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.

Why Does It Matter At All?

This is the question I have been asking myself about my performance.  It is very very important to me in my heart, but on a rational level I have been struggling to answer to why.  I’m just some middle-aged mid-level manager in a mid-sized company grinding out a living for my middle school kids in our medium sized Midwestern town in the middle of America, and if I run a 2:42 marathon or a 3:02 marathon tomorrow it matters not at all in any way.  I’m not contending with the winners.  Heck, in this race I likely won’t even crack the top 20 in the Master’s category.  I am the very definition of the “also ran.”  So why is my performance so important to me?  Should it be?

Literally there are kids in Africa who don’t have clean water to drink, whose parents have died of AIDs, who are struggling to keep their younger brothers and sisters alive for another day.  In light of reality like that the whole Boston Marathon and this avocation of mine seem entirely trivial, even more so the number on the clock when I finish the race.  Still, in my heart, that number matters.  Why?

 

This year for the first time I will start the race in Corral #1.  In this corral are not the real big boys, the Greek gods of the elite group, but the very best mere mortals lined up immediately behind the elite runners.  In the 2^nd Corral, where I have three times before started the race, the pressure is off completely.  In the 2^nd Corral you will find runners who have qualified with times roughly from 2:53 to 3:03.  These are good runners for sure, but there are a thousand of them all clustered together fairly closely in ability.  This is not so in Corral #1 where the normal distribution really starts to tail off.  Here are runners like me at the bottom end who barely made it into this semi-elite group with times around 2:50 and runners capable of running 20 to 25 minutes faster, sub-2:30 guys who are not very far away from being fast enough to qualify for the Olympic Trials.  Being in such company makes me feel both proud and sheepish because I know that in this group I am a pretender.  Certainly I will be found out; I have snuck into an exclusive private club and they are going to spot me and kick me out at any minute.   Indeed, maybe my performance at Twin Cities last fall was a fluke, a one-of-a-kind.  Sure, I have my ticket to Corral #1, but the boys in this club, so I think, are looking at me to prove that I belong here.  Do I?

The whole God-blessed world, so it seems, is watching me run this year.  This is at least in large measure my own fault.  Although I think it was God’s call on me to fundraise for World Vision for this race, naturally creating a lot of extra attention, I have also probably drawn a lot of attention to myself about this race at work, in my online running community and elsewhere that I needn’t have done.  If I fail and blow up tomorrow a lot of people will rightly conclude, like the guys in Corral #1, that I’m not as good as I’m cracked up to be.  Many will be compassionate and a few will secretly rejoice in my failure, but all will know that I didn’t measure up.  Many others won’t care and don’t appreciate the difference between a 2:10 and a 3:10 (which is the difference between a Mozart opera and “Chopsticks”), but even so, and most importantly, I know.  My oldest son, thank God, has this ability to rise to the occasion when it counts, when he is on the stage and everyone watching.  He gets very nervous.  He makes mistakes in practice and is sure he will fail to perform, but then, whether it is a saxophone solo in front of the whole school or a mile race on the track, he puts forth his very best and usually nails it.  I have never felt that I possessed this ability nearly as much as he does.  With this fantastic sense of external pressure I sure could use it tomorrow.

In my heart I know that it is not really the imaginary voices of the Corral #1 runners or family or friends or coworkers or rivals putting the pressure on me to prove that I belong, that I measure up, that I’m a “real” runner, that the Twin Cities race was not a fluke.  Of course, it’s me.  Even if some of the voices are real they have no power over me at all unless I allow it.  It’s all me.

In the dark at 5:30 a.m. a few weeks ago, I was sitting in a parking garage with a very good, sleeping, friend of mine a couple of blocks from the State Capitol of Texas.  And I was enjoying it, just sitting there in the dark, thinking.  We had followed pre-race recommendations and had made our way early to await the start of the Austin Marathon.  As I sat there feeling a tremendous sense of joy at just being there, it occurred to me that I always feel that way on race day, especially on marathon race day.  Staring at the concrete parking structure around us I thought about how there are so few days in my life when I have that feeling, that overwhelming sense of joy.  Marathon race days are among them, and I thought, right or wrong, that it is a little sad to struggle through all other ordinary days to arrive at so few days like these.  I wondered, is it OK to feel that way?  Nothing in my life, absolutely nothing, can come above love for Jesus Christ, which would be idolatry.  But why do I love to run, and especially to race, so much?  Truly, on that morning, I feel like a voice came out of the dark:  because I was made to.  It is not all I was made to do.  Contrary to the t-shirt, running is NOT life.  Not even close.  But it is a part of my life, something God has given me the ability to work at and struggle against and fight for and, occasionally, do very well at.  And when I do it well – maybe even when I do it poorly – it gives God glory because “It is He who made us, and not we ourselves.”

