Going Big Time

Really, it’s only a thinly disguised donation to support my local running club, as if what I already do for the club isn’t enough support. Somehow, though, it’s exciting. It’s like and initial public offer of a sort – not that kind of IPO, but an IPO just the same. This is it, it’s the Big Time. Sort of.

I’m talking about cranking this writing hobby up a notch, raising it from Utter and Complete Obscurity to Pretty Much Total Obscurity. Yes, my peeps, I’ve taken that step and entered the world of marketing. Actively seeking eyeballs. Upping the site visitation. Burning up a few more seconds of my Andy-Warholesque fifteen minutes of fame.

It’s not like I’ve signed a contract to place ads on Google searches or Weather.com, right alongside those sleazy ad sites that still promise to get you a mortgage for nothing despite the Crash of ’08 and subsequent hand-wringing. Even if I wanted to spend that kind of money, I don’t think I want to be a cyber-neighbor of those punks. No, my entry to the world of ad-driven traffic is far more tame; all I’ve done is kicked in a donation to my club’s 10K and made this blog a sponsor of the race. It’s really just one hand feeding the other, since I’m the one driving the sponsorship campaign anyway. OK, so I just upped my numbers a bit in exchange for a tax-deductible contribution to a non-profit, with the hope of gaining maybe three peeps. Fair enough.

But nothing is simple in life. A few bucks buys me a couple square inches on the t-shirt, a spot on the web site, and even less space on the race application. All I’m promoting is a web site, so it had better be clear and readable. And www.thesecondlap.blogspot.com is not short, which means printed on a small spot on cloth, not readable, even when stationary, and these are, after all, running shirts. One hopes they’ll find some time in motion.

Fortunately I’d already bought a domain name when I started this blog. It seemed unfortunate at the time that someone had already snagged “TheSecondLap” (get this – they use it to sell “second laps”, as in lap desks. Yeah, I guess I’m OK with that…) I had to settle for “SecondLap”, which, it turns out, is shorter, anyway. T-shirt material. Score.

Of course I hadn’t actually done anything with the domain name for nearly two years, but with the prospect of www.secondlap.com appearing on our club’s web site and race applications within days, last night turned into one of those frenzied sessions brought on by a typically ludicrous self-imposed deadline for an uber-critical cause. If I sound like I’m attaching just a little bit too much importance to all this, of course I am. If you don’t convince yourself that something is important, it just doesn’t get done. Within a couple hours I created a logo (ooh, check it out, high tech, eh?) and a couple of stub web pages to lead the faithful from www.secondlap.org (yeah, there too) to the real Second Lap, right here.

All this so I could find an excuse to kick fifty bucks over to my club. OK, and to move one step closer to that dream of publishing a real book someday, once I figure out what it will really be about. It might be helpful to have two dozen peeps by then.

So, if you’re here because you saw a web site on the back of a t-shirt, well, first, get a life, and second, read back to some of the interesting articles (unlike this one), and third, post a comment. You’ll make me feel like I’ve gone Big Time. Hey, it’s kinda’ exciting in a way.

Speaking of Big Time Department: A few days ago I happened to hit web page of the Mount Desert Island Marathon, www.mdimarathon.org. You’ll recall that last fall I ran MDI because I love the place, and instantly loved the race as well. And to my great amusement, there was my smiling face staring out of the slide show on the home page. Not once, and not even twice, but three big appearances (to be fair, one is my Fuel-Belted backside, though obviously me), a fourth slightly out of focus background cameo, and, for those of you truly obsessed enough to look for these things, even a fifth slight view of a few body parts among the starting line shot. Yeah, that last one is pretty useless in the fame department, but hey, all of this amidst a slide show of a mere twenty-two photos. Not a bad ratio. Perhaps I need to pay my agent more?

Wander on over and look for me in the double shirt, bright yellow Boston Marathon sleeves sticking out from under the blue, number 796. Or better yet, wander on over just to see the gorgeous scenery of this fabulous “Must Do” race.

