Saturday, April 21, 2012

Mother Nature 1 - Housewives 0

Ice, hoses, visors, blue moon, shamrocks, mint chocolate gu....none of these things will ever be the same again, every time I see them I am pulled right back to our 2012 Boston experience.  Intensity is the major ingredient of a regular marathon; both the good and the bad, the experience resonates with you in much the same way as childbirth or war.  This one was as intense as it could be - the temperature rising by 35f degrees to a crazy 89f at the height of the race meant we were now entering a war zone; instead of beating the clock runners were attempting to beat mother nature and the heat.  All the pre marathon advice is to change nothing in your running as you should stick with your training plan - but when the weather changes so drastically you have to change just about everything.

I kept Q-less up most of the night, which she made abundantly clear to me as I woke.  My worst fear had been a hot weather marathon and here I was facing one in Boston in April.  Alternately hydrating and peeing, with the squeakiest hotel bathroom door, announcing my rapidly unravelling nerves to the entire hotel, I tossed and turned through the night.  We had stayed close to the race start to cut down on the ridiculous 4 hours it took us to get to the race start last time.  This time it was closer to 3 hours to get there, but it was much more mellow.  Taking the hotel shuttle with other runners, I immediately felt calmer than I had for the previous two days.  Once you are on that bus you have reached the point of no return.  The Boston marathon committee had urged anyone except the super fit and the elite runners to defer until the next year.  The previous afternoon our two mile warm up had been so gross and muggy around the industrial park that bailing was a serious consideration.

But runners are by nature pyscho and I knew that if I stood and watched the race go off the next day a large part of me would want to know how I would have coped with the heat.  It turns out only 400 runners did defer, but 4,000 never showed up in Boston to get their packets and, allegedly, the really smart ones deferred, then bandit ran for a slow or partial marathon.

I had not even bothered packing warm up clothes, and true to the forecast, when we woke the air was a heavy 74f degrees at 7 am, with bright, unapologetic sunshine beaming down on us.  In the Athletes' Village we moved from one spot to the next following tiny patches of shade, like lemmings, along with the other 22,000 runners.  I had panic bought a visor and glasses at my running store, they became essential items, as Q-Less and I spent a good deal of time rubbing in anti chaff and sun cream to exposed skin.

Getting to our corral was painless, but it was a different experience to our previous Boston.  Sun was bouncing off the sidewalk as we listened to the pre-race announcements and Q-Less weirdly sidled up to the tallest man she could find with a large smirk on her face, and instructed me to stand next to her at a bizarre angle, she was trying to get shade from him.

As per the emails we had thrown all goal pace to the wind, despite 6 months of hard training, we knew there was no way we could complete a 3.25 Boston that day.  We set off at a leisurely 8.30 pace, on the first sharp downhill, running slower than our slow run days.  Spirits in the crowd seemed good initially, I heard a southern lady shout behind to her friend 'this day is so hot, a'm gonna drop twenny pouns for sure - I wish I had brought ma skinn jeans to ware tonaght!'   A few minutes later a guy behind declared 'with this kind of heat I'm finally getting rid of my beer belly and swapping it for a six pack, it will just melt off me'  Q-Less responded with her usual up beat 'well, I'm drinking a 6 pack at the end of this one.'

The exuberance of the start soon evaporated in the heat and for the rest of the 5 miles I was miserable, my head was pounding as if I had already had a day at the beach, and I wondered how the heck we were ever going to be able to finish this one.  I knew it would be the hardest thing I ever did.  Q-Less asked how I was doing and I replied with my ever upbeat 'this sucks'.

However, the only bright spot was the crowd at Boston is incredible and today was one of the best.  Every house saw families setting up stalls, giving out ice from their freezers, running their hoses to cool us down.  Near the start one set up a tent and offered free supplies of cheap glasses, vaseline, oranges and water as sheer charity to poor runners.  During the first 5 miles we used the time to figure out how to survive this strange new world of slow motion running in global warming.  We had to stay totally wet, using every hose, hydrant and spray on hand to keep our heads and bodies cooler.  The water stations were offering bath water temperature refills, so we looked for ice and every 3 miles or so we struck gold and would suck on it and put it in our water bottles.

Roaring in our ears was the crowd - the tee shirts worked.  We constantly heard our names screamed - Chereeeeee,   Rutheeeeeee, you can do it.  Miles 6 - 14 were actually easier, I seemed to have acclimated more to the heat and figured out how I was going to survive, the pace kept it easy.  I did start to feel some worrying tugs underneath my right knee cap, but figured as usual the niggle would work itself out and move to somewhere else in my body.  By mile 16 the pain was worsening ominously and starting to slice under the knee cap and at the back of my mind, I knew straight away it was a brand new IT band problem beginning.  Knowing that it had taken 6 months to recover from the very same issue on my other leg I started to doubt my willingness to run through it.

The hills of Newton approached and actually going up them felt great, as my knee subsided, going down was a bitch.  I stopped and stretched - Q-Less screaming at me, don't sit down!  she was worried I was cramping, but I explained the only way to stretch that long tendon that reaches from hip to knee was to lie back on the bent leg.  I limped on and saw a red cross tent and ran in asking if they had a foam roller or anyone who knew how to release an I T band.  One guy tried to do some trigger release on it, but as soon as we hit the next down hill I knew it had had no effect.

Running up the next hill a small hunched figure of a woman our age ran alongside and asked 'is this Heartbreak Hill?' sadly for her another runner responded that it was just one of the other hills in Newton, Heartbreak was still over two miles away.  Coming down at mile 18 and a half I made a really difficult decision.  One that runners are hard wired never to make.  I decided to abandon the race completely.  My two new goals were out the window.  I would not finish, I would not collect my medal, receive or time, or get any shred of satisfaction from my efforts over the past six months.  I would visit another medical tent.  I imagined limping on and finishing, in probably a 4 1/2 hour time and saw a month or more of recovery and no running.  No Broad Street, no fun 5k's, no training with the other housewifes and decided, whilst bailing on Boston had been unthinkable a few hours ago, now I was there, it seeemed the most natural thing in the world.

I made Q-Less continue despite her protestations, my job had been to slow her down for the first part of the race, and I had certainly done that - the rest was up to her.  I sat in a chair waiting for the bus of shame to drive us back, and it took well over an hour.  I drank iced water and ate bbq potato chips feeling ridiculously well and something of a fraud - watching stretchered runners keeling over from heat exhaustion, white, vomiting or simply fainting with the heat.  I realized then and there that the unicorn was not even visible on the horizon, but I could find him in all sorts of other places, maybe Big Sur, or even in a couple of weeks at the Navy Yard.....

to be continued

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