The Martian Marathon
As I get into 2015, I am going to be seriously working on my
goal of running a marathon in every state.
For April I signed up to do the Martian Marathon in Dearborn, MI, which
is close to Detroit. This would be my 31st
state. By the way there is no obvious reason for the Martian theme for these
races (which also have a half, 10K and 5K) other than it is cool.
In researching how to get to this event I discovered that
flying was expensive directly from Philadelphia and that it would actually be
cheaper to fly from BWI and transfer to the same plane in Philadelphia. The latter scenario already involved driving
70 miles and paying tolls, so I decided to simply drive to and from the event.
This will be my last drive to one of the fifty states as the closest left to be
done is Tennessee and the flight there is fairly cheap.
So on Friday, April 17, I was up before 4 A.M. I simply got dressed, grabbed my suitcase,
got in my car and started driving. Going
up Rte. 41, there is a Sunoco station fairly close in Pennsylvania. I got some coffee, which kept me awake. By quarter to six I was at a rest stop on the
Pennsylvania turnpike. I called Carolyn,
ate, visited the restroom and took more coffee to go.
Around ten A.M., I entered Ohio. Driving there was easy, except that there
were numerous construction zones where the speed limit officially dropped from
70 to 50. Having received a speeding ticket the last time I drove this highway
in 2010, I tried to keep my speed under 60 when I got into the construction
zones. But everyone was passing me. I finally gave up when a car continued to
pass me in the lane that was disappearing as the cones edged out and I was forced
to brake in order to either prevent the woman from hitting my car or plowing
into the cones. I laid on the horn, but
she sped on. After that, I just went
with whatever the traffic was doing.
By 2 p.m. I was off the Interstate and driving to my
motel. After checking in, I drove to the
expo only a few miles away. On that
drive, I started to realize that as Wilmington used to be synonymous with
DuPont, so Dearborn was such with Ford.
I drove past one huge plant on my drive.
Upon getting in the building, I realized that I, along with
a couple hundred other runners, was 15 minutes early before the 3 p.m.
opening. I stood in line and struck up a
conversation with a guy in his 40s who was behind me. He was running the half-marathon as a
training run for the U.S. National 25K Championship, which occurs annually
somewhere in Michigan, and may be the only one in the country. (Later I found that he was second overall in
the half-marathon.) Getting my number, I
browsed the expo briefly. I checked the
shoes, which were not being sold as any bargain prices. One of the guys working there noticed my
shoes and commented that he didn’t see Sportivas much. Turns out that he used to work in Kentucky
selling rock-climbing apparel, such does my son at his Delaware Rock Gym. I had gotten the shoes through an employee
discount, but after realizing they were impossible to tie tightly for racing, I
pulled out the laces and use them as slip-on comfort shoes.
After leaving the expo, I checked possible places to
eat. Then I drove from the motel to
where the race would be held. This time,
driving down Oakwood Rd., I passed another Ford facility that seemed to go on
for a mile with R&D buildings for Ford on the other side of the road. I scouted out the parking lot that only
marathon runners (who would start long before any other runners) would be allowed
to use. I also talked to a couple of the
people setting up and noticed the two brand new cars at the finish. The company was apparently the major race
sponsor. You can guess the brand.
Then I drove back toward the motel, but turned where I had located
two places to eat and have a beer. The
first one seemed to have a full parking lot, so I pulled in the second one,
called Brews Brothers. But as soon as I
walked in the door I smelled cigarette smoke.
So I did a u-turn and left. I
went back to the first bar and found a parking spot.. I had a nice burger with sides and a couple
brews. I told the waitress about the
other place. She said some of the
smaller bars allow their customers to smoke in order to keep them even though
it is supposedly illegal.
Back at the motel, I was turned in by 8:15. I was tossing and turning by 3:15, so I was
up before four a.m. There were no cups
for the coffeemaker in the room, so I used a water bottle to catch the dripping
coffee. I probably melted and consumed
some plastic in the process. I had a
banana and a granola bar, got ready and left around five. There was a Tim Horton’s coffee shop less
than a mile away, so I got another and drove to the park where the race would
start. I pulled right up where I could
watch the vendors setting up and nursed my coffee until six. Then I started to pound a quart of
Gatorade. One of the nice aspects of
starting in the marathon (which had less the 300 entrants) was that we got to
use the roughly 50 portajohns by ourselves without having to deal with the
almost 4,000 other runners in the other races.