A Perfect Storm

My excuse could be simply, no runny, no writey, since I haven’t run much lately, nor have I written in weeks. Reality is a bit more complicated. It’s been more like the perfect storm of events, conspiring to keep me from my literary therapy.

You might remember The Perfect Storm, the flick with George Clooney when he was still only fabulously famous (as compared to his entirely overpowering fame of today). It was a seriously good flick, so long as you didn’t see it in IMAX 3-D shortly after a meal. New Englanders remember the Perfect Storm – the topic of said cinema – because we lived it. Three weather fronts converged to create an über-hurricane-like storm far too late in the season, far too far north, and with all of its power focused in the water, with far too large and too destructive surf.

I worked with a guy at the time who lived in a house on Lighthouse Point in Scituate, Massachusetts, the epicenter of the storm’s land-based impact. He was the, I think, the calmest guy I’ve ever known, the poster boy for what tranquilizer pharmaceutical researchers try to achieve through their craft. Good thing, too, since the ocean went through his house that night. He calmly reported to us later how he and neighbors went through the salt marsh behind their road on a mission of discovery, finding various things they once owned. He never flinched or showed the least distress or emotion over his trauma. It was calming, but almost weird.

I can’t compare my life to that calamity, but I’ll steal the parallel of three fronts bearing down with powerful effects. A couple of nagging injuries have largely kept me off the roads, which removes the adventurous story fuel for these tomes as well as a good chunk of the inspiration. End-of-season wrap-up duties for the kids I coach have sucked half my non-working, non-eating, non-sleeping hours. And planning duties as race director for my club’s upcoming 10K have sucked the other three-quarters of that time.

Let’s face it, during normal times, most of these columns get written well after midnight and posted far later. It’s only to put on a farce of normalcy that I adjust the posting times to a humane 11:30 PM or so. During times like these, when the wee hours roll around and the race sponsorship correspondence or the track team results compilations still aren’t done, not to mention the stack of typical non-work work that never stops accumulating (and we won’t even talk about real work), well, blog postings take a back seat. Sorry, fans, I’ll send you all personalized apologies once I figure out who all six of you are.

So, in weather front number one, my track team finished their season on a glorious note. While my boys managed to win a couple meets, it’s been a tough year score-wise for the girls, not that that dampens their enthusiasm. When it comes to scoring, we really don’t care, but it was a nice bonus when my girls actually managed to not lose their last meet. Mind you, they didn’t win, but they didn’t lose for the first time all year.

They tied, thanks to a gutsy young lady who on that last day of the season – without being begged, cajoled, or even telling us coaches – jumped into the 1600m – the long event that strikes fear in the hearts of middle-school-aged kids – and slogged out a nine minute mile for third-place among a thin field, earned a point on the score card, and saved her team from going oh-for-life. You’d have to see how this kid never quits to understand the heart she brings to the track. Coaching her is as satisfying in its own way as is having the honor of coaching the superstar boy on the other end of the spectrum who wins everything he looks at. I had the pleasure of giving them special recognition at our year-end banquet this evening, and the team said thank you to me with God’s Perfect Gift for a coach – my very own bullhorn! Lift and drive, people, LIFT AND DRIVE!

Sweeping in from the other direction, weather front number two, that being Chief Poobah, or race director, for our club’s Running With the Wolves 10K, has consumed the rest of my discretionary time. We promised ourselves we’d start earlier this year. Really. Of course, we didn’t, and I take full responsibility for that, but it doesn’t change the mad rush status we’re in now. I’ll expound on the fun at some indeterminate point in the future, but suffice to say sleep is elusive.

And all of this fun – after all, it is fun, or why do it? – would be bearable with my daily hour of road therapy, save for that third weather front that barreled out of nowhere to complete the Perfect Storm. A pesky Achilles strain and an inexplicably long-lasting hamstring pull have conspired to pretty much wipe out any hope of maintaining a decent training program. Suffice to say I’ve run farther in two and a half hours than I have so far this entire month. It’s enough to make a guy grumpy. And as The Hulk once said, don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

The Achilles I can understand. It’s supposed to be tough to heal. That’s why it’s the Achilles, of course. And I count myself lucky for never having had this oh-so-common problem in the five years and eight thousand miles of my Second Lap. But the hammy really should have healed when I took three days, then five, then a whole week off to let the anti-inflammatories get the flam out of the Achilles. I’m puzzled, frustrated, and dismayed that it’s still in tough shape. I’ve had to let a few favorite races slip past, and next month’s Boilermaker is at risk.

