Reaching the Limit

[ Ed note: This is the first of at least two articles on Reach the Beach. This one focuses on the event logistics. I cover my actual running fun in the near future! ]

If there’s one word that describes last weekend’s Reach the Beach Relay, it’s not Strategery, it’s got to be Vantastic. Vans, vans, nothing but vans as far as the eye can see. Vans to the left of me, vans to the right, here I am, stuck in the van again.

Four hundred and thirty teams, each with two big vans, most looking almost eerily alike, being bred from the same rental fleet stock, plying the absurdly rolling hills of New Hampshire, 209 miles from Cannon Mountain to Hampton Beach in a decidedly not straight line. A few rough guesstimates hints at about 15,000 gallons of fuel toasted, which sounds ugly until you do the same guesstimates for a typical NFL game and get a far larger number, then multiply by the number of games in the league each week and by the length of the season. Reach the Beach (RTB) is a drop in the proverbial bucket.

But I digress. It was all about vans everywhere, and so a little explanation is in order here. This relay is a logistical masterpiece, until the end, when it degrades to a logistical disaster. RTB consists of 36 legs ranging from three to nine-plus miles. The standard team is twelve runners (there are also “ultra” teams with only six, but let’s keep this simple, kids…), so each runner takes three legs over the course of the race. For each team, Van 1 sets out with runners one through six and leapfrogs from “Transition Area” (or “TA”) to TA, arriving ahead of their runner to queue up the next one, pick up the last one, and head out again, often with a stop or two along the route to cheer on or re-supply their teammate. After six legs, Van 2 steps in with runners seven through twelve and does the same thing, giving Van 1 a few hours R & R until they meet up again six legs later to trade positions again. The magical van swap-over spot is known as a “Vehicle Transition Area” (or “VTA”), and as you might guess, there are twice as many vans at these stops.

Did you get all that? It’s complicated. Read it twice, there will be a quiz later.

Obviously, sending off four hundred plus teams and 800 plus vans at once wouldn’t work, so the wise overlords of RTB devised a staged start. Based on your team’s estimated pace, you’re assigned a starting slot ranging from early Friday morning to late Friday evening, the slower teams starting first, with twenty or so teams heading out every twenty minutes. The plan is that everyone gets to the beach more or less at the same time.

It almost works. But thank God it doesn’t work entirely. We’ll get back to that.

Since each wave of starters spread out pretty quickly, the net effect of this is that there is a never-ending stream of runners, spaced mysteriously evenly, spreading probably over at least sixty miles, slowly congealing as the convoy heads south. There is also a steady trickle of vans, which in their own odd way create a safety barrier as no midnight drunk driver could get up much speed before taking one of these rolling behemoths out. Yes, midnight drunk drivers are a concern, as are 2 AM drunk drivers and 4 AM drunk drivers because this thing does indeed go all night.

Now, where the problem arises is, as I noted, that their system pretty much does work. The plan is that everyone reaches the beach Saturday afternoon, and they pretty much do, which means that as you get closer and closer to the end, the pack contracts and the van density per road mile creeps ever upward. Of course, if the timing were perfect, at the finish, that van density would spike to infinity, creating a singularity that would spawn not a black hole but a white one (since all the rental vans were white), which would swallow up all of the known universe. Fortunately, the timing’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good, and that means one thing: traffic.

You start to see it about mid-way through at the VTAs. At about 10 PM Friday night we arrived at the New Hampshire Technical College near Laconia. Not only is this a VTA, but it’s a place where you can pitch a tent on the lawn or roll out your sleeping bag in a hallway and try to get some sleep. I of course failed miserably on that count, but more on that in a future posting. What strikes you about this VTA is that the vans really start to pile up, since not only is this a VTA, but it’s a VTA where people stay for a while. Hundreds of them. And of course you have to find yours.

By the time you reach the final VTA, the Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, the enormity of scale has sunk in. By that time – the completion of leg 30 – you’re into the routine. You find nothing unusual about volunteers waving at you with those little orange sticks like the ones they use to guide aircraft on their roll to a stop at the terminal. The zippy little rotating flashing lights marking the actual runner hand-off zones at the TAs are old hat. All of this seems so, so normal by now, but here you are among many hundreds of vans, and while the number of people doesn’t touch an event like a major marathon, the dance they all perform, knowing just when to be where, when to run, to hand-off, to hop in the van, well, it’s amazing, and it’s getting thicker.

