Baystate Marathon

Kevin Beck
October 17 1999
Tyngsboro, MA

After my running inexplicably bottomed out in mid-August (well, I suppose there's always an explanation for such things, but I have no idea what it was in this case), I took ten days off altogether, ate abominably bad foods, focused my energies on other pursuits, and resolved not to keep track of my weekly mileage for the remainder of the year. And waited patiently for the running bug to bite again. 

One thing that did revitalize my running in a roundabout way was coaching high school cross-country for the first time: I found myself worrying more about the kids' races than mine while I was on training runs, but at the same time I couldn't very well squawk at them for slacking if I wasn't putting my feet to the grindstone myself. I found that I had eight weeks to get in shape for the Baystate Marathon and did the best I could, capping off my training with a 1:11:01 half-marathon. Going into my seventh marathon in six years of doing them (and my third shot at Baystate), I thought I was ready to erase my PR of 2:30:52 from two years ago.

The course is a very flat double loop through the largely working-class towns of Tyngsboro, Lowell, and Chelmsford. The accompanying half-marathon starts concurrently with the marathon - this was a big advantage for me in 1997 when the half was the USATF-NE championship (I went through 13.1 in 1:13:30 behind 35 half-marathoners) and I was hoping for plenty of first-half company again. Byrne Decker was in the race, "fresh" off a big negative-split (1:16/1:12) 2:28 CR at the Portland (Maine) Marathon just two weeks ago. He was hoping to have recovered enough to run a similarly paced 2:25 or faster. There was also a crew of 6-8 "CMS-East" runners, athletes coached by Bob Sevene who compete primarily on the track. One or more of them evidently hoped to run sub-2:22 and jump onto the Olympic Trials bandwagon. 

So from the outset I wasn't thinking win. And anyway, in a marathon, who I "beat" or fail to beat is, in the end, quite incidental, because my race is (if I'm doing things right) run entirely from within. With that in mind, I figured I'd stick near Byrne in the early miles, but resolved to abandon his companionship if he didn't adhere to his usual conservative-start plan. I didn't see a lot of other guys in my general range, but one interesting factor at Baystate is the lack of distinction between the race numbers of half-a-thoners and those of marathoners - anyone can "bail" en route and choose to switch to the half if the full isn't looking like a good proposition. Talk about temptation.

Anyway, the gun went off, the yellow singlets of the track guys shot off into the distance, and I settled in at the head of a small pack with Byrne. "This is gonna be fun," he said, referring to the corpses of fallen marathoners he hoped and expected to pick his way over in the later miles. They were certainly setting an ambitious pace, and I guessed that a lot of them were running to pace a select few through a 1:10-1:11 half. I went through the mile in 5:46 - a perfect warm-up for proposed 5:40-5:43 pace. But the next one skipped by in 5:30 (11:16), setting a pattern that would not relent for...a while. 

"Who's the woman?" Byrne asked, and for the first time I noticed that one of the smooth-striding figures in front of us belonged to a female. This was Kristen Beaney of CMS, and she wasn't messing around - she would wind up with a 1:13+ for one of the fastest US half-marathon times of the year!
Byrne and I edged away from the pack and then suddenly began gobbling up bodies at a faster pace. I had felt strong and smooth through splits of 16:59 at 3 miles, 22:34 at 4, and 28:12 at 5. But mile 6 - when it seemed the people in front of us were suddenly fading - went by in 5:22 (33:34 total). Oops! It was nice to have a quick 18 seconds added to the cushion on 5:40s, but at what eventual cost?

At 7 miles I let Byrne, who seemed to have slipped comfortably into his best gear, go ahead and focused on relaxing so that I would not fritter away my only marathon shot of the year. 7 in 39:12, 8 in 44:38 (finally catch Beaney here), 9 in 50:11,10 in 55:37...the 5:30s kept coming, Byrne had pulled 100-125 meters ahead, and I was somewhere in the top ten overall but unsure of who was in the half and who was in for the long haul.

