Actually, they might be coming back to me. Or, at least a couple of runners are.
It looks like two guys are starting to yo-yo off the back of the lead pack. A gap will open up, then they will surge a bit and latch back onto the pack. Then they will drift off again -- just a little more this time -- before accelerating again and making contact.
Surging and slowing -- that is a difficult way to race.
A third time comes when the two runners fall off the back, but this time they have no response. Their gap to the lead group grows one stride at a time; 2 meters, then 5, 10, and pretty soon I come to a realization: these two are coming back to me.
This is it! The first two professional casualties arrive as a pair. This is why you keep the lasso tight, I tell myself.
This is also why you race with your head up. You can see when people start coming back to you, and then you can respond.
I can’t quite tell who they are yet, but I can judge their stride rate compared to mine. It is a quick slowdown for these two. Each stride is heavy, labored, and slow.
This happened quickly, but that is how it usually goes in a marathon. When -- not if -- you fall off pace, it is not a gradual slide. Rather, it is more like a cliff: one minute you are racing along at pace, maybe labored a little bit, and then the next your legs are locking up and your breathing becomes labored and your day is over. Just like that.
It wasn’t much beyond this point in my first marathon when I fell off the--
Stop. No negative thoughts right now. I’m bringing these two guys back.
As I race closer to the pair, I sort of can make out who they are. No Americans, which is nice -- hey, they may be my competitors at the moment, but I’m still a fan and I want to see my countrymen do well at America’s premier race. It is an Ethiopian and a Japanese athlete coming back to me.
It only takes me a minute to make psychological contact with the pair. Admittedly, I have been consciously surging since I noticed I could catch the pair.
As I close on them, I can tell the Ethiopian is falling off of the Japanese. He is slowing considerably. What had been race pace is turning into a plod, then a jog, and now -- could it be? -- a walk!
I glance towards him as I fly by, and he is slowly, gingerly, bending over to sit on the side of the road. He doesn’t look up from the pavement.
Before I realize it, I have almost run up on the Japanese athlete. He runs on the white line on the left side of the road, his face contorted into a pained grimace. I continue past on the double yellow. Neither of us acknowledges the other.
Nothing helps break through the Suck quite like passing people. In the second half of a race, it is always better to be the passer than then passee. Being overtaken can crush your spirits, but crushing someone else’s spirit can lift yours. It is a competition, after all.
Despite a long grind uphill for much of the second half, mile 16 flashes by in what has felt like the shortest mile since the ninth. I look at my split -- 5:02 -- and it is no wonder this mile has felt so quick: it has been the fastest since the downhill Wellesley mile. As the gradual hill levels off, I hope that I didn’t burn it just a little too hard chasing those guys down.
At this moment, a song from college wedges its way into my head. Not the whole song, per se, but just a chorus on repeat, driven by a thumping drum beat. “Don’t slow down, don’t slow dow-o-o-own, don’t slow down.”
I am not slowing. I’m gaining on the leaders. I can bring them back.
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