Degrees of Difficulty

And he sticks the landing!

Yeah, I guess the simple swan dive is easy, at least if you’re a diver, as might be the basic gymnastic vault, if you’re a vaulter (or, I guess, if you’re talking about the landing, you’d be a devaulter, but I digress…). It’s when you add in the ‘elements’ that things get more difficult. In those sports, and probably others, they call them degrees of difficulty. We runners have our own version of degrees of difficulty, like the number of degrees on the thermometer, the degrees of tilt in the course (fancy verbiage for hills), and the degrees of the compass determining from where the wind howls. In Stage Three of the climb up the mountain of Boston prep racing, the New Bedford Half Marathon served up an interesting combination of those degrees.

But before we get into the pain and the pleasure of the race, let me pause first and say a few words about New Bedford. Yes, they’ve got the Whaling Museum and yes, the associated national park (seeing how the place is always windy, it’s no surprise they built a seaport there; people way back when may have lived in what we now see as a black and white era, but they weren’t dumb). And yes, I’m sure they have a few other gems that I’m not thinking of at the moment.

But New Bedford is not high on the list when you think of rockin’ places or economic wonders. It’s a struggling town, struggling economically as are all New England fishing towns, struggling with more than its share of addiction issues, and, well, just plain struggling. It’s no ritzy seacoast tourist town like Hyannis. It’s worth noting that I’ve had the pleasure of doing business with some superb people there recently, and after I’d penned the start of this paragraph, but while I was still pondering whether to make such a statement publicly, those New Bedfordites told me the same thing, unprompted. It’s no secret, it’s no insult, it just is.

But therein lies the beauty. When a couple thousand people descend on Hyannis for their annual midwinter race-fest, outside of the race itself, the town yawns. Half the town is empty, being summer homes sitting lonely in the winter, and the other half of the town is just plain used to visitors. So sure, we get some support in the streets, but it’s not a big deal. But when a couple thousand people descend on New Bedford for their annual running extravaganza, it is indeed a big deal. It’s an event. Or as Arlo once said, friends, it’s a movement.

New Bedford rolls out the red carpet. The local support is nothing short of phenomenal. I can’t think of another race outside of a big city marathon with more fans along the route – and not just friends of the runners, but local residents, making a big effort to get out there and make noise. The volunteers – it’s all volunteer, but you’d guessed that – are second to none in friendliness and enthusiasm. The cops on the road – paid cops, I’m sure – are more into this race than any other I know; seriously, these men and women voraciously cheer, and this is a Grand Prix race, which means I’m nowhere near the front of the pack by the time they see me, and they’re still into it. And there are stretches where even the bars – yes, on Sunday morning – seem to spill their patrons to add more rah to the rah-rah. Add in post-race chowder and what more could you ask for?

I hear you say, “How about some decent weather?” Well, yeah, there is that. Though by New Bedford standards, this year was actually quite lovely, though still challenging. Last year’s gale found me working with a local cop to try to re-right the road closure signs downtown. Last year’s gale had a buddy comment that if the wind had suddenly stopped during the waterside stretch through mile ten, we would have all fallen down, so intense was our lean. This year, by contrast, delivered brilliant sun and seemingly mild wind. Seemingly. It’s all a matter of degrees, remember?

Twenty-five degrees isn’t really that cold, when less than three months back I was racing at five, casually marathoning at one, and running in the negatives. But factor in that this is a decent-sized endeavor – north of two thousand runners – with someone complicated logistics: parking, race headquarters at the YMCA, and the start/finish are separated by a few blocks, making for a lot of forth & back. Then add in the tweak that they close off the start line twenty minutes early and force entry to the corral from the rear, so if you want to be anywhere near the line, you’ve got to be in the corral – read, no room to keep running to keep warm – early. Top it off with the fact that you’ve got to dress for hot and cold, depending on your direction versus the wind in any given mile. And again, as noted, this one is Grand Prix, part of the annual New England USA Track & Field team and individual championship scoring, so yeah, it matters to get it right.

Daring youth did this one in shorts and singlets. For me, the older I get, the colder I get, so even tights, a double shirt plus the racing singlet, and my haute couture contractor-grade trash bag atop that couldn’t stave off pre-race shivers and shakes. I wasn’t alone; in a telling scene, ten minutes before the race virtually nobody was near the starting line, since it was in the shade. A half-block back a gaggle of shivering runners huddled in the northernmost diagonal slice of sunlight peeking over the downtown edifices. The two young ladies who belted out pre-race anthems certainly had impressive pipes, but on days like this, one would have sufficed; I’d be perfectly happy if God Didn’t Bless America and the bombs simply burst in the air. Let’s just get moving and generate some heat!