But all storms die out at some point, and this one will too, excepting of course the case when storms kill off those who try to ride them out. But we won’t talk about that now, will we?

Let It Shine

A few days ago I was ensconced in a hotel room in a city I was told is not a friendly place to run. Matters not, I was – and am still – on injured reserve, taking a few days more to try to heal a nagging Achilles, now coupled with a strained hamstring as well, so said urban imprisonment is of minor concern. But even without running at the moment, this running habit of mine is generating positive results.

As I wrote the bulk of this article a few days back, the oversized hotel room television silently flashed a truly astounding assortment of crap that I just don’t see at home because when home, other things occupy my time rather than a brief spurt of traveling-time channel surfing. My amazement that anyone would watch some of this stuff is exceeded only by my amazement that anyone would film this stuff. Vacuous and vapid are words that come to mind. Yet people do watch it, else there would be no economic incentive to air it. And with each minute of viewing time, these twisted media versions of reality influence the viewers’ perceptions of normal. Is it any wonder our society in general chases materialistic and wasteful idols and has largely lost its way?

Every impression that reaches every person has an impact in some way, shape, or form. It’s a basic fact that drives our advertising-driven society. Each moment of impression might be explicitly accepted by the receiver, explicitly rejected, or more insidiously, implicitly unprocessed but not unnoticed. One might believe the impact of such unprocessed impressions is nil, but I hold instead that it is additive, slowly shaping reality as defined by perception. In a simple example, I may explicitly reject the notion of the driver passing by me doing eighty-five while another may explicitly accept that behavior as admirable, but the bulk of people probably don’t even think about it. After a while, their perception of acceptable reality is eighty-five on the highway.

Everything you do outside of closed doors is an influence on others. Each impression you make on others may be explicitly rejected, explicitly accepted, or unprocessed yet additive to the receiver’s perception of the world. In time, you do influence those around you, whether you want to or not. You have the choice of what kind of influence you want to impart.

My coworkers know I am an avid runner. I’ve had the blessing of supportive management who for years have not only encouraged my lifestyle, not only embraced my efforts to build this healthy activity into my busy appointment schedule, but have explicitly advertised my exploits, adding a slide to the usual staff meeting blather after most of my marathons. Many explicitly reject these impressions with the usual good-natured (and somewhat accurate) accusations of insanity. Some explicitly accept these impressions with recollections of their previous similar adventures or wishes of future imitation. Most leave them unprocessed, but they cannot fail to paint their view of reality.

And it works. After five years of running, I’ve seen a surprising – or perhaps not surprising – number of converts, all the way up to a co-worker who went from a casual jogger to completing Boston last month. I know I’m not entirely to blame for any of these converts. I also know I’m not entirely not to blame. For whatever blame I hold, I am proud of my influence and prouder still – for them – of the transformation I’ve seen in these people. It’s a positive influence. It’s leadership.

As it turns out, I’ve had a chance of late to turn these casual influences into something stronger. A manager also bitten by the running bug learned that I’m acting as race director for our club’s upcoming 10K. She encouraged me to send word of the event to our sales and engineering teams, both as a fun event and as a way to encourage some fitness on the team. Now, it’s one thing to passively lead by example and quite another to drag your peeps kicking and screaming into the pool. I wasn’t quite sure what their reaction would be.

I needn’t have worried. After a few days of radio silence to let the concept sink in, out spewed that typical sales force competitiveness. The trash talk started. The factions formed. I found the need to make the executive decision to add team scoring to our race, just to let these folks have their day, have their fun, and in the process, do something good for themselves. I was tickled pink.

You might think you run for yourself, and you do. But don’t forget for a moment that your running is a beacon of healthy living, shaping the perceived reality of those around you. Let it shine.

