Around the lake
Another Story.
I would really like to be able to tell a different story about this race. I would like to tell that other story, the one I had been rehearsing in my head. The story of how I had beaten back a chronic injury, trained well, gotten fit, lost weight and the punch line would be that I easily crushed a qualifying time on a flat loop course.
The happy ending that I always get through perseverance and hard work and then I pretend it’s just luck.
Friday night I raced well and disciplined into the half marathon but then fell apart. I didn’t have the legs. Flip a coin. It was either over-training or not enough quality miles. Or I just had a bad day. Who knows? You’ll make yourself crazy trying to tease discrete causalities out of that chaos.
I feel fairly frustrated that I keep coming up short in these marathons but I’m also cognizant of the fact that you may be getting frustrated with me as well. And it’s true that I’ve been all talk and no results for the last few months but that’s what you get in real life.
If this was a movie or even a ‘reality’ TV show I would have triumphed and gotten my successful race in before the second commercial break. But it isn’t. Even though I am an avatar I am susceptible to the same physical laws as everyone else. I can’t make stuff up. I can’t force a happy ending. All I can do is train, adapt as I go and compete.
That is one of the reasons I have always loved the marathon because you never know what’s going to happen. On paper, based on my history, I should be able to knock off this time no problem. But history only influences the future. It does not predict or guarantee the results.
I went into this race with 6 months of reasonable training since coming back from my injury. I have managed to work my weight down close to 180 pounds from a high of 195ish. I’m lean (ish) and my core is fairly fit. I’ve been getting 4 days a week of running in with 3 days of cross training.
This should h have been a no-brainer. The only thing that could have gone wrong was to get hot weather. The weather was as good as you could ask for this time of year. It was rainy and in the 70’s. The course wasn’t perfect but there were no big hills to complain about. It had some interesting peculiarities but was basically a flat 5K loop.
Even with all the good work and good luck my legs decided not to show up. I don’t know why. Now I get to sit down and look at my training and see what I can learn and plan my next race.
Just like real people do. Real people have real lives. Real people have jobs and work doesn’t always go well. Real people have families and it’s not always unicorns and chocolate and rainbows. But that is the human situation; that human condition is exactly what makes life interesting and challenging.
Don’t worry about me. I enjoy the contest. I enjoy the narrative. I influence the narrative as best as I can but I don’t always get to write the ending. My goal is to figure out how to enjoy the contest.
…
As I made my way out of the start/finish area for one last loop around the lake Frank pulled up beside me on his bike.
“I’m videoing you. What do you want to say to your family?” Frank asks.
I am trashed and suffering, and jokingly respond. “Ask them why I do this to myself. What’s wrong with me?”
Frank responds. “You have an empty place that you’re trying to fill.”
Frank knows. Frank retired from running after Boston but we’ve spent many the long hours on the road together over the years filling that emptiness.
37 M231 Christopher Russell 51 M LITTLETON 26.22 8 3:55:06
…
The course was interesting. It was a 3.2ish loop in a city, part of the Boston exurbia, around a lake. They added a short out and back loop to start to get the math to work right and then it was a straightforward 8 loops to the marathon.
The race was never intended to be a certified marathon course. It has been a 24 hour and 12 hour endurance event for a number of years and the organizers tacked a certified marathon course onto it. In the old days, when you could qualify for Boston with an October marathon no one wanted to run a marathon in July. Times are different. People and races adapt.
The race started on Friday night at 7:00. The ultra-folks would be out there until 7:00 the following morning or 7:00 Saturday night. The winners would run 115 miles and 70 miles respectively. But we puny marathoners hoped to get off the course long before then.
I had never raced a night marathon before or a Friday marathon either. I had to decide how to best taper for it and how to fuel appropriately. I struggled with just when and what to do and what and how much to eat and when. I was jacked up all day in my office at work with that excited dread that fills you in the hours before an endurance event.
I got there early and did all my prerace ministrations. About an hour before the gun it started to rain. Rain was good considering that alternative which was ‘hot’. The previous Friday I had done my last training run on the rail trail at 7:00 PM to mimic race conditions and it had been 91 degrees and Africa humid. Rain and mid-70’s was much preferable.
As race time approached my adrenaline drained off and I felt like taking a nap. Strange. To be sitting in your car watching the rain drops splash on the windows ½ hour before a marathon and to feel sleepy.
…
I felt tired from the beginning. I had no snap in my legs. You folks who have gone through a quality training program successfully will know what I mean. You can feel the bounce and the barely contained energy in your legs coming out of the taper weeks. I didn’t feel it. My legs honestly felt like they had been over-training.
Honestly my training in August had been spotty. I had some tempo workouts that were amazingly good, but I struggled to do any kind of consistent volume or distance in the heat. As near as I can deduce I went into the race with an odd combination of over-training and lack of miles.
We started off in the rain and I was able to reel my pace in fairly quickly. My goal was to keep my pace between 7:50 and 8:00 for the first 20 miles and take it from there.
For me the marathon as a race doesn’t start until the 20th mile. It’s that last 10k that determines your race. The entry fee is the first 20 miles. You have to race those first 20 miles with discipline so that when you get to 20 you have the opportunity to compete.
I passed mile 1 with a reasonable 7:40 and settled in to my goal pace. By the 4th mile the average was right where I wanted it to be 7:49, 7:50, 7:51… right on target. I was working but not terribly hard. I was finding people to pace.
