APR-B-4
THE 105TH RUNNING OF THE BOSTON MARATHON
APRIL 16, 2001
It was beautiful! A “no-excuses” kind of a day, a great group of runners, a fine bunch of cheering fans, with the Wellesley Women in full-throated cry—never better!
We did the usual kvetching along the two non-running days while waiting to get on stage and dance. We all had the usual aches pains and “well, I don’t know if I will be able to do this…” kind of pre-race. contemplations. My left pyriformis was at its most annoying spasm, complete with a numb left foot and full-blown sciatic compression—only while I am on the run is it happily silent, but before after or at any pause in any of the action it goes into a tizzy. Stretching it out gives relief for only the period of its stretching.
The next subject, after exhausting aches and pains and diets, is the weather, which is the usual Boston spring---considered to be spring when most of the snow has melted and there is at least a thirty degree day with thirty mile per hours winds—always right in the teeth. But a cold rain was predicted after a rather pretty day for the starting time—cool and bright. It never came our way, even though the usual wind kicked up and the clouds did cover us from about ten miles on—which may have helped us in preventing sunburn. After the usual dance around what we should wear, we settled on shorts and singlet, with my precaution of wrapping the Lifra blue Antarctic Marathon long-sleeve pullover around my waist and fastening it with two safety pins. I planned to need it after the race, when we are whipped by the winds at the finish line where the Mylar blanket blows over our heads. I did need it there, and it kept very nicely \wrapped around my waist without ever giving any notice of it s presence on the run, ironically, until we turned on the Boylston “home stretch”—when it unraveled and threatened to slip down around my ankles and trip me up at the finish line. So, I had to give a one-handed salute at the finish since I had to gather up my blue sash threatening to sprawl me over the finish line. Some folks had done just that according to those watching the TV coverage, with few of them crawling the length of Boylston, a couple doing handstands, cartwheels or pushups on the mats, and a couple kissing the far side of the finish line. Not a few were being resuscitated and wheeled away on stretchers or wheelchairs, at which the TV cameras flipped to something else when a bit of sternal compression was being performed on a couple of victims about which nothing else was broadcast.
The crowd back in the Jefferson Room of the Back Bay Hilton from the AMAA who were waiting to take my blood and run the post-race tests were all eager to see me to announce that I had achieved my fifteen seconds of fame, televised nationally. During the long pieces of dead air time during which no breath-taking photo finishes are being lunged for or no dead heat dogging it along the course is going on between dueling wheelchairs, or human interest on father/daughter amputees running together, they had a camera fixed at the top of Heartbreak Hill, the third of the Newton hills and the one that tries men’s souls (and soles) because of the place it is found along the course where you would rather not see a hill rising in front of you at the time you would like to be leaning back on the oars. The TV announcer and the camera crew had an inspiration; they were going to study people’s reactions to the joys of Heartbreak Hill, and watch as waves of different runners were coming up the final stretch.
“Here is the agony before the ecstasy—here the runners have to pay the price. Everyone is miserable here and reacts to it differently. Except for this one fellow who is charging up the hill cresting with a salute to the crowd and high fives along the way waving a “V” sign for all to see---he seems to be really enjoying himself!”
Well, I was! My thoughts may have been---“Well, that is over!” but I have also been down this road too many times to think that “It’s all downhill from here!” means anything at all at this point since those last five miles are never easy, since the glycogen is gone, and you have to do this part on guts alone. I did it. I tried not to put my head down d slug away at it, but I probably did lean over and shuffle a bit too much, only occasionally throwing my head back to relax the neck muscles and cheer the crowd, who usually cheered at me “GO, CALVIN!”—since the singlet logo is much more apparent at a distance than the indelible inked on “GLENN” on each arm.
The bus ride always seems longer than the race. By the time we pull into Hopkinton to go behind Collela’s market—the parking lot for the permit-only “club buses”—it seems impossible that anyone could run back the distance we had just driven in about two hours at Mass Pike Highway speed. But, then, once we are there, the question is what will we do for three hours of milling around, drinking, looking for a place to pee?
By an amazing coincidence, each of us had learned at Davio’s Restaurant that we have the same story of an unknown contact in Hopkinton. I had received an email from a woman named Terry Donovan who had seen me at the George Award ceremony in New York when she had come to support Unita Blackwell. When she had written me an email and had the address “Hopkinton” under it, I immediately sent back a note. She may ha been thinking of inspiration, I was thin king of a warm bathroom! The identical experience had been had by Freeman Dyson, by a reader of one of his books, and the same had happened to Ron Lawrence, so each of us were headed to a rendezvous. I had written an email to Terry Donovan, since I could not find her by the phone book, which showed a couple of pages of that name in even the small town of Hopkinton. I had written that if she was still in Hopkinton, at least she now knew one of the runners, and I would appear around the “It All Starts Here” sign on the Hopkinton Common.
