The Route 66 Marathon

“Well if you ever plan to motor west

Just take my way, that’s the highway that’s the best

Get your kicks on Route 66”

Anyone who is old enough to have grown up in the 1950s probably remembers some version of the song Route 66 or the TV show of the same name. The song and the show are evocative of an era when gasoline was cheap and the roads were wide open.  It was the dream being sold by the automobile manufacturers and the show featured the newly introduced Corvette with accompanying orchestration by Nelson Riddle, which sounded like easy cruising in the wide open spaces:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZ1k4d02KA

Route 66 was also done by Nat King Cole (jazzy), Chuck Berry (cross between jazzy and rock)) and the Rolling Stones, who turned Berry’s version into an early hard rock cover.

Today Route 66 is mostly gone, having been replaced by Interstates 40 and 44.  But for a short stretches it still exists, including running through Tulsa, OK.  That is most appropriate as Oklahoma is the state with the lowest gasoline tax in the country and its Interstates allow a legal speed of 75. The price of gas there is 50 cents lower than in Delaware.  Route 66 makes for a good theme, but the fact was that we would not actually be running on Route 66, although we would across it a few times as we ran around Tulsa.  That was actually better than a wide-open road in the country where we would have been exposed to the northerly wind for the entire race.

When I traveled out to Oklahoma with Ricky Singh to run the Route 66 Marathon, I was reminded of all this almost as soon as we picked up a rental car in Oklahoma City, before the 115 mile drive to Tulsa, because we passed an operating oil rig on the grounds of the airport and then sped down the highway at 75 mph.  The roads out there are straighter than back east and there is not a quarter of the traffic.  So 75 feels like 45.

Enough of the nostalgia and back to the reality of what we were going to have to deal with! At the car rental the saleswoman tried to scare us into buying insurance by warning about six to eight inches of snow.  But the weather forecasts predicted only a slight chance of snow the next day.  However it did predict unusually cold conditions for November 24 when the average high temperature is usually 56.  Instead we would deal with temperatures in the low 20s with a breeze the entire morning.

Luckily Ricky had reserved a room at the Hyatt, which was literally at the end of the starting corrals, four blocks west of the starting line.  The hotel was also only five blocks east of finish in the opposite direction.  I dropped the car in the parking garage and didn’t have to move it until we were ready to leave for the Tulsa airport.  After checking in, we walked to the race expo, which was six blocks away in a southwesterly direction.  We walked there, got our bibs, shoe tags, shirt and bag, scouted out the expo and headed back.  After an hour we headed downstairs to the restaurant attached to the hotel.  No dealing with the cold yet. By nine (ten east coast time) it was lights out.  I needed the rest for it had been a long day with my driving to BWI for the flight and then driving to Tulsa.

I arose at 5:10 to have some breakfast downstairs.  The choices were all overpriced, so I choose a bowl of oatmeal, the cheapest option.  Then I returned to the room to finish putting on my running gear.  My first goal was to stay warm.  So I wore: smart wool socks, a pair of athletic long underwear (which could be called tights), running pants, a smart wool shirt, another stretchy shirt built for cyclists, my 50 states shirt on the outside, a smart wool neck warmer, thin gloves inside mittens of which the mitten part would retract to allow the use of the fingers, and a wrap-around head covering.  I also inserted hand-warmers into my gloves and shoes.

At 7:30 we headed down stairs, out the hotel and walked the length of the corrals towards the start where the drop-bag areas and the portajohns were located.  We didn’t need to wait in line for the portajohns since we had just left the hotel.  Since I am in the 50 States Club, I dropped my bag with that group, which would have a special area at the end, shared with the Marathon Maniacs.  I figured this would allow me to find my bag more easily. 

There were four corrals, each a block long. There were over 2000 marathon participants and over 1000 half-marathoners.  After the 7:58 wheelchair start, the first wave started two minutes later.  Then the second wave, in which we both were seeded, started six minutes after that.  I started conservatively while Ricky went for it and disappeared from my view within five minutes.  After an initial mile of sub-9:30, I settled into a pace of just under or just over 10:00 as we traversed up and down hills. 

The corrals worked for me as everyone was moving at roughly my pace and I saw some of the same people for miles.  The fluid stops came within every two miles, which was sufficient on a cold day.  I mostly grabbed Gatorade, but made the mistake a couple times of taking water, which was slushy.  That I couldn’t drink, but later found when I finished that some water was frozen on my head covering near my chin.  Yes, it never warmed up.

