Once again time escapes; it’s been a month since the event that spawns this tale, but if I’m doing my job, it’s a good story whenever it sees the light of day, and time should be irrelevant. After all, Hamilton had been dead for over two hundred years before Lin Manuel Miranda got around to telling his story, right? So I’ll try to weave a compelling tale of blame, redemption, and vindication, tied together by, of course, time, that’s worth ten minutes of your time. Maybe toss in some suspense, mysticism, and murder (Murder?!), just for intrigue.
Blame! For six months I’ve been vocally (yes, my clubmates sigh, very vocally) blaming the New York Road Runners and the New York City Marathon for what I considered to be a substantially suboptimal performance in the Big Apple last fall. That blame sprang from the many reasons I’ve documented on these pages which moved the needle from “there were a few issues”, typical for any race, to “I’m never going back”. Suboptimal wasn’t just an opinion but was quantified in a disappointing time, and though I’d told myself (and anyone who asked) before the event that time wasn’t important, that New York was simply a grand tour, an adventure finally achieved after ten years of almost comically not running, let’s be honest here. Yours truly doesn’t typically pay to go for a run and not care, at least somewhat, about time. In the back of my mind, I had a pretty solid view of what I expected. But it didn’t happen, and while I alone had to own it, I found plenty of really good reasons to blame New York.
Redemption! My inbred Catholic Guilt kicked in saying I should simply own it; plug my pie-hole, and not blame someone else. Besides, how could I claim I shoulda’ coulda’ woulda’ run “Time X” – all but for New York’s epic fails – when in fact I hadn’t run “Time X” in many years? Stand and deliver, or shut up. Cue the video feed: Providence Marathon, a few weeks back, I stood, and I delivered.
Vindication! I am vindicated. My guilt assuaged; my blame justified. New York, that one was indeed on you, because at Providence I ran “Time X” and then some. And rather decisively got back in the game.
Let’s not grow outside our shoe size though. As pleased as I was with the way the day turned out, slicing twenty-five minutes off the Tragedy of the Five Boroughs, I later ran into an old teammate from my Greater Boston days and learned that he, just as well ripened as I, eclipsed my Providence time by nearly half an hour at Boston. So much for being the fastest old fart in town. Not even close. Which reinforces that this story isn’t about a marvelous feat; it’s about that vindication, and confirmation that this racing-into-the-age-of-decrepitude game isn’t over. Not yet.
Suspense! Twenty-five minutes off New York sounds (and was) great, but having any idea of what time to expect in any marathon is a crap shoot at best. The funny thing about the marathon is that every one of them – every single one – is a mystery. You really have no idea. You can’t race them every other weekend like short races (if you are inclined to spend a lot on race entries). If you’re going to race a marathon, truly race a marathon, not just cover the distance, your body can only handle it a few times a year. And your fitness changes constantly. So each time you do it, you don’t know where you stand. And it’s worse if you’ve had a long break since racing one, which was the case for New York, and since that didn’t turn out to be much of a race, it was the case again this time.
Mysticism! Then again, if you’re into spirits and ghosts and things like that, there was an omen that gave a hint that the gods were smiling on us. I regularly devour the Washington Post online crossword puzzle, and one of their offerings is the “Mini Meta”, a series of six small puzzles throughout providing clues for and culminating in Saturday’s meta puzzle with a zig-zag answer. That week’s answer – on race eve? You can’t make this up. Providence. Seriously?
Enough sensational introductory words, on with the story!
New York was my return from a long marathon break, thanks to injuries and COVID, three and a half years, not counting the quasi-virtual-not-a-race Boston of ’20 (official, yes, it counts, but certainly not a race). Thus for New York I set my goal – the one I wouldn’t tell anyone about – conservatively. And missed it. I tanked early, around seventeen. Erase those New York problems (Blame!), and I figured I could reclaim about ten New York Minutes pretty easily. So, mental note, Providence goal – the one I told very few about – let’s reclaim those ten minutes. And then, maybe a bit more.
In the starting corral I conveniently found the pacer whose target would have delivered sixteen minutes ahead of that New York result. Ten minutes plus a little aspiration. Seemed reasonable, even though the day promised to be a lot warmer than anyone hoped (and it would hit the eighties by early afternoon – hot when I was out there, hellacious for those not already off the course, not to mention that the weeks leading up had been unusually cold so nobody was truly acclimated). I made quick friends with the pacer. Made friends with the those to be paced. Wondered if I’d hold that pace. Because, as I said, every one is a mystery (Suspense!) and you just don’t know.
OK, let’s go.
I never saw that pacer again. After Black Cat, back in March, where Mile One was a bit irrationally exuberant, this time I made a point of going out comfortably. After all, that race had been a mere twenty miles and I’d turned into burnt toast by eighteen; this one had those pesky extra six. And this time the start didn’t seem fast; on the contrary, people were flying past, making me wonder if I was sandbagging it. But even cruising carefully, my pacer was gone, apparently long behind me, and I didn’t care because I was comfortable. The Mile Two photo (thank you races who just give away the photos with the price of admission and spare us the incessant spam from the photo hawkers!) looks, well, comfortable. (Yes, non-marathoners are permitted to puzzle at that statement. Comfortable. Grin.)
Pace angst alleviated, mile one clocked in about where I’d hoped, a shade slower than Black Cat with the hope of lasting a bit longer than Black Cat. And just having Black Cat as a comparison – well, priceless, and it went through my head how fortunate I was to have had club-mate Paul sell me his spare entry to that derby.
