, but gradual downhill. The course we drove showed an undulating highway with lots of little ups and downs and some significant climbs at unfortunate places.
We drove all the way to the start in Veyo, UT, which has a population of 3-500 souls and is famous, apparently, for its pie shop.
We should have bought a pie.
As for signs of an impending marathon…there was nothing. No signs, porta-johns, water-stops being set up, cones being dropped…nothing but that undulating, rolling, 2-lane black top through the canyons waiting to eat us like an angry anaconda.
Now that Tim and I knew what we were up against we drove over to Zion Canyon Park and did a short scenic hike as a warmup.
Pretty place Zion. Other-worldly.
We met up with Gary in the afternoon who joined us from his company’s kick-off meeting in Vegas.
The weather forecast was in that stupid place between cold and warm. Somewhere in the low 30’s at the start. Somewhere in the 40’s at the finish. Right on the line between shorts and tights. I really wanted to wear shorts, but, in the end, I caved, like you do, and went with the tights.
I think I could have gotten away with the shorts.
After passing through the Running Center Store to grab our bibs we went to the Thrift Store to provision for the cold start. I bought a $10 pair of sweatpants and a $6 long sleeve tech pullover.
I had brought a fuzzy. throw-away, winter hat and some long overdue throw-away gloves.
We had a nice Italian dinner, swung by the supermarket for some bananas and oatmeal, stopped at a late night Starbucks for me to get my morning coffee.
And, we were set to go.
We made plans to meet in the lobby at 4:45 AM, laid out our stuff, and went to sleep.
…
The morning broke early and stress free. I woke up at 4AM which was 6:AM my time, drank my coffee, ate my oatmeal, rubbed my legs, got suited up, and made it down the lobby to meet Tim and Gary for the ride over to the park where we would meet the buses to the start.
There was no drama to any of this. We took Gary’s car because he was the fastest runner among us and would be back first.
I decided to keep it simple. I shut off and abandoned my phone to lighten the load.
Note: This is not an example of ‘Chekov’s phone’ – I have never raced with my phone, I only mention it because I had started to carry it in these slower races. This race , I decided, I would focus on the race and not worry about twiddling with a satanic pocket computer.
I wore my thrift clothes over my race kit, my gloves, and my fuzzy hat. I clipped my normal ‘Boston Strong’ racing cap to my vest to have it for later when it warmed up.
One water bottle, a couple Keytone-IQ bottles, 4-5 Endurolytes, a small tube of lube, and one old Gu pack, all tucked into the cheap vest I’ve been using.
Simple.
Minimalist.
Well-worn.
It was mid-30’s and overcast in St. George as we gathered into the impressive modern coaches. We were a bit shocked. We were expecting the classic yellow school buses, but, no, they drove us out in style!
Everyone was in a good mood, and we chatted our way up the dark winding roads to Veyo for the 7AM start.
We had scoped out the start the day before. It was in this small park between a graveyard and a rodeo ring. But, when we got there in the morning, we couldn’t see any of that because it was pitch black.
The race team set up a couple of fire barrels and we clustered around those in our throw-away thrift store clothing trying to stay warm. It was just about freezing with a stiff side wind blowing south at a good 15 mph.
A cold, howling wind carrying the fire from the barrels sideways across the high desert.
As we were standing around telling stories, Erlend, a tall runner from Finland came over and said he recognized my voice from the podcast, which is always cool, and we invited him into our sewing circle and took some pictures.
I told them my leg rub story, because Tim had thought it was funny, and like all stand up routines it gets better every time you practice it, like you do.
So now, I’ll tell it to you.
With the cold weather, hard training, longer runs and races, I found myself really wanting to rub some warmup gel on my legs to get them ready. This is a practice that goes all the way back to running cross country in prep school. Massage a little warmup into the major muscles to get the blood flowing before you head out. Especially now that I’m old, the warmup helps the cranky old muscles, well, warm up.
