• BESIDE THE POINT

After spending a week kicking back with friends in New Hampshire and hitting the frigid streets for some mellow runs with Komen, I arrived at the Huntsville Hilton on Thursday afternoon. I ran an easy five miles, trying to tour the first few miles of the race route but getting lost several times in spite of carrying two maps. After Byrne and Dave arrived that evening we laid waste to two pizzas, exchanged numerous witless insults, and crashed early. We ran an easy half-hour before the onset of rains predicted to last right up until the start of the race, then embarked on a typical marathon-eve day of focused lassitude: Watching (and bemoaning) weather reports, swilling variously colored fluids, commenting on one another’s dietary foibles, calling friends back North, emotionally abusing ourselves and each other at the invited runners’ “chat panel,” napping, and complaining about the weather as well as the televised reports regarding it. We went to Kroger, where I patiently taught an addled Byrne how to use the U-Scan checkout system.

Dave, whose goals were more low-key than Byrne’s and mine, added a second run and would reach 100 for the week. We sandwiched two movies - Goldmember (“Hellishly stupid!” - Kevin Beck; “Good for a few laughs, though!” - Dave Dunham) and The Bourne Identity (“Shut up so I can watch!” - Byrne Decker) - around the pasta feed and were practically asleep by the time featured speaker John (The Penguin) Bingham presumably took the dais downstairs at 7:30.

• NOT POINT-TO-POINT

The start and finish lines of this mixed out-and-back and loop course featuring 52 turns are both within two hundred yards of the Hilton, an invaluable advantage. Race morning dawned partly cloudy with temperatures in the high thirties and winds (which, according to the Weather Channel, always blow in convenient 5-mile-an-hour increments) of 15 to 25 MPH. I opted for a short-sleeved Coolmax shirt under my singlet and beat-up gardening gloves to in lieu of the pair I’d lost somewhere in a hotel room which, under the influence of three constantly snacking, frequently changing, coffee-slurping and preoccupied men, had rapidly become a bona fide stankhole.

Heading downstairs, I was surprised to see people wearing race bibs wolfing down scrambled eggs and hash browns from the hotel restaurant’s buffet just forty-five minutes before the marathon start, and wondered non-judgmentally if this sketchy behavior was related to whatever words of wisdom I’d missed at the previous evening’s pep talk.

A half-hour before the start, I warmed up for about eight minutes around a nice little in-town pond, terrorizing a gaggle of relatively tame city ducks as a means of getting in some quasi-striders, then ran for another five or six minutes right before, and during, the National Anthem (who among even the most ardent patriots would look askance at a runner trying to keep warm at a critical moment?). Wearing bib #4 based on a gracelessly aging PR, I lined up next to #’s 5 (Byrne) and 12 (Dave). We were loose and ready.

• GETTING TO THE POINT

The early miles of the race wind through downtown Huntsville, a city of about 150,000. The first two miles constitute a climb by RCM standards - about 50’. Ohio’s Nate Norris, who ran 2:23:43 here in 2001, immediately assumed the lead, while Byrne and I settled into a pack with at least a dozen others. I had failed to start my watch at the gun, but according to the clock on the lead vehicle we reached the mile in 5:35, which did not deter the volunteer standing there from calling out “4:50!” (many of the early splits would be fast by the same 45 seconds). 5:35 was encouraging - it felt more like a 5:50 and was a pace I had experienced less frequently since July than I cared to admit - but early splits don’t mean diddlyjack. As I sensed a bunch of Trials hopefuls in our pack pick it up in an effort to make up ten lost seconds all at once, I tried to ease off and failed, hitting the second mile in 5:23 for a total time of 10:58. Lanky and soft-spoken Russ Sears, a newly minted master from Indiana with a 2:18 PR, scampered ahead to join Norris, while Byrne bided his time, fronting our pack of eight or nine (okay, I didn’t count bodies but sensed their numbers dwindling).

It was just around the two-mile mark that I, by my detailed if approximate reckoning, topped 5,000 miles for the calendar year.

That second mile for me set in motion a pattern of consistent splits within a few ticks either way of 5:25, which meant I was running faster than I felt I should be, margin unknown. (I would record yearly road bests at every distance from 8K on up this morning, but then I hadn’t recorded any times between 5K and 26.2M in 2002 except for two rancid half-marathons.) Nevertheless, I preferred running in a group and actually felt better after cresting a token rise at seven miles than I had at the outset. (A sure sign of the impending apocalypse: A bespectacled, grinning woman standing at the seven-mile mark hollered out “DONNYBROOK!” as I trundled past.)

