2001 Boston Marathon: The Night Before Patriot’s Day
Steve Woo (Palo Alto Run Club Newsletter)
Shhhhhhhhhhh!
'Twas the night before
Patriot’s Day, when all through the Hyatt
Not a Runner was sleeping, not
even a Kenyan,
The ChampionChips were laced
to the shoes with great care
In hopes that PRs soon would
be clocked.
The runners were tossing and
turning in bed,
While sounds of the
Wellesleyans shrieked in their heads
After setting the alarm and checking it twice (then calling the front desk for a wake up
call, just for insurance)
I finally settled down for a
short sleepless nap.
When out in the hall, there arose such a clatter
I sprang from my bed—Nikes intact—to see
waaazuuuuuup
Away to the peephole I flew
like a flash,
Flung open the door and poked my head out
Oh, freakin’ A, nevermind, just a screwed runner—OD-ed on some GU.
Well, this is
stretching things a bit, because the Hyatt Cambridge is one of the noisiest hotels in
which I’ve ever stayed. At 11PM the
night before the marathon, someone started playing the piano in the 2nd floor lounge. The noise drifted up to my room on the 8th
floor and kept me awake for a good hour, then the noise from the guests continued for
quite some time, keeping me tossing and turning, and stressing and fretting. Still, I’ll be back at the Hyatt Cambridge
next year. I stayed there last year for the
marathon and had a great run, and given my marathon experience this year, I don’t
want to screw around with tradition and a formula that works. The hotel is on the Charles River, and down the
street from MIT and near Harvard Square. So
with all those smart Ivy League vibes floating around like the plague, how can one not run
a smart marathon and a PR?
Tonya Harding
When, what to
my bloodshot eyes should appear,
But the clock which did taunt….half past two?!?!
With a jittery feeling, so nauseous and bleaugh
I knew in a moment, this run’s really, really, really gonna suck.
More rapid than Ndereba my veins they did pulse,
And I cried and I raved:
"My right hip! My right quad! They both feel so sore!
My taper, my taper, why didn’t I #@$%&@#&$% taper?!! “
To the top of the bed, I sprawled myself out
Now
stretch my hip, stretch my quad, stretch it all out!"
I’ve yet to learn how to taper properly for a marathon, and was now paying the price for a less than ideal one week taper. By Saturday, my right hip/quad was feeling extremely tight, much like it felt when I ran the LA Marathon in March and put in a pitiful performance because of it. So I pulled out “The Stick” to massage and loosen up the muscles in the area, but I ended up getting a little masochistic and was rolling the device over my quads so hard, it was quite reminiscent of the painful myofascial therapy (deep tissue massage) that I went through one year earlier in an attempt to relieve the compartment syndrome in my calves—those sessions left my legs in raw pain and unable to run for several days after. My employment of “The Stick” produced a hurts-so-good type of sensation; however, later in the day the whole area was feeling extremely tender and sore. Having self-inflicted this torture on myself, I was left lying on the floor of my hotel room, utterly horrified with what I had done to myself and whimpering, “Why meeeeeeeeeeeeee?!”--ala Nancy Kerrigan after her infamous bludgeoning by Tonya Harding’s own version of “The Stick.”
The Rhetoric of Marathon Apparel
Then drifting away, my eyes they did
snooze
With my gut full of water, and
unable to pee (ugghhh).
And then, in a twinkling, I
heard in my ear,
“Good morning Mr. Woo,
your 6:45 wake up call.”
As I pulled at my hair, and
cried myself awake
I rolled off the bed with a
grunt and a groan.
Got dressed in my shorts and
strategic t-shirt,
Which was littered with
spirit: USC, USC, Go Trojans, Go!
Now, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of carefully selecting an appropriate race shirt in which to