But, I am so old that they discontinued my favorite warmup gel, FlexAll454. They don’t make it anymore. So, I’ve been casting about for a replacement.
I was in the Dollar Store buying some envelopes for my mother, like you do, and they had these tubes of warmup cream.
I bought one.
Well, the week before the race, I had one last little taper run, and I thought to myself, “Hey! I’ll test out that gel and see how it works before I drag it out to Utah. Because, who knew what Dollar-Store warmup gel would be like?
So, I grab the tube of the counter in the bathroom, bring it downstairs, and rub it into my quads, and hammies and calfs. It’s a bit thicker, stickier than I’m used to, more of a paste, and while it has some mint to it, it isn’t very warming.
But, hey, Dollar Store warm up. What can you do?
I finish up and go for my run.
When I get back, and I’m changing, I see the tube on the bathroom counter and realize…I had grabbed the wrong tube off of the counter and used toothpaste.
Better than brushing my teeth with warmup gel, I guess.
A good laugh was had around the fire, and the younger ones said I should do it on TicTok and claim it as the new running hack.
At the 10-minute warning the race team dumped buckets of water on the fires in a big plume of steam, like some ancient ceremony, to get us all away from the fires and over to the start.
The start line was an inflatable arch out on the road and you threw your checked bag, if you had one into the back of a pickup truck. I ditched my thrift sweatpants but kept the long sleeve and the fuzzy hat and my gloves.
As we’re wandering around the start line, we start seeing people holding pace signs. This is where I find the second person I know from online, Todd Yerkes, who is apparently from the area and one of the pacers.
Let’s pause a second and revel in the wonder that is the online running community.
I flew to the middle of nowhere in UT to run a race with less than a couple hundred people in it and ended up meeting two people from our online community.
How about that? I guess the internet isn’t all bad.
It was still quite dark at the start. Sunrise wasn’t until 7:44. Some folks were wearing head lamps and some had knuckle lights. At least we had people to follow but you couldn’t really see the ground for the first couple miles.
I managed to find the 4-hour pacer and made a vow.
A vow that I have horribly violated in the previous 2 races.
Stay with the 4-hour pacer until the end. Take it easy out of the start. Pace myself. Run smart.
And then we were off. I don’t remember and anthem or a gun or a horn. I think someone said ‘Go!’
I introduced myself to Douglas the pacer. Douglas was from Brazil, living in Utah. I tried to make sure I stayed on the road in the dark to not trip and fall in the first mile. I was working hard and noted to Douglas that he might want to check his pace. I did my best to slow him down because the effort felt a little high.
The first couple miles were through Veyo and across a highway and into the two-lane, undulating road through the canyons. This was flattish to downhill but nothing challenging.
There were water stops every two miles. At the first one I ditched my fuzzy hat and pulled on my Boston Strong hat. It was warm enough now and the wind was on our backs.
I had found that fuzzy hat by the side of the road last year. It was a West Coast Choppers hat, not really my style, but functional. It had a good run. Now it would go back to the thrift store.
The first major course element was around 4 miles in where a switch back dropped us steeply a few hundred feet down into the canyon.
A couple runners flew by us, but I was holding back and diplomatically coaching out loud. “Elbows back, fast feet, don’t fight the hill, stay off the quads.” I was not going to lose my race here. I stuck with Douglas and we kept on knocking off the miles.
At every aid station I’d take a drink of Powerade. Maybe 6 ounces. I had my one soft bottle in the vest for when I needed to sip some water, but it was cold enough that I wasn’t worried.
After we dropped into the canyon, and the sun started coming up, I asked someone to hold my vest and threw the thrift long sleeve at a water stop. I ditched that pair of long-suffering gloves too.
The next landmark was the massive town of Gunlock at mile 8 with 250 residents and several very friendly cows who let us know their interested in us by vocalizing enthusiastically. Next up was the internationally famous Gunlock State park and reservoir at mile 10.