A Long Awaited Experiment

How great is it when different parts of your life collide in good ways and build on each other synergistically? Now and then the fickle finger of fate points in the right direction, and it can be very cool, as it was last week. As a result I’m going to try an experiment I’ve wanted to do for some time.

Just back from a few days of post-Boston relaxation I was greeted with – what else – about four hundred business emails, not counting the “congrats on a fine Boston” ones that don’t count as a chore to wade through. Yes, the benefit of vacation time and being home-office-based means you spend the night before returning to work already working. C’est la vie, it’s a living, and a pretty good one.

In my line of business, which is, in effect, trying to explain what our gadgets do and why you want them, where our gadgets are pretty complex devices that can be rolled out in any of about four-point-seven million variations, I get called in to see pretty much any customer in our fold when the time is right. The usual day brings the usual suspects: insurance companies, colleges, consulting houses, government agencies, you name it. Then once in a while comes a treat, the call you just can’t wait to go on. So how cool is it that my first customer call after coming back from the marathon was a running shoe company? Can you beat that? A meeting at New Balance. Way cool.

New Balance sports an impressive looking headquarters on the edge of Boston, but we trundled up to their other place in beautiful (he said somewhat tongue-in-cheek) Lawrence, Massachusetts. Truth be told, while Lawrence doesn’t have the best reputation as a garden spot, as one who’s heavily interested in history I find the place rather fascinating. And New Balance lives in a grand restored nineteenth century mill – with track lanes marked on the hardwood floors in places.

My sales rep of course opened the meeting by bringing up the marathon, and the moment I knew would come at some point came immediately: “And you ran it in New Balance shoes?”

Umm, uh, well, truth be told, no. I’ve been an ASICS guy, with a smattering of a few others tossed in for variety, none of which made me all that happy. And I’m a frugal guy, so I simply buy last year’s model at the cheapest close-out price I can find on the web. Hey, they’re not the newest, latest, and greatest, but if they were good enough last year, they’re good enough now. Sad truth is I’d never tried on a pair of New Balance that I thought had fit my feet. But it’s also fair to say that my trusty ASICS have changed a bit over the years, I’ve blistered more of late than usual, and I’m game for variety. I just hate paying running store prices to run those tests.

Yah, well, they understood, and we moved on and had a fine meeting. But they promised to take us upstairs to the factory store afterward. We’ll get back to that after a short interlude of extreme coolness.

Interlude of extreme coolness: New Balance has a lab where they do all sorts of dynamic biometric studies on runners and shoes. I’d heard about it some time ago, and corresponded with the guy who runs the lab about a year ago, but that was as far as it went. I figured I probably scared him off with my tale of bizarre foot surgery – I mean, how much useful data could he get on normal people’s feet by measuring my bionic one? By now, of course, things are a little more back to normal in the foot department, and I might actually be of some use to him. As a runner, the opportunity to get a better understanding of what my body was really doing sounds simply too cool to resist. And as an engineer, the opportunity to see how that measurement and analysis was done was again simply too cool to resist.

Since things in my life were converging that day, you’d expect me to tell you that it turned out that the lab was a mere fifty feet down the hall from our meeting room. And that somehow, the name of the guy who runs the place – with whom I hadn’t corresponded in over a year – just popped into my head halfway through our meeting (this, when the name of the guy across the table whom I’d just met had already left my head). And so I will tell you that these things were so, and that I was treated to a quick visit to the lab and a chat with said lab engineer. Whether I can be of any use to him remains to be seen (it would appear, in Seussical Grinchian fashion, that my foot is a size or two too small), but it was a great connection to make.

On to the shopping! Armed with a friendly discount, I hit the company store and to my delight did indeed find a pair of New Balance that appear to fit my feet, so I’ll give a pair of 1225s a drive and see what happens. But the much cooler bit was the 904s, which, at least in my opinion, are a cross between training and racing shoes. Light as a feather, but not so insubstantial as to leave your little piggies exposed to the nasties of the road. And shockingly yellow. Easier to pick me out of the crowd with these puppies on!

