Race Day

As the last drops of blood were still running in rivets down the shafts of broken spears, a lone messenger took off down a dirt path towards Athens, Greece. The year is 486 BCE, and his lungs carry an important message.

Twenty-six-sum-odd miles later, the messenger, broken, torn, shattered from the run, falls at the Athenian gate, gasping for air. A soldier manning his post bends on his knee and cups the back of the messenger's head.

"What word does thou speak, messenger?" The guard asks. The messenger's eyes roll in his skull, he gulps air, his legs burn as if set to fire. He takes one last gulp and utters:

"Victory," and then dies.

This is a somewhat fictionalized account of the ending of the historic Battle of Marathon during the first Persian invasion of Hellenic Greece. The word of victory was carried by a lone, fleet-footed messenger from the battlefield back to the capitol. And the people rejoiced in the remembrance of this event, by stupidly running a similarly destructive course that killed a man, themselves.

I am now one of those many.

The inspiration to run the Cape Cod Marathon this past weekend came from the training slump I found myself in shortly after competing in the Hyannis Sprint Triathlon earlier in the summer. I had trained for about a year leading up to that particular tri, and during that year of training I was highly motivated (to the point where Jill would often complain that I was neglecting her).

But I was in a fitness fever. So imagine how depressing my workouts were AFTER the race? I had nothing to work towards now. I had competed successfully and earned a decent time and place in the race. Now I was going to the gym and just putzing around. It was boring.

So when I saw that the CCM was taking entrances, I batted the idea around in my head for about a month. I didn't know (at the time) what our schedules were going to be like, with my efforts to get into OCS. Would we still even be on Cape for the marathon (it was on Oct 31st)? With a seventy-dollar entry fee, I didn't want to waste the cash.

But soon, with set back after set back with this whole OCS process, I was confident I'd be able to run the race.

Serious training started about six weeks out from the race. I was doing Long Distance Runs (LDRs) on Mondays, and tapering my runs down to 50% of whatever the LDR for that week was. My first week, my LDR was about 8 miles of continuous running, which was taking me about an hour to complete. I'd take a day off and do more running on Wednesday and Thursday, Friday would be my SDR (S for "Short"). I'd rest all weekend, and get back at it on Monday, increasing my time and distances.

Two weeks out from the race, I decided to try for the full marathon distance of 26.2 miles. The course took me through three towns on Cape, and a little over 3 and a half hours of (somewhat continuous) running.

Meanwhile, my feet and legs were paying the price for my ambitions.

I've lost three toe nails, was forced to "bleed" both my big toenails just to save them, plus my left knee is sore from the road impact. I also went through two pairs of running shoes, a pair of Nike racing flats that lasted about 100 miles, and a pair of Brooks Ravannas that I had to give up on because one foot is slightly longer than the other, and was paying a pretty hefty price for the workouts.

There would be days I wouldn't be able to sit down and get up, because my hamstrings would be shot.

While all of this was going on, I was still in the gym three to four days a week, with hour long weight training sessions.

Race day finally arrived, coincidentally on my birthday. At 29 years old, I was running my first marathon. Even I thought this was crazy.

A friend of ours came up from New Orleans. She's big into the Ironman Triathlon series and plans on doing her first "Half Ironman" next summer. Her and Jill took to the sidelines while I stuffed GU gels and little packets of lube into the tiny pockets on my running jersey.

With bib number attached, sunglasses firmly on face, I waded into the teeming crowd of runners on Main St in Falmouth, right by the village's green. All around me people were popping up and down, warming up their legs, checking their digital watches to time themselves, jabbering in that nervous energetic way we all do when our adrenaline starts to spike out.

I was relatively calm in this sea of athletes, and just stood, shifting my weight from foot to foot, shaking out my arms. Also, since it was Halloween as well, plenty of people decided to get into the spirit of the holiday and dress up. Around me was the occasional ghoul, or devil, or slutty bumblebee.

The race coordinator started the countdown a minute out. A member of the local clergy said a prayer, and at exactly 830 on the nearby digital bank clock, a loud canon blasted off, and the race was officially underway.

Unlike most of the track events I've competed in from high school, there was no mad trample of people, or even a sprint out of the gate. This giant wave of human flesh kind of just shuffled forward out of the gate. As things spread out a little, our pace increased, and soon before long I was running down Main Street to the cheers of well wishers and onlookers.

The first half of the race was a cake walk; all level and flat, paved, a few downhills but nothing serious. But almost instantly I found the people who bit off more than they could chew. Relay runners (the marathon hosts a relay that's run concurrent to the race itself) were dropping left and right, the victims of charging out of the gate at too fast a pace.

When I got to the first pace marker, a digital clock on a tripod on the side of the road, at mile 1, I saw I was running at 7:31 mile pace. I knew if I was going to finish, I would have to pump my brakes a little.

By mile 5, I saw a woman ahead of me peel off down an alley way. As I approached and ran by, she was squatting, mere feet from the road, peeing against a wall.

Have some class, please.

The race course is notorious for it's hilly second half. I knew this going into it, but didn't fully understand what running essentially 15 miles of hills would be like. The first hills hit around the 1o.5 mile mark, and I took water from a water station attendant and started my charge. I figured the bigger hills would be spread out, maybe one a mile. I was wrong.

Literally, the entire 15 or so miles that would take me to the end of the race, was 99% hill. Big, winding hills, where you couldn't see the crest from the bottom. You'd be pushing up the incline, cornering expecting to see the top where it would level out, and you'd be greeted with another sharp incline. A few "goddamnits" were uttered by myself and other runners nearby me.

For about four miles, towards the end as we came around the crest at Nobska Lighthouse, I ran alongside a 54 year old man. He was hurting but determined. As we ran I asked him how many marathons he's ever run. He said this was his first.

Holy shit.

At mile 22, I left him behind and picked up my pace. The course was starting to level out, and according to my watch, I was at the 3 hour mark. If I wanted to beat my previous time when I ran the 26.2 "just for kicks" I had to pick it up.

I buckled down, pushed; with no iPod to listen to, I had only my raggedly breath and footfalls to keep me company. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, I kept telling myself.

Relay teams were running past me at considerable clips, yelling encouragement as they did so. I was resentful of their fresh legs and attitudes. Where were they at mile 14 when I was running over camel humps that led to a 110ft incline over a half mile?

I hit the 26 mile mark and felt a wave of euphoria. Adrenaline re-surged into my brain as the sounds of the crowd waiting at the finish line became louder. Cowbells were ringing in excitement, people cheering, red faced from the cold. All I could see was gaping black mouths.

As I rounded the last corner to get to the finish (where the race actually started, the course is a giant loop) I remember thinking: don't be a damn hero, just finish. I was thinking of pushing it hard to the end, sprinting it out. But I didn't want to collapse and be hauled off in the back of the ambulance with a stupid plastic mask over my mouth and nose.

I crossed the line at 3 hours, 28 minutes and 54 seconds, with a pace of 7:59 per mile. Those are unofficial times, however.

Overall, I placed 117th out of over 1200 competitors, finishing 62nd in my age division, which held over 250 other runners. I was also the third Cape Codder to cross the line, the first coming in about half an hour before me.

Will I do another one? Yes. I take an unbelievable sense of pride in being one of the many, but at the same time, one of the few, who has competed in a marathon. And according to rumor, my pace time is good enough for the Boston Marathon in April. So depending on where we are by then, I'd like to run that one as well.

If Jill lets me.