As I walked around the common, I was handed several tracts and things for sale, from long distance service to evangelical pieces. Then someone spotted me. A young couple came across the Hopkinton Common amid the tents and balloons and hawkers and came to me because I was wearing a Calvin singlet. They identified themselves as Calvin grads, and said they lived in Whitinsville. That was where I first had entered Massachusetts, and had viewed the Purgatory Chasm from the windows of the Choir Tour bus. When I ha moved to Boston seven years later, my Aunt Betty who died only last year had said to me how nice it was that I would be going to Boston, since it was right next to the larger spot on the map, Whitinsville, Massachusetts—so much more important than any other of its smaller suburbs, since it had a Christian Reformed Church and she even knew of people who had been there. When I lived in Boston I never could find the town, nor anyone who had ever heard of it. I even made a weekend excursion to try to find the Purgatory Chasm once again, and failed. So, there may be a small clan of Dutchmen along the running route, at least enough to recognize the Calvin singlet, but not enough for me to find where this focus was when I lived there. We exchanged names, and later, as I was chugging across the bridge over Route 128 where the head-on breeze always begins to come at the runners, the young man called out my name, and he was the ONLY person I could recognize in the crowd, despite looking out for several at places they said they would be, such as the Dyson grandsons and Dorothy at Mile 22, and Cindy at Mile 16, and the Stanleys at 3 miles from the end. Despite my not seeing individuals I had expected on the observer side of the course, I DID encounter several groups and I will mention three particularly as groups I was expecting, and then point out that I fell in with quite a few new and old friends along the way who would run with me and talk for a bit, especially when they learned that I was an old hand at this Boston thing—one trio of young girls from Ohio said “Oh, we wannabe you!”
I met Terry Donovan who had seen me at the George Award, and she commiserated at the collapse of the journal after this fine start at recognizing the folk who were doing good things on earth. She had been with Harvard when she got Unita Blackwell to get a degree there, but now was with some other organization. I saw the “Team Hoyt”—heroes of mine, since father pushes his severely handicapped CP son in a wheelchair along the length of the course in this favorite as well as most other marathons I have been in. I wandered back to our bus, and stripped off all but my running light gear, and bid farewell to Imme and Charlie. My bag would be carried back to the Jefferson Room in the Back Bay Hilton, where I would return after the race—without the privilege of getting into any form of conveyance until I was on the elevator to the shower facilities.
I entered my corral #7, where we who had qualified at a given pace of around 3:30 were placed. I spoke with a pretty young woman who had graduated from Wellesley in anthropology after three years in Mauritania in the Peace Corps where she could run only in an abaya, which had to be loose fitting and billowing around her legs to especially avoid showing any outline of her thighs in the Moslem culture she was in. She had been a French teacher in Columbus Ohio, which marathon she ran to qualify for this one. Although she knew well the Boston Marathon from the perspective of the screaming Wellesley women, this was her first running, and she asked me a lot about the proper pace and the course. Next to her in a racing bra and briefs was a young Swiss woman making her first visit to the US who was delighted to be able to speak French with my other corral mate and me. I sat in the sunny middle of the road on what would turn at the Common to become Route 135, and stretched my stubborn left pyriformis. At the time the wheelchairs –all 34 of them—took off and the National Anthem was sung by a Massachusetts State Trooper and his wife after a medley of patriotic songs in honor of Patriot’s Day, the last line of the National Anthem was just about to ring in the air, when a direct flyover of F-16’s went screaming overhead from the Air Base adjacent to the Concord and Lexington “Rude Bridge That Stemmed the Flood Where the Embattled Farmer Stood, and Fired the Shot Heard Round the World.” Although there is a hot contest (a “war of Chambers of Commerce”) as to which town was the site of that first shot fired, a debate that continued in the papers this Patriot’s Day morning, the jet pilots got to do double duty since they could do their tight G’s overflight maneuvers over both the town of Hopkinton for the impressive display that would juice up the runners who had been sitting around idly for three or more hours, and then, seconds later do the same overpass over both Lexington and Concord where colonial re-enactment’s were going on at their village greens.
Sweatshirts were tossed to the side and the corral ropes were dropped and we surged forward at the sound of the noon starting gun and the 105th Boston Marathon was under way under a clear and sunny sky, despite all threats of clouds and impending rain.
Despite my seeding up in the front half with the qualified runners, I got off to a slow stutter start in the heavy crowd, and never really ran until Ashland. It was thirteen minutes when I passed the first mile marker. But, I am not complaining, since my mantra on each of these occasions remains “I cannot believe I am actually doing Boston!” I had looked out on these men (there were no women then) on Commonwealth Avenue, with a small boy named Donald perched upon my shoulder asking about “What are those strange men doing Daddy?” as these super-heroic figures came slapping through freezing rain and slush from a country far away to arrive in Boston as visitors from another planet.