And so it all boils down to really only two voices that matter.  All my fears that are driven by what others think, fears of starting up in the front with the big boys, fears of being found out as a fraud, fears of failing in front of everyone and maybe even small hopes of vain glory, do not matter at all.  At least so I need to preach to myself.  The voice in my heart about what it will mean if I perform poorly matters to some degree.  The voice of God, however, that he has made me (in part) for this purpose and that the results are in his hands matters a lot.  Certainly he has given me this frivolous gift and I think it would be a sin not to enjoy it to its fullest measure.  There is still a wicked, sinful, suffering and hurting world out there that needs the people of Christ to take joy in bringing it light and comfort – that is much closer to the meaning of life than running or any hobby or sport or recreation could possibly be.  But I believe that every good and perfect gift comes to us from God and should be enjoyed as such.  

Even though I have not trained as hard as I would have liked to, I still have logged a sufficient number of total miles to enable a good run.  I am coming off January best-ever performances in the 5k and half-marathon.  And, two and a half weeks ago I ran an 8-mile time trial on the track over a minute faster than I ran it last year before the Twin Cities race.  Finally, weather is looking real real good.  Bill Rodgers said, “You need the perfect-storm conditions, with cool weather and a west tailwind, to run fast at Boston.”  This is exactly what is forecast for tomorrow.  Wow.  It all adds up to a phenomenal opportunity for me.  My knee hurts.  My hill training is fairly weak.  My confidence is not high.  But I’m going to shoot for a PR run because these opportunities just don’t come along every day.  If the LORD shows up, if he strengthens me tomorrow, it could be a great one.  Maybe the best ever.  Or I could end up walking up Heartbreak Hill, heartbroken.  In any case, if I rise or if I fall, blessed be the Name of the LORD.

Oh, and one more thing, After missing this race for the last three years it is really really good to be back.  I am deeply grateful to be here.

“Know that the LORD is God; It is He who made us, and not we ourselves.”

Eve Means Life

I am drafting this pre-race jitters post sitting on the airplane hurtling toward my doom in Boston.  At this point I guess there is no turning back.  I have had a lot of thoughts the past couple of weeks that I’ve wanted to get written down, but life has just been normal-busy with a two year old and a bunch of busy boys.  However, I did waste over an hour of my life the other night working on my picks for the race finish order of a bunch of on-line buddies.  Whoever’s picks are closest wins a running jersey.  I was surprised that my beautiful wife was actually supportive of this activity and not annoyed.  “It’s better than fantasy football, it seems to me.  At least it’s real and related to something you are doing.”  

This woman of mine has breathed life into me at every stage leading up to the race this year.  Although my absence will work a hardship on her this weekend, her support of me has been unqualified and total.  She told me just last night that she hopes and prays for me that I enjoy the whole experience, the whole weekend, and drink it in completely.  She also told me again how proud she was of my fundraising for World Vision and her pleased surprise that I actually reached my goal.  She also knows how I have struggled to train up the level I would have liked this year because of intermittent problems with my surgery knee; she knows how important my race performance is to me even if it’s silly, and she prays for me to succeed and run fast.  Sometimes she jokes with me that she knows me better than I know myself.  Many times she is right.  Years ago when I started running marathons she always went with me.  Okoboji, Wichita, Boston, Minneapolis.  We were always together.  I will miss her very much the next three days, but I am thankful that she sent me off with full blessing.  She is life to me.

I’ve been trying to come up with the right metaphor for the sense of dread I have been feeling for this race.  If I am blessed to make it to the starting line on Monday (in all things at all times I am learning to say, “God willing”) I will arrive there with enough fitness to possibly race my best marathon ever, but there have been enough training setbacks that there is also a significant level of probability that I could crash and burn in a spectacular way.  These facts lead to mixed feelings for me.  I want to be confident and run without fear, but I still remember really well walking up Heartbreak Hill a few years ago.  I’ve concluded that I think I must feel like those bull riding rodeo cowboys right when they are about to sit on the back of that enormous animal.  They’ve got to be a little cocky just to make the attempt, but they’ve also got to know that there is a real good chance that things will not go so well.  I guess you just have to take a deep breath and go.

This also reminds me of my third-born son, who, when he was really little, five or six years old in fact, climbed up to the top of the high dive at the city pool and proceeded to walk right to the end of the board and jump in.  After doing this a couple of times with little notice from the lifeguard he climbed up there again and stood on the board when she saw him and got a little upset.  “He can’t do that!”  She said.  Plop.  “It appears that he can,” I replied.  He’s a little older now, but no less fearless, and he inspires me.

 
There is a whole spiritual side to this year’s quest, too.  I need to write a separate post chronicling this most central aspect of my 2011 Boston journey, but fundamentally the point is that I want Jesus to show up, big time.  Maranatha.