I’ve wanted to try out a pair of racing shoes for some time. It’s been close to thirty years since I wore those lime green Nike Waffle Racers around town and around tracks in upstate New York. But what’s been holding me back was the fear that real racers simply wouldn’t be supportive enough, and that old Yankee frugality – I had no great desire to dump a lot of money on something that experimental. Come the 904s, not really true racers, but a nice combination of lightness and support, and – just my style – last year’s model, discounted, with a bonus friendly discount at the already discounted factory store, and, well, even Mr. Stoic Shopper can’t resist making that kind of buy.

Which means I now have to consummate the experiment, which pushed me over the edge upon which I was tottering, which means yes, I went ahead and signed up for the Buffalo Marathon. Life just switched from post-Boston, to T-Minus four weeks to the next marathon. In cool shoes that will either kill my feet or – I hope – slice some effort and time from the tallies.

We learn best through experimentation.

Ed Note: A few days after I wrote this but before posting, I took the 904s for a short test drive. Like running in comfy slippers! Can my feet stand them for 26 miles? Actually, not my biggest concern at the moment as enough other things hurt that I’m really questioning my decision to run Buffalo.

Wackos Descend on Groton

What kind of a wacko goes out and races six days after the Boston Marathon? Apparently quite a few kinds, since a bunch of us lined up for a little post-Boston reunion on the starting line of the Groton Road Race 10K a week ago, a mere six days after punishing ourselves through the Newton hills and down Beacon Street.

Groton is one of those classic New England races that has transcended mere racedom to enter the zone of eventdom. It is known to and appeals to the entire community, not just the hard-core and light-duty runners. This is evident by the size of the crowd compared to the size of Groton. There simply can’t be that many runners in a town that size, even counting us foreigners imported from neighboring villes. Truth be told, I didn’t go to Groton because I wanted to race. I went to Groton because I wanted to go to Groton, because my friend Chris is the race director, and I wanted to see his big party. I wasn’t disappointed. Quite the party.

Groton is a whole host of events ranging from a couple of kids’ runs to a 5K and then the headliner event, the 10K. The races are big enough to warrant shutting the streets, and the town is small enough that when the streets are shut, you can’t go anywhere, which led to the ironic situation of having to sit in traffic due to a race while trying to get to a race. The old guy who got out of his car behind me and groused about, “Can’t believe they’re running a race on a major thoroughfare!” just didn’t get it. In Groton, there simply aren’t many thoroughfares, period. You can’t avoid it. Fortunately, he avoided me, as I would have had a bit of a debate with his stance.

Our Masochism Trio of Boston Recoverees including myself, Rocket John, and Boston PR Mark, assembled at the start which was curiously marked as if to expect about a hundred five-and-a-half minute pace runners and at least a hundred more at six minute pace. Knowing that was probably more than a bit hopeful (the actual count at day’s end was three under 5:30 and five more under 6:00), we all paced around up front while awaiting a ten-minute delay due to a car wreck (no runners, thankfully) on the course. A couple of colonial minutemen fired off a volley, fortunately missing everyone, and we were off on a day that turned curiously from expected cool showers to surprisingly humid warmth.

The foolishness of this endeavor sunk in before we even left the high school track. Racing six days after Boston? Yeah, right.

Rocket John didn’t seem to notice this irony, bolting out in a manner suitable to his nickname. By the mile he was a good thirty seconds up on me, and that with me hitting the mile slightly under six flat. What did he put in his Wheaties this morning?

Mile one and I was pretty much finished for the day. No surprise, that was all the legs would offer up, no more power to expend. That’s not to say I was flat on the ground or anything, just that there was no way I’d be racing toward the six-oh-somethings I’d like to see in a five to six mile race. John was long gone, and by one and a quarter, Boston PR Mark eclipsed me as well. I told him I was toasted, put a fork in me, I was done, but soldiered on, settled down to a “default race pace” in the 6:20’s and chugged it out.

