Pocatello Marathon
8/31/2013 – Marathon of the month #5
“Let me be worthy…” I said in a soft, broken and choked voice. We are a huddle of a few hundred runners in the pre-dawn, moonless still of the high Idaho desert. Our huddle is thrown in stark white light relief by the portable spotlight array playing on our backs, no doubt borrowed from some municipal night-paving project. The hum of the generator, the restless sounds of a few hundred pensive souls, and I am having a moment.
In this open place of stars and skies I found myself sobbing quietly into the dark as the national anthem drifted over us, unaided by a microphone, from a gifted and generous volunteer. To be in this place, to be alive in this world, to have the opportunity, to have the adventures, to do the things I love. Here in this quiet place so many thousand miles from home I feel small and out of place.
“Please let me be worthy of these great gifts – let me be worthy.”
This seems to be the appropriate supplication.
…
Boise is a college town in the full bloom of a new year. Parents and kids. Hipsters with goatees pondering worn copies of poetry, tattooed and sporting dirty, bare feet, lounging in coffee shops and brew pubs. There’s nothing here. It’s a city but the biggest building around, dwarfing all the others, is the Boise State football stadium.
There is a Whole Foods next to my hotel. I cruise through and grab a $10 salad and some other provisions.
Thursday I spend with a wonderful client learning their story and taking good notes and trying to add value. Friday I’m up at 5:00 AM local time to jump on 5 straight hours of calls. Then I’m back over to Whole Foods to stock up on fruits and veggies before embarking on the 3.5 hour cross country drive to Pocatello.
I’ve rented a cute little red Toyota Yaris compact with 200 miles on it. I may in fact be its very first driver. I have an immediate crush on this car. It’s peppy and easy to maneuver with 360 degree vision. It’s got a mystical jack hidden in the glove box for my iPhone USB so I can catch up on podcasts and it gets 4 thousand miles per gallon. It’s a little light and exciting when a surprise blast of cross wind hits me out on the long two lane strip of asphalt through the wasted nothing.
The temperature is reading in the 90’s outside and at one point my iPhone overheats from sitting in the sun with the GPS on. It’s not like I need the GPS. It’s one highway for 3.5 hours. I perch the iPhone in front of the AC vent to keep it cool.
The Idaho wilderness rolls by unabated at 80 miles per hour. The speed limit out here is 75 so I set the cruise and worry if my little car has been designed for this much velocity in the desert.
There are no trees. It is rolling brown scrub and broken brown rocks. Every 30-50 miles there’s a farm or homestead with fields under watering systems where there are patches of green. Each farm house has its collection of 5-10 trees clustered around to break the wind that howls in. They sprout up in stark contrast like naked genitalia on a shaved pubis.
Coming in from the green depths of New England the switch seems starker to me than it probably is.
It’s like a scene out of an old cowboys and Indians movie. Lava rock attest to the super-volcano that coughed up this land and still lurks beneath. There are gravel pits and great gouges. I cross the Snake River and drive on with the truckers, on to Pocatello.
…
Pocatello is a pretty big berg with lots of stores and hotels and industry. I’m staying at a Super 8 to save money – directly across the street from the race hotel. Matt, the manager tells me it’s been newly refurbished and I’m not allowed to smoke in the rooms. I assure him that’s not likely to happen. I tell him I’m here for the marathon. I get that question that I will be asked 3 more times before my stay is over: “How long is that marathon?”
Stepping into my first room I am aghast with how nasty it smells. That old ‘motel that has been smoked in for 30 years straight’ smell. My expectations were low, but this is nasty. I go back down to the desk and ask Matt how their newly refurbished, smoke-free rooms could smell of decades of smoke? He guesses that that may have been one of the old smoking rooms and gives me a much nicer smelling room. I guess ‘newly-refurbished’ means ‘slapped a coat of paint up’.
I trade texts with my new friend Ron, a local, who has offered to drive the course with me. I walk over to the Clarion hotel where the expo is being held and he meets me at the door.
I pick up my race packet – which is a nice gear bag for bag check and a 5 pound bag of potatoes. I honestly haven’t even looked at the race packet they mailed out and I’m surprised by this spudly largess.
