THE LAST CHANCE FOR BEANTOWN
MARATHON
In my quest to continue to
do marathons throughout the year, the summer season presents a lack of choices.
Since I’m also starting to try to run marathons in all the states, I had an
interest in finding marathons in states where I hadn’t yet run. So it was a
good find to discover a new marathon scheduled in an area of North Carolina
called Holly Ridge, which is about thirty miles northeast of Wilmington, N.C.
and about five miles from the beach. It was scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 24,
two months after my last marathon. Since it was an August marathon in North
Carolina, the organization scheduled it as an evening run. Although I did not
want to miss doing one in July, other events forced me to wait.
About a month before the
race, I had a conversation with fellow runner Ricky Singh at the local park. He
is also a 50 stater and had also done 19 states, but has only run 19 marathons
– just one per state. I’ve confined myself for years to doing a number of
marathons in the mid-Atlantic region, before now spreading my running to other
areas. Ricky had not done a North Carolina marathon either, and because of his
business obligations, had not run a marathon in 14 months. He agreed to travel with me. (In fact we’ll
be doing another one together in late September.)
For days as the marathon approached
I watched the weather. It seemed to be very humid in the area where the
marathon was going to occur. For most of
the week before, the dew point did not drop below 70. Although it was that
humid many days here in Delaware, I find it difficult to breathe while I’m
running when it is that humid. The day before the marathon, the dew point shot
up to 76 in that part of North Carolina as a storm front approached. Going to
bed that evening, I was worried. I got up the next morning at 5 a.m. and
checked the weather. The dew point was
down to 68 and appeared as if it would keep dropping as a cooler, drier front
went through.
At 8 a.m., Ricky came over
to my house and we got into my car. Off
we went for the drive to Jacksonville, N.C., where I thought I had a motel
reservation. The drive went pretty well – with stops it took about eight and a
half hours. Getting to the motel, I found that I apparently hadn’t made a
reservation, but there were plenty of rooms. We put our belongings in the room
and went across the street for a quick, light fast food meal. It was 4:30 and
the race was at 7:30, so we had to eat early. Then we went back and rested for
about a hour, got dressed for the run, and got in the car for the 20 mile drive
to the community of Summerhouse.
The area where the marathon
was to occur is a gated-community about five miles from the beaches of North
Carolina. I guess that would be the appeal of living there, but from our drive,
it seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere.
Driving into it, we soon realized that only about 20% of the lots had
houses built on them. We decided that one of the main reasons that the race was
scheduled there might have been to draw the attention of possible buyers. The
shirt certainly had no advertising on it other than a mention of the community.
The registration area and
the start-finish were outside of the community clubhouse. But there was no
large parking area for cars. So I had to
park about 3/8s of a mile away. The entire field, between marathoners and 10K
runners was only about 175 people. How far away would people have to park if
there were 500 participants?
The development did have
several manmade lakes, which meant geese were present and THAT meant we had to
watch where we stepped on the sidewalk.
Later, before the start of the marathon, we sat relaxed on a landing
near a pond. The sign said BEWARE OF
ALLIGATORS! It was looking less and less
like a place to which I’d ever consider moving.
The clubhouse was nice with
a complex pool area. The runners were invited to stay for a swim (which we
declined at midnight). After getting our numbers and shirts, we returned them
to the car, made our final preparations for the run and returned to the start
area for some instructions. Then we hit the portajohns and sat by the water
until ten minutes before the 7:30 p.m. start. Thankfully, the weather had
turned relatively merciful. It was about 75 degrees, dew point of 63 and a nice
breeze. In a short time the sun would go down.
Off we went. The course
consisted of a .6 mile run around and out from the clubhouse to another road,
then five five-mile loops, and another .6 mile run to the finish line. The
course was lit by lampposts, which seemed rather far apart. Occasionally one would go out. Sometimes two
in a row were out. When that happened the
course became pretty dark. There were volunteers are some turns, signs at
others, but a few times I became confused about which way to turn. By the
fourth loop the moon rose and helped a bit with the light.
My first two miles were run
slower than I thought I should be doing. I could feel the humidity in my lungs.
My forehead was exuding beads of sweat. The conditions were better than they
might have been, but not ideal for a good marathon run. About mile two, Ricky
said something to me. I was not aware until then that he was right with me. He
had said previously that he was doubtful that he could run 4:30. I said
something like, “Are you using me as your rabbit?” I think he sensed my
agitation, so he backed off, but he kept following me through the race.