I used them twice and there were no lines.
By seven I was finishing stripping down to my running
stuff. It was in the mid-forties with no
wind. So I wore shorts, my short sleeve
50 states shirt and decided not to wear gloves as I would be warming up and not
needing them. After a few introductions and a trumpet playing of the National
Anthem, we were off at 7:15.
I could tell I did not feel especially energetic and settled
in about a 9:45 minutes/mile pace. In
the first eight miles we did some loops and in and outs of various
neighborhoods. Most of this section was
composed on concrete roads, which I find to be a surface that is too hard on
your body. At some point a guy struck up
a conversation. He was from the suburbs
on the other side of Detroit. He was
going a bit faster than me, so I focused on following him as he said he would
eventually walk, because he always did.
At one point he stopped and walked at a water stop and then went by
me. I said, “Yeah, you’re supposed to be
my rabbit. Get up there!” After we got on the road on which we would
run out and back for almost 15 miles, I asked him on the way out, “Is it my
imagination, or are we going slightly uphill all the time?” He said the road runs along a stream and we
were going upstream on the way out. I
eventually left him for good at about 14 miles.
By the time we turned about at 16 and a-half miles, the sun
was beginning to take its toll. While
the temperature probably didn’t go over 70, there was no shade and there were
no clouds. I kept making sure I was
hydrated. I also began to slow, a bit
slower every mile. I had passed the
half-marathon point under 2:08, but my miles were creeping towards an eleven-minute
pace. Still I had figured that if I kept plugging away, I could finish under 4:30.
Then the little purple man appeared! No, I wasn’t hallucinating. It was an actually runner in full Martian
costume – a purple suit and a rubber Martian facemask. I could only think it had to be hot in that
mask. He passed me, but a short time
later, peeled off to run into a restroom.
I kept shuffling along as I went toward the 23rd
mile at just over an eleven minute pace, but my legs were tired and I wasn’t
picking them up as much. It was then
that my shuffling foot caught a toe on a ridge of asphalt, probably created
from a previous hot summer. That leg did not go forward, but my body did. I threw my arms out and I remember the road
rushing towards my face. Apparently the
force of the landing was fairly evenly distributed as I hit my hands and my
knees on the asphalt. My right arm was a
bit inward and my elbow went into my ribcage.
Fortunately, my face hit my arm and not the road. My upper lip was caught
between my arm and one of my crooked teeth, which produced a gash (and
eventually a bruise on my lip).
The worst aspect of the fall was the elbow in the ribs took
my breath away. I heard myself
uncontrollably moaning for about thirty seconds. I hated the sound, but I could not stop until
I started to get my breath back. Three
or four runners, including the young man in the Martian get-up, gathered around
me, asking if I was all right, if I needed medical attention. We had just passed a water stop. A guy came running up with a water bottle and
poured water over my hands, washing off blood and road grit. I was walking by then and as soon as he was
done, I started jogging again.
Twenty yards later, there was the 23-mile marker. The time that mile took was 12:45, meaning
the fall cost me a minute and a half. I
figured it had cost me finishing under 4:30 and it did as I did finish in
4:31:22. As I shuffled towards the
finish, I realized I had also bent my glasses when my face hit my arm. I could only keep one or the other of the temple
pieces on an ear as the right one was bent out.
After I finished I went to medical and got my scrapes
bandaged. I also asked medical, the cops
and the race direction for a pair of pliers to straighten out my glasses. But
none had a pair. Eventually I collected
my first place award to go along with the finisher medal. As I was about to leave, I spoke to a woman
who had the 50 states finisher shirt on.
She invited me to have a beer, which she had stored in her car, but I
had to decline because I was going to have to drive.
I went back to the motel, showered, and hit the road. I did manage to partially straighten my
glasses with a towel, pressing the bent part on a counter (and got the rest
done at the optician on Monday). I drove
to Pittsburgh, about halfway. It was a
mistake. I should have stuck to the
Pennsylvania turnpike and gotten a room at a local exit. I got lost in Pittsburgh and had to take a
detour the next morning to get back to the Turnpike.
As a 50 stater, the Martian Marathon is one of the closest
ones to Delaware. The same group puts on
another marathon in the summer and, of course, there is also the Detroit
Marathon for other relatively close options.
Someday I might go to the Detroit Marathon, but I recommend this one for
one that is easy to get to in Michigan with a fair price.
