Slightly panicked by the abrupt shift in race dynamics, I hardly notice the 13th mile marker and then the 13.1 marker for halfway passing in quick succession. No time to think that we’re only halfway and I have to do all of this again. Or that 1:06:30 is the second fastest half marathon I’ve ever done, behind the 1:04:18 I ran last summer to qualify for the Olympic Trials. Or that, you know, my only other half marathons were part of that disastrous Trials race. One of those half splits was…
Stay out of your head, man. No time to think in this situation; you can only react.
At this point, a quarter of the way into the fourteenth mile, I can’t see the leader anymore. I can vaguely make out the media van and pace cars ahead on the road, but no longer can I make out the numbers on the race clock.
For the first half of the race, seeing each second tick by made it hard to keep cool. Thinking about the more-than-two hours left of racing is daunting when you see the numbers click past 10:00, 10:01, 10:02…
I suppose it might be for the best that I can’t see the clock any more. In any race, it is best not to think about how much you have left until you can feel the finish. The fourteenth mile is not close enough to let those thoughts creep in. Hell, I don’t even want to entertain dreams of the finish until after the twentieth mile! There is still an hour left of racing -- and in Boston, this is the hour where it gets hard.
I’ve heard horror stories of the Newton hills. You hear it all the time from veterans of the course, “Even though the course runs mostly downhill in the first half, do not try to bank time.” There are way too many cases of athletes -- professional and amateur alike -- bombing down the first half of the course and then cratering in Newton.
I think I read that Shalane Flanagan described the feeling as “thigh smash.” Running downhill is easier metabolically -- you use less energy because gravity is pulling you down -- but deceptively harder neuromuscularly. Every stride down a slope pounds your legs muscles just a little more than a normal stride. Your quads and hamstrings should be acting as shock absorbers, but asphalt is an unforgiving surface.
What makes Boston an especially cruel course is that it softens you up with such a long stretch of mostly-downhill running (15 miles of it!) before hitting you with four long hills through the next four miles. The moment you demand your legs to propel you against gravity (for the first time in at least an hour and half) is the moment they’re depleted.
I fucking hate hills.
I can remember countless cross country races in both high school and college where I got dropped on the hills. I was one of those weird distance runners who liked track more than cross country, and hills were one of the main reasons.
I just never seemed to have the strength to power over inclines like some of my competitors did. I had all the basics down -- shorten your stride, pump your arms, lean into it -- but I could never hang with bigger, stronger runners. Elevation change just wrecks me. That is why I preferred track. It’s a flat, even surface with regular intervals. You’ll hear a common refrain that track is boring while cross country is interesting, but I was never interested in the scenery. I just wanted to get into a rhythm and click off my splits. The monotony of the track brought me into the zone so much easier; all the ruts and roots and hills and dales of the cross country course broke apart my flow.
It doesn’t help that I’ve done just about all of my training in Kansas, either. I am from the somewhat ironically named town of Flint Hills, where there aren’t any hills within town limits. If you follow some of the dirt roads out into the prairie, you’ll end up finding some inclines -- ‘hills’ is a bit too generous of a term for them.
That said, like any younger runner, hill reps were a staple of my training schedule. Just about every week in high school, our coach would pack the team (all six of us) into a beat-up van and drive out to the closest thing we had to a respectable hill. We’d sprint up, jog down, turn around, and repeat until we puked. It was torture in the heat of a Great Plains summer, with no shade to provide any relief.
In August there are only so many layers of clothing you can shed. But there we were, up-down-up-down in running shorts and racing flats, sweat flying off our limbs mixing the dirt into mud with a sizzle. You know it was an especially bad day when you eventually stopped sweating and were left with salt streaks on your forehead, shoulder, and shorts.
We left parts of ourselves on that hill; we owned it.
Despite our Kansas upbringing, that hill became our staple session. We were out there in every weather imaginable -- gale force winds, thunderstorms that turned the dirt road to muck, blizzard conditions; you name it, we were out there.
Come college, we emphasized hills slightly less. At times we were relegated to the campus parking garage, dodging cars and security guards. Campus police yelled at us a couple times, but what were they going to do, chase us down? We were the XC team for fuck’s sake!
And through all of that, I still sucked at hills. That weakness stayed a weakness. The best race I’d run in a while -- that half marathon that qualified me for the Trials -- was pancake flat. I loved it. I found my groove, hit my splits, and just freaking cruised. I was in the zone the whole time.
Why the hell did I choose to race Boston?
***
The hills are coming, but it might not matter if I keep dropping from the pack. Things are slipping away from me, and I feel helpless to stop it.
Looking up ahead, the single-file line of racers gradually splits into two lines on either side of the double yellow line. Of course, I think, they set up the elite drink stations in the center of the road. Each of those guys has their own custom water bottle with their preferred carb mix, chilled and waiting for them at regular intervals.
And here I am drinking either water or Gatorade out of Dixie cups just like everyone else. Sure enough, upon passing the folding tables -- empty by this point -- I start to see the side of the road littered with mostly-used water bottles. I had almost forgot that the professional women came through before us.
Instead of hugging the centerline, I veer off to the left side of the road, opposite the normal traffic flow and thankfully in a small patch of much welcomed shade. Making sure to avoid stepping on a pro’s water bottle -- what a stupid way to sprain an ankle and end a race -- I eye the cup I am going to take.
I’ve never been particularly dexterous with my left hand, and it can be surprisingly difficult to grab a cup out of someone’s hand at 12 miles per hour. I haven’t practiced this enough. Well, it didn’t help that I had to train solo.
In at least one of his wins here, Bill Rodgers famously walked through the water stations en route to a 2:10 or something. I don’t have that luxury; I need to keep the gas on because I’ve been losing ground this mile.
And then there was Alberto Salazar, who didn’t take on any water during the scorching Duel in the Sun in ‘82. You know it’s famous when the race has a name. Some say that day ruined the rest of his running career. I don’t have that luxury, either; it’s getting damn hot and I can feel the sweat drying into salt around my eyes.
Here we go. I point to the volunteer in a poncho whose cup I’m going for. She holds her hand out a little more prominently. Don’t move the cup too much or I’ll miss it!
Still pointing ahead, I open up my left hand. With my momentum carrying me forward, I swing my left arm back in the opposite direction so that its relative speed matches that of the cup -- zero. I’ve got the cup behind me, now I need to pinch the top and tilt it so that, as I swing it forward, centripetal force holds the water in the bottom of the cup.
Then, keeping the top pinched, I make the exchange from left to right hand. Tilting my head to the opposite side, I try to drain the cup through one of the pinched ends into my mouth.
I get about half of the few ounces of water. The rest splashes in some form or another into my nose and onto my jersey. So it goes. As I crumple the used cup and toss it aside, I see out of the corner of my eye the volunteers slap a high-five. Sometimes you get so caught up in the seriousness of the race that your forget they’re having a great time.
Okay, if I can feel the salt on my face that also means I’m losing electrolytes, so I ought to grab some of the Gatorade while I’m at this water station. Of course, that Dixie cup took me most of the length of the tables, and pretty soon I’ll be out and back onto the regular road.
I point to the last volunteer holding a cup -- looks like one of the high school kids Amelia coaches -- and begin to repeat the process. Point, grab, swoop, and -- shit! I lost it. Looks like I’m not taking on Gatorade here, so I make a mental note to hit the next stop in a mile.
This has been one of my slowest miles, 5:13. I can feel the race starting to slip away just like that last cup. I’m the first runner to come through using the Dixie cups, but also the first one to fall off the lead pack.
It seems that’s not a coincidence.
**********
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