Teemings
The E-Zine of the Straight Dope Community

Things Worth Doing

by Scylla

Marathon

As the buses stop on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel at 6:15 in the morning on Sunday, Oct 20, the first thing I notice is that all of the volunteers are dressed like Nanook of the North. The second thing I notice from the flapping of their clothes is that the wind is blowing pretty hard, and in the wrong direction.

I’d brought along a windbreaker in case of this eventuality. It’s a wonderful piece of technology, this $19.95 blue piece of nylon. It’s light enough to tie around your waste and forget about, but wear it and it will stop all that chill wind from sucking the heat out of your bones. I appear to be one of the few people who thought along these lines, and as we’re waiting to start the marathon there’s a profusion of people in tank tops and goose pimples.

Standing next to me is a young lady in her twenties, in stretch pants and a halter top. She’s maybe 105 pounds, hugging herself and chattering her teeth. I note through a sideways glance at her halter top, that her headlights are very much on.

I have two layers beneath my windbreaker and am a pretty big guy for a marathon runner at 200 pounds. As I am feeling toasty warm and somewhat smug, and it doesn’t seem like too much of a hardship, I offer her my windbreaker. She doesn’t hesitate, but takes it and promises to leave it at the finish line for me.

As I ponder whether there is some kind of insult in the built in assumption that she’s going to get to the finish first in order to leave my windbreaker behind for me, the race starts.

The first mile or two passes pleasantly. The field is pretty close together and I’m running in the middle of the bridge. To my left the sun is rising over the Chesapeake Bay, and we’re only about fifteen feet above the waves.

We are the first group to be allowed to run over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, one of the 7 engineering marvels of the world. It stretches for 20 miles across the bay, and in two places, at artificial islands the bridge dives under the waves and becomes a tunnel for a mile so that ships can cross. We’re going to be doing both tunnels and fourteen miles of bridge. Once we hit land it’s 12.2 miles into Virginia Beach, the last mile being finished on the boardwalk itself.

After 4 miles or so, the field stretches out, and I realize that I have a big problem. We’re running into a hell of headwind. Without my windbreaker it’s sucking the heat from my body and adding effort to each step I take. I warm up a little in the first bridge grab some Gatorade at a water stop and keep chugging on.

Around mile 7 or 8 I notice that there is somebody right, and I mean right behind me. They’re practically stepping on my heels as if they were going to pass, but they don’t and they’ve been there for some time. I look over my shoulder and it’s the girl I lent my windbreaker to. Behind her are two more girls right at her heels in a line. She smiles apologetically, and I figure out what they’re all doing running up my ass as they are. They’re drafting! I’m doing all the work fighting through the wind, and they’re staying in the relative calm of my slipstream. I’m really leaning into this wind, and it seems like it’s adding 30-40 seconds to each mile. I’m feeling a lot more tired than I should at this point. I begrudge being used by these three women while at the same time realizing that it’s petty and small of me to feel this way. I have to run into this wind anyway. It costs me nothing to have me shield them this way. What’s my problem?

The problem is I wanted to run a four hour race and that’s not going to happen in this environment. Yes, I know that’s a petty and arbitrary figure, but that’s MY GOAL. That petty and arbitrary figure is what made me run every day for the last 6 months. It’s my motivation. It’s the reason I didn’t cheat, and take days off when I didn’t feel like running. As I think about this, I think about all the other reasons that I’m here, running across a cold windy bridge when I could be in a warm bed with my wife.

Food. I love to eat. After the birth of our first child I’d spiked up to 250 pounds. At 250 pounds there is no other word to describe me but “fat.” When I determined to change this physics gave me two avenues, eat less or exercise more. The latter is by far the better choice as the changes it makes tend to be permanent and beneficial while dieting alone tends to have temporary and harmful effects. All I changed in my diet was the quality of the food I ate, not the quantity. I tried to cut out the crap and eat healthy, and after 3 months or so when my weekly mileage got up to 30 miles a week the weight started to fall off. Now I eat more than I ever have before just to supply the fuel for the 200 miles or so I run in a month.

For example, this is a typical days’ food for me in the last two months.

Breakfast: Large bowl of Energy Crunch Wheaties, orange juice, and a chocolate chip cookie.

Drive to work: Two Dunken Donuts, large coffee.

Midmorning snack: bag of pretzels and a bag of Combos from the snack machine.

Lunch: Four or five slices of pizza, and some fruit, or a big sandwich, or a value meal from Burger King

Dinner: Lots of it, whatever it is. Steak and fries, or Spaghetti and meatballs, or what have you.

Snack: Either take my daughter out for a sundae at Baskin Robins or gnosh on a bag of chips.

That’s not really representative though, because usually there’s more cookies and snack in there on a given day. We usually go out to eat two or three times a week and I hog out, and I’ve also been known to enjoy a beer or two.

I’ll let you in on a little secret though. If you’re running fifty miles a week, it’s impossible to overeat. If you’re overweight, it will come off no matter what you consume. The human body is a wonderful thing. It KNOWS if you are running 50 miles a week, and even if you are eating more than you need, it isn’t going to store it as fat. Running changes you, and your body adapts to become good at it. I’ve always had a strong upper body, and I noticed that no matter what I ate or how much I lifted, I was losing muscle in my chest and arms. At 50 miles a week my body was determined to make itself into a running machine, and that meant that extra muscle was extraneous. As time went on I found myself interested to note that the strength came back, just not with the bulky muscle of the weightlifter, but with more wiry efficient muscles. Interesting.