After TA 32, the traffic had grown so thick that I beat my van to the next handoff and had to hang around cooling my jets, awaiting our next runner. After TA 33 they sent the vans down a different route than the runners to keep the roads moving. And after TA 35 it’s the home stretch, and the dreaded singularly happens. The last mile through Hampton Beach comes to a standstill. Crawling at best. They simply can’t get all those vans into the parking lot at the beach fast enough. One of my teammates and I actually got out and walked just to be sure we’d be there when our last runner arrived, so as not to miss the ceremonial team run through the finish chute.

I’ve got to suggest that Reach the Beach has Reached the Limit.

What’s a race organizer to do? This thing grew out of nothing, and the unique aspect of the adventure has attracted such a following that it keeps growing and growing. But my experience this week says it just can’t grow any more. Many of the TAs themselves are at their bursting point, barely able to stow the vans transiting through. It can’t get much bigger, but nobody likes to be shut out.

The organizers seem to have figured this out and have announced the launch of a new RTB here in my home state of Massachusetts next spring. Perhaps it will take a little of the pressure off the original RTB. Or maybe it will just cause the popularity to explode that much more. Not that getting that many more people out to run more miles is a bad thing – no, far from it. It’s just an interesting thing to ponder. Could the amazing scale of RTB be replicated many times over, and in doing so, become ordinary? What does this say about our society? Our sanity?

Right, let’s stop that train of thought; it’s getting a bit too deep. Next time, stories of my running adventures at RTB.

Reach the Edge

Tomorrow I set off on an adventure. Not really a race, just an adventure. Yes, after a number of years of contemplating it, I’m finally running the Reach the Beach Relay, somewhat by accident, but running it just the same. The bigger theme of the week, however, is riding the thin edge between crash training and injury, so I’ll call this Reach the Edge week.

Reach the Beach is a 209 mile odyssey through New Hampshire, starting in my beloved White Mountains at Cannon Mountain at the top of Franconia Notch (where it will be tough for me to get back in the van with my team without heading off for a summit first…), and winding its way down to Hampton Beach, along a route not even remotely direct.

The finish point is somewhat ironic. I’ll spend over a day heading for a destination that, while I’ve never really been there (I think I drove the main drag once?), I associate with tacky beach businesses and partying crowds. With me being a mountain person and it being a beach, it’s already starting out handicapped in the impression department, though admittedly some recent R&R on Cape Cod have bent my opinion of beaches significantly upward. Nevertheless, Hampton is not a high spot on my list. Shame on me for being so judgmental for so many years, but it is ironic to work so hard to leave a place I so love just to get to a place I could so care less about.

But then again, after working so hard to get there, I may just fall in love with the place and find its hidden beauty. That’s one of the cool things about running and racing. I have tremendously fond memories of places like downtown Lowell and Buffalo, neither considered the garden spots of their regions, just from memories of running and racing adventures. And so this adventure could in fact transform into a new appreciation for a place I associate with heavy traffic and beer-swilling beach types with loud radios and oversized coolers who like to engage in what used to be known as sunning but what I refer to as active cancering.

But that’s really not the point of this story. I just got carried away a bit.

While I’ve wanted to run this relay for a number of years, Reach the Beach wasn’t even on my radar this year. I didn’t seek it out just as I haven’t sought out any races all summer, and only recently tried to return to the land of the living. But my same club friend Bill who lit me up on the forty-dollar marathon (or, as I previously noted, the inexpensive training motivation program) dropped me a note last week that his team of twelve numbered only eleven, and would I consider jumping in?

It’s like giving candy to a baby. What, are you kidding?

Now, the funny part is that I was signed and sealed before I even knew who I was running with. I knew this wasn’t a team racing for glory, this was a team out for a fun adventurous run. Super, no pressure, just fun, I’m in. And Bill told me it was a group from his church, where I know he’s very active. We’ve had numerous chats about promoting the church life and though we’re of different denominations (I’ve always been amused by that word, what, I’m a ten, he’s a twenty?) we’re pretty much on the same page. So I knew I was going to be an honorary Lutheran for a day and a half, and I’m cool with that.

What I didn’t realize is that his team – no, make that our team, known as “Outer Body” – is doing this as a fund-raiser for a food bank ministry his church runs. So I’m sort of kind of maybe accidentally begging for donations to the Central Food Ministry of Lowell. Which is a place, as I noted before, of which I have fond memories. Funny how these things connect. Anyway, I figure since we’ll be tooling around in the Food Ministry’s van on the back roads of New Hampshire, I’d be a good sport to ask for some donations to their cause. So, all six of you reading this, consider this a plea, email me, and drop a few bucks to a good cause.

Now, what was my point again? Right, the edge. We’re now down to two weeks to that marathon. I managed a seventeen-and-a-half miler late last week, and, feeling good, kept up the intensity for a couple of days, hitting a respectable fifty miles over five days. And whammo, the shin injury came back, with a vengeance. Well, what did I expect, anyway?