What the heck am I going to do with a 5-pound bag of potatoes? I’m certainly not dragging them back on the plane with me to Boston. I’m asking Ron if there isn’t some deserving charity that I can contribute my spuds to when another smiling runner overhears me and says he’ll gladly take them off my hands!
Everybody is super nice. We chat up the pacing team table. They have a 3:35 pace group and a 3:25 pace group, but no 3:30 pacer. I’m feeling Puckish and tell the guy it’s my first marathon, what should I do? Ron probably thinks I’m a nutcase. The guy tells me I should go out with the slower pace group and then make up the 5 minutes at the end. He’s trying to protect me from myself.
Ron and I drive down to the finish line. I park my rental and jump in Ron’s pickup to drive the course. We get up to the goat barn on top of the mountain that is the start and check the altitude, it’s 6,008 ft. It’s got a beautiful panoramic view of the surrounding brown hills.
From the start the course drops and drops hard. The first mile reminds me of the drop out of Hopkinton. It keeps dropping down a winding two lane blacktop that curves in and around the hills. As we drive I see the marking for the aid stations and a stack of porta-johns every couple miles. I joke to Ron that I’ve never seen so many porta-johns for such a small race. They must be expecting food poisoning at the spaghetti dinner!
At mile 7 there’s one of those little out-and-backs that races have to throw in to make the mileage correct. It’s the first uphill on the course. It’s nothing.
We keep driving the course and it keeps meandering downhill past the ½ and into mile 14 where it finally flattens out and starts to roll a little. Around mile 20-21 it ducks under the highway and climbs out of a valley for the longest hill of the course, a decent ½ mile pull, then it rolls into the finish.
Ron leaves me to go get some sleep. I pull on my shoes and run the course backwards from the finish line in the afternoon heat. At the 25 mile mark I stop and walk to look around. I try to visualize the finish and take note of the turns and milestones. I intend to jog but can’t help myself from stretching out a nice easy tempo pace back around the two 90 degree lefts and the long stretch into the finish line.
I have worked up a little sweat but the air is so dry it will soon be gone. I drive back to my discount motel and lay out my race kit.
My Brooks baggy shorts with the liner. My Squannacook River Runners singlet. I pin the bib on. Calf sleeves, racing socks, the man-thong tech support, my Boston 2013 hat and calf sleeves. I throw a long sleeve shirt in the pile because Ron says it’s cold in the morning up there. I throw a towel in bag for the post race shower, some hotel shampoo and soap.
I didn’t bring the Hokas. I had a lot of stuff to carry on this trip and the Brooks Launch take up less space. The Plantar Fasciitis has been minding its own business so I think I’m safe but worry about the pounding of all that downhill. My Launches are significantly smelly from the summer training. Nothing too bad, just the overwhelming smell of many hundreds of miles of man sweat in the hot, sticky New England climes.
I lay out 5 hammer Gels, 5 Endurolytes, a roll of athletic tape, a tube of heat rub and a small tube of Aquafor. I put out a banana and a cliff bar for breakfast and get the in-room coffee pot ready for quick use. I mix up two bottles of half strength Gatorade, one for the race one to sip in the morning.
I take a shower and wander over to AppleBees to see if there is anything I can eat. It’s busy so I find myself a seat at the bar. I have a salad of some sort with a couple Fat Tires and finish reading “The Bell Jar” which I had found by the side of the road during one of my last long runs. The last 50 pages or so are pretty good. It’s like a female version of ‘The Outsiders’ or ‘Catcher in the Rye’. I turn the last page and hand it to Stephanie the bartender with my compliments, telling her how I found it and yes this would be one of those 26 mile marathons.
It’s been a long day. It’s been a long week. I’m wrong-time zone dog-tired when I finally rack out and set my alarm for 4:30 AM local time.
…
Somewhere near the 23 mile mark there is a small crowd administering help to a runner on the ground. Was that Alice? The 30 year-old from Seattle who we ran the first 13 miles with? Looked like her shirt. It was her second marathon. She ran a 3:36 in the first one and was looking for a PR.
That looked like her shirt.
Steve, the pace group leader and I both noticed she was running a bit ‘loose’ and were trying to get her to tighten up her stride and relax. You shouldn’t be breathing that hard through the first ½ of a downhill marathon. Steve told me later when I saw him at the finish that she had collapsed.
