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Short version: Run it if you can, praise it if you can't. John Conley and his crew do a tremendous job with this event. Typical, BS-filled version: On Valentine's Day weekend, I traveled to one of the premier (in terms of both size and quality) marathon events in the United States, the Motorola Marathon in Austin, Texas. Although I was entered in the half-marathon that started in conjunction with the full, I attended primarily to support an Olympic Marathon Trials aspirant I've been coaching, Heather May, and secondarily to cover the race(s) for Running Times. After dealing with some injuries in the second half of 2003, I had been training well since November and had some idea of what I might be able to run on a course like Austin's, which drops a steady 20' per mile from start to finish. My own competitive aims were, however, a back-burner issue, although it's just as well that I gave sufficient attention to prepping for my own race to keep me from driving Heather nuts over the weekend - that was her husband's job, not mine. My race plan was to try to stick with the marathon leaders or at least close enough to them to follow the race, as it were, through at least 10K. Given the accomplishments of some of the runners in the overwhelmingly international field - there were several 2:12 - 2:14 types on board - I knew this would require going a bit over my head. Still. I was willing to try it even if it meant I'd be compromising my final result to some extent, though I had no intention of running blatantly toward a lactate-driven suicide. In other words, if I found myself running at 5K race pace off the line I wasn't going to hang onto the frontrunners, but I was willing to maintain a pace I knew I'd be unable to sustain for the entire 13.109 miles. It was a gamble but I really had nothing at stake. I knew that last year's marathon winner, Poland's Andrzej Krzyscin, was entered as a pace-setter, but also fully believed he'd wind up staying in the race the whole way, because he (or more accurately, his agent) had hedged slightly with regard to this issue in pre-race interviews, probably because they knew the field had been weakened by foreigners' visa problems (related to terrorism threats) and maybe to some degree by the fact that some countries will soon hold their Olympic Trials. I figured that if he planned to run 5:00 pace, he'd take the field out in around 5:15 to 5:20, given the 90' climb in the opening mile (I had meticulously studied the course profile and had spoken with several people who'd raced either the marathon or the half in the past) and the fact that an experienced marathoner's first mile tends to be a few seconds slower than his or her target pace even on a flat course. Well, when the gun was fired and pack took off, I found myself pulling ahead of the other half-marathoners (we all started on the left-hand side of the road, the marathoners on the right-hand side) but falling behind the marathoners in spite of settling into what felt like a fairly ambitious pace. Sure enough, I passed the mile in 5:08, a good 50 yards behind the lead group of six or seven runners. A Columbian athlete who had initially joined but quickly forsaken the front group fell in beside me and although I knew I'd overdone it, I felt okay and decided to plant myself in his immediate wake. The pack continued to pull away gradually as I and my new friend covered the second mile across the MoPac Loop and through Austin's northwestern reaches in 4:59 (10:07 total) before turning right (west) into a mild breeze. Okay, I thought, that was probably unwise, but it ain't the first time. I recall keeping half a mental ear on what would unfold shortly at every point I passed: I hope Heather doesn't run her first mile like I just did. Hope Heather is tucked in behind people when she hits this wind. As we passed the first fluid station, the Colombian guy (who turned out to be Jorge Real, a Brooklyn-based marathoner with a 2:21 at 7,000' to his credit) grabbed a cup of water, drank half of its contents, and held out the rest to me in gracious offering, but I waved him off, and - by way of explanation and sensing that he spoke English about as well as I spoke Columbo - lifted my plain gray T-shirt with the lone word BOSTON on it to show him my half-marathoner's bib. Right after that he tucked in behind me, which was the right idea.
This was already turning out to be a "fun" race, as I expected it would be - I was here in an emotionally charged setting, in a vibrant (if still mostly slumbering) city, and it was a calm, sunny, 40-degree morning; my own output was but an interesting aside. So what if I was going to be hurting as a result of my casual recklessness? It was a good day for it. I felt lucky to be doing this, which probably means I'm getting old, but no matter. A short, smart downhill took us through the fifth mile in 5:07 (25:31). I was now running just behind Real again. I wondered if I was getting Real tired, since I was starting to feel real tired myself...alrighty then, lame jokes aside, I took the point again, gauging the distance between our twosome and the leaders to be close to 200 meters. The six-mile mark seemed to appear out of nowhere. After covering the sixth mile in 5:02 (when in doubt, accelerate!) I knew I'd have to let off significantly or pay an even bigger price later: I was in over my head for sure now. I passed 10K in 31:41, bettering my loop-course personal best by few ticks, and then eased off for about 20 seconds in an effort to stay on the kind side of the hydrogen-ion-dissociation equation. I obviously lost contact with the quick Real really quickly (I know, I said I wouldn't do that anymore), and two other foreign marathoners passed me as well. Still, I figured I had no business covering the rest of the mostly downhill course at slower than 5:30 per mile unless I really threw in the towel. I was pleased to collect a 5:31 seventh mile (38:04 total) and felt somewhat recovered, so I tentatively sought out runners on the near horizon I might be able to pick off - the pack ahead was finally fragmenting by degrees. Mile eight took me 5:16 (41:20), during which time I passed a lanky Kenyan who was clearly not having his best day, and over the next, mostly flat mile (covered in 5:20 for a total time of 46:40) I slowly reeled in a pair of Africans, with Real and a few others far out of range. 15K split was 48:22, another sham "personal record." Somewhere along this stretch, we passed a band of young musicians that was jamming enthusiastically, if artlessly, off to the left. They looked like they had been up all night pounding beers as well as drums and possibly each other, which is about how I'd started to feel, though not necessarily in a terrible way. As we turned east onto 45th Street (where, directly facing a bright sun that was only a few degrees over the horizon, I was grateful for the sunglasses I proceeded to lower from the brim of my cap onto my face) we were presented with a slight upgrade - a 50' climb. After being spoiled by miles of flat and downhill running, such a thing seemed almost unfair. I had planned to ditch the BOSTON T-shirt after only a mile or so, but couldn't be bothered until this point; I was rather enjoying being called BOSTON by the spectators on the course (hey, three-time BAA Marathon champ and CR holder Cosmas Ndeti named his son BOSTON. though presumably without the CAPS LOCK KEY ENGAGED). But I was warm enough now so that parting with the shirt seemed prudent, so I hauled it over my head and tossed it randomly at the feet of a youngster watching the race. During this maneuver I was passed by someone with a yellow bib and realized that I had given almost no thought to the idea that I had, in some sense, been leading the race until this point (when guys planning to go twice as far as you are in the process of beating you by several minutes to your own finish line, the idea of "leading" anything seems grossly watered down.) He went by with some authority and I locked in behind the two Africans instead. Mile ten was 5:31 (52:11 total), matching my slowest. We turned right (south) again, and the downgrade resumed. I realized that although I couldn't make much of whatever I wound up recording here in terms of time, I could proceed at a three-quarter-assed effort or less and still approach my lifetime best (1:08:29). After a 5:13 eleventh mile (57:24 total) this seemed even more likely. I looked forward to the end of mile twelve on San Jacinto, because I had envisioned thousands of yammering UT students lining the street on the final, grossly downhill stretch. I had forgotten, however, that college students with or without rousing hangovers aren't apt to crawl out of bed at 7 a.m. on a Sunday just to watch a bunch of underdressed freaks trundle through campus.
Technically, every step past 10K had constituted a personal best of some sort, but not legitimate ones. Besides, in spite of the excessive, even painful amount of verbiage already dedicated to my own Texploits, the real story of my Motorola Austin experience was still only beginning to unfold...
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