If there was any consolation, it wasn’t as if I was losing ground wholesale. I sparred with a few runners, trading a few places back and forth, having enough oomph to take a few on the upgrades – the benefit of growing up around and living on hills. There was the pleasant surprise of an unexpected cheering section, a co-worker out to root on his son, who spotted me around mile five. But it was otherwise an unremarkable run. I was happy to be able to hold my pace once I’d settled in, to post a little kick at the end just for the cameras, and mostly to be finished.

PR Mark, Rocket John, and I took 8th, 13th, and 15th among the nearly 500 finishers, nothing to scoff at, but nothing special on my part. Ironically, though I hadn’t gotten a real 10K split in the Tri-Valley 15K a week before Boston, when I extrapolated my 10K from miles one through six and an appropriate part of seven, it turned out – I can’t make this up – to the second identical to Groton. Of course, one would hope the 10K to be faster than the 15K, but of course, one doesn’t really care six days after Boston. In fact, one could be quite pleased to hold the same pace.

Now, the funny thing is that in five years of Second Lap running and racing, eleven marathons, countless 5Ks, bazillions of distances in-between, I’d never actually run a 10K. So what the heck, it was a PR anyway.

And the post-race munchies were great, too. Hats off to you, Chris, you ran a fine event.

(Photos courtesy of Jim Rhoades)

Bizarre Note: Groton is a classy New England town, home to a classy New England prep school, not surprisingly called the Groton School. But back in those First Lap days in upstate New York, we knew nothing of this. We knew of Groton as a small town in the Middle of Nowhere (as if we lived in the Center of Somewhere?), between Ithaca and Cortland, and worthy of derision as only high-schoolers can generate. For some reason one of the guys on my cross country team decided that the name “Groton” sounded like a fungal disease, and in that weird flavor of high school humor, we’d lament the pour soul who came down with a bad case of Groton. It’s thirty years later and I can’t get that out of my head, but I’m pleased that I haven’t needed any anti-fungal creams since running that fine event in that fine town last weekend.

True Tales of Boston, Part 2

We now return to our Boston 2010 program already in progress… The tale of the race itself can be found here. Part 1 of the random stories of the day can be found here. And now, the second half of those stories. Enjoy.

Stupid Fast: In my race story last week I talked about how stupid fast I went out. How stupid fast was it? Well, it was so stupid fast that I actually hit 30K faster – by 21 seconds – than I ran the whole 30K race at Stu’s back in March. After that race I mentioned that I’d run the pace I wanted for a marathon, but knew there was seven and a half more miles to go. Guess what? I ran that pace, and had seven and a half miles to go. And they weren’t pretty. I hit the half in a smokin’ 1:26:06, only to follow that up with nearly an hour thirty three. Yep, no negative splits on this one, instead just an ugly pace chart, showing either a struggle to get my pace under control or a twenty-five mile fade – you be the judge. Not exactly a smart race strategy, but in the end, whatever.

Everybody’s Passing Me! The first corral is a scary place to start at Boston. My number just barely got me into that club, and I knew they’d go out fast, so I put myself in the back quarter of the corral. Nevertheless – and despite my stupid fast early miles – I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was being walloped by everyone around me. Not until late in the race did I feel like I was holding my ground. And pictures show all those two- and three-thousand numbered folks all around me. Yet, if you figure that there are a hundred or two up front in EliteLand, my number 1948 hinted at a seed of 1100-1200 or so, and my final place, 1170, fell right into line. Moral of the story? Don’t believe it when you think everyone is passing you.

Old Friends, New Friends: Boston has become an annual gathering of my ever-expanding clan of running friends. It’s like a class reunion, and the class keeps getting bigger. Shout-outs go to…