By nine miles, Sears had fallen back and prohibitive favorite Dennis Simonaitis, another Massachusetts native wandering half-naked around Huntsville in December, had moved easily past me to join the leaders. He was followed in the act by Isaac Kariuki, an African (something tells me) and last-minute entrant who showed no audible signs of breathing as he loped ahead of our group and made the vanguard, now 100m-150m ahead, a foursome along with Byrne and Norris. The 6’ 3” Simonaitis, who at age 40 had recently run 29 and change for 10K, nearly whacked his head while entering an annoying, low-clearance foot-tunnel near 12K. My own pack had also been whittled by the hill and the ambitious (for most of us) pace down to four - me, Bill Baldwin of North Carolina (47:00 and change in the last two Gate City River Run 15K’s), Donn Craig of Ohio (2:28 PR), and Louis-Phillipe Garnier of Montreal (obviously), who had run 2:27 five weeks earlier in Richmond, Va. but today had looked like hell warmed over right from the get-go, burping and flapping along in the ostentatious fashion of Quebecois.

Just before ten miles we turned onto Bailey Cove Road, a four-lane, exquisitely flat stretch that would last nearly five miles and offered about a kilometer in forward visibility at any point. It felt as though we were running into a slight headwind, which pleased me greatly since I felt quite relaxed at PR pace and the last fifteen miles would be run in the opposite direction. I should have known better. I should have spat.

My splits for miles three through thirteen and the total time at each point were, as best as I can remember, 5:24, 5:21, 5:26, 5:24, 5:26, 5:25, 5:24, 5:31, 5:27, 5:31 and 5:34 (16:22, 21:43, 27:09, 32:33, 37:59, 43:25, 48:49, 54:20, 59:47, 1:05:18, and 1:10:52; 1:11:28 at halfway). When Baldwin surged slightly ahead near eleven miles, the gastrically garrulous Garnier fomented moderation and teamwork, which, in view of the whimsically egalitarian prize-money structure and out present collective position in the pack, really did make sense. By 14 miles (1:16:22) Baldwin was history and no one else was within a minute of us. Byrne, Simonaitis, Norris, and Kariuki had gone through halfway in around 1:10:50.

• THE TURNING POINT

At a right turn just before fifteen miles, the entire race  changed with an almost audible snap. What I had somehow perceived as a mild headwind had really been a crosswind and partial tailwind, and now we were running dead into a brisk headwind. My 15th mile was 5:31, but 85% of that mile had been before the turn and my 16th - mostly up a slight grade - was barely under 6:00. I immediately stopped thinking about time in order to enhance my chances of surviving what had busily and quickly become a race of exaggerated attrition - the lead foursome still looked good (from a growing distance) but odds were at least one of them would go to pieces. I kept my head down and traded places with Garnier and Craig, meaning I floated between 5th and 7th place as I drew past eighteen miles (1:39:11).

Denied the usual opportunity to have race minions place my personal drink bottles along the course, I’d been taking Gatorade at the aid stations spaced two miles apart and had managed to recruit someone to bring a pint of Hawaiian Punch to somewhere near 30K, so remained pretty well fueled up throughout the race, but with a quarter of the marathon remaining my right calf was becoming a concern. I had one bitter moment right before nineteen miles when a cop inexplicably let me miss a turn and run about 30 meters off the course (fortunately, a sporting Garnier, who had been paying attention to the marks on the road and had noticed my error from a position about 20 meters ahead, bellowed at me in clipped, belchy English for Craig and me to follow him). My time at nineteen miles was 1:44:57, so I’d somehow split a 5:46. Visibility was now limited to a maximum of several blocks because we were back in town proper and turning corners at, ah, every turn, but I could see that both Norris and Kariuki had fallen off the pace and that Byrne and Simonaitis were, together or separately, now way the hell ahead of everyone else. After I ran 5:48 for the 20th mile for a total time of 1:50:45, it occurred to me for the first time all day that I really had no business running close to 5:30’s for even this long, given what training-log forensic specialists would deem my decidedly nonspecific preparation. But it was too late for that hokum. If I can run 5:45’s the rest of the way, I thought, I will finish third. I was right. Just after twenty miles came the usual swell of competitive shifts. The African pulled to the side of the road and called it a day just after seeing someone looking and running like me leave him in arrears. I caught Norris, now suffering from hamstring woes, at around twenty-one miles (1:56:44). Craig seemed to be faltering - I’d gapped him by five or ten seconds - but Garnier was on the verge of breaking contact. I thought clinically: This is just like Hartford circa 1998. I’m not going to blow up; I’m just going to smolder, slowing down bit by bit. This sucks, but I’ll live with it.