So we dance. A few more days off. Then, much by accident, but a great motivator, Reach the Beach. Considering the lingering injury, not really at a good time, but how often does life fall exactly as you want it? I cover nineteen miles, which would be a good training run for the marathon if it were in one shot, except that it’s in three legs, so it’s not. Which means that next week I’ll need to get a twenty-miler in, or I am pretty much doomed to the death shuffle come the high miles on the west side of Newfound Lake. But a twenty following shortly after Reach the Beach is of course likely to re-aggravate that already aggravated aggravation.

Aggravated if you do, aggravated if you don’t.

A crash training program can easily lead to a crash. It’s like piloting the space shuttle in for a landing. You’ve got to hit just the right angle, and you get exactly one chance to get it right. In short, I’m riding the edge. Drive the training, synergistically build the motivation, while dodging the injury bullets that come so often on a trajectory like this. Two more weeks till the marathon. I just need to keep my balance as I ride this thin line, trying to reach the edge without falling off.

Shedding Moss

It never fails. Never say die, or you might. Predict where you’ll get that speeding ticket, and you will (and yes, I did and I did, though that was twenty-two years ago, clean since, no, wait, I’d better not say that, either). Announce a breakout, as I did last week, and something will break. Which I did, and it did, though I’m hoping I’m quickly past that, gathering steam, and shedding the moss that grew on the bottoms of my feet this summer.

Just a week ago I gleefully declared the summer slump over. New Hampshire Breakout, I called it. There’s an aspect of positive thinking in a statement like that. The recession will be over when we all decide it’s over, right? And my slump will be over when I decide it’s over. And I decided it was over, though I knew there was an issue…

When in New Hampshire, my clan bases ourselves at a fine small motel in Franconia, just north of the famous Notch. Nestled along the Gale River, I’ve got the choice of running the valley or heading up the hills, which, being New Hampshire, are significant. Arriving a couple of Mondays back on a cool, drizzly afternoon, having just driven the course of my upcoming New Hampshire Marathon, I was inspired to run the hills. Abandoning the clan at the motel, I headed up Route 117 toward Sugar Hill, veering off at the top to climb higher up Sunset Hill, roughly a seven-hundred foot climb in about two and a quarter miles. Exhilarated!

And then… Most runners would groan at a hill like that and crave the coming descent, but I’m not most runners. I’m simply not a downhill guy, perhaps a good reason I gave up alpine skiing over twenty years ago. (Yes, I prefer to hike uphill as well. But that came later in the week, I digress.) But what goes up, right? So, bang a left at the top and scream down, down, down, a beautiful quiet rural road, straight and steady, down, down, I’d checked my watch and knew I’d been cranking for a good six to seven minutes, all down all the time, not gentle but really down, down, down, when what do my wondrous eyes do see, but… yes, the familiar “truck on block” sign waning me of an impending hill.

Only in New Hampshire. Or, I suppose any mountainous state, but it sounds good to say that since I was in New Hampshire. A solid mile downhill and now they’re warning you about a hill. You’re kidding, right? I literally laughed out loud.

There was a reason they warned me. What followed were three or four pitches of the painful kind. The kind of hills that you simply can’t follow the hill coaching advice of letting the hill to the work, letting yourself glide down in a controlled fall, not fighting it. No sir, not on these babies. If you didn’t fight these, you’d be dead.

Bottom line (and it took a while to get to the bottom), them there hills, they hurt bad. Leaning back, fighting like the dickens just to keep balance, yanking on muscles that never get used, no, just plain shouldn’t get used, slamming, pounding, pain. That seven-hundred feet evaporated in about one-point-four miles, and with it evaporated a fair amount of connective tissue, I figured out later.

I know, I know, it’s kind of like Arlo Guthrie telling you the whole Alice’s Restaurant story to get to the punch line, isn’t it? But you really need the setup to know there this is going.

We spent a fabulous weekend in the White Mountains beating the crap out of our legs. Tuesday, per my younger daughter’s request, was up Mt. Washington via Tuckerman Ravine, a truly grand route I hadn’t covered in twenty eight years (and descending via a route I’d never taken, only to be taken by surprise by a very significant ladder at the end of the day; now, I don’t like ladders much and my daughter likes them less, but what can you do?). Wednesday I ran the hills again, different route but more painful descents, and a nasty surprise to discover that nine miles into a nine-and-a-half miler, on Mt. Washington-abused legs, the bridge was out, and it would tack on five more to go around. Fortunately, a very amused construction crew showed me how to weave through their work zone and pass through. Hey, if I can climb mountains, I can get over a measly creek, right? Thursday, an easier summit and a flat run, Friday a few small summit hikes and some moderate hills on the late-day run, Saturday my daughter again picked a good one, one of the steepest trails in the Whites, the Flume Slide, for a finishing touch on a week’s leg abuse.