• Co-worker Kerry on completing her first; I can’t take much credit but I’ll beg for a little in nudging her toward this life achievement,
• Dave and his fellow traveler Mike, the Ottawa crew; I’ve been trying to meet Dave for a few years and finally did before they did two marathons in one day: Boston, and the drive back to Ottawa that night,
• Mike from Carolina who ran a much smarter race than I and almost nailed sub-three, Vince from Florida, and the others from afar with whom I’ve been in touch and hoped to meet this time but still haven’t; we’ll do it again next year I hope,
• My fellow club-mates from the Highland City Striders; for a club of a mere 50 people we fielded seven Boston runners, all finishers, way to go Rocket John, Krazy “Marathon a Month” Kevin, “Bet on it” Dan, Lovely Liz, Chris “The Gurn is Coming!”, and Paul, so sorry I cannot come up with a snappy nickname,
• The Squannacook crew, Chris, recovered from a tough half marathon a week earlier to turn in a fine Boston, and Mark who PR’d with a 2:54 and change – outstanding!, and to the rest of their welcoming gang,
• Mrs. Foot Doctor, to whom I owe the fact that Dr. Foot Doctor understood me when I first went to see him nearly two years ago and didn’t tell me to stop running,
• To new friend Steve from Maryland, who lamented missing re-qualifying by a mere thirteen seconds; I hope that paper application idea works out and we cross paths again.
• And to the rest, too numerous to mention…

The Reward! The reward? A few post-race days of R & R on beautiful Cape Cod, gloriously devoid of summertime crowds, and sporting just enough fellow Boston recoverees to make for interesting conversation including the lady from Sacramento and the gent from Germany enjoying our Commonwealth’s gorgeous beaches. I’ll excuse the couple who, while soaking in the hot tub, asked the classic, “and how long is THAT marathon?” question. Muggles.

Barefoot beach walking is perfect therapy for marathon-battered feet, like a miles-long foot massage. And the flatness of the Cape Cod Rail Trail was perfect for those rehabilitation runs. No hills this week, thank you. Perfect time to jog a few with my beloved, who yes, on her own accord has taken up the cause and is putting in a few miles.

By week’s end the quads were back in business enough to somewhat foolishly pop in a ten-miler. A ten-miler four days later? Well, you know how it goes… Out onto the rail trail behind the hotel, I wanted to run into the next town to check it off my list like any nerdy engineer type would. Then, once there, it was only another mile and a half to the end of the trail, so, might as well… Suddenly, I’m five miles out and only one way to get back, so what’s a runner to do? Some speed, of course, culminated by chasing down a local runner who we’ll call Amy (since that was her name), and her version of the Wonder Dog (border collie), Echo.

A little banter made the trip back more interesting, as did Echo’s joyful sauntering. Echo seemed a fine companion until he (she? It?) decided to flush a squirrel out of a tree, which promptly flew a foot in front of Amy’s face, giving her quite the start, and landed on the trail immediately in front of me, not at all right-side up and therefore doing one of those hysterical righting dances that only squirrels can do, while trying to run away, of course in the same direction I was moving, well, just try to envision it. Four days post Boston, muscles still a little tender, and it was either dance or kill the little bugger. Yeah, you had to be there, but trust me, it was a real hoot.

Parting Shot: My wife captured a classic shot as I came through Newton Lower Falls at mile sixteen. Really I was telling my ladies that I wanted one bottle of Rocket Fuel, yes one, see that finger, one! Clearly it looks like something else entirely. I’m not showing off. Just trust me on this one.

Enjoy.

True Tales of Boston, Part 1

If you tried to package up everything that happens on Marathon Monday, you’d end up with something that UPS probably won’t ship in one piece. So now that I’ve dispensed with the excitement of the race itself in last week’s posting, let’s move on to some of the more interesting tidbits to emerge from that intimate little gathering in Hopkinton. Here’s Part 1 of two entries to this post.

It’s an Cozy Little Event, Really! With 27.000 registered runners, countless bandits, and hundreds of thousands of fans (estimated at over a half-million), how will we ever find each other? Yet somehow we do, and it keeps happening enough to convince us it’s karma. Dude, let me count the ways.

One: Rocket John and I drove together to Hopkinton State Park and boarded one of many BAA buses to downtown Hopkinton. Granted, this arrival route serves many local runners, but it also carries many out-of-towners who are staying in the western ‘burbs – probably a couple thousand in total. So it’s still pretty remarkable when the two ladies sitting behind us are from the next town over, and even better when one says, “Hey, I saw your picture in the paper!” Even better because, frankly, very few actually read that paper.