…
I was before the alarm with the noise of others stirring in the hotel. I cooked my coffee, chewed a Cliff Bar and greased up and stretched a little. I packed up my stuff and put it in the rental car. I took my race bag and walked next door to where a line of busses sat idling in the dark full of runners headed to the start.
They drive us up to the barn, with the goats and we all got in line to use the porta-potties. I met and chatted with Iram Leon who we have interviewed recently. It was good to meet him in the flesh. I sucked up an Espresso Hammer gel and a proscriptive Endurolyte. I rubbed around the sunscreen that came in the race stuff and perched my sunglasses on top of my hat for later. I ran the whole race that way, never actually put my glasses on.
The crowd was your typical small-remote mix of 50-staters, Marathon Maniacs and locals. Ron found me in the corral and I had my teary moment of introspection before the start.
We lined up with the 3:25 pace group and ran off into the cool darkness.
…
I didn’t start my Garmin correctly in the darkness. It was off by ¾ of a mile or so when I finally got the right button. Having raced most of my life with nothing but the rudiments of a sports watch I had no moment of panic that the techno-slavish might. I was on a course with well highlighted mile marks and I had my pace and average pace on the Garmin. I was not without sufficient compass for the task at hand. I wonder if it isn’t an advantage to have matriculated in sparser, simpler times.
The first 7 miles or so the course drops significantly so I sidled up to Steve, the 3:25 pacer, and stuck with him. I rolled out my annoying affability, much, I’m sure, to the dismay of that small pod of strivers. Steve started with a flock of 10-15 folks but it dwindled away and I don’t know if Steve had anyone still with him at the finish.
My race strategy du jour was to hang with Steve into the flats, back off to my own race pace and have a few minutes cushion at the end to bring it home, if I could.
In a downhill start you have to hold back without fighting the hill. It’s tricky because your heart rate and effort will seem too low but your legs will be doing double the work, especially if you are braking against the hill.
I put my energy into focusing on a light, easy form with quick turnover. Hips forward and elbows back to keep my center of gravity over the hill, trying not to fight the hill or use my quads to brake. The key to this race would be to save those legs for the flats and the finish.
I worked the tangents on the winding road where I could. Still, it was hard to hold back and even Steve was a couple minutes faster than plan coming out of the hill. I think I may have sucked him out a little with my jocular prattling.
The course support was great if not a bit quirky. The adults at the aid stations were all in pajamas and the kids were dressed like black and white cows. I joked that there probably weren’t a lot of vegans around.
The nutrition offered was a bit outside my happy zone. The drink was fruit punch flavored PowerAid – yuck – and they had PowerGels every so often as well. I’m old school and consider any proffered manna an outright, undeserved gift from the race committee. I grabbed a PowerGel around mile 12 that ended up being a nasty orange-cream flavor – double yuck – But, with my strong stomach and general positive attitude on life I gladly took my medicine and kept on trucking towards the
Of course I start every race self sufficient. I train with and run with and then comfortably race with my traditional 24 oz half-strength Gatorade handheld. My running friends would not recognize me without that Poland Springs sports bottle, foraged from some local supermarket or gas station, clutched in my left hand. It is a holdover from days when there just wasn’t that much support on race courses, but I’m sure it’s one of my totems and comforts. With the cool morning temps my pale green sloshing totem lasted through the half and after that I just refilled it with water and tried to take a gel every 5 or 6 miles, before tossing it empty in the general vicinity of a volunteer late in the race like all its cousins and brother plastic totems throughout the years.
Along with Steve, the front row of our little group had Tracy from Arizona who was wearing a red EVR team shirt that stood for something Valley Runners but reminded me of the Newark Airport code ‘EWR’. There was Alice running too hard and breathing too hard, having to put up with Steve and I preaching about form and pace. (Alice, if you somehow come across this story shoot me a note and let me know what happened.)
And so we ambled down through the twisty, turny mountain road chatting and watching the sun come up. It is beautiful country and none of us was working too hard. I didn’t feel great or bad I just felt like any other long run.
We passed through the 13.1 at 1:42:38 ish – which if you do the math – translates to a 3:24ish finish time. Steve was doing his job. A big crowd of half marathoners was milling around waiting for their start. They gave us a big cheer as we rolled by. Some in our pack exchanged words with people they knew. There was much smiling and celebration.