And I came home pumped. And I wrote that column. And I knew darn well that my legs were shredded. And I didn’t care, because after a week like that, the slump was over! And I had less than five weeks to ready myself for the marathon.

Reality has a habit of setting in at the least convenient times. Those downhills had done their damage. New Hampshire Breakout quickly unveiled its true identity of New Hampshire Break-it. By the end of last week my left leg was at that, “you’ve got a nasty shin splint which, if you don’t rest, could gravitate to a stress fracture” point. And I hadn’t yet put in a long one. Four weeks to a marathon, and my longest run since May was a fourteen miler. And in need of a few days off.

Well, this stinks, eh?

The glass is half empty, the glass is half full, the glass is broken, take your pick. I’ll take half full. OK, so I burned four precious days sidelined and resting. OK, so there’s barely more than three weeks till the marathon. OK, so what? I told my self this wasn’t a time-focused race, this was a motivator, so get motivated. An early morning seventeen and a half today, not the best, but not bad, and we’re on our way. Mash in a twenty early next week (here’s a plan: other daughter’s new school is eighteen-plus away via the back roads, hitch a ride in with her and run home, that’ll be a fun and interesting odyssey…). Toss on top of that a high-mileage couple of days next weekend, as I was just recruited by a friend as a last-minute fill-in for their Reach the Beach Relay team – White Mountains to Hampton Beach, yes, again in New Hampshire, a dozen runners per team, 200+ miles, about 24 hours. Before you know it I’ll be in taper, one local 5K booked to mix in some speed (and burgers afterward) a week before, and hot diggity, we’re gonna’ run a marathon soon!

Moss free.

New Hampshire Breakout

Those who follow astrology (though I cannot for the life of me figure out why) would recognize a phrase like, “Such and such plays a major part today”. Yeah, watch out for those Leos, you never know about them. That is, of course, if you know who they are.

My horoscope two weeks back might have read, “New Hampshire plays a major part today.” And I would have laughed, and said, “Of course, you astro-ninny, I’m heading up there for a week shortly,” which of course, I did. But New Hampshire played a bigger part than expected, and the result is, I hope, a breakout from my injury-prone summer slump.

It’s been pretty much a foregone conclusion that my fall marathon would be the great Null and Void Marathon, held on a bench near you. After the horrid May (103 multiple-injury-laden miles), disastrous June (a mere 77 miles) and somewhat recovered but still hobbling July (finally a respectable 158 miles), all pretty much devoid of any racing, the thought of prepping for a big fall event was, well, astro-ninny silly. Nope, no marathon for me this fall. Stay the sane course.

But the down side of that decision is that there’s nothing pushing you, nothing goading you into working toward a higher level of fitness, nothing driving you out the door every day. And the result has, so far as I can tell, been an extension of the slump, probably beyond what it physically needed to be. Mentally, it’s dragged me down, which of course translates back to the physical. It’s a spiral, easy to fall into, hard to break out of.

Enter my club-mates, or one in particular. I’ve always said that a club is a motivating force, and this time was no exception. At a recent workout, club-mate Bill mentioned his fall plans to run the New Hampshire Marathon. Which one is that? Manchester? Clarence DeMar? Huh? No, the New Hampshire Marathon, a race I’d never heard of. How is it these things exist for years and you never hear about them? Thanks to the club, you do.

So, here’s the cool part. It’s only forty bucks. Yes, I spelled that out so you know it’s not a typo. Forty bucks. Lock, stock, & barrel. Cheapest marathon I’ve seen in, well, cheapest marathon I’ve seen. And it appears to be a full-fledged event. Forty bucks. Go figure.

Now, what this did to my head was simple. For forty bucks, just sign up. Don’t even think about it, just do it. That’s only five bucks more than the fee I lost by not running the Boilermaker this year. For forty bucks, you get motivation. You get something pushing you. And you get the freedom of knowing that if you find you just can’t pull it off, well, so what, it was only forty bucks. And if things go well, you even get a race. And a t-shirt, of course, because I need another t-shirt, but hey…

I know people that would spend more than that on a tie. I can’t see why, but they do.

And so, just before heading off to my week of hiking with the family in New Hampshire, I mailed in my check for forty bucks, and I am now registered to run a fall marathon. Since I was going to New Hampshire anyway, and since it was rainy and not a great hiking day on our way up, we spent an hour or so and drove the course. Very pretty, circumnavigating Newfound Lake, and of course, this being New Hampshire, hilly. Just my style, oh, what fun!