I made it through 4 laps at this pace but couldn’t hold it. The last couple laps were miserable. I did a fair amount of walking but mostly just slow running.
In the course of 8 laps you get familiar with the course. Out of the start area we cut across a short grass strip that got boggy in the rain. Then we spent a half mile or so on an asphalt path. Then we ran on old concrete slab sidewalks around the to the far side of the lake. There was a slight rise to the route here, maybe 20-30 feet of elevation that was barely noticeable.
On the back side there was an aid station about half way around, by what looked like a Korean church. Then a short length of lumpy asphalt sidewalk with roots pushing up through it where the rain weighed down some tree branches to whack you in the head. Then there was a final stretch of uneven concrete sidewalk back, slightly downhill into the start/finish area.
The loop course has its pros and cons. On the good side you knew exactly what to expect and could access your stuff every 3 miles. On the bad side the sidewalks in the rain involved a lot of sidestepping and stutter stepping that broke up your pace. I think the worst thing was once I knew my race was done to stay on the course when it would be so easy to just get into my car and go home.
The first two laps it rained and we had to avoid the puddles in the sidewalks, but it was cool. I was carrying Gatorade in a bottle and had staged 5 more bottles in a cooler by the start/finish line with my gels and Endurolytes.
My nutrition was good but I made my Gatorade a bit too strong. It was hard to drink towards the end and was giving me a sour stomach so I switched to water. Even in the nighttime with the cooler temps I lost a lot of water to the humidity. I weighed in about 6 pounds lighter when I got up in the morning.
As I was finishing the second lap the sun came out and we were treated to a beautiful double rainbow over the lake. People were taking pictures and I passed ultra runners who were gazing up and smiling mystically as the sight.
In the fourth lap as the sun began to set we were treated to clouds of mating flies of some sort. They weren’t house flies or anything substantial or biting. They were just tiny, diaphanous things hanging around in great clouds around the lake and we happened to be running through their territory.
Unfortunately running through a great cloud of small bugs is not pleasant. I could hear people coughing and retching as the flies went in their eyes, nose and throats. I pulled my hat brim down as far as I could and breathed carefully through my teeth, but it was uncomfortable to have to hunch over like this.
They hung around for two laps on the back side of the lake until it got dark and then they went away.
Frank showed up with 2 laps to go. By then I was already cooked and just trying to finish. He cycled around and got me some water and took some pictures but I wasn’t all that entertaining at that point! He asked me what my strategy was and I told him the truth – I was counting steps.
I had my white Goon Squad Singlet on. We saw some other Goon Squad Runners out there. Mamacita passed me in the 7th lap but then had stomach issues. Yeti was pacing someone walking and his wife Chopsticks said ‘hi’ to Bones (Frank) and me (Maddog).
And I was counting steps. After I had slowed and was walking at points I found the structure of counting to be comforting. I tried not to walk more than 30 steps, and when I started running I would count my steps to distract my mind. Sometimes I’d count out loud. Sometimes it would even make sense. I’d count 28, 29, 100… the numbers weren’t important, it was a mental trick to keep the cadence going.
There were a lot of people running marathon, like me, trying to qualify. The winners passed me at least twice. The time I’m shooting for now correlates with a women’s time for 20 year olds and I was pacing some of them at points but mostly I was on my own lonely journey in the dark. I did notice some drop outs late in my race as I overtook some young women who had passed me earlier.
There was one strange moment for me on the last lap where I was passed by a guy wearing nothing but a light blue Speedo. I guess it’s comfortable in the summertime but it seemed a little incongruous there in the suburbs and in the dark on the sidewalk.
Looking at the results, 26 marathoners DNF’ed after starting the race. That’s the problem with a loop course. It’s too easy to quit. There were also people walking the marathon, because the course was open for 24 hours you could take as long as you wanted. Then there were the ultra-runners on the course and many of them were walking. You were constantly passing walkers or walk-runners. It made for an interesting dynamic.
The uneven surfaces were tough in the dark. I had my Hokas on and they were great in keeping my feet dry in the puddles but they were also quite slippery on the wet asphalt. It got a bit dicey in the dark when my legs were trashed having to navigate a puddle or a curb or fire hydrant or a wavering pedestrian. I ended up with no blisters and no chaffing, even with the wet conditions.
I figured I had to finish and I just kept counting steps. I just kept running.
As I counted my footsteps to the end of the 8th and final loop I knew exactly where the finish was. I tried to pick up the pace and finish strong and I got those shooting cramps through my calves. After getting my medal I had to lay down with my feet up at the finish. The world was spinning and I was nauseous and out of sorts. I felt really beat up.
It felt like the finish of one of those first marathons where I didn’t know what I was doing and just dumbly fought the course to the bitter end. I would not go as far as to say this was a fun course or a fun race for me. It was fairly ugly. The logistics were easy but my race was ugly. I got a shirt and another medal and another story to tell.
That’s not the story I was expecting or the story I wanted to tell but it is the real story.
I now have another pretty good story. It’s a true story about the time I ran a marathon on a 5k loop around a lake!
I think that’s better than the other 100 stories that I could tell about me sitting on the couch watching a baseball game, eating Goldfish and drinking soda pop. I think if we weigh those Friday night alternatives in the balance the real story of me suffering in Wakefield is part of a richer, more interesting life and that is something I would encourage you to celebrate with me.
Carry on.