“Well, Donalbain,” I had said, “Some day you and I might both understand what they are doing and maybe you might even like to try to do this yourself.”
“No I wouldn’t. It looks too cold!”
Well, now, over a third of a century later, both of my sons are marathoners, joining the half million on earth to which that number has just recently swelled, and their father—if it can be believed—has just started out on his sixty first long run!
My pyriformis loosened up, but my anterior tibialis was tight and aching for the first five miles. From experience, I know that this is usually the case after a couple of days of not running, and it should loosen up with a few more miles. Until then, just stay loose and coast along despite the slow start, since if nothing else, this will keep you from going out too fast in the first half, a chronic likelihood I loped along watching the crowds, giving a few low-fives to the little kids and the handicapped, taking pictures of the nursing home invalids propped up in wheelchairs along the running route, and seeing the rock bands, country and western and other diversions that are spread along 26.2 miles of Route 135. The smell of beer and bratwurst came over the course from the tailgaters and the kids were hading out orange slices to those who would snatch them from them on the fly. This is a wholesome, All-American way to party---and they even had an American in the lead through the half way point named Josh Cox—something that has not been seen for more than a decade of Kenyan dominance of this race. Something would happen later, and the person who finally won did come from a country that starts with “K”—what would be your guess?
I did not recognize individuals, even those who called out “Go Glenn!” since someone had stenciled my name on each arm as I had walked around the Hopkinton Common. I waited until I came into the area of Natick to look for the Camp Calvin banner which had formerly been put up at Dale Bloem’s front lawn. But he had sold the house and moved out, so that there was no longer a lawn party for the event with a lot of maroon and gold jackets. But the faithful still congregate at the curb each year, and I knew where to look about mile 9, since I was wearing a Calvin singlet, and I should be able to see the banner that so puzzled me the first time I had seen it. It is a good thing I knew where to look, since only one end was hanging up and the other had fallen down so it could only be read backwards from the far side. But, I came in, and for the first time, instead of hitting and running, I actually stopped, and posed with the faithful few who were there this year, had my own picture taken with the little slide/print Internet camera I had carried, and dropped a card saying “Thank you Camp Calvin!” before running on.
And, now—can you hear it? I am coming up on the highlight of my run each year in Boston, the part I would like to stretch n for another thirteen miles—the Women of Wellesley. The big sign says: “Wellesley Women: 360* ahead!” Around me were first –timers running who asked, “What does that mean?” I told them, including one woman who was running next to me “Although it may not do much for you, the high decibel cheering screams of thousands of nubile college women is the only reason I keep coming back to this race!” Sure enough, she heard the sound about half a mile before the college could be seen, sounding like a tornado in the distance.
I always “run the ropes” at Wellesley, right along the snow fences. I hold my right hand up, giving high fives to what might sound like a little kid riding his bike along a slatted fence striking out his lacrosse stick to make a washboard tattoo. I touch about five hundred outstretched hands going through, as the women of Wellesley in full throat yell their approval of each runner, a few of them assigned to call out the names of the numbers they were taught to recognize randomly. A few wear bikinis in honor of our shorts and singlets, but it must be a lot chillier for them than for us. The whole student body passes in a blur, since for some reason, I always pick up the pace through Wellesley, and for some other reason, I rarely have any exposures left to shoot after I am through this mile eleven. Last year I followed a guy with bunny ears who celebrated his trip through Wellesley by mooning the whole group—it makes for better pictures to get the reaction of the women than of the fellow himself.
The exhilaration of my pass through Wellesley is such a kick that I said out loud to the runners around me when we had passed through town and were headed on further “Did I just suddenly go deaf?” The silence was haunting and we could hear only our feet slapping the tarmac as we slowed the pace with a couple small hills—hints of things to come.
The Chip mats are every five kilometers, and the split times are for every mile—this is Boston, after all, and they have had a hundred and five years to get it right. I saw the half coming up, and the overhead Marathon Foot cameras clicking, but I think all of them were changing film as I came along. The tweeting beeps of all the chips sending the position and timing of each of us by number around the world by internet or call-in phone information request sounded like a tropical dawn birdsong fest. I slowed at a water stop, and whom should I see, but Charlie Clark. I pounded him on the back, since he explained he had been off to such a good start since all the oldtimers who had run thirty or more Boston’s were asked to come to the Pavillion for a Photo, and then were moved up to at front corral. We ran for a mile or two when Charlie remarked that I seemed to be running rather well, so I should just move on out, since he was going to hang back and not get greedy, shooting for about a 4:10 which would make him happy. It was true that I had been “negative splitting”—running each mile subsequently faster, since I had run through the “shin splint” kind of pain and had to do a quick inventory to realize that I felt rather good. I determined that I would certainly not want to stop or walk one step of this race, and there was the unholy trinity of the Newton Hills ahead.