I now have motivation. Combined with a week in New Hampshire where the air was cool and, when not raining, crisp, my outlook has risen significantly from slump-land. Even the last few days home, when it’s peaked in the mid-nineties every day and hit the mid-eighties every time I’ve gotten on the road, making me feel quite awful again, my outlook is up. I’m registered for a fall marathon.

We won’t talk about the fact that it’s a mere month from tomorrow and the longest run I’ve put in since May was a fourteen miler just before the New Hampshire trip. No, that’s crazy talk, we’ll just avoid that little reality. Let’s see, pop in an 18-miler this week, a 21 in another week and a half, still time to taper and rest, and after all, this one is not about the time. Just go and have some fun. Really. I swear.

It’s all about the motivation.

New Hampshire plays a major part today. Really, I read it next to Ann Landers, it must be true.

A Series of Little (Wolves) Tastes

A couple of decades ago, just before I embarked on a business excursions to Los Angeles to teach a roomful of people a solid week’s worth of mind-numbing information, my mother was thoughtful enough to send me a restaurant review she’d seen in a magazine. When you get to L.A. check this place out, she told me, it looks good, and was, according to the article, “reasonable”.

After I dragged ten of my corporate classmates to this fine establishment, I realized that “reasonable” in a magazine about an eats-house in L.A. is only reasonable in comparison to a year’s tuition at Cal Poly; our expense budgets were shot for the week and we literally did pick up a meal or two at McDeath’s to make up for the folly. But memories of that evening linger, notably when the waiter, in perfect harmony with the prediction in the magazine article, strode to our table and announced, “The chef has prepared for you tonight a series of little tastes…

Let the gastronomical delights and the financial wreckage begin!

Why do I think of these things? That, I cannot say. But in that spirit, at last, nearly a month past the event, I fulfill my promise of bringing you stories of the Wolves race. The author has prepared for you tonight a series of little tastes…

Indulge.

Who’s That Winner? Our race was won by 18-year-old Ben Perron of Southborough, the next town south of here. Shortly after the race I received an email from Jeff, the coach of the Southborough Recreation track & cross country programs, a gentleman I’ve had the honor and pleasure of working with on numerous middle school meets with my Immaculate Conception teams. Jeff was tickled by the news since Ben was a veteran of his program. Clearly a high for any coach!

In Record Time? Ben’s time was a minute and change off of last year’s winning time, but we extended the course this year to gain USATF certification. Granted, we added only 84 feet, about 5 seconds at Ben’s pace, but a change is a change, it’s a “new” course, and I’d give him at least a record with an asterisk.

Stretched It? Why add 84 feet? Certification is a mysterious thing. For certification, we elected to measure assuming runners might cut onto a sidewalk we’d presumed they’d skip last year. It’s lumpy and ugly and such, but they could, so we did. Doing so still put us only a few feet off our wheel measurement from last year – within the error limit for certification. But on the second measurement it all came out different. Why? I’d call up Alan Jones, inventor of the famed Jones Wheel, and ask, but I’ve kind of lost track of him since I knew him in my early First Lap days running for the Triple Cities Running Club back in Binghamton NY. Alan was a real pioneer, using computerized results reporting for our weekly club meets in the days when “PC” was a foreign word to most. His son, Clain, who took over the Wheel business for a time, was a schoolmate and track & XC teammate of mine, though a bit younger than I. Someday I’ll have to look them both up… And maybe they can explain it. Though we were within the acceptable limit of error, we elected to be conservative and added the distance. Whatever.

The Course, Completed: Measured or not, we had a scare when the City tore up a piece of the rail trail which our course crossed twice (being an out and back) mere days before the race. Race director’s coronary department! But the work was completed rapidly, and truth be told, that spot – at the town border with embedded town seals and an embedded piece of rail – was a bit hazardous and needed attention. Kudus to the City for fixing it. Just for us, we figure.

And Maybe It Was – Because the City was Fabulous: Early in the planning stages, our fair city, the fine City of Marlborough, tossed a new permitting process at us that created some heartburn. The new framework was clearly designed to handle the woes that entail from visiting carnivals, charlatans, and murderers’ conventions. We, being local folk trying to do good, were, to be fair, a little irked. But there was method behind the madness, and being more aware of our plans than ever before, the City delivered in spades. They gave us the stadium again for our finish and post-race gathering, but their man on location, Rick, didn’t just unlock the gates and open the doors, he pretty much joined our race staff and worked his behind off to make it a fantastic night. Gratis. And the City sent us cops, not one, not two, but three, James, Tony, and Borden. Gratis. And they didn’t just stand there like rent-a-cops, they too dove in like race staff, covering road crossings, traffic snarls, you name it. Two of them, mounted on their fine titanium steeds, became roving course marshals (“The runners are coming! The runners are coming! One if by foot and two if, umm, by foot!”), and one happened to be on the spot when our casualty of the day occurred and one went down to heat stroke. Thanks to these guys, our runner was treated in minutes, his worst lasting wound being a bad memory. Hats off to the City of Marlborough, a thousand thank-yous.

