I’m not going to run in the Narberth Run to beat Cystic Fibrosis this year. There’s no doubt it is for a great cause. The truth is, I didn’t start training early enough. It will be held two weeks from tomorrow. Anything you can do to support the event would be appreciated.
I did run a marathon at age 50, but I’d been training for the event for almost 3 years. The seed was planted in the summer of 2005. I’d planned to do it that fall, so it would just be a matter of picking the date and doing it, I figured. I spoke with a friend who had run a number of marathons, and told him my plan. Fortunately he didn’t laugh at me (at least not out loud). He told me that it would be very hard to train for an event that I believe, at the time, was less than 3 months away and then “just do it.”
I’d run a 5k race at the end of that summer. It was my first race in over 20 years. I’d run a 5k or two decades before, but none since then. I’d even run a half marathon around that time (1983 or so). But back then I was in my twenties.
Training
Then, after training at a distance of about 5k to five miles, one day when I was out in San Francisco, not only did I run those incredible hills, but I also ran about 11 or 12 miles, all the way from Union Square down to the Golden Gate Bridge and through Golden Gate Park. It was too much and I pulled something. So I hung up my running shoes for the year.
The next year I ran more sensibly. I worked my way up in races from a 5k to a 5-mile to a 10k to a 10-mile and then finished off the summer by running in the Philadelphia Distance Run, a half marathon, which I ran in mid-September. After that I retired from running for the year.
Then, in 2007, I had more ambitious plans. I started running at the beginning of the year, training just about every weekend. The day I ran 16 miles for the first time, I felt very beat up. My hip, my knee and my back all hurt. I’d suffered setbacks before but gotten over them. All of a sudden, seven weeks from a marathon I’d registered for, my prospects for my running in it looked pretty grim.
With a scheduled half marathon coming up in two weeks, I joined The Bryn Mawr Running Club. The “guru” there, Bob, devised a plan for me to continue to train for the marathon, but I was dubious. The plan called for my taking a weekend off, then doing the half marathon the following weekend, then 10 to12 miles the week after that, 18 miles the following week, 10 to12 the week after that, then 20, then two final weeks of 10 to12 mile runs, all supported by a half hour of running during the week.
Well, it must’ve worked because I felt like I was ready for the big day when it arrived.
Marathon weekend
Because all the nearby hotels were full of runners, volunteers and their families, my wife and I, plus our two dogs had to stay about 40 minutes away. I grabbed a ride from our hotel and rode in with two schoolteachers from upstate New Jersey. They were each running the half marathon, which, I soon found out, most of the 6000 runners that day had registered for. I figured that of those 6000 runners, only about a third ran the full marathon and some ran it as a relay team.
Race day
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The weather on the day of the race was ideal for running. It had drizzled early in the morning, but stopped. The temperature was in the 50’s with a mild breeze. The sky was overcast, not too cool and not too hot.
The origin of the marathon is quite interesting. The modern Athens marathon commemorates the run of the soldier Pheidippides from a battlefield at the site of the town of Marathon, Greece, to Athens, in 490 BC, bringing news of a Greek Victory over the Persians. Legend has it that Pheidippides delivered the momentous message “Niki!” (victory), then collapsed and died.
As the (New Jersey) race started, hoodies and other outergarments started flying over the sea of humanity to the sidelines. The horn blew and we were off, some more ambitiously than others. The scenery was actually quite pleasant, much better than I’d expected. It was almost all flat, except when we ran on a bridge that went over a causeway, which was lined with a myriad of boats. Although crowd support was certainly adequate, I tried not to get too caught up in it. I wanted to run my own race and stay focused.
As the great Yogi Berra said, “90% of the game is half mental.” Because I ran the first half in less than two hours, I thought I was going to break four hours. Although that wasn’t my goal, I thought I’d go for it anyway. So I picked up my pace a little at around the 14 mile mark. In retrospect, this turned out to be a mistake. I think I got a little greedy.
I felt okay until until around mile 18 or 19. It’s well known that many marathoners “hit a wall” around that distance. Although I never felt like I hit a wall per se, I struggled pretty much the entire last quarter of the race.
Along the way, I saw quite a few walkers, a number of people off the road (including one guy who appeared to be vomiting), several on stretchers and various other versions of self-inflicted human suffering. I must say it was quite a phenomenon.
Fortunately for me, I didn’t experience Pheidippides’ fate, but it certainly was no walk in the park, either. In the New Jersey marathon on Sunday, April 29, 2007, in Long Branch, New Jersey, I crossed the finish line in 4:16:25. However, because there were approximately 6000 runners, I didn’t get to the starting line for almost 5 minutes after the race started. So, the computer chip I wore around my ankle (as did everyone else) registered my time at 4:12:17.
The aftermath
I came in 795th overall, 576th out of 1020 men and 56th among 120 in my age category (50-54 years old). I ran the first half in 1:54:59 and the second half in 2:17:19. It was my first marathon.
There were some interesting signs along the way. A lot of “Run, (runner’s name), run” signs. One I liked was “Earn Your Shower.” I will say the shower and hot tub afterwards was one of the most pleasurable things I’ve ever experienced in my life.
Which brings me to my favorite sign, which, I must say, choked me up a little. It said something like “Running shoes $78; gym fees $120; Gatorade $3; being cancer free for 5 years: priceless.”