Their race was soon to start, and in reality, so was ours as the course flattened out.
At mile 14 I stopped to refill my bottle with water and lost Steve. I was right on race strategy with a couple minutes in the bank but not too much.
Over the course of the race I ended up drinking 3 bottles of fluid plus a couple cups. It wasn’t hot at all, but it was dry and I did end up with a little sun burn in the thin mountain air. Each time I stopped to pour cups into my bottle I lost a 10 -20 seconds, but I was still on pace.
I didn’t really lose Steve, I could see him up ahead running with Alice. I stretched out my pace and within a mile I caught them as the course rolled gently downhill through the teens. We heard the gun for the half go off behind us and joked about harsh crowd control measures.
I was right here I wanted to be with 3ish minutes in the bank and running easy. That’s how I plan my races. Not to succeed, but to put myself in a position to succeed. To do the little things that will give me the opportunity to execute the coup de grace if it is my day and the fates smile broadly in favor of my endeavor.
But I felt tired and uninspired. I was slowing down. I lost Steve, somewhere in mid-teen miles, for good and started taking some short walk breaks at the aid stations. My legs were ok, I was just tired, like ‘haven’t gotten enough sleep’ tired, like ‘burning the candle at both ends’ tired, when the adrenaline drains out and you’re left with the realization that you really are, just tired.
At one point Ron passed me as I was taking a walk break on the shoulder. I focused on my average pace as the key number. I knew I had to hit 8 minute miles at the end. I went into the teen miles with a 7:46 average left over from the downhill. Every time I took a walk break I’d see it creep up by a couple seconds, but there were still some downs on the course where I could beat the pace and hold the line. Now it was just a question of whether I could play the string out long enough and have enough in the final miles to bring it in. Not a hero’s task. An accountant’s task.
As I got into 19, 20 and 21 I was starting to feel pretty hammered. I was walking too much. Every time I took a walk break that average would creep up by a couple seconds.
It was here that the half marathoners started to pass us. First just the good runners, then the morning glories who’s crashing corresponded with our struggles.
The last miles of the race were emotionally hard because there was line of sight of a couple miles where the road stretched on into the horizon with no cover for what seemed like infinity. It gave you a hopeless feeling that the finish was out of reach.
I could feel an ache in my lungs and I figured it was either the altitude or the forest fire smoke. My legs were tired and I was slogging it out. I don’t know if I was actually incapacitated or just giving in to the physical and mental tiredness. Maybe if you could walk onto the course with a fresh mind at the 20 mile mark you could urge more out of those legs, but when you’re out there it all telescopes in on itself and you the tiredness becomes the focus.
Some annoying kid from the half marathon pulled up beside me and declared he would run with me. I gave him a sideways glance and kept at my solitary struggle and eventually he went away. I just wanted to keep moving – I did not need his adolescent company. Another time I pulled over to walk and some 10K runner said “I guess it’s just us losers” – I shot him a dirty look and kept running. He made some comment and told him to ‘Get over yourself, dude’.
You calling me a loser? You don’t know me. I’ve seen things you’ll never know.
At mile 21 we turned under the highway underpass for a hill. This is where our race overtook some other part of the race, maybe the 10K? There were a bunch of larger people walking. It was a bit incongruous having to weave through all these folks, who my brother might refer to as ‘wide glides’, late in the race. They were running their race, I was running mine.
After the hill, up out of the valley, it pitched down again. I still had a 7:55 average to work with but by mile 22 I was hurting. Not bonked, just tired. Strategically I had planned to be at this place. I had executed to be here with around 4 miles to go and 5 seconds per mile in the bank – but I was tired and I couldn’t find the guts to hold the pace.
At mile 23 I pushed past that pile of people that looked likethey were attending to Alice, down, in the middle of the blacktop. .
I was doing the math trying to see if 8:15’s would get me there, maybe with a kick. I fought it to the finish but ended up losing 5-6 minutes of positive split in the last few miles.
…
My stride imbalance from the PF made my quad strobe as I limped across the finish in 3:32:25.
The finish was two hard left turns that I had reconnoitered the night before. But the last stretch into the chute seemed to stretch on for longer than the ½ mile it was.