Missed My Fame: My hub-bub as pre-race field commander was interrupted for a five minute interview by the local access cable news program. The bummer is I forgot to watch it. My fifteen minutes of fame, and I missed it.

Did they howl? You Bet They Howled! We billed it as the Wolves run, and they howled. Yes, at first, because I told them to howl at the start, and howl they did. But howl they continued to do. They even became famous for doing so, as reported by John over at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette (take a look down toward the middle of his column). Hey, you have to be a little loony sometimes, right?

Real Wolf? The morning of the race, my wife spotted a coyote while out on her morning walk. Yes, they’re known around here, but not all that common. And for you nay-sayers, the Eastern Coyote is a hybrid with plenty of wolf involved. I say it was an omen. And one real wolf, or at least a distant cousin of one, did cross the finish line.

But As They Howled… What About The Important Stuff? So our team has been working for months and it’s all come down to this. Field commander mode, everything must get done. Finally, it’s starting time. I’m making the pre-race announcements. We’ve verified that our split timers are on the course and ready for the start. Amy, our Head Queen Diva, belts out a stirring national anthem. We howl. And in the excitement, the fun, the not-wanting-to-hold-these-people-up-any-longer, I say GO! Oh what fun! And then I have that, OH CRAP moment, when I realize that while yes, I did have my stopwatch in my hands, DID I START IT? A moment of panic. Yes, I did start it, even at the right time, but I realize that of all those checklist items, I’d forgotten to verify who were our backup timers and if they were ready. Thank God for teammates, they were all over it. Not that we needed it, but if we had, and they hadn’t, oh, I shudder to think. “Well, we THINK you ran about, umm, uhh…”

And Last But Not Least: This race was a tremendous team effort, especially on the part of the few inner-circle folks who worked ridiculous hours to make it happen. But I did stamp a few personal bits on top, just because, well, after all, being race director does let you make a decision now and then. And I wanted to recognize some people who never get recognized, so we gave awards to not just the fast folks but also to those with the most perseverance: the very last man and woman to cross the line. Unfortunately we missed catching the last lady before she left. When I contacted her to send her award, she was tickled by the recognition, but said she’d departed “exhausted and embarrassed”. Embarrassed? Always remember, I reminded her and I remind you, when you toe the line for that 5K, 10K, or any race, the last place finisher has just accomplished far, far more than the 99.5% of the population who haven’t left the couch. Fast or slow, stand proud, you came, you ran, you howled, and you triumphed.

Not That Great

Ed Note: Yes, I know, I’ve promised stories from the Wolves race. Sadly, my primary computer is down for the count with maintenance issues. All of the Wolves pictures are over there. So again, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the Wolves, and hopefully enjoy this tale in the meantime.

It’s easy to romanticize. We do it all the time. Imagine that perfect setting, that perfect experience, scope it, plan it, just do it, it will be great. Yeah, well, not always.

That famous glitzy running magazine features a spread every month called the “Rave Run”, where some über-fit denizen of our community glides along through breathtaking scenery, without, of course, having their breath taken away, since that would be a bad thing during a run. On occasion that feature has even hit a place or two where I’ve run, and they are fabulous spots. But since we don’t get those opportunities often, we try to re-create something similar close to home.

A few days back I had a business meeting in Connecticut, about an hour and a half from home, and as is often the case with my late-night routine, I didn’t drag my bones out of bed early enough to pop in a few miles in the pre-work sunrise hours. Rather than fret, I saw this as an opportunity: pack the bag, find a good spot, and plan a rave run for the ride home, once safely removed from customers who actually desire that the engineers who visit are clean-smelling and somewhat kempt. It is, after all, a sales job. But I digress.

My target, courtesy of a thirty-second web search, was the Air Line Trail (or Airline Trail, depending on who you believe), an abandoned rail bed stretching 50 miles through northeastern Connecticut. In my brief web search, I didn’t catch much information about the trail; I simply looked for a spot not far from my travel route but away from civilization. In northeastern Connecticut, that isn’t really that hard; I chose a section near Hampton in the James L. Goodwin State Forest. Ah, what better way to end a workday on the road than with a pleasant ramble through the forest, where the map promised trailside lakes and forest scenery, the former railway promised relatively flat and easy going, and the brief web search hinted at a soft, unpaved surface.

