Boston 2011: Race Report

I haven’t felt like writing this race report.  Since Monday I’ve felt a little lost and unsure now what to do.  It’s been at least 5 or 6 years since I have poured so much of my heart into a race (probably the 2005 Boston Marathon was the last race in which I invested so much mental and physical energy), and now that it’s over I’m a little numb.

What a beautiful day to run a marathon, though.  Fifty three degrees with a tailwind on a point-to-point course is about as good as it gets for a marathon runner.  On the bus ride I was very fortunate to link up with Tom and some other good guys from Chicago who knew somebody who knew somebody who had a house in Hopkinton where we could await the start of the race.  Now that’s good livin’ – beats the snot out of sitting outside on damp muddy grass for two hours.  The hostess, Liz, was wonderful and warm and didn’t seem at all to mind being invaded by 20 runners.  On the contrary, she had all kinds of food and drink set out for us to take as we wished.

With only about fifteen minutes before the gun the Chicago boys and I made our way over to the corrals, said our good-byes and good-lucks, and broke up for our individual corrals.  I walked toward the starting line and found myself admitted to Corral #1 for the first time in my life.  It was cool to be up there in front, especially when Ryan Hall came out high-fiving us and bouncing his way to the very front with the elite runners.

Picture Courtesy
of Jim Rhoades

When the gun came I was ready to go.  I just sort of moved with the crowd and tried to run easy.  When my first mile split came up 6:32 I was pretty happy with that because it was about how fast I wanted to go out and hadn’t felt hard at all.  It was a good sign.

I had finally made up my mind the night before to go for the PR, to pace for about 2:46.  I struggled a lot to come to this decision.  The alternative was to play it relatively safer and pace for 2:50 or 2:52, but in the end I made my decision totally irrationally (but not wrongly) based on considerations of the heart rather than the mind.  At Park Street Church on Sunday the preacher taught about Moses’ disappointment at not being allowed to enter the promised land.  This discipline from the LORD was bitterly disappointing to Moses and indeed, he went to his grave on the wrong side of the River Jordan.  However, the sermon climaxed with the observation that even though Moses was bitterly disappointed at the time of his death he would later enter the promised land in the most glorious way at the transfiguration of Christ.  Moses could not have possibly imagined in his wildest dreams this blessing God ultimately had in store for him.  I took courage in the message.  It was a good reminder that disappointments of all sizes, including little ones like poor performances at the Boston Marathon, are ephemeral and that truly, “…no eye has seen, …no ear has heard, … no human mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him.”  Finally, as I lay in bed Sunday night trying to go to sleep I was reading Pre.  My eyes were getting heavy as I turned the page to this, “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift.”  At that I clicked off the light and my mind was decided to take the risk and run for the PR.

The early miles went by easily as they usually do in a marathon, a couple of them surprisingly fast at about 6:06, which worried me a little but still the effort didn’t seem too hard.  Throughout the first half my chronic left knee pain did come and go in little waves, along with some related tightness in my left hip flexor, but fortunately it never got serious enough to completely stop me in my tracks which was something I had feared.  I think in the end my left knee is indeed what did me in, but not on race day.  In the preceding months it kept me from running those critical quality miles, and those chickens came home to roost in Newton.

Long before then, however, in Framingham, I was cruising along and heard the crowd going nuts all around me and just ahead of me.  At first I couldn’t figure out whom they were cheering for, but then I came up on small grandmotherly looking woman with an odd gait and I realized the crowd was cheering, “Joanie!  Joanie!  Joanie!”  Pretty cool, I thought, to run for a short while next to an Olympic gold medalist.  As I passed her I understated dryly that she seemed to be something of a local celebrity.  I guess she was smart enough to stay focused on her race and didn’t reply as far as I could tell.  I gave her a thumbs up as I went by.  Unfortunately I would see her again before the finish.

