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| Course Map for the 2010 Columbus Marathon |
It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done.
Granted, I’ve not had a tough life, so that’s not saying so much. But it was hard, harder than I expected, and I had to dig deeper than I knew I could. And that, I think, is what changes you. That part, glimpsing a capacity that you didn’t know you had, that is what drives people to do this crazy-ass, unnatural, unhealthy, stupid, amazing thing.
It was the Heathers’ fault, actually. I didn’t know this at the time. Shortly after running the half marathon, my first, which was hard and exhilarating and euphoric for me, I was at a bar with a number of friends. Sean and I were talking to two Heathers, both runners, both attractive, and Sean, a running partner and, apparently, show off, said “I hope no one recommends we do the full, ‘cause I might go for it.”
“Sean,” I said. “Let’s do the full.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. I think so. Yeah.”
Five months later, I met another running partner – my unofficial coach – Tim, outside Sean’s house. The sun wasn’t up yet. It was 6:00 am on an October Sunday, chilly. Tim called me over to his car. “Listen to this.” I got in. He was playing Rush, and, with no fear of clichés on such a nervous and vital morning, we listened to “Marathon.” And he and I laughed and joked and enjoyed that damn song so much, and then we went inside, and we took turns doing what nervous guys do when they’ve been hydrating for a week, and then we pinned on our numbers, loaded into Tim’s car, and headed downtown.
The “Tips for First Time Marathoners” website had warned us about the nerves:
Whether you're a newbie or a seasoned veteran, making even the smallest decisions like what to eat and what to wear will feel like life changing moments during race week.
Should I take my duffle or leave it? Wallet and keys in Tim’s car, or in the bag? Take the gloves? It’s chilly. We all stood on the pre-dawn street-lit sidewalk, taking minutes to decide, to undecide, to decide again, the smallest things, taking forever but rushing, because man-oh-man, I had to pee again.
*
We started to walk the few blocks to Broad and High, the far end of the starting line.
We found a huge crowd and a million porta-potties, the far ones with the short lines. We stretched, we joked, acting like middle-schoolers.
Eventually we were in our starting corral, in a sea of people. Tim and I were in the last chute, having not registered with a previous marathon time. Sean was smart enough to register with his half-marathon time – you could do that? - and was up in chute number two, where he was meeting a friend.
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| Tim and me at the starting line. |
Text message, 7:15 AM, from me to Brelle: I have my phone (it will be hard to text in crowds, though.) I love you.
Tim and I waited nervously, excited, joking, chatting with Jason from Atlanta, drinking in the festival. The nerves gave me tunnel vision, but I calmed my breathing and made it a point to look around, to enjoy the moment. The sun wasn’t breaking the horizon yet, but the sky was going from black to a rich blue. It was chilly in shorts, but the shared excitement, the loud chatter, the sense of community felt important and fun. Someone took our picture with my phone. The Danger Brothers were loud and were really good and were playing “Born to Run” to no one’s surprise. They were playing on a stage right at the starting line, pretty far away, actually, up near Third. Corral number four, where we were, was way down by the Palace.
I looked behind us.
“Tim,” I said. “Look behind us.”
Behind us was a scattering of fifteen or twenty runners. We were at the very back of the very last batch.
“Oh wow. We’re really at the back, aren’t we?”
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| Just before the start. |
Fireworks. No shit? That was cool. Fireworks off of a rooftop, and the sun painted the first traces of gold into the sky, and way up there by the stage, people started moving forward. Eventually, so did we, a slow walk with a huge crowd. I mooed. Someone had to.
So, here we went. I hugged Tim, thanked him, wished him luck, and he did the same, and soon we were moving toward the start line. Watch your step, as piles of shedded layers were strewn and piled in the street.
“Okay,” Tim said. “I’ll see you. Good luck.”
“Congratulations.”
“You too.”
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| While running, just after the start, with thumb. |
Tim is a faster and stronger runner than I am, but months before, in my first real race, the Cap City Half Marathon, I paced with him for the first few miles. This time, he disappeared off to the right and into the crowd. I glanced over and couldn’t find him, and there I was, just me and 14,999 of my closest friends.
I started the mental strategies I had learned from my training book, the kumbaya shit that my more cynical, pre-training self would have scoffed at. “This is the best run of my life,” I told myself. And with the crowds and the music, the Columbus just-enough skyline, the rising sun, the chill in the air, it was easy to believe. “This is the best damn run of my life.”
Except.
My legs felt weird. A little tight, a little less ready than I had expected. I had stretched while waiting – maybe not enough? Something was funky. Oh well. They would warm up. Forget about it: My concentration was needed for the complex dodging and weaving needed to move ahead from the very back of the pack. Would that narrow gap between those runners narrow before I got there? Were those two ladies walking together, or just near each other? Can I get around that guy without stepping on the curb?