After a few miscues – as it turns out you cannot find the trail when it crosses US Route 6, forcing a start in the forest at the next road crossing – I hit the trail. Flat and easy going? Check. Soft, unpaved surface? Check, a fine respite for that nagging Achilles. Scenery? Too early to tell. So, two out of three so far, not bad, but there was a forth forest feature I hadn’t figured on. A frighteningly frequent flying formation fomenting furious frenzy. Silly me, I should’ve known better.

Cursed flies. Evil, villainous, cursed flies. I’d use stronger words but we try to keep this family oriented.

Now, I’m not saying I was really prepared for this. It was a quick, last minute, running-out-of-the-house decision. I’d made tactical errors. No dry clothing outside of dress work clothes for afterward. No beverage stock. No plastic bag to keep the car key fob dry (hmm, soak it in salt or carry it looped around the fingers…neither optimal). And no bug juice. The latter would have been handy against mosquitoes, but not having it was really not the problem; it would have been useless.

These were not your average house flies, or even your typical black flies. These were kamikaze flies, terrorizing in swarms, like kamikazes using their impact more than their weapons to agonize. Before I was a hundred meters down the trail I was pelted with a hailstorm of winged protein packets. No bug juice could have penetrated the air quick enough to turn them back from their evolution-honed attack vectors. Frankly, it’s hard to figure out how they do it, how they seem to position themselves in your path and allow you to smack them as they smack you.

Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead. This is going to be a beautiful route. I am going to enjoy this.

Except that it really wasn’t, and I really didn’t. Trees, trees, and more trees. Don’t get me wrong. I love trees. I will hike for days. I love forests. But even the most excitable peak-bagger will tell you that the wooded summits are a bit of a letdown. We outdoors types do like some spice on our food. We do like something more than trees. Now where were those lakes on the map? Ah, yes, those weed-choked over-phosphated almost-thick-enough-to-walk-over quasi swamps. Yes, those must have been the lakes I was promised. Well, as they say, it looked good in the brochure, but that was just marketing.

Truth? It wasn’t that bad. But more truth? It wasn’t that great.

Well, when you’re in it, you’re in it, and you might as well milk it. I pushed on, at a harder pace than planned in a futile attempt to outrun at least some of the flies, till I reached the fifth road crossing which I’d measured as a tad over five miles out, having seen a mere two humans by that time (not even another runner to commiserate with!), then spun it around for the return trip home. Being a hot, humid evening, my shirt soaked and heavy, it wasn’t long till the ancient runner’s malady set in, with friction on the pointy bits creating red streaks down my white top along with the accompanying screaming soreness of every stride. On a normal day, the solution is easy. Lose the shirt. But not with four miles of flies between me and the car.

Soldier on.

Probably the worst insult was having to jump in the car instantly after coming off the trail. No walking warm down, no time to let the drippage subside. Grab the towel, slam the door, and get out’a there. Fast.

So it wasn’t the rave run. It wasn’t the nirvana spot I’ll return to. But we have to take what we’re given and make the most of it. It was certainly an adventure. And it was the first hard ten miler I’d logged in a long time.

Who knew flies could be such tough coaches?

Loyal To My Lifesaver

Ed Note: I’ve promised more stories from my club’s recent race, and I promise, I will get there. Meanwhile, August 7th has come around again. I’ve written before about what happened on that date, twenty-nine years ago. But with my sister fighting a courageous fight against cancer, showing how a positive attitude toward one’s own care (and life in general) can inspire and carry us through the tough times, it’s all the more relevant to tell the story again in more depth. I recently was asked to write an inspirational piece on running for a friend’s forthcoming book, and my selection of a topic was easy. I present that piece here. Fight on, sis. You’re showing us how it’s done.

It’s simple, really. Running saved my life. Dramatically. Someone, or in this case something, saves your life, and you ought to stay loyal to it. I didn’t, and running had to save my life again – not quite as dramatically the next time, but really, it did, again. This time I’ve learned. Running is my friend. I will stay loyal as long as I can.

Truth is, running had already made my life before it saved it. I was the geeky kid, the nerd, the one everyone taunted and teased, the klutz with no athletic ability. It didn’t help that I had the emotional control of a tornado till middle school. I had the respect of the adult world, but without single a cool factor in my column, I was hopeless amongst my peers. But in high school, I found my calling on the roads, the trails, and the track. A natural endurance. A tolerance for pain. An urge-to-kill competitiveness, as one of my coaches used to call it. A path to bring a little victory to the old Spartan Blue & Gold, a school that sorely needed it. Of course I was still a geeky kid, a nerd, and a klutz, but as a runner, I grew up, and gained some respect by the time high school ran its course. On my way out the door, the world stood at my feet with great plans and opportunities.