The Wellesley girls were about as loud as I can ever remember.  I stayed to the left, which is my preferred way of running Boston.  It’s fun hearing the girls cheer and all, but in my empirical experience I run Boston better when I don’t high-five people or get too “involved” with the crowd and just stay in the private race in my head.  I don’t know if that helped me Monday or not, but I just seem to run better that way.  I know other guys like to stop for a kiss, and that seems to help them run better…

Sadly, by the half marathon point I started to suspect that I was getting into trouble.  I came through the half officially at 1:22:26, my third fastest half-marathon ever run, which was OK and not way too much faster than plan, but by the 14^th mile marker I knew I had to change some things or the wheels were going to rapidly fall off.  For the next couple of miles coming into Newton Lower Falls I intentionally dialed back the pace about 0:20 per mile and hoped the race would come back to me.  Unfortunately it did not, but it was still the right thing to try.

Familiarity with the course helped me immensely at this point, I think.  As I started the climb up out of the bottom at mile 16 I could envision reaching the firehouse and turning the corner, and this was a good milestone to shoot for.  In my mind’s eye I pictured Kay along the route there after the I-95 crossing, cheering for me as she had done several times before.  Unfortunately she wasn’t there really, but she told me later that she had felt more invested in my race this time than she had in any of my marathons for a long time and that she had prayed for me a lot during the run.  She was certainly there in spirit, and she helped me along.

Suffering at 30km
Photo Courtesy of Jim Rhoades

After rounding the corner at the firehouse I presently hit the first big climb.  It wasn’t too terrible, really, but at this point I started feeling like everybody and his dog were passing me.  My 19^th mile split was over 7 minutes and at that point I determined to stop looking at the splits.  Heck, there was nothing I could do about them anyway.  I was hitting the wall and I was running right at the redline where if I tried to speed up a calf or hamstring or quad would threaten to cramp up completely and stop me cold.  No, the only pace decision I was in control of from that point to the finish was whether to run (the best I could at diminished capacity), walk or stop.  Around the 20-mile point I knew we were coming up on the base of Heartbreak Hill and I determined that no matter what else happened I was not going to walk up that hill unless my body just openly revolted.  So, I just put my head down and putt-putted up the hill the best I could.  While doing so the crowd around me got louder again and this little grandmotherly gray-haired lady with a strange gait went right on by me like I was standing still.  My second and final brush with Olympic greatness for the day.

I should add to this story that, even when I was not in near proximity to Joan Benoit Samuelson, the crowds at Boston this year were absolutely electric.  Maybe they’ve always been that way and I had just forgotten since 2007, but as I hobbled my way up Heartbreak Hill the good people lining the course deserve some of the credit for why I didn’t give up and walk.  The cheering was almost like a jet engine – no kidding – and the energy of the crowd helped me in a very tangible way to keep pushing on when it was really starting to hurt.  I have never run anywhere like Boston.  It’s runner magic.

The remainder of the race can really just be summed up in one word, suffering.  I kept making the decision over and over again to keep running.  I felt like I was running 9-minute miles, but I knew that even if that were the truth 9-minute miles are a whole lot faster than 15-minute miles walking.  So I just kept plugging on looking for the next mile marker and feeling like the whole Boston Marathon field was passing me.  I caught a glimpse of the mile clock at 24 and noticed that it read about 2:40 and some change, and I thought and prayed, literally, “Lord Almighty, surely I can cover 2.2 miles in less than 20 minutes and still bring this one in under 3 hours.” 

Once I reached the 40km marker just before Kenmore Square I finally felt like I would make it.  I wasn’t sure I’d keep it under 3 hours, but I felt I could finish this blessed race without walking.  From Kenmore Square to the finish the crowds were amazing again, except for that brief stretch where the course now crosses under Massachusetts Avenue, and their energy again carried me.  I rounded the turn onto Hereford and looked ahead to the turn onto Boylston and life surged into me.  A little tear came into my eye (no kidding) and I was thankful, so thankful, to be a part of this race one more time. 

The clock overhead said 2:57-something as I finally crossed the finish line having given this race maybe more than I had ever given any race in my life.  I later told Kay on the phone that it wasn’t the fastest I’ve ever run a marathon and it wasn’t the fastest time I could have run in this marathon if I had run it differently, but I decided to make a run for the very best result I thought I could possibly get, and in the end I had run the gutsiest, grittiest, unprettiest 10 miles ever.  For these reasons, it was still a PR, although a different kind of PR.  I am thankful for the ability that God has given me to run, and I am proud of everything I poured into and got out of this race.  It was the Boston Marathon, after all, and for me this race is always the mountaintop of my running year when I may run it.  Thanks be to God.