Funny things go through your head when the gun goes off. A quarter mile in, while still surrounded by hordes of people who’d mostly kick my butt in short order, it occurred to me that in my pre-race dance, flitting between parking, the Y, warming up, stripping down, and of course the port-o-john, I’d never even looked at my shoe laces since dressing at home hours earlier. Typically I don’t don the lightweight racing shoes till I’ve reached the venue, so I know that I’ve tightened and tuned, but this time I’d fiddled and diddled with different shoes at home early that morning, seeking the one that would least agitate the large patch of missing skin behind my left heel, courtesy of a snowshoe outing in somewhat ill-fitting boots a week prior. Now, as we barreled north into what was proving to be more than a mild breeze, instead more of a face-freezing wheeze, crap, those shoes felt loose. It was kind of a, “Did I close the garage door when I left?” moment. There’d be nothing worse than losing a minute or two before we’d even hit the mile mark. Pray to the God of Friction and hope for the best…and yes, they held on.

Go to a race once and you’re experienced. Go to a race twice and you’ve got it down cold (in this case, pun intended). This being my third outing, it was my civic responsibility to pass on tribal knowledge, and I’ve coached a number of people, including the fast young lady who carpooled down with me, that the hills on this course aren’t severe. Two early on, when you’re fresh, and one at the end, long but not steep, a welcome chance to fire up different muscles for that last push to the finish, but nothing to worry about.

Wrong, and Wrong.

Wrong Number One: Yeah, there are three up front. Small sin, I know, but I should know better, and staring at number three, I knew I’d lied to her. I also knew she wouldn’t care, but to an OCD type, that’s a mark. And amidst those climbs, remember those degrees of difficulty? The opening stanza, heading north, is almost always into the wind, but as we curved to the west, I got the hint that the northeast wind I’m used to was in fact decidedly northwest. That doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but it would prove important in the final push. At this early stage, it just made those two, no, make it three early hills a bit tougher than planned. Yeah, but we’re fresh.

No worries. Miles four through seven brought southbound shelter, the wind seeming to vanish but actually gently padding us from behind, our skin no longer abased but instead warmed by the almost-spring sun, an utterly lovely stretch save the fact that there’s no rest, you can’t break the intensity. I pondered the absurdity that this crowd, myself included, considers a half marathon to be relatively short; by five miles in you’ve only got a mere eight to go, so you’re thinking borders along the lines of speed as opposed to survival. I had a little help on that count, having heard on the ride down that a clubmate had run a solid time in a half earlier that morning a few states to the south. While his time was utterly irrelevant to mine, I knew that our racing capabilities have been similar of late, so I put his pace into my head as a benchmark. Having lost a bit in those opening hills, the southbound stretch was the perfect opportunity to bank precious seconds against that meaningless but focusing goal, knowing that I’d need them in the gnarly bits to come.

Which leads us to Wrong Number Two: That last hill? Yeah, it is a big deal sometimes. Those ninety degrees from northeast to northwest meant that while mile ten, the usual gnarly bit heading north along the water, was windy as usual (though not nearly so ugly as last year), the respite that usually comes by passing through the floodgate (shown on a lovely summer day, courtesy of Mrs. Google) and back inland didn’t show up. Instead, the wind aligned itself straight through that floodgate portal, and straight at us as we steamed just west enough of north to turn that last ‘no big deal’ hill into a long, agonizing, extended gnarly bit.

Let’s just say that it was strong enough and cold enough that even wearing shades, my eyelids were frozen enough that a good hard blink at the wrong moment would have probably flung a frozen contact lens into the gutter. And let’s just say that in pictures from that climb, well, I pretty much look like hell frozen over.

But once you top this thing, it’s only a quarter mile, half of it downhill, let it fly, body parts flailing, wild abandon, and it’s done. My carpool companion carved out her best and took our local club record, which she proudly held for exactly seven days before it was taken back by her club rival. I set no records but closed it out more than respectably, nearly an age-graded best (because, let’s face it, real bests are probably long in my aging past), and had the pleasure of learning I’d notched the fifth scoring slot as our Central Mass seniors team ran away with the win in this year’s first Grand Prix team competition.

Meanwhile, my local clubbies keep me sane, or I drive them insane (the fun pose in this shot was my idea), or we meet somewhere in the middle while this bodily-abusing crazy climb to Boston nears its finale. One more push, one more tuning race to go, then on to the big dance to Boylston Street. The gods are actually calling for decent weather for the last of this four-race series. So, with fewer degrees of difficulty, can he stick the landing?