The halfway point of this marathon provides a transition that is almost palpable: The crowd is yelling for the finishing half-marathoners, the leaders gain a sense of exactly where in the field they stand, that subtle "just-over-the-hump" feeling takes hold...and the road suddenly becomes a lot lonelier. The second loop is identical to the first, but by the time the last 10K rears its head, tunnel vision usually erodes any recollection of having been there just an hour or so earlier.

I hit halfway in 1:12:50, in fourth place, and now there was really no backing off; either I'd pay a potentially tremendous price or I was having a great day. I will stress that at no point did a lack of confidence impact my race. I heard some fast splits, but simply chalked them up to feeling good and that was that. This, I think, is the mental value of MP runs - an effect that becomes almost as powerful (but not quite) as the physiological training toward the end.

I reached the 14-mile mark in 1:17:47. (I never record splits on my watch, but through some combination of memory and logical interpolation, I am usually able to remember most of them - if I want to.) Two years ago I blasted through miles 12-16 at sub-5:30s - way too fast for my conditioning then, and it cost me dearly in the later miles; today I merely maintained the effort of the previous miles to glide through this stretch at a similar pace. 

I started looking for J.R. Stockwell, my N.H. buddy who would be serving me up 20-ounce bottles of fruit punch at either end of the bridge over the Merrimack River that links the 15- and 20-mile marks. I spotted him just before 15 (1:22:20), grabbed the bottle and start gulping away. Yow! Way damn sweet! But remembering the DeathMarch™ of 1997, I forced myself to down all of it within 200 meters or so. A minute of discomfort, then I was okay. 

I hit 16 miles in 1:29 even, and now I was far enough into the race to start playing mind games, such as, "I can basically run 6:00 pace from here on in and still break 2:30." The sun had come out and the effect was bound to be unpleasant. I suddenly saw the 3rd-place guy, a Kenyan, coming back hard.
When I got within 30 yards he abruptly came to a standstill and lay down. Gotta love the marathon. So now it was some unknown guy some unknown distance ahead, Byrne (now at least 45-60 seconds ahead), me, and no one within a quarter mile or so in my wake. 

17 miles in 1:34:34. 18 in 1:40:12. The sub-5:40s were still happening and I wasn't going to complain. My legs were getting that annoying slow-to-respond thing going, but I wasn't in trouble, and 18 miles is my usual "can-almost-start-to-think-about-someday-sniffing-the-finish-line" point of a 'thon. Byrne was no longer pulling away and appeared to be coming back. The sun was out in full force and I started favoring shade over running tangents. Then more mind games - "Come to think of it, I haven't done a whole lot of long runs recently, now, have I?" But I squelched them, remembering my 30K time trial at 5:35 pace instead. 19 miles passed in 1:45:45, and not long after that comes J.R. again, bottle in hand. Bless his soul, but darn it too - hadn't I just seen him and tossed back a load of that sweet-and-sour citrus crap? But I knew that taking my medicine meant surviving a while longer, and so I did. This time I burped and spat and mumbled and drooled and just about puked, but there was no real discomfort involved. A small uphill, then another, then the all-important and dignified 20-mile mark of the marathon. 1:51:28. That's a PR. In fact, every step since the misguided 1:12:50 half had been a PR. But I was more worried about the one lurking up the street.

21 miles passed in 1:57:04, and Byrne was obviously in trouble now. A half mile later I passed him by, but every step of my own required some degree of concentration. But I would not bend. I may be bent by forces beyond my reckoning but I would not bend to the whims of my straining will, which told me to "ease in with Byrne." I passed him instead, and he offered a thumbs-up, a few words of encouragement, and the admission that he was "shutting it down." 22 miles in 2:02:48. I started to think, hey, this kind of feels just like a regular old long run. Only 25 minutes or so of running left. How hard could that be? I realized I could fold like a napkin and run 2:30, but I also knew that I have disproved a few of my own "no-way-I-won't-run-such-and-such" mid-marathon theories in the past, so I was loath to re-evaluate my goals on the fly. 