After about five and a half miles, the course flattened out for about six miles.  They were my fastest miles as I clipped them off at about 9:30 pace.  But returning into town where the half-marathoners would finish, it got hilly again.  The 13^th mile was one of the steepest portions.  I continued to use the strategy I had begun to adopt several marathons earlier of not only race-walking up the hills, but also race-walking down the steep ones.  I figured I was saving my quads going down and I knew, from the way I passed people going up, that it was easier. 

During this uphill section I passed a guy who looked to be in my age-group.  About a mile later he re-passed me and may have gotten a lead of over 30 seconds on me, but remained in my sight.  I focused on chasing him as it helped me forget the now incessant ups and downs of the second half of the marathon. Eventually, several miles later, I caught up to him and struck up a conversation.  His name is George Beitzel from Lancaster, PA and is also on the 50 states quest with the race being in his 38^th state.  After a half mile, I told him I was speeding up on a downhill.  But after another few miles, after a long uphill he re-passed me.  I thought maybe he had me, but at about 22 miles, I passed him again going downhill.

At 24 miles I came upon Ricky walking.  He had done the first half under two hours, but he was cramping up and had to walk. He hadn’t eaten breakfast and didn’t drink anything for the first seven miles.  It’s possible that he was hampered by both of those deficits.  The course was about at the same level of difficulty as Clarence Demar Marathon in New Hampshire, where he did break four, so it probably wasn’t the terrain.

The last two miles were uphill, then downhill and then uphill again.  I did hold on to about a ten minute pace and finished in 4:18:38.  Since I did the first half in 2:07:30, the second half was less than four minutes slower.  Any time my slowing is this slight I am happy, especially when the first half was probably two to three minutes easier because of the flat section.  Ricky finished about a minute behind me and George Beitzel was about a minute behind Ricky. 

In all, I was 601^st out of 2,021 finishers and 436 of the 1,200+ males.  In my age group I was fourth out of 21.  While not placing, I was happy to see that I passed seven of these guys after 10K, of which five were after the half-marathon point.  It’s satisfying to know I adopted a strategy that was sensible for me.

My race pictures (which I won’t purchase) are located here: http://www.marathonfoto.com/Marathon/Williams-Route-66-Marathon-2013/LastName/MCCORQUODALE/BibNumber/3004/offering/myMarathonfotos/RaceOID/22252013F1/Language/en?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=0%20Proofs%20Online%20ENG-SPA%206PM%20(6)

A couple comments on them:  In top left photo, after the finish, I am NOT as miserable as I look.  The photographer just happened to catch me when I blinked. Several of the finishing photos clearly show the ice frozen on the covering of my chin.  The bottom photo in the third column is a picture of me ascending in the thirteen mile one of the steepest areas of the course.  I was using my race walk strategy.  The woman in the background in a raspberry colored top had a sign on her back that said it was her 50^th marathon.  There was a sign over an underpass near the end congratulating her.

After finishing and receiving the humungous medal, I didn’t spend much time in the food area.  I took a bottle of recovery drink and a bottle of water and headed off to retrieve my bag.  Finding it, I stripped off everything on top, which was totally soaked and put on three other dry layers.  Then I headed towards my hotel, walking past the Center of the Universe area on which people were invited to detour in the last mile.  I hadn’t bothered with that, but did walk over the spot on which if one stands and calls out, there is supposed to be an echo that only the person standing there can hear.  (In some instances that’s known as a hallucination, but I digress.)

After Ricky and I got showers, we headed for the airport.  Problems came up right away.  His Garmin was telling us to go in a certain direction, but the marathon was still going on.  We had to detour several times in order to get to a place where we were allowing to cross the course.  Then, while driving on the Interstate, I suddenly had a cramp in my right adductor thigh muscle and had to pull over to get out and walk it off.  Pulling into the rental car return lane, we found ourselves behind a car carrier truck, which had mistakenly pulled into the lane and could not go forward because the clearance was less than eight feet.  So all the cars had to back out of the lane before the truck could back out.  This took over ten minutes.  Arriving at the rental return area, we stood for five minutes behind other customers before the clerk could come out of the booth to scan the car.  This did not seem like a big deal until I returned home and saw in an email that I was being charged $23.69 per hour for two hours late.  We knew that we had no choice on the first hour, but we actually were checked in one minute beyond the first hour.  I had to write a protesting email and then another, this time requesting a phone number, before being told the second hourly charge would be credited back.

