Starting three or four days before a marathon I will have a very hard time bridging the two worlds I inhabit - one in which I try to cover certain distances in certain periods of time and a second in which I try to write a certain amount of words about a certain topic. In other words, I get distracted; I get far behind my normal creating-copy pace. Thus, when I return to work during what is my equivalent of a couple days behind schedule, my body beaten to hell, there is a lot of catching up to do and this catching up usually takes a lot of time.
All the while, as I spend my week off after a marathon drinking and eating like a total idiot, I actually spend scattered minutes here and there pondering sentences I might write for this entry - sentences that never seem to make it to print, for they exist in my imagination only for a very short period of time before they vanish altogether and I return to some form of the aforementioned and wonder, yet again: What the hell should I write?
For me, running and writing are impossible pursuits that never get any easier for reasons that are just as ineffable as they are totally and obviously opposite.
This much I know.
I also know that it is very easy for me to keep races, as the line goes, "in perspective." For that, I have West Africa to thank.
In Niger, I learned that the ability to be a runner is nothing less than a rare privilege. Being a runner means you have enough to eat. It means you have a job that pays you and is not overly taxing. It means you have room in your life for frivolous activities. I know that the men in eastern Niger that would join me for runs during the rare months when there was enough food and not too much work, with any time committed to training, could have been great runners. All it would take was some support and even less time.
These men had been through so much more.
This is just one reason that athletic training is neither a burden or hard or heroic. It only is what it is -- individualistic, a luxury, and a choice. Which is to say that when the occasion comes when I am not able to convert the training I do into the result I spent many months aiming for, I am able to say something like, "That's the journey. That's the way it goes."
But I will also admit that I ponder a lot. That it takes some to get over it. That I spend some time wishing that I could tell my father, my coaches, my family and my friends that it went as well as they I and hoped it would. Quite honestly, the whole thing - silly as it is - does in fact hurt.
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Four days before the Chicago Marathon, I ran 30 minutes in pain. That afternoon, I ran some more - in pain.
That night, I called Dave Fontaine, who I usually train with on Thursday morning, and my longtime coach, Todd Lippin, to fill them in: If I don't get a breakthrough in less than 12 hours, I'm out.
Three days before the race, I could not believe it: I ran for 57 minutes more or less pain free. The pain in my hamstring started out as a dull ache and loosened up with time - a good sign.
I was going.
Mind you, I did feel sluggish during these 8 miles. My legs had no pop. But I attributed it to the fact that, during the string of missed days due to a sciatica flare up 10 days before the race, I had not been eating much to make sure I stayed at racing weight. Also, I was taking Aleve, pills that allow me to run but, as I have learned, in time, zap my strength.
In Chicago, Friday and Saturday, my shakeout runs were pretty similar to Thursday's session. Slight tightness. Legs a bit heavy. On Saturday, however, Sarah Buckheit stretched me out and said everything was looking dramatically better. I was calm, confident and, like everyone else, optimistically interpreting the weather report for highs in the lower 80s: It was not supposed to hit the high until the early afternoon.
I do not remember how my leg felt during the first couple miles of the race. I remember that, around mile 5, a gel slid out of place in my shorts, I grabbed it and took it right before a waterstop. I was running with a 2:26 pack that included half a dozen men and some elite women, including Desiree Davila (4th, 2:26.20), Irina Mikitenko (5th 2:26.40) and Magdalena Lewy-Boulet (7th, 2:28.44).
Heading around a sharp turn, I felt a sharp pinch in my hamstring that stayed with me for about 50 meters but then, I think, went away. You see, I was not allowing for negative thoughts - and I honestly do not believe I was feeling any. I remember, in our pack, there was a conversation between two guys who knew each other: One asked the other how he was feeling; the response was, "Like I'm running a marathon." I suppose that was how I felt, too.
I was not taking splits: I was just running the race I knew I was prepared to run.
Miles seven to 11 were good ones. I like this part of the course, as you start returning south. Our pack had jelled, the crowds were feeding us and there were periods of effortless running. We passed 10 miles in 55:30-ish, but as we passed 11 something was starting to change. The hamstring tightened for a time and then it was kind of like the knot released. My legs were instantly dead.
I stuck with the pack. I took fluids at every opportunity. The crowds were roaring, but I was starting to lose contact.
No. No. No.
Lewy-Boulet was clearly having a rough day. She was to my right. She surged. So, so tough. There was a sharp right turn heading to 13.1. There's the pinch again. Screw it. Come on, man! Your system is strong. ... You can run uncomfortably for a long, long time. ... It's not that big a deal.
So you feel like crap. Just accept it. Just GO!
1:13.07 ... about a minute slower than where I was in 2006. But this was the plan ...
By 14, I had been dropped - my legs were dead, my gait was off (my dad, actually, says it was off at 1.5 miles).
Time to fight. Give it everything.
The rough patch, though, was not clearing up. My legs were feeling worse - starting to actually hurt, quiver. Around 16, I caught up to Craig Segal, a really good runner and an even better guy. He was EASILY in 2:23 or better shape. There were no words; neither he nor I could utter even one. This was my first indication that a lot more runners than me were not going to realize what they had dreamed about in training.
By 19, I knew that finishing was not in my best interest. There was the potential to do some real damage.
I waited until I saw my dad, around 21.5, and walked off the course. He put his arm around me. I stood there for a second, kind of shocked; I never, ever, thought I would have to drop out of a marathon.
He flagged down a cab.
I took off my sunglasses.
Then - for the first time - I realized just how hot it was.
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In Chicago, many runners had very bad days.
Some runners had very good days.
Some runners had decent days.
Those of us who fall in the very bad or decent (or less than decent) can only wonder: What went wrong?
You see these Kenyan super-runners like Simon Wanjiru redefining the sport. He likes the heat. Nothing, be it injury or lack of fitness, seems to stop them.
You see that members of the Hansons team ran personal bests, and then read a quote from their coach expressing his opinion that it was not really that hot - adjust, be tougher.
I support anything that pushes American distance running to new heights, but I also think part of the reason most pros will have a better time dealing with tough conditions than working types will is because (one) they are that much more prepared for the race (2) they get bottles (3) they are pros.
Still, if you were to look up the results of the runners in the photograph, you would find that most of them held up well in the second half of the race - and I like to think that if I was physically 100% I might have done the same. But, again, you can only wonder. I just hope I am tough enough.
Patrick Reaves (2:36.33, 131st) describes the atmosphere late in the race as such: "While the first half of the course in Chicago's north side is pleasant and shaded, the second half is brutally exposed to the sun, and it was getting hot, especially as we passed US Cellular Field. I started passing guys doing the death shuffle or just walking outright, presumably with the heat as a catalyst. Looking at the results after the race, a grand total of one guy ahead of me negative split the first and second half. That's brutal."
It sure is.
The mind, though, is capable of forgetting all of this, or at least capable of disconnecting from the memory. In the next couple weeks, while running, mine, I know, will do what it does - turn over. It will be my body, in fact, that needs more time to recover.
"That's why even though I had a rough day yesterday," writes Ben Ingram (2:50.46, 385th), who logged huge miles in hopes of cracking 2:30, "I know I'll eventually be back for more. Eventually I'll look at a calendar and plan six months of training. But for now I drink a few strong ales and rest.
"For now, it's over."
DEVELOPING...