And so we rolled through the high desert canyons, loosely tracking the Santa Clara River. We ran on the road shoulder into light morning traffic. I focused on keeping my form clean, staying with Douglas, and ‘riding the bicycle’.
Nice and easy.
There was a hill at mile 9, another one at mile 10, and I navigated them as cleanly as I could manage. I was relying on Douglas, or ‘Doug’ as I now called him, but couldn’t help noticing that he was banking time. Not too much, but we were consistently faster than the 4 hour pace.
We had also picked up a friendly ultra-runner named Kerry who happened to fall in with Douglas and me. Kerry and I swapped stories and compared notes. She was a veteran of Wasatch and Javelena, and running this as a light recovery run, like you do if you’re an ultra-runner.
We rolled through mile 15 and, (hooray), I felt no crash symptoms. In my previous races this was the point where life had started to suck and reality had set in. But, here I was, staying in the pace, cruising along.
Huh.
I drank the first of two Keytone-IQ bottles I had in my vest and a couple Enduralytes, just in case, like you do.
Occasionally there was a nice pushing tailwind. I took to calling it “The hand of God” in deference to the saintly population of Utah, which Kerry thought was hilarious.
About this point I noticed our friend Douglas was struggling and starting to fall back.
Whelp.
looks like we needed a plan ‘B’. So I asked Kerry if she wouldn’t do me a giant favor and pace me into the high miles. She loved the idea. And we continued chatting and running, having a grand old time.
There was a significant hill at mile 18 that I struggled a bit on, my breath came hard and I wondered if maybe the shoe was dropping or maybe it was altitude or whatever. But, Kerry pulled me up the hill.
She was keeping me on pace. So much so, that with the buffer Douglas, (may he rest in peace), had built we were tracking at 10 minutes ahead. At which point Kerry hilariously asked me if I wanted to pick up the pace and try for a BQ, like you do.
I assured her vociferously that that was not why I was here today.
After that hill we got pushed onto a bike path and I recovered on the shallow downhill.
There was one final long hill around 18.5 that loomed like a Mount Kilimanjaro in my imagination from our course ride the day before. But, I knew I had money in the bank and just needed to keep running.
I did lose some speed on the hill but made it up and over, and frankly, was surprised that it wasn’t that big at all.
Now I knew the next landmark was the hard turn at mile 24 that led to the finish.
Again, I relaxed and ran. It was a nice shallow downhill for the most part. I was feeling a bit beat up but the wheels were turning and I still had my form.
Then a thing happened that told me I was going to have a good day.
I looked down and saw the 20-mile mark painted on the road. And I thought to myself, (and probably said out loud), “Holy Cow, how did that happen?”
We had been chatting along and not paying attention to the miles and I was surprised. In a bad race you count the miles like Golem grabbing at the ring. In a good race they just appear out of nowhere.
Somewhere in there I lost Kerry who ran ahead. But she had done her job, just like Douglas had done his. I drank another Keytone. I was in full end-of-race cruise control as the Mile 24 turn appeared.
This was exactly where I wanted to be.
Turning into the final miles, still running, maybe 8 minutes in the bank, nothing left to do but fight and close the deal.
There was one volunteer at the turn, which apparently wasn’t enough, because Tim told us later that he missed the turn and had to bushwhack his way back to the course, and added, fittingly, an extra mile.
I, on the other hand, made the turn and stared up at a long, shallow grind, peopled with 5K and 10K runners and wonky cement sidewalks.
…
The turn into the finish line, which we had also scoped out the day before, came into focus like a long-lost lover, yah know, like they do. And I pushed the pace around the corner up the path for a 3:58 finish.
I got my medal and found some water and some lovely Clementine oranges, quite pleased with the positive outcome.
I had run the race that I trained for and trained for the race I had run.
Could I have done better? Meh, maybe I could have squeezled another minute out of it. Could I have done worse. Oh, yeah. I could have attacked those early downhills and no-doubt ended up walking it in.
And that, my friends is how you have a good day in Utah, yah know, like you do.