Plus it was getting harder to think.

23 miles in 2:08 and some number of seconds that escape me. I started getting conflicting accounts from spectators and volunteers (one of whom managed to jump out of a car and RIGHT into my path, getting a very profane earful as a result) - some said I was in second place, some say I'm third, and in truth I didn't give a hoot one way or the other at this point. Over the Tyngsboro Bridge and head-on into a chorus of cheers from the teenage girls managing the final aid station. 24 in 2:14:28. I took my final swigs of fluid (Gatorade? Water? Who could tell?) and plowed on.

I'd gone to my arms by then, bound by the somehow grim realization that unless tragedy struck, I would absolutely crush my PR. And it was warm - 77 degrees by early afternoon, according to accuweather.com. 

Dave Dunham and Rich Bolt - Byrne's erstwhile support crew - whizzed by on bikes. "First place is two minutes up on ya! But he's got his head down!" one of them trumpeted. "You can break 2:27!" The other one brayed. They had the best of intentions, but in my harried state they seemed like fitter versions of Stadler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show. Break 2:20-what?

Here I started passing by loads of half-marathoners - and marathoners! How can anyone drive themselves through five hours of running?! I used that question to my advantage when I got to 25 miles (2:20:03) and realized that I only needed to run for seven more minutes myself. I yelled just as loud for the struggling runners cheering me on as they did for me, and mentally fed off these exchanges. I even considered counting off the remaining seconds: Less than 400, not so bad! Pump the arms...no, count breaths instead of seconds. And those breaths were loud now, grunts borne of some combination of effort, angst, determination, and dawning triumph. Yup, this was a great day indeed, and it still hurt.

 The marathon is physiological chaos - how could I have forgotten? I can't run this fast, I found myself arguing inwardly. Shut up and get those knees up, came the sharp voice of PR reason. I decided to break the remaining distance into quadrants - 90 seconds at a time...look at the pretty trees! Nice try at a diversion there, but man I was in the last stretch of a marathon...and a sick, sick part of me didn't want it to end quite yet, because in spite of the stiletto heels merrily kicking away at my quads, this was a rare feeling, one no amount of riches could ever avail me of.

As it turned out, CMS veteran Rusty Snow, who races well over a great range of distances, finished first in 2:25:41. But it didn't matter - as I entered the last quarter-mile, I could hear the crowd cheering for the winner, but those cheers meant just one thing to me: there was a finish line just ahead. And as the noise grew louder, I started to kick. I thrashed along in giddy defiance of past failures, of the jerks at the Concord Monitor who kept botching my kids' meet results, of the idea that no one really races a marathon. And I'm not ashamed at the snot flying from my nose or the grimace signaling the very real pains (how did I miss those?) shooting into my quads as I turn into the Lowell Tech High School driveway and skip over the speed bumps, the finish clock is in sight and wait what's that - a 6 or a 7? - that's a 6 and here it is the line the people the chute I am crossing the finish line in 2:26:51 and I can stop now. A PR by exactly four minutes.

What happened? Well, seven weeks of training and a mini-taper included the classic elements of "my" plan - a 20K run at 5:33 pace embedded in a 20-miler; a 30K run at 5:35 pace embedded in a 22-miler; and - more to Tegla Laroupe's style than my own recommendations - a 13.1 mile submaximal effort (but PR) at 5:25 pace just 8 days before the biggie. No races, but some solid "tempo runs," including a pair of 5-milers.

Also very important - crucial, I am sure - was choking down 800+ calories worth of fluids, plus another 250 just before the start. It was also important to urinate profusely on the tranquil - and well-occupied - fairway of a very exclusive county club. 

And this, as they say, was one way to do it.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008 04:33 PM