We finally had some time to grab some food and a beer at the airport.  Then we discovered the flight was delayed.  Bad weather had already hit Dallas and we were lucky we weren’t there.  After boarding the delayed flight, it took an inordinate amount of time for the plane to actually have its doors closed and to begin taxiing.  Since our connecting flight in Atlanta was originally scheduled to leave only 38 minutes after we landed, we knew it was going to be tight.  Those trying to make connecting flights were allowed to leave the plane first.  We dashed to the other flight, only a few spaces up the terminal from the one we had just left.  But we were too late as the doors had just closed.

The next flight was three hours later.  The person handling the arrangements originally intimated that there were no seats available and we would either have to go on stand-by or take a different flight to Charlotte and make another connection.  But while doing the computer work, the man, who was from Jamaica, asked Ricky where he was from originally.  When Ricky replied “India”, the man started a conversation about cricket, about which Ricky knows a lot, including the situations of some professional teams.  I will always believe that conversation worked wonders as all of a sudden the man printed out two boarding passes for the direct flight to BWI.  When we did board, we found we were seated very near the entry door, an area Ricky call “poor man’s first class”.

There were no other hitches to our trip, but we still had to get to my car in long-term parking and then drive back to Delaware. I believe I actually turned in an 1:40 A.M., making it an almost 20-hours-awake day.  THAT was the tougher marathon!

Recommendation:  Weather in the 20s was an anomaly.  With relatively mild weather, if you want to run a marathon in Oklahoma, it’s a good one.  Everything is done well from the expo, race organization, water stops.  The food seemed a bit sparse after the race.  There was a beer area and the bibs had two tickets.  But who wants to stand around drinking light beer in cold weather.  The course has some good scenic areas, running along a lake for a while and passing through some pass neighborhoods.  With the hills, it’s not a PE course.

Monster Mash & Midsouth Marathons

The marathons have been accumulating faster than ever this year as I have now done 13 with one, perhaps two, more to go. I did two more this past few weeks.  I don’t have great memories about them, so here’s a brief re-cap of each.

The Monster Mash Marathon, Dover, DE:

Although this year marked the third Monster Mash Marathon, it was the first time the course was certified. I intend to run any marathon in Delaware that is certified at least once.  So this was the time for it.

The race starts at Dover International Speedway, home of the so-called “Monster Mile”.  A few years ago a statue of “Miles the Monster”, sort of a hulk-like creature, was erected at the main entrance, which is where the marathon would finish.  The first mile starts on pit road and circles the oval once before exiting the stadium.  It’s a bit annoying because of the slant of the surface toward the infield, even when running as low on the track as possible.

After exiting the track, the runners took about 3/4 of mile through the Down Downs roads before crossing over Route 13 and entering Dover. This few miles was full of memories for me as my mother grew up in Dover and moved back there when she re-married.  I ran past the house she grew up, Wesley College - which I attended for a while in the 1960s, the graveyard where mom’s second husband is buried, and, finally, the graveyard of Christ Church, where the ashes of both my mother and my brother are interred. Then it was through the legislative area and out back across Route 13. 

Within another mile the half marathoners split off from those of us who were running the marathon.  We became more spread out.  The area is composed of corn or soybean fields, which had been harvested at this time of year.  The rest of the run was unremarkable, except for the dozens of brown fuzzy caterpillers attempting to cross the roads – some going one way, some going the other.  Just where were they going?  At any rate, the course is flat; there was no wind and few trees.  It was my second fastest of the year.

Finishing in front of the stadium at the Miles statue, I saw the guy in my age group from Florida, who had also run the Last Chance for Beantown Marathon in North Carolina.  He had a good day, getting within a few minutes of four hours, after voicing his doubts before the race about being able to get close to four hours.  We agreed the cool weather made all the difference.

One interesting side note was that David Buckson, the father of the race director, Kent Buckson, was on hand when the awards were presented to the winners.  He is the founder of Dover Downs and was also a Delaware politico back in his day. When he was serving his second term as Attorney General of Delaware, he showed up to observe a trial in 1968 where I and three other young men were charged with “distributing obscene literature”.  Actually we were handing out anti-war leaflets, which had a provocative title.  Our four ACLU lawyers quickly had the case dismissed and AG Buckson had to leave the courthouse disappointed.  But then, seeing Mr. Buckson pushed out for the awards in a wheelchair in failing health, my former resentment over the decades-old incident melted away.

