Ah, the running life! My brother Spike is headed for Boston tomorrow to run the Marathon, his second, I think. I am very proud of him. I was pretty cocky about having completed seven of the 26.2 endurance contests, but while he started his marathon career later than I did, his accomplishments quickly eclipsed my much more modest efforts.
He was not there last year- schedule conflict or something- and I am delighted that he missed the deadly attack, which I was startled to remember was a year ago yesterday.
That was a doubly memorable day. Our pal Mac Showers was laid to rest over at Arlington in one of the great celebrations of his life, and of the craft that hundreds of us shared with him. It was a cloudy day, but temperate. Not like what we had here, with sheets of rain and plummeting temperature so abrupt that I had to bring in the plants from the patio on the near-certainty that the frost would kill them.
We walked somber back from the grave to climb into the cars. I had left the satellite radio on in the Panzer, and the first words we heard when I turned the ignition were of the bombings in Boston. It was a personal affront- I don’t think anyone who has ever plodded the full distance hasn’t had at least a thought of doing it well enough to Qualify for Boston.
It is a mantra. It is that powerful.
We listened in disbelief as we drove to Willow for a gathering to honor Mac’s memory in a way he would have appreciated, but the news was bad, and brought back the dark mood that followed 9/11, when the Pentagon was still burning.
That is what swirls and draws the memories of the hundreds of miles of training runs back, and tinges them with a sense of rage. People work hard to accomplish even one of these races- and for the vast majority of us we will never qualify for something as grand in tradition as Boston.
A pal down in North Carolina is on the path of enlightenment through sweat. She reported that she successfully completed the Hickory Half Marathon last weekend, as I lolled around on the first 80-degree day of spring at the farm. She wrote: “OMG! Hills and heat. Do I need to say more? It was pretty tough — I was so slow and had to walk up the last part of a few hills. But I did it!!!”
I had to smile. Everyone runs their own race, but all the races have something in common when they are done. All have their little challenges, over and above the build-up of lactic acid in the blood, and the burning lungs. Somewhere in there is the legendary “wall,” that thing you hit when the legs begin to get rubbery and you can see nothing except that little circle of gray pavement in front of your feet. i
My first marathon in Honolulu in 1982 taught me a lot. Vaseline on the nipples and a slippery singlet prevents chafing and bleeding. Avoid bleeding through you shoes, if you can. It does get easier, if you have put in your roadwork. I have done them prepared and unprepared, and trust me, prepared is much better.
(The 1982 Honolulu Marathon official poster. Wish I still had mine. Broke four hours, which is all I wanted to accomplish. Besides finishing, of course).
Most of the races have an insult in them, just when you are least prepared to deal with it. In Honolulu, it was the flank of Diamond Head that had to be scaled on the Kamehameha Highway, about two miles from the finish line. At Boston, it is the fearsome rise of Heartbreak Hill at the twenty-mile mark, when the acid is in the blood and the quadriceps are aching from the downhills of the course leading up to it.
The most insulting in my experience is at the end of the Marine Corps Marathon in Virginia and the District. It is one of the smallest hills, but it comes at 26 miles, the little rise on which the Iwo Jima Memorial sits is just that last little decimal point of a mile- and it feels straight up hill to the finish line.
The Huffington Post has 26 excellent reasons not to run a marathon- it is a little snarky in tone but true enough, and worth a look:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/29/why-not-shouldnt-run-marathon_n_4171186.html
But that is just a laundry list of excuses to sit it out. I think I spent too much time running on the steel of the flight decks of the ships I rode, or on the concrete in Hawaii and Jacksonville and here in DC. I don’t have much left in the way of cartilage in my knees, and after tearing out my left quadriceps, I doubt if I will ever be able to run again.
But I don’t regret any of that in the slightest. It is something special to wake up in the morning, and realize you could run to the office in the morning if it came to that.
Andy what my brother is doing this coming Monday is the culmination of intense personal discipline and the raw animal joy of motion. And it is harnessed to something else. No one is going to intimidate us, and no one is going to stop the Boston Marathon.
I am very proud of everyone who is going to run or is going to root the runners on up Heartbreak Hill. I am particularly proud of my brother. This year, he is Boston Strong.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303