I was agitated because I
felt that, with the flat course, I should be able to run a 4:05, since I had
run a 4:08 on the hillier Delaware Marathon course in May. But, when I ran
that, it wasn’t as humid and I had done a series of marathons leading up to the
one good time. But before this race, my
last marathon was two months ago. In between my quality runs consisted of a 12
miler, 19, a 10K race, 20 and 14. Everything else was just “jogging”. In short, I wasn’t in shape to run 4:05 in
those conditions.
Nevertheless, I foolishly
tried. I picked up the pace and, for the next six miles, I was averaging 9:12
miles. Then I inexorably begin to slow down, at first by a few extra seconds
per mile, later by bigger chunks of a minute. Even so, I went through the first
half in about 2:02. At 20 miles I was almost four minutes ahead of the time I
ran 20 miles in my last marathon. But in the last one I stay felt like I had
something left at 20 miles.This time I was still slowing down, running on sore
knees and quads and finished only six seconds faster than my last marathon
(which was a hilly course). Final chip time was 4:15:53.
The better story in this
tale is Ricky’s. He usually follows a run-walk strategy, taking walking breaks
every mile. But he decided to follow me and since I wasn’t taking walking
breaks, he had to keep going or risk losing contact. Most of the people who
were watching the marathon (probably either friends of some of the runners or
some of the 10K runners) were situated in a few locations near the end of the
loop or near the clubhouse, which we passed by at about three miles into the
loop. As we went past people cheering, I could hear Ricky in back of me saying
“Thank you! Thank you!” As we were finishing the fourth loop, after I heard him
again, I called back, “I hear you back there! Come on up and run with me.”
For the last loop, we
slogged on. Ricky was already ecstatic because he knew he was running faster
than he had expected. We were both tiring. My strategy was to keep pushing on.
He began to take walking breaks. But soon he would catch right back up to me.
At mile 24 he took another break. I told him I was going to try to see what I
had left and picked up the pace a bit. But within a couple hundred yards my
hamstrings were feeling like they were wanting to seize up and I knew I had to
slow down or cramp up. Within a mile Ricky was back. We hung together until the turn for the last
.6 of a mile. Ricky had something left and finished 38 seconds ahead of me.
After the race we were a bit
disappointed to discover that there were no age-group awards. The race managers said something about not
wanting to have people wait around until late in the night for awards, but they
could have identified award winners as soon as they finished. I was even more
dismayed to discover later, that because of the small size, the last age group
they used was 50+. Well, I was 12th among that group, but I’ll count
myself as second among five men 60-69, finishing only behind a 60 year-old. We
also found the refreshments somewhat lacking: cold Domino’s pizza, bananas,
water and soda. One guy had a beer,
which had been given to him on the course by a guy. He said it was pretty warm
by the time he carried it in to the finish.
So Ricky and I trudged back
to the car, happy enough to have done a marathon in North Carolina. Ricky was
on cloud nine, having vastly exceeded his expectations. By one a.m. we were
back and the motel and settled in to sleep by 1:30. I woke before seven and by
7:30 we were getting up for breakfast.
The clerk at the motel office pointed out a diner across the way. He
said the portions were huge. Keeping that in mind, in additions to some eggs, I
ordered one pancake. It came out on its own plate and was so big it was
flopping over the side. I cut off a third and gave it to Ricky. Then it was
back in the car was a much slower ride home. We got stuck near Washington,
because it was the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March. We also got
off the highway a couple times for fuel or food and found we couldn’t re-enter
at the same point and had to drive miles to find another entrance. Nevertheless,
our rides were full of conversation and we got to know each other much better.
I think we found each other to be compatible traveling mates and we will look
forward to some more road trips together. Down and back with 960 miles of
driving and 26.2 miles of running in 33 hours.
As far as the Last Chance
for Beantown Marathon, I have my doubts that it will survive. I disagree with
the premise that people should think of it as a last chance to qualify for
Boston. Here’s the breakdown that I got from Marathonguide: Of 101 finishers, 24 qualified for BostonNot
a bad percentage, but not a high percentage either. But of that 24, 14 were
under 40. Perhaps even more relevant is that of the 24, 19 live below the Virginia-North
Carolina border. Only two live north of Delaware. So if people are acclimated
to running in 70+ dew points, running in somewhat cooler weather may have
seemed pretty easy. But coming from Delaware, although I ran in very humid
days, it wasn’t that humid for several months straight and I never felt used to
running in that weather. The chances are slim, if this marathon continues, that
the weather on any given day in August would be even close to as nice as it
was. It worked for me as a North Carolina marathon, but I wouldn’t recommend a
qualifying attempt there.
