Frozen Food Department

[ Ed Note: As is often the case, postings on marathons themselves become marathons. Pace yourself, there’s a lot to this story! ]

A week later I cannot begin to figure out how to describe this experience. The usual question I get is, “Have you warmed up yet?” to which I reply with a crack about having completed the swim portion of the event (funnier if you know how weak a swimmer I am), and thinking to myself that every subsequent blast of wind since that day has evoked a PTSD-like sense of dread.

I’ve run twelve Boston Marathons and twenty-eight marathons overall, plus a few more I think of as unofficial. I’ve run over a hundred and fifty races. I’ve gone hypothermic several times. But I’ve never seen or experienced anything like what hit us last Monday. Nor has anyone I’ve spoken with. Not veterans of twenty or more Bostons. Not those who remember forty. Many have said this was the grand-daddy of all one hundred and twenty two, so far as the impact on the runners.

If you’ve been under a rock or just don’t follow this stuff, the perfect storm intruded on our party. To a runner, purgatory is cold rain, and hell is cold wind-driven rain, and perfect hell is all of the above escalated to a level of intensity that drops both jaws and internal core temperatures. Anyone who has qualified for Boston has run and raced in cold weather, in rain, in snow, in wind. We get it, we deal with it. This one was different. I’d rather race in the single digits – been there, done that, just a few months back. I’d rather race in snow on a thirty degree day – snow gets you wet, but most blows by, brushes off. Neither penetrate like cold, wind-driven, heavy rain.

Boston rained from the start, rained for the duration, and only ceased raining to allow interruptions of stunning downpours that exceeded the definition of rain. Marathon Monday (dubbed Monsoon Marathon Monday by a friend) dawned with a fresh coating of snow and ice on the ground, barely rose above that frigid temperature by the start, and never attained even the slight warming that was forecast. As I passed mile twenty-four, the thermometer still read forty-two – and that dial would drop even lower by the time friends passed it later. The fateful day started with a true-to-prediction stiff headwind that proceeded to deepen its attack throughout the race. The Weather Channel had forecast finish line sustained winds at nearly thirty with an ominous orange GALE WARNING banner on-screen, while the local TV news pegged expected gusts at forty-five. Neither were overstated. All were head-on, save for the brief two blocks of Hereford Street when ironically the canyons of the city spun the tempest around. A tailwind rarely registers as anything other than the lack of resistance. The intensity of that one-minute long hind quarter boosting reprieve spoke volumes of its power.

No clothing worthy of an attempt at racing the distance could stop the assault. Those who opted for the shelter of more clothing simply accumulated more refrigerated coolant against their skin. Those with wind gear became sailors, which might have worked well if they’d had the time and space to tack their way upwind, but that wasn’t an option. Slower folks in the charity-runner range may have enjoyed the luxury of worrying less about minimizing their clothing for speed and performance, but paid through their extended exposure time. And the post-bombing elimination of the Hopkinton baggage check once again haunted this race; save for throw-aways, my wardrobe choice had to be made by seven in the morning while my front yard was still white and icy.

I opted for minimalism, recalling the 2007 Nor-Easter race when temperatures rose more than expected, and the 2015 gale, when similar, though as we’d learn, nowhere near as intense, conditions brought on hypothermia but not until well past the finish line. Racing shorts, one long-sleeve wicking shirt with a racing singlet atop, a thin beanie, and glove liners for some protection but minimal water absorption. And cheap throw-away expo shades to try to keep some of the liquid bullets out of my eyes. Of all that, only the beanie truly worked as hoped.

It goes without saying that the dry shoes I’d brought to the Athlete’s Village and donned on my way to the starting corrals were wet shoes – at least not muddy, but still wet – by the start, and soaked shoes by the mile mark as attempts to avoid not just puddles but pools and streams and floods quickly became impossible to win. So drenched was the course that runners often coagulated on the non-flooded paths between tire depressions, leading to more traffic dodging and more bump-and-grind than I’ve seen in a marathon ever. That was just one more ingredient in what would quickly become an energy expenditure equation that couldn’t be balanced.

Things got weird fast. Within a mile, my numb legs made me question whether I had, in fact, put on my shorts that morning – something I’d joked about while Dearest Spouse drove me to the race, being buried in voluminous quantities of pre-race warmth and unable to recall what sat at the bottom of that seven-layer taco dip. Cruising Ashland, I was certain that said shorts had to be drenched and must be riding up to my hip joints, giving those interested in well-aged thighs a cheap thrill, because I simply couldn’t feel them. You shouldn’t have to look down to verify the location of your clothing, nor should subsequent downward reconnaissance reveal a truth entirely in contradiction to what your nerves are telling you. The shorts hung normally, it was the legs that really weren’t there.

But a few miles later, the opposite developed. Now, my exposed quads insisted they felt the presence of fabric – tights, track pants, whatever, hard to tell – but the unmistakable sensation of fabric brushing over them. Again, the visual confirmed a complete neural disconnect, they were, indeed, still quite (as intended) naked. All I can fathom is that the winds were strong enough to drive sensation down hair follicles below the upper layers of chilled numbness. Weird.