Soon Garnier was 100 meters ahead and although he didn’t look any better than I felt, he never had in the first place. It was now almost certain that I would wind up 4th and thus, in a sense, the first loser, finishing ten minutes ahead of slackers like Dave and earning not a penny more, yet unable to muster up whatever effort it would take to gain 30 seconds and an additional $250. But having not come all the way to Alabama to piddle around, I fought as hard as I could, and realized at twenty-three miles (2:08:39) that if I could remain in my just-under-six-minutes-a-mile rut I could beat my Boston time from April (2:28:30). The wind was still in my face, but by now I was used to its banal effect on my stride, rhythm, and splits.

• THE WHOLE POINT

At twenty-four miles (2:14:38) I made one last pseudo-move to catch Garnier, figuring there was no way I would cede 4th place even if I imploded further as a result. This “move” consisted of lifting my feet a few inches off the pavement for about fifty meters, but in spite of its ineffectiveness it didn’t ruin me. I hit twenty-five miles in 2:20:31 and the one-mile-to-go mark in 2:21:50 and decided 2:28:00 was likely with a bit of work. The second half of the final mile was on a slight downgrade, so I wound up finishing 4th in 2:27:31, my third fastest marathon of the eleven I’ve finished.

Drama had beaten me to the line. Simonaitis, in an eerie reprise of Chad Worthen’s 2:22:03 Trials near-miss at Cal International the week before, got even closer without plucking a cigar with a 2:22:02 after taking the lead in the last 5K. But Byrne, in his 25th or 26th marathon and past his 35th birthday, had orchestrated a yeoman effort, leading and generally controlling the race from 10K on and forcing the pace into the wind, no cup of joy for a 5’ 7”, 125-pound law firm partner with four young kids. His 2:22:48 was a PR by 2:12 and a convincer to all of us, even him, that he could run 2:22:00 and more likely 2:20:00 on a pancake or slightly aided course. Dave moved up from 25th at halfway to 10th at the finish, running 2:36:22 and not straying from his plan despite the early bombast of a cast of hundreds.

• PRESSURE POINTS

After we reconnoitered in the hotel lobby, Dave suggested we take advantage of the free post-race massage, something I’d never done. When he and I walked into a room full of tables to find two of them free, Dave made a beeline for the table staffed by a veritable blonde bombshell, leaving me in the hands of a guy who looked and spoke exactly like Todd, the teacher from Beavis and Butthead. Once again, Dave, a veteran of 400 road races, proved that experience always provides an edge.

• BALL POINTS

After the awards ceremony, the three of us went to T.G.I. Friday’s and methodically plowed our way through several thousand starchy, greasy calories apiece. I suspected Byrne was feeling unwell when he failed to finish a tall Sam Adams in short order, and on the way back to the hotel, seated silently in the back, he threw open the car door when we stopped at a red light and horked up what had been a damned fine meal onto one of Huntsville’s busiest thoroughfares. It was a fitting display of guts from a fellow who’d already dumped a big heap of them scattered on the pavement of the Rocket City that morning.

• BONUS POINTS

The day before the race, I met a gentleman from Rochester, N.Y. named Norm Frank. Fortuitously, we shared a flight out of town on Sunday morning and discussed possibilities I might keep in mind for a fast spring marathon. Norm, 71, should know. RCM 2002 was his 800th marathon since he started running them half a lifetime ago. No North American has run more.

In response to an inevitable question, he has an interesting anecdote. Some years ago, he asked one of his granddaughters what she planned to do when she grew up. The girl, five or six years old, explained that one day she’d be a dance instructor. Norm told her, “Well, I can’t wait to see that!” Replied the girl: “Aw, you’ll be dead by then!”

“That,” says Norm, “is why I run so many marathons.”

Funny. I myself seem to die every time I run one of the damned things and I am 789 races behind Norm Frank. But how quickly we all forget this part…although Norm, who at a recent rate of two marathons every three weeks barely has time to shower between expos, might be forgiven for not forgetting as much as some of us.

But who would really want to forget?

And what would be the point, anyway?