Two: Walking into the Athlete’s Village, tens of thousands of runners, you couldn’t find someone if you tried, and of course we almost walk into our friends from the Squannacook River Runners, including Chris, who provided the impetus for my writing this blog in the first place. Even better, having first seen Mark, clueless me didn’t even recognize Chris behind his funky hat and shades. Hey, it was a whole week since I ran with the guy, cut me a break. They made fine camp-mates at the village as we basked in rare golden sun for a change rather than the usual Hopkinton Shivers.

Three: Crossing the finish line, I had a social call to make. Michelle, the lady who directs the vaunted medical tent is a friend from my church and insisted I stop in to say hello. Conveniently, I had a wicked blister on the ball of my left foot that had been working up since mile fifteen, and miraculously hadn’t burst, but wasn’t at all comfortable, so getting a patch was a great excuse to stop in and say hello. Now, just having a friend at the end was nice enough, but – yes, that phrase again – even better, when I walked out of the tent ten minutes later, there was Rocket John walking by, fresh over the finish line (probably not the best choice of words to describe him at that moment, but you get it). Had I not stopped short I would have walked right into him. Out of 27,000, just like that. I swear you can’t choreograph this stuff. (Thanks to med tent photographer Justin Ide for the shots of me, Michelle, and that fine inch-and-a-half blister!)

Four: Hours after my finish, after the baggage bus, after the reunion with Rocket John’s family, after hitting the Squannacook post-race party, after a fabulous rub-down, after all this I am walking back to catch the BAA bus back to Hopkinton, and amidst the still swirling crowds I hear my name called not once, not twice, but three times in a half-block span. First by a co-worker out to watch the race (my bad, I didn’t recognize him, we’re relatively new colleagues), second by someone I’ve never met but knew me well enough through someone else to recognize me (a bit scary, really), and third by a club-mate. Hundreds of thousands of people, and you can’t blend into the crowd.

Five and More: And there were other such encounters, edited for brevity, not to mention the numerous shouts from the crowd during the race I already mentioned last week. It’s intimate and cozy, I tell you. And somehow, there’s always someone around that you know.

I’ve Got His DNA Right Here! I completely missed the opportunity last year. Being in the first corral, I had wormed my way to the front to see the elite men, but they weren’t out yet, and knowing I’d be slow, I didn’t want to get caught up front when the rush went off, so I faded to the back of the corral and never saw those vaunted heroes.

What I didn’t realize last year is that there is a fenced corridor along the north side of the corral which the elites use to come from their secret church basement lair to the front of the pack. All you have to do is sidle over to the left, and you not only get to see them all, there’s a lot of high-fiving going on as well. I started the race with a little Ryan Hall, a little Meb, and a lot of Kenyan and Ethiopian DNA smeared across my right hand. I’d tell you I haven’t washed it since, but that would be a lie. Perhaps some of it might have soaked in and melded with mine? I’ll have to let my hair grow and see what happens.

And on that topic of the legendary Ryan Hall hair, my daughter, standing at mile sixteen, got one of those one-in-a-thousand lucky shots as Mr. Hall of the Hair flew by. Check out her picture – this is unedited, uncropped, uncompromised in any way. Way to go, Emily!

Media Star? Notwithstanding the obscure pre-race newspaper photo publication referenced via the link above, it was a banner year for media face time. Usually I time it just wrong. They’re always talking to someone at the times I pass the TV cameras, or if I make the shot, it’s during a commercial when they’ve picture-in-pictured the coverage to a miniscule size. Not this year. My timing was perfect: a full shot climbing Heartbreak, a long shot laboring up Hereford Street, and a final shot coming down Boylston, ironically ending with me checking my watch only three blocks from the finish but still not convinced I’d make it in three hours. If I was truly in the high-tech media age I’d have screen shots, but I’m not, so I don’t. Come on over and I’ll pop in the real live antique VHS tape!

The Honor of Addressing the Troops: I’d mentioned that the head of the medical tent is a friend. I was honored that she broadcast my kind words to her staff out to all of them. They’re saints, they deserve to know it, and I’m oh-so-pleased to have had the opportunity to tell them so.

To be continued…