I ran on ahead of Charlie after a couple of pictures of us together, and he had told me Cindy would beat Mile 16 and would run in with Imme. I pulled in to start cranking for the hills. I looked for Mile 16 and shouted for Cindy. There was no one there who responded, so I kept on going, figuring “Good! That means that Imme has already passed this way and Cindy had joined her.”
I pulled up on the first of the Newton Hills. I did what I did not want to do, and that is lean forward and pull my head down, not looking up when I heard my name or acknowledge the crowd. I simply pulled my head back with this odd “S” curve of body forward and head back. I turned at one water stop and saw Charlie. When I was pulling up the second hill, I heard “Hello, Mister Glenn!” and there was Cindy. She was leading Charlie and had run along behind me without knowing it was I. I explained that with Charlie’s good start and fast pace, we might all come in sub-four if we did not slacken the pace, but we still had Heartbreak Hill to go and the hard part down toward Kenmore Square under the Citgo sign. We got separated at the next water stop, so I spurted ahead a bit and did not see them ahead of me and figured they might be behind me. I saluted Johnny Kelly’s statue at the foot of Heartbreak Hill, and then, buzzed up the hill with my full bravado caught by national TV as I crested the hill and began the flat out home stretch. As the newly renamed Anderson consulting company says in its logo “Now it gets interesting.”
I was talking to a young woman who had run with and around me for the last ten miles named Randi, who had never done Boston. A fellow with a Mass Gen shirt displaced her, and we compared notes. As I was talking to each of them, I realized there was a lot of noise around me, and I realized that here was Boston College trying to out-Wellesley Wellesley. They did a good job, but “Nothing comes close.”
The third group I could mention is the whole work force of Reebok, headquartered in Massachusetts. Two years ago they were all out on the course wearing blue jackets and ringing cowbells. This year they were out there in red jackets and were snapping little plastic clappers. As I came by, I pointed to the shoes—although I am not supposed to “call attention to the test models” which are not out in production or sales as yet. But I got the cheers of Reebok, and can later tell them that they saw one of their test pilots in action.
The last three miles are a drag. I saw the Citgo sign, but Kenmore Square kept retreating. If it were not for the fact that there is a thick crowd all along this route, I would have been tempted to stop and stretch, but the crowd would not let that happen, and I also knew that if I stopped, I was not going to be able to re-start with the stiffness that I could feel coming into my muscles already. They were not cramped up because of dehydration or lactic acidosis. They were just out of fuel. If I had not drunk lots I could have had another Gu or Power Gel and drunk much more water to keep these energy supplements down. But, I thought that this is the point where there is no tomorrow, and do not stop to drink or stretch, I plodded on at 9 minute mile pace and rounded the turn onto Boylston after passing the Harvard Club. It was here that I was struggling to keep my blue waistband long sleeve shirt (for the chilly wind tunnel of the post-Finish walk) from falling around my ankles. I saw the Finish Line ahead and kicked in with my head high and waving to the crowd as they carried some fallen runners by me in Wheelchairs. It was not until I was in the chutes looking for the Mylar space blanket, that I remembered to turn off the watch, and all I saw was that it was just after four hours; I usually do Boston in the 3:47--3:56 range—but this was one time I really did not care what the time was. I had done what I had set out to do, and I thought that the day, the race, and my run, were all gracious mercies and all were enjoyed thoroughly.
I pulled on the Lifa pullover from the Antarctic run after I had picked up the medal and the Mylar blanket and walked around to the Copley entrance to take the indoor route to my hotel where I could get my blood drawn (and post-race weight, which was seven pounds down despite drinking at each water station) and change into the warm-up clothes. When I arrived I saw a small piece of the videotape from the TV finishes of the winners. The number one male came from K-----, but not Kenya! He was #4, a Korean! The same female Kenyan won as did last year. My hero in the good sport department is Driscoll, the eight-time wheelchair winner has retired from racing, so that allowed Savage of Switzerland to come in first in the women’s wheelchair division. It was in the Jefferson Room that I met my colleagues, all salted over and smiling, and heard about my own TV performance at the crest of Heartbreak Hill.
Having showered and sucked up two more juice liters, foregoing the more abundant beer, I got a taxi with my checked bags and rode out to the World Trade Center where I found the new rented Mazda without even so much as a ticket waiting unmolested—one of my smaller triumphs in Boston parking. I drove down to Providence to rendezvous again with Lee and MJ Dutton to make plans for the Hartford Marathon on October 13.
Boston, and THE Marathon, are as good
as it gets!
Just wait until next year!