I ended up with a 3:32:25 net time and about 80 out of 400 overall. I’m still looking for that comfortable, ‘go-to’ pace for the last 10k. I slowed down a lot in last 4 miles. I was still moving ok, just slow, with walk breaks, but way better than the last marathon in July.
I’m realizing that even though I stayed in shape during the injury I lost a lot of running specific fitness and at my age it just isn’t going to come back because I think it should or I want it to. The quality of training I’ve done over the last 6 months would have put me across the finish line with time to spare over 5 years ago.
Or maybe, after so many marathons, I can no longer summon that Prefontaine, animalistic passion to damn the torpedoes. I don’t know. But I’m still having fun, having adventures and doing things that the losers in this world don’t even consider.
…
I met up with Ron at the finish. He had needed a 3:25 and he missed his time too. I saw Steve and he told me about Alice collapsing at mile 23. I saw Tracey, and she missed here time by 3 minutes too. Maybe the Pocatello marathon isn’t as easy in real life as it looks on paper!
Ron and I sat at a picnic table and chatted with a young lady named Erin who ironically placed in her age group with a time slightly slower than mine!
The medals were big and heavy, which seems to be the trend. I joked that I would have to start doing more core work to be able to wear the medals they are giving out these days.
Ron and I got some sorbet that they were passing out but half way through it I was overwhelmed by a wave of nausea and had to lie down in the grass and put my feet up to regain my center. At the end of the day 26 miles is still a long way to run and takes its toll. You can’t just stop and resume life without your body giving you some feedback.
They had beer but it was icky Miller 64 – triple yuck, but I drank the can and gave away the complimentary cozy in my ongoing efforts to jettison knickknacks from my bag and make the ride home easier.
There was plenty of food but it was Idaho food – classic American
heartland (or maybe heart attack) fare – buns, meat, dairy and Butter. How about something green or some blueberries? I’m a stranger in a strange land.
After lounging around in the grass for awhile I checked my watch and hustled over the Aquatic center to make the 11:00 AM cut off for showers.
I was the last one into the showers before they closed the door. I promised to hurry.
From the ‘small race, small world’, file I met the guy that I had
given my 5 pound bag of potatoes to the night before in the showers. He told me he had driven down for the race and slept in his truck. In my continuing effort to lighten my load I was going to abandon my cheap hotel towel, but Mr. Potatoes said “Hey, I’ll take it.” Good thing I wasn’t leaving my undies.
I caught the bus back to hotel and was in a fine mood, joking around with the other participants. One of them was a kid stricken with cramps – so I lectured him on electrolytes and I gave him a couple Endurolytes to chew.
I checked my Starbucks App and found one inside a nearby Fred Meyer grocery store. It wasn’t even noon yet when I stopped to get my honest cup o’ Joe and loaded up on fruits and veggies for the long ride back to Boise. Yes, I got my blueberries, and quite enjoyed them.
As I was making my way back – and this is one of the great things about travel marathons – I kept meeting other runners from the race. At Meyers, at the rest area on the highway…and everyone was all jacked up on those feel-good post race chemicals. It’s a great community.
…
Bottom line: Am I upset about missing my goal time by 2 minutes? I got some online comments that I must be ‘gutted’, and upset. But, truthfully, no. I’m not upset at all. I’m making good progress. I have no injuries. The PF get’s better every week. Remember, this time last year I wasn’t even running. I’m super happy with my effort.
If they hadn’t changed the standards I would have qualified twice by now. I am glad I registered for Boston with my waiver. That’s one less thing to worry about. I’ll run a qualifying time at some point in the next 6 months – maybe even at Boston.
I came through the race clean and unscathed. I had no chaffing, probably because the dry desert weather evaporates sweat, your clothes stay dry and don’t rub. The weather was overall nice and cool, although I did get some sun in those last few open miles when the sun came out.
My legs were ok. The quads remembered the down hills for a few days but nothing debilitating. My Achilles were a little sore, but no PF pain, and no knee pain, and nothing out of the ordinary.
It’s all good.
Next up, marathon of the month number 6, the Presque Isle Marathon in PA. A nice flat course at sea level with two weeks recovery. Who knows? If I can get my time It would be good for two years!