Every hundred yards or so there was a different live band, plugged into a chugging generator, playing a gig at 7:30 am on a Sunday morning. Rock, blues, folk, pop. Most of them were really good, they could really play. I heard some exciting funk/soul coming up ahead. And then there was a big enough gap in front of me that I could finally set a pace.
I took a minute, paid attention to how I was running. “This feels good,” I thought. I was aiming for around ten minute miles for the first half, slower than my training pace, but I’d only trained as high as twenty-two miles, never twenty-six, and they say the last six miles are the second half of a marathon. Okay. I felt like I was running about a ten minute mile. Perfect. But, as I had been getting stronger the last few weeks of training, I was used to being surprised. I would look at my Forerunner on my wrist and every time would see that I was actually running faster than I had thought. So if this felt like what a ten used to feel like, I predicted I was running a 9:45 pace or so. I should maybe slow down a bit. Keep it at ten. It’s a long run.
I glanced at my Forerunner.
10:15.
Huh?
Something wasn’t quite right. These weren’t my legs.
This was mile two.
Okay. Don’t let that get into your head. “This is my best run ever.”
Then, still on Broad Street, still the chill and autumn sunrise, I felt the first sign of sharpness in the top of my right foot. Already? I looked at my wrist. Mile 2.23. A new low.
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| The injury. |
During training, I had injured my foot, enough that I had to walk and then bail sixteen miles into an eighteen miler, enough that smart people told me it was a stress fracture and I shouldn’t run, enough for x-rays and MRI’s and a cortisone shot. When my doctor asked me how much I wanted to run this race, I asked him if I could mess up my foot for life, he said no. I said I wanted to run, that is was my last chance to run a marathon.
It wasn’t a fracture, it was inflammation in my meta-whosis-toe-joint thing. Plans were made, try these pills, get new shoes, train like this, if not, I'll give you these other pills, keep me posted. I rested and completed a twenty-two mile trainer. W00t! Then, days later, I failed a nine mile run at mile eight – the pain was sharp and brutal; I hobbled toward home looking like James Caan in Misery. I called my kid and made him drive to pick me up, his first night-driving, all alone, all illegal like.
I had finished the twenty-two mile trainer after a long rest. So I rested my foot. For two weeks before the marathon, I didn’t taper my training – I stopped. Cold turkey. Like a cold turkey that doesn’t run. Thus, I suppose, the bad legs on marathon day. But, I had hoped, a good foot.
Mile two. Foot pain. Earliest yet.
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| MRI of evil foot. |
Okay. Now what? To pill or not to pill.
Rule number one: Never do anything new during the race.
But if didn’t take anything, I would risk my foot getting worse and having to quit.
Take the pill.
I had been prescribed one Celebrex a day. But for the long trainer, I had taken one pill the night before and another in the morning, so I did the same on marathon day, with another in my pocket just in case.
Three fourteen-hour-lasting, 200 miligram Celebrex for one run?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I reached into my pocket.
Gone.
I emptied one pocket to the other - my Gu, my phone - and checked again.
Gone.
In my head: “Oh, fu. . .” Pause. “This is the best race ever.”
I pulled out some last resort bright orange generic ibuprofen I had thrown in my pocket just in case. This was a just in type of case. I downed three at the next water stop.
They went to my stomach, did a little dance to the soul / funk band, and started messing with me.
Could be a long morning.
*
For the next several miles I ignored the foot, the legs, the gut, and worked on my head. I meditated, trying to concentrate on my breath, my breath only, being aware of the setting and the feeling, but breathing.
It was getting warm. I pulled off my long sleeve T. People just toss them, the clothes get donated to charities. That’s cool. Considering that, I had grabbed my oldest long sleeve T.
It was old. Really old. The graphics were completely rubbed off.
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| Me after the 22. And the shirt. |
Old old shirt.
I sure had had it a long time. Got it the first time an old band I was in played the arts festival.
I’d hate to pitch this shirt.
I tied it around my waist, counting on some friends who said they’d be cheering in Bexley. I’m a cheap-ass bastard.
I found a groove. I fixed my mood. My stomach settled. The foot pain didn’t seem to be getting worse, was just there. I was enjoying the morning, enjoying the sites, the people, even the run. Especially the run.
“Stefan! Go Stefan”
I turned to my right. There was Amy, a more than a co-worker, a damn cool lady whom I admire a lot, waving like mad, smiling like hell, so damn happy to see me, and me, so damn happy to see her. “Amy! Hey!”