While they may have been transmitting wildly corrupted data from their sensors, at least the legs worked – not terribly well; in the cold numbness I simply couldn’t break beyond a tight, choppy stride, but they worked – at least through the first twenty or so miles. Hands, on the other hand, rapidly became useless. Manipulating the zipper of my mini-pouch became a quarter-mile effort. Simple actions like clicking off splits on my watch became an engineering challenge; fingers failed and only a thumb was strong enough even for that tiny motor function.

And then there was the acoustics. The wind drove even sounds into cognitive dissonance. Repeatedly I puzzled why runners approaching me from behind were carrying cowbells, only to realize that the sounds were coming from the dedicated drenched devotees lining the course – out there even in these conditions – right alongside. Fool me once, it’s a curiosity. Fool me repeatedly and there has to be physics involved, probably mixed with a dose of reduced brain capacity.

Meanwhile I was already shivering; not superficial oh-that-gust-was-cold shivering, but deep, core, inner shivering. By Framingham. Mile six. Twenty to go, and the winds were nowhere near their apex. My mind, usually focused on the math of time in the bank and pace required to reach any of several goals, could think only of the rate of heat loss and whether there’d be any fire in the soul by Boylston Street. And no sooner would my racing efforts start to turn up the thermostat ever so slightly when the skies would open – about every twenty minutes – in unspeakable deluges that instantly saturated every pore and bloated every liquid-holding fabric fiber with the equivalent of an ice bucket challenge.

Despite all this, I was having a pretty good race. How’s that you say?

After the horrendous traffic of the first mile, partly an artifact of my first-ever second wave start (I’ve always been in the first) and partly an inexplicable mix of incompatible paces by people who had supposedly been seeded by time but now were reacting to the conditions in a myriad of unpredictable ways, I settled into a target pace range that would bring me back to the first wave for next year’s race. Save for a slight and entirely acceptable slowdown on the first Newton hill, I held that range till Heartbreak. On target, cylinders firing.

At mile eight, one of my rocks of the race, perennial fan Cori was there, as always, come thick or thin. I’ve been doing this race so long that she’s gone from single (might have that timing a little off) to married to mom to her kid being old enough to make a poster in my honor (though sadly I didn’t see it till later). That kind of support and spirit keeps me coming back.

Around mile twelve, I picked up a CMS teammate, a young woman I recognized but didn’t know well, and glommed on to her steady pace under the theory that two CMS jerseys were better than one and it might give us both a boost, and perhaps even a few hoots from the crowd. About the same time, while tracking her, I passed my New York buddy the Brooklyn Barrister, up for his first Boston, and having what I’d find out later was a day that hurt to even read about – worse than even what the weather dished out. It wasn’t till I’d overtaken him that he spotted me, but being slightly blinded by the dim and rain-streaked light of the cheap shades, I was hesitant to spin around to see him for fear that I’d trip over something I could barely see, instead shouting and hoping he’d join me. “I’m laboring!” was the last I’d hear from him till he recounted his own personal nightmare a few days later.

At sixteen, Dearest Spouse was out there. I’d given her dispensation to skip this one, but love and dedication know no bounds. I couldn’t even give her the joy of sidling left, out of the shortest tangent path, to swing closely by, as everyone was huddled on the right, on the inside track of the curve. Even though drafting wasn’t terribly effective, not drafting was worse. Swinging wide into the wind just seemed unthinkable.

Heartbreak hurt, Heartbreak slowed me, but Heartbreak didn’t kill me. Shortly thereafter, cold killed me. The heat equation hit zero balance coming down the back side, and systems began to shut down. Past the Graveyard, through Cleveland Circle, those repeated dousings had taken their toll. Staying vertical became the challenge. I knew my hometown club, Highland City, was manning the pedestrian crossings at twenty-three and twenty-four. That bit of coming familiarity was a bigger boost than you’d expect; it was cathartic to holler, “This SUCKS!” to friendly faces, especially one friendly face who was, to my spirit-lightening humor, wearing a rubber-ducky kid’s swim float around her middle. Little things. Thanks, peeps.

At forty kilometers it was walk or fall. I stumbled from there to the twenty-five mile mark, a mere two tenths of a mile that seemed to take a lifetime. Irony of ironies, there happened to be a timing mat at both forty kilometers and twenty-five-point-two miles – the mile-to-go mark – so this lowest point was forever memorialized in a really bad pace readout. One more brief walk coming out of the Mass Ave tunnel, that Divine Wind of Hereford, about six years to get down Boylston Street, and it was over. Requalified for next year. If I lived that long, which at that moment, wasn’t certain.

The human body delivers far beyond what anyone can expect of it.

