JW RunBlog 1: Crash and Burn

Crash and Burn

I ran my first road race in 2001 at age 35, stepping in for a friend who decided not to run. It was a 5K. At that point I was running regularly, but just a few miles on my own a few times a week. My motivation was not complicated--I was sick of being out of shape, and running was the most convenient cure. Then I started running on Saturdays with Fr. Culloty and a new guy named Mike. We’d do 3 miles or so and would talk along the way. (Fr. Culloty used to try out bits from his upcoming homilies.) The notion of talking while running was new to me. I remember it being odd from both a pacing perspective and a social perspective. I wasn’t used to running at a conversational pace, and I wasn’t used to the cadence of conversation amongst runners, which, as I learned, comes in bursts. 

Mike and I expanded our running from weekends to weekday mornings. Then we expanded to track workouts. Mike was already a marathoner, and his chatter about running them, along with regular encouragement to try more challenging races, led me to longer distances. But I didn’t increase my volume too quickly. It took four years from my first road race until I tried a marathon. For my 33rd road race, in 2005, I ran the Boston Marathon. I should rather say “tried to run,” as I walked a big chunk of it. Some of my training runs were more impressive than that first attempt at a marathon.

Boston Marathon 2005

In November 2004, I ran the Thanksgiving Day 5K called “Paul’s to Tom’s.” It went from Paul’s house (Paul was a state trooper who organized the race) to Tom’s Tavern in Wrentham. It was a quirky race in several ways. First, it was a point-to-point, so you had to find your way to Paul’s house from Tom’s Tavern. People generally piled into the SUVs of random strangers to accomplish this. Second, it ended at a tavern on Thanksgiving morning. This was the race’s appeal, of course. After the race Tom served up some breakfast, which we chased down with a few beers. 

Here is the scene: after the race, I am outside Tom’s with Mike and Johnny Curran. Johnny is originally from Norwood and is the picture of the grizzled old runner. He is fast and tough and, as I learn over time, tells wildly entertaining running stories. So I’m standing there listening to Mike and Johnny talk about races. And of course the conversation turns to the Boston Marathon, which both of them are planning to run the following April. Johnny turns to me and says, “Have you ever run Boston?” I say, “No.” He says, “You want to?” Turns out that Johnny has a waiver number that he’s willing to part with. (Waiver numbers are a category of entries into Boston that allow you to bypass a qualifying time or a charity number.) So after the pancakes, post-race beers, and yakking wind down, I follow Johnny to his house in Norfolk where he hands me the waiver app for Boston. I very clearly remember driving home that sunny morning in our 2001 Corolla with that waiver app on the passenger seat next to me, saying to myself, “I’m gonna run Boston!”

My training for that first marathon was decent, looking back on it. I did three runs of 20 or more miles and fairly regular speed work. I was also big on “old school” strength training in those days, throwing in a round of situps, pushups, and curls after most runs. I’m not sure what that added to my running, other than making me feel strong. 

For race day, I managed to score a spot at a co-worker’s house in Hopkinton. From his place it was a short walk to the start. Back in those days everyone started at the same time--noon. I was way at the back of the pack, so it took 22 minutes after the gun went off to shuffle my way to the starting line. It was of course hotter at noon than it was for any of my training runs. I was too new a runner to know what this would mean. 

One of my co-workers at Pearson at the time was Amanda. She was also running Boston and we made a plan to start the race together. What I should have realized at the time was that her goal pace was beyond my ability. She is a really good runner. So I went out way too fast. My first 5K was 24:32. Before the half-way point, I could feel that it was going to be a bad day. I was overheated, and as I later discovered, once I overheat, I get the sensation of my power source being turned way down. This was bonking. Welcome to bonking. 

What other mistakes did I make? Oh, pretty much every mistake there is to make in a marathon. I grabbed random food from strangers along the way. (Banana? Sure, why not. Popsicle? That’ll help.) Someone gave me the advice of writing my name on my arm so that people could cheer for me by name, so I dutifully recorded JEFF on my arm. Mistake. As I was struggling through the race, the cries of “Come on, Jeff!” sounded more like an indictment than encouragement. I walked a lot from mile 20 on, with my head down. For the last 5K of the race, my pace was 43:55. By the end of the race, I was nauseated. I crossed the finish line after 4:47 on the course, walked a few steps, then was on all fours retching. Someone wheeled me into the med tent where I stayed, shivering under my space blanket for over an hour while they tried to rehydrate me with Gatorade. When I finally tottered out of there, I found Mike and the others drinking at the Park Plaza Hotel bar. They were wondering what the hell had happened to me. 

Back in those days the Norwood Record did a story leading into the marathon and following up on it. I somehow got into both articles. In the first, there I was making predictions (argh, mistake number 17): “I did twenty-two miles about four weeks ago, starting out in Hopkinton and running to the top of Heartbreak Hill. I’ve done twenty-milers before, but this workout proved to me that I could go the distance. I felt like I still had something left in the tank, and I think adrenaline will pull me through on race day.” In the follow-up article, there I was, eating crow. The reporter called me while I was in the tub soaking my legs after the race. My wife Sharon called into the bathroom, “There’s someone on the phone from the Norwood Record. You want to talk to him?” Sure, why not. My lead quote in the story was, “Let’s just say that I got schooled by the Boston Marathon.” I got that right at least.  

Another lesson from my first marathon was that the shame of a bad race continues in the re-hashing of the story afterwards. So I had to tell the story over and over again on ensuing runs with Mike and others. All of this just made me mad. I knew I was a better runner than 4:47. So I signed up for the Maine Marathon that fall.