“Way to go, Stefan!”
That cheering stuff? It works.
Past St. Charles – cool rock band there – and the Conservatory – cool, odd folkies. I was on my own at this point, in a crowd but internal, working on my head game, looking for the turn, wanting to keep to the inside. Left turn into Bexley. A slim chance the family might be here; I kept an eye out just in case. Brelle had mentioned maybe Parkview. “Really?” I said. “That’s mile four, pretty early in the morning to get the kids up and everything.” She agreed. Now here I was, scanning every face, just in case.
Pretty run – pretty means a lot to me on a run. On a stretch of Parkview my foot reminded me that it was a problem. I tried to stick to the center of the street, where there’s less grade, as if that would take some stress off the foot. Plus, in case the family was on one side or the other, from the center I could get there. It was hard to keep the center – it was crowded. A lot of weaving through people on this narrower street. It was then that I realized that all that weaving meant lots of passing. I looked behind me, which felt like an amateur move, but, well, not many folks on the road were more amateur than me. There were a lot of people back there, a big crowd going way back past my line of sight. Having started at the back of the last corral, I realized I had passed them all. My pace wasn’t great, but I wasn’t embarrassing myself. That was cool. I felt good.
Maryland to Drexel. Bexley is beautiful, really: huge, verdant trees. The grand old houses that I so often resented through a car window I now enjoyed, perhaps because so many of their occupants were lining the street to cheer for strangers.
And then a call: “Stefan!” And there were Beth and her daughter, my student, Meredith. Good good friends. Beth had been a training partner for the Cap City half.
“Hey, guys!”
“Woo!” or “Good job,” I think, or some such.
I veered toward them, clawing at the knot at my waist. Beth reached up and I tossed her my shirt.
“Sorry!” I yelled as I passed. I ran backward for a bit to face them. “Thank you so much for being here!” They yelled encouragement. And it worked.
I was encouraged and excited and happy to see them. But what a dick, I thought. They come out here to cheer, I throw sweaty laundry at them. Eagerly – like, as soon as I saw them, I started clawing at the knot. “Oh thank God you’re here! My old shirt! My old shirt!”
Dick.
*
At the mile five water station I ate my first Gu, a carb and caffeine packet you squirt into your mouth while running. There’s a nice endorphin rush that follows. I was getting more extroverted, starting to chat, to thank cops, to encourage runners. “Nice pace,” to one runner who passed me.
“I need to sprint once in a while to get the circulation going in my knees,” he said. That was new to me.
I had to pee. I had had to pee since Bexley, and here I was on Nelson Road. I had passed a lot of porta-johns, each batch more tempting, but lines were long and the clock was ticking. I saw a woman run out of the woods from a dirt path up to the railroad tracks. That’s the place. Should I run up there? Yeah, I should, right? Think quick. Take my chances, hope for, what, no lines? And then I was past it.
Damn. I should have peed there.
Up there. In those shrubs, just off the road. There’s a guy peeing there. Just past that. . . just passed that cop? Okay. Cop doesn’t care. Stop hoping for something better. Don’t miss this opportunity.
I ran off the road, through the wet grass – “Socks, don’t get wet. Socks, don’t get wet.” – and realized I was heading directly toward the peeing man. Awkward. I veered six feet to the left. He took off, I started. Glory. By the time I was done, there were ten of us lined up facing the shrubs. “Thank God for the Y chromosome!” I yelled. They concurred, and I rejoined the race.
Very cool percussion from a high school band. At the corner of Nelson and Franklin Park, there was a huge inflatable arch over the road that said START, as if we’d only been warming up so far. That could have been discouraging. I still don’t know why it was there.
Other than a water station just passed the START sign, I have zero memories of running down Franklin Park. I know I did – I’m looking at the map. But it is a complete and utter blank.
*
A young lady with a group on the side of the road, cheering generic: “Good job!” “Go runners!” Just as I ran by she ran out of material and yelled, to no one, “Hello!”
“Hello!” I yelled back. “How ARE you?”
Exagerated: “I am FINE! How are YOU?”
“I am fine! Thanks for asking!”
“Okay! Have a nice day!”
“You too!”
Best cheer ever.
*
Mile eight. The foot pain was getting pretty sharp pretty fast, and I was nervous. On my long training run, the pain started at mile six – two miles earlier than usual -- but eventually plateaued. This time it seemed it would keep getting worse.
Just past the bridge a guy was playing an acoustic guitar and singing “American Pie.”
“This’ll be the day that I die,” he sang. “This’ll be the day that I die.”
“This is not the day that I will die!” I yelled. Approval from other runners, and we chanted.
“This is not the day that I will die!”