Crossing the line, my core temperature must have been low enough that even the gigahertz of my brain’s processor had slowed. My vision, already obscured by the throwaway shades that I could never find a calm enough stretch to discard, flickered as if the frame refresh rate on the video screen had been turned down by half. My legs wouldn’t have held another few seconds past the moment a medical volunteer appeared to provide support. From him to the next volunteer to the wheelchair scooping me up just as I was going down – not knowing if I would faint, vomit, cry, or all three – to the slightly warmer environment of what I’d later term the Frozen Foods Department of the medical tent, probably took less than a minute, but who knew? Time wasn’t registering. Another volunteer stripped my sogginess from the waist up, piled on layers of Mylar (and thankfully one real blanket), and put a cup of warm sugared water in my mostly non-functional paws. I have no idea how long I stayed, and the ordeal wasn’t over. Having finally displayed just enough motility and lucidity to gain walking papers, there still remained the task of navigating the finishing chute and picking my way through barricades and crowds, hauling a bag of leaden clothing and clad only in soggy shoes, soggy shorts, and a couple layers of thin film (sadly, without that one real blanket).

But I’m here, writing this. I survived, as did everyone else. I had it bad, but others had it worse. A record number hit the med tent, but nobody was lost. I made it to that Finest Hot Shower You Will Ever Experience, also known as the Squannacook post-race party (unending thanks to them for their efforts of bringing this together every year!). My time wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either, but frankly, nobody cares. The winning times were the slowest in decades. Most of the elites dropped out. Speedsters I know all faded out in the high miles, not, I suspect, because of the traditional wall, but because, I’ll bet, their core temperatures collapsed as did mine, and they too found it nearly impossible to function. But I did, and they did, and still some absurd number like ninety-five percent of those who started, finished.

The human body delivers far beyond what anyone can expect of it.

They’ll be talking about this one a decade from now, maybe multiple decades from now.


Snippets:

Like most marathons, there are too many stories to fit in one marathon-length narrative. Here are a few bonus tidbits.

Mud Shoes, Dry Shoes: In a pre-race email, the Boston Athletic Association relaxed their stringent policies on what could and could not be brought to the Village and clarified that a pair of dry shoes would be allowed and indeed would be recommended, expecting muddy conditions at the Athlete’s Village. (Long-time readers will recall how I took them to task on this very issue in 2014 and their then-stalwart response; this message was welcome and long overdue.) The sea of mud, exceeded in my memory only by a legendary hike in the Adirondacks, delivered as promised. By the time I’d forded the muck pit and shoehorned myself into a patch of space, I was pleased to see that many heeded the call and wisely equipped themselves. What I didn’t expect was to then see people all around me donning those dry shoes while still in the tent – while still needing to re-cross that Rubicon to get out of the tent. I can’t tell you how many people I advised to wait until they reached pavement before making the switch. I just can’t explain this gap in their logic. (Further note: While I was changing in the Hopkinton High parking lot, someone with a BAA jacket came by and did an impromptu video interview – no idea where that landed…)

Of All The Gin Joints, You Picked This One: Yes, I shoehorned myself into the middle of the mob-scene of the tent in the Village. Yes, I found a patch of ground, laid down an old Mylar sheet, and invited another runner to share the space. Safe and dry till it was time to leave for the race, right? No, suddenly a torrent came down on the middle of our Mylar, and looking up, amongst the vastness of the canvas, was one hole – yes, one – that had been taped up, and that tape had just come loose and yes, it was right atop us. Go figger.

Rubber Ducky: I’d see my clubmate with her rubber ducky float down at mile twenty-three, but I missed my chance at the village. As a last-minute extra layer of pre-race warmth, I’d pulled an old terry bathrobe out of our basement heading-for-donation bin. Once ensconced in the tent and having removed my rain layers to expose this fashion, I took a walk over to get some snacks and suddenly realized how appropriate it was to be wearing a bathrobe while we were all taking a bath, so to speak. The crowd soaked it up (groan, pun intended). Oh, if I’d only had a bath brush or a rubber ducky.

Wrong Date? Why does it seem every year that Saturday morning before the race turns into a delightful morning for a marathon? Happened again this year. The day after wasn’t bad, either.

Small World: I always love the variety of people at this global event. Sitting directly around me in the tent at the Village were people from Montreal, Paris, Monterrey Mexico, and Portugal. Closer to home, at the last port-o-john stop near the start, I asked the guy in line with me where he was from and he answered, “Binghamton, New York!” – my home town. My amusement at that multiplied when the guy behind him then said, “Me too!” Technically, the second guy was from about twenty miles away, but who’s counting. And no, they didn’t know each other.

Field Day for Bargains! I’ve never seen more stuff – and in this case, lots of good, expensive stuff – discarded on the course. As clothing soaked up more and more water, it was abandoned. The quantity of fancy running gloves was staggering. But the only thing I’d like to retrieve is the discount coupon promised by the marketing director of a major trail shoe manufacturer that I met on the bus to Hopkinton. Whoever you are, I know your brain was probably erased by the day’s experience, but if you read this…trail season is upon us!