Recommendation: This course is fast and flat, so it’s a good one to run a fast time.  The post race food is excellent.  But the race is small and after the first six miles is pretty boring.

Photo of me at the start, with friend Dave Baca (running the half-marathon), two to my left:

http://chessiephoto.com/p730480743/h1f673e2#h1f673e2

The Midsouth Championship Marathon:

I had spotted this one in marathonguide.com.  As a 50-stater, this is the easiest and probably cheapest Arkansas marathon to do.  Wynne, Arkansas is about 60 miles from the Memphis Airport.  Driving to BWI made the flight a lot cheaper.  I left Friday afternoon, arriving about 7:00 p.m. local time.  I picked up a car – the Alamo attendant offered me a new deep blue Dodge Charger.  When I turned on the ignition, the mileage read 666, which meant nothing to my non-superstitious mind.  Although I drove as lightly  as possible on the gas, I still only got about 25 mpg on country roads.  Give me my Honda Civic anytime!

I could not find the pasta place that I had found on Google Maps and had to settle for fast food to eat.  Then I drove about 15 miles to West Memphis, AR to a motel. The good news was that a Waffle House was right next to the motel, so I could get up at four and have some breakfast.  The bad news was that I ate the Waffle House food.  It didn’t “bother” me, but it seemed greasy. 

After prepping in my room, I was off to Wynne, about 45 miles away.  Halfway there I passed through an intersection of a town called Earle.  Only an older guy like me would remember from the names of this town and the one I was approaching that there was a major league pitcher (now in the Hall of Fame) named Early Wynn, who finished his career with exactly 300 wins.  He was from Alabama, not Arkansas.

Pulling into the Wynne High School parking lot at near 6:30 A.M. it was still dark since it was the last day of Daylight Savings Time.  I walked up to the tables and collected my bag and number (and then walked up again when I could find no pins in my bag for the bib). I used the restroom near the football field where I would later take a shower.  It was rather primitive with one stall and one urinal. (Many more portajohns were on the road to the start, but we weren’t told they were there.)  As for the showers, there were only two chairs plus some weight benches on which to sit to get undressed or dressed.  I spent most of the time in my car until race approached - called Carolyn, hydrated, made sure my shoes were double-knotted, etc.

Everyone hiked a quarter mile up the street to the start, giving us over a quarter mile to spread out before the first turn.  Right from the gun I knew I didn’t have the usual strength in my legs.  Could it be that I was a tad foolish to run a 10K in between marathons that were only two weeks apart?  I think so!

I also quickly noticed that the course rolled, almost constantly.  I’ve decided that the best description of a rolling course is that the runner notices and has to work harder on the uphills, but he doesn’t seem to get a corresponding benefit from the downhills.  After five miles (with the fifth mile being run on the shoulder next to moving traffic), we turned off the main road and headed north, running into a wind for eight miles. 

Around mile ten, I noticed a runner coming the other way, all alone.  At first I thought it was someone out for an individual run.  Then I realized SHE was the leader.  Several minutes later came another runner.  SHE really looked like a fast runner.  Then came men.  The winner won by about 14 minutes over the second woman and qualified for the Olympic Trials.  I wasn’t the course I would have picked for a qualifying run.

By the time I turned around, my energy had been badly drained.  The second half became a series of one mile increasingly slower than the previous mile.  Ah well, I finished in 4:20:51.  Got it done! Arkansas down, my 22^nd state!

I noticed on the results that were posted that I was second in my five-year age group.  After my shower, I got some food in the cafeteria and asked the guy arranging the awards if I could pick mine up early since I had to get back to the airport.  He called the timer and then presented me with first place in my age group.  I was incredulous and asked him if he was sure.  He was.  When I got home and looked up the results, I realized that this event was exceedingly generous with its awards.  In addition to three deep in five-year age groups, it had three deep in Masters (40+), Grandmasters (50+), and Seniors (60+).  There was a man of 65 who won the second-place Senior award, so I moved up to first in the age group.

Recommendation:  Unless you live in the area, why would you go?  Well, if you are a 50-stater, it’s the perfect Arkansas venue, close to Memphis, which is a relatively short and cheap flight from BWI.  BTW, registration was only $50!  Or you might want to win an award – the chances are good!