And then it all went away – almost – if not for running.

People don’t get the flu in August, but I did. Maybe it was working three jobs, keeping up a social life, and running most every night at 1 AM when my best running buddy got off his second-shift job. Most likely it was dumb luck, since it turned out it wasn’t the flu.

After two days of feeling pretty down I awoke on a Friday morning, the seventh of August, 1981, feeling pretty good. Nevertheless, I elected to call in sick again that day. Might as well rest up, it’s Friday, they can live without me, I’m just a summer temp anyway. Back to bed for a nap at 7:30, mom’s off to work, I’ll be fine snoozing alone, enjoy it, college arrives in a short month.

A mere hour later I was jarred from slumber by a freight train derailment. The real train tracks were a mile from my house, but this train was in my head. Quite the wreck. Unimaginable pain. And it got worse when I lay back down. That told me something was really wrong. Enough lucidity to make the phone call. Mom, something’s wrong. Not enough lucidity to realize she’d hung up to call the doctor and was trying to call back. Still holding the phone in agony at the kitchen table when the neighbor came banging on the door to find out why the line was still busy.

Haze setting in. Fortunate to live in a town small enough that she’s home from work in ten minutes, we’re at the doctor’s office fifteen later. Lucky as hell to see a doctor who gets the right hunch the first time, after all, not like he sees spinal meningitis every day. Remember hearing, “No time for an ambulance, drive him to the hospital now, and don’t stop for red lights.” A crash team waiting for me at the door. Enough brainpower to crack with them that I must be really sick since they’re not making me sign any forms, but not enough to care about the pain of the immediately administered spinal tap on arrival. People tell me they hurt. I didn’t notice. Then, nothing.

Elapsed time: Feeling pretty good to deadly coma, about three hours. Ponder that. Three hours. Of course, there are plenty of things that will kill us instantly. A heart attack. A bullet. An asteroid the size of Chicago. Still, there’s something uniquely frightening about that three hour span. We tend to think in terms of instant death or slow decline. We don’t think much about the middle ground; it is foreign to us. Death in a span of three hours strikes an odd nerve.

The end of the story is that I’m still here. The recovery was long, far longer than a couple days in the ICU, a week in the hospital, and a month of recuperation. Effects lingered for close to a year. But I’m still here. Plenty of people contributed to the end of the story, all worthy of lifelong thanks. To this day I don’t know who that doctor was who played the hunch and got it right when minutes counted. Twenty five years later I tried to find out, but couldn’t. He saved my life. The crash team saved my life. The rest of the staff saved my life. Mom, of course, saved my life. Bacterial meningitis was at that time about 90% fatal, I was told (today’s drugs had dropped that to about 50-60%, still pretty scary). I was oddly honored to learn that I had generated my very own county-wide public heath alert.

But in the aftermath, the doctors summed it up very neatly and succinctly. Without the physical conditioning from my running, I wouldn’t have made it. They left no doubt about it.

Simple. Not running, not writing this. Running saved my life.

That part was simple. But life never is. Recuperation plus the onset of college made me drift away from my lifesaving friend. A little here, a little there, a little less next year. A decade later I was still cycling and hiking but not running. Another decade later the cycling had dropped away. The skinny kid was still pretty fit compared to the American Couch Potato, but frankly, had acquired a bit of pudge. Twenties became thirties became forties became the day I realized my legs didn’t feel very good anymore. Dr. Google, who has no bedside manner, suggested all sorts of mean nasty ugly things that could be happening. It was time to be saved again. I came back to my old friend.

This latest time it wasn’t a narrow escape from death. It wasn’t running in the fire turnout gear hauling me from the burning building of imminent death. But running came to my rescue again, replacing the start of my decline with the start of my midlife fitness triumph. Five years, twenty-five pounds, eight thousand miles and eleven marathons later, I am saved again.

People never stop telling me how running will kill me: death by joint degeneration, death by traffic, death by heart attack because they heard about that one guy out of thirty thousand who collapsed at Boston this year. They’re not entirely wrong. After all, running nearly did kill me a few marathons back. But I’m willing to give it that opportunity. Something will kill me someday, and if it is running, it will be because it running has earned it, because running has saved me, because I literally owe my life to running. And besides, what a way to go when the time comes.

Every August I remember the day I didn’t die. And I remind myself of what saved my life. I need to stay loyal to my live-saving friend.