And then a funny thing happened on this day at the office. Nothing. There were no big events. No alarm bells. No crises. Just humming along. It brought back that old advertisement (
which is worth watching!) from the eighties about the piston engine goes boing-ditty-boing-ditty-boing but the Mazda rotary engine goes mmmmmm…. I know you have to be of a certain age to appreciate that reference, but isn’t this column all about being of a certain age?
Up hills, down hills, click, click, click. The big hill at mile six I’d scoped out on a course preview with clubmate Sam a few weeks earlier? Less than ten seconds off mile one. The downhill on the far side of that one? About ten seconds quicker than mile one. The nasty sharp rise at twenty leading into the long climb to twenty-one, still a mere ten or eleven second lag. Training chits were being redeemed. The engine hummed. We (me and whoever happened to be alongside at any given moment) chatted idly while I ignored (or more accurately, managed) the heat, which intensified slowly but surely, and we soaked up the course, which really was lovely, especially the lilacs, oh my, the lilacs. On my death bed, let me inhale lilacs!
Dearest Spouse positioned herself at a nifty spot where we’d pass twice, first arriving from the east, then the west, and heading out first to the south, then the north, covering all four points on the compass. The first time, around mile ten, I was chatting up a fellow traveler who I’d find had later dopped some forty-plus minutes off our pace. The marathon will do that to you.
Shortly thereafter, I spotted my pacer, except it wasn’t the same pacer I’d met at the start. It was the guy ten minutes ahead. Not really certain it was a good idea to be not just sixteen but twenty-six minutes ahead of New York, I held back a bit. Brain, recalculate expectations. Really, should I be
that far ahead? At New York I’d fallen just a minute and a half shy of re-qualifying for Boston so that was really the only “must notch” item on the list. Everything else was gravy. Avenge those ten minutes, then… Did this make sense? We weren’t even at the halfway mark. Was another New York style (is that thin crust?) mile seventeen crash coming?
But everything is relative. Twenty-six ahead of New York was still more than thirty behind where I was in the bad ol’ days, and the bad ol’ days weren’t so long ago. Brain said it’s wasn’t irresponsible to be in this neighborhood. So sure, let ‘er fly.
And the Mazda goes mmmmmm… Click, click, click. Post-race analysis would show this as one of the most consistent marathons I’ve run, even splits save a late (and small) blip which didn’t show until I stretched out the graph axes.
That pacer? I really couldn’t avoid catching him. And once in the fold of his flock, I’ve got to heap on the praise. He was the definition of a terrific pacer, chatty, encouraging, vocal at every mile marker, a pied piper leading his band of merry men and women. I was a few strides in front of his gang when we passed Dearest Spouse again at the Four Points at mile sixteen, and I stuck with our little posse up the slap-in-the-face at twenty and the climb to twenty-one, along the stretch of supreme ugliness (really the only unattractive spot on the course, otherwise, did I mention it was lovely?) from twenty-two onto the bridge back over the Seekonk River back towards downtown. (Seekonk! Home of what our club nicknamed the “Not the Murder Motel” where we bunked the night before, in contrast to the place they’d stayed for a previous race in the area, which apparently
was the Murder Motel…but I digress…but I did tell you I’d wind murder into this somehow?) I only lost touch with Herr Pacer around the end of mile twenty-four when the last of several PUDs (Pointless Ups and Downs) finally started to do me in.
Perspective here. Fading a bit in mile twenty-five is nothing to complain about. For that matter, even twenty-five clocked in within ten seconds of mile one.
And the Mazda goes mmmmmm…
Sure, twenty-six was ugly, but it’s supposed to be. And Providence had a special treat in its back pocket, a short, sharp climb halfway up Statehouse Hill a tenth before the finish. Nasty indeed, and well played, Providence, well played.
I may have lost my pacer (this time ahead of me) but lost less than a minute off his clip by the finish. So, twenty-five minutes ahead of New York rather than twenty-six, no complaints. Dearest Spouse, not expecting that outcome, had hung around at sixteen to cheer on our clubmates, and barely made the finish to witness those iconic final Death-Warmed-Over moments. Admittedly I did see it as a possibility, but kept it quiet. And I doubted it back around eleven, but got over it. The marathon is a mental game. Yes, you have to be able to physically do it, but you also have to be able to convince yourself that you can, and stop yourself from stopping yourself.
It took a few minutes to resolve the mystery of whether there were any other old farts ahead of me, the answer to that being a satisfying no. The next closest sixty-something was seven and a half minutes back, so yes, first race as a sixty-something, chalk up a win. We’ll take it. But more so than the win, which was sweet, was the redemption. Since the knee injury back in ’19, the resulting gap in racing that spanned into and beyond the COVID era, doubts were sown and grown. That Sunday in Rhode Island reminded me that it ain’t over till I decide it’s over. Take that to your bank of inspiring thoughts. Don’t let yourself accept that it’s over.
And as for that vindication? Well, New York was hot, but Providence was hotter – less humid perhaps, but full sun the whole way. New York had its bridges for so-called hills, Providence had a few decent climbs (mile six to seven alone eclipsing anything on the New York course) as well as a number of those pesky PUDs. So as for conditions, let’s call it a wash. But unlike New York, Providence didn’t screw up on even a minor, let alone an epic, scale. (Granted, Providence’s logistics paled in comparison to New York, but what they had to do they did well, save perhaps for a curiously long course). That alone bought me those ten minutes. Vindication, indeed.
The rest we’ll chalk up to not letting the fat lady sing. You age, you hit a milestone (sixty!), you inevitably have gaps, injuries, and you doubt what you can still do. Don’t. Just don’t. Go out and test it and see what happens. Take it back. Oh yeah, and let yourself go mmmmmm…