The other reason I run is for pride. I want to be strong. I want to be healthy. I want to be capable. I want to live a long time. The added benefits I’ve noticed is the total loss of stress headaches and back pain. I don’t get depressed any more. I have lots of energy. I feel good and optimistic and powerful from the endorphins that exercise releases and I feel that way all the time. My favorite though is that I am now seemingly immune to illness. There was a study cited in Runner’s World, that running steps up the immune system. I usually got a couple of colds or flus every year, but now I haven’t been sick in two years, not even last year when my and kid and everybody in the office was down with the winter bug. I stayed fine.

So, anyway as I run on the bridge being followed by three ladies, I’m in trouble. I’ve just crossed the halfway point (13.1 miles) in 2 hours and 20 minutes and I feel about 7/8 used up. I’m not even close to my mark. I seriously think I won’t be able to finish.

Oh well, one of the pleasures has been coming down here. My wife, daughter and I went swimming in the Atlantic yesterday (it was 70 degrees outside,) got to eat the good food and play on the beach. I find that if you are planning on running marathons most of the marathon sites have travel and hotel discounts. We got a nice weekend getaway on the cheap even if the run itself is disappointing.

Land is in sight now, and that cheers me up. As we make landfall and get some shelter from trees and buildings, the wind lets up. Better still, we take a strong left turn to take us to Virginia Beach, and what wind there is is now coming from behind us.

A couple of miles later and I’m starting to feel better. I’m regaining strength, my body is heating up, and I’m running faster. The crowds help, too. All of a sudden there are people here, cheering, and the water stops are run by diverse groups of High School kids.

One water stop seems to be all overweight 12 year old girls, the kind that are maybe a little troubled and not particularly popular. It’s hard not to categorize here, because each of the dozen or people at this water stop fits this description. As they hand out Gatorade they’re getting a lot of appreciation from the runners and they seem like they’re having a good time.

I grab two Clif-shots from a girl, and suck the caffeine/sugar gel out of the packet as I run on.

Later on I hit what seems to be the Goth water stop. They are not quite so enthusiastic, as they stare sullenly at the runners who have to pick up the water themselves.

Two miles down the road and it’s the Boyscouts doing a first class job at the water stop.

Still later I hit the popular white kid water stop and must again serve myself while being ignored by the apathetic group talking among themselves.

I’m feeling good now. Real good. It’s mile nineteen, and I’m making time. The girl with my windbreaker has given it back to me and disappeared up ahead. The crowds and the scenery are nice. Somewhere way behind me is the “Sag-wagon,” otherwise known as “The Struggler’s Bus (both excellent band names.”) These pick up the runners who are falling behind the course minimum pace. Back on the bridge I was worried about this. Now I know I’m going to finish.

At around mile 24 there’s a special treat. They’ve saved the best for last. I have run into what can only be described as the hip-hop water stop. This stop is run by about 20 young teenage black kids. Each one has customized their t-shirt in some fashion, and they are cheering and singing and competing with each other to hand out waters.

As a good looking girl runs by and grabs a water, about 5 of these kids peel out and start cheering her. “Yo-baby! Yo-baby! Go-baby! Go-baby!”

As each person grabs a water, they’re getting cheered as if they’ve already crossed the finish line. “Looking good!” I hear as I grab one of three waters thrust at me. “It’s all downhill from here. You got it, man!” As I throw away the cup, one kid peels out runs up to me and hands me another. “Take this. You need another. It’s about another mile and then you turn into the boardwalk. If you got it, now’s the time to kick it into high gear. Go man!” My self-appointed coach slaps me on the back, and runs back to give the same treatment to the next person, and with that, I leave the best water stop that has ever existed.

People talk about a wall that you hit when you run. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never hit it. What the wall is supposed to be is this: It is physically impossible to eat enough food before a marathon to carry you through the marathon. It is also impossible to refuel enough along the way. The wall comes when your body stops burning sugar and carbohydrates and starts running off of muscle and stored body fat itself. It’s the awful, ultimate final fatigue. A running friend warned me of it, and said that when it comes it’s going to feel like all of a sudden you can hardly move and you feel like you couldn’t possible feel any worse. His word of encouragement is that when you get this feeling that can’t get any worse….. it doesn’t. And, if you can run through it, you can conquer anything.

I see that look on the people running, and walking towards the finish, and I don’t envy them the walls they’re encountering. I suspect that I’m being pardoned from the wall because of my large size and weight. I simply have more reserves. I’m paying for it with my legs, though. Two hundred pounds is a lot of meat to carry 26.2 miles, and while I have the will and energy my legs are tight and sore, and each step is painful deep in the muscles. But, with only a mile left, I can take it. At the last marathon I got hit by cramps at mile 19 and limp/jogged the last 7 miles. Here, I give it everything I have, forget about the 25 miles behind me and try to run as fast a final mile as I ever have, sprinting the last quarter.

I cross in four hours and eleven minutes according to my chip timer.

Later we drive home, and I stop for gas in Fredericksburg. There’s nobody outside, and I watch a family pull up to the front of a restaurant as I pump gas. Three people get out and literally run for the door. I realize that nobody is outside because of the sniper. He shot two people in Fredericksburg. Yet, I’m standing out in the open, the only one, and I’m not even nervous.

I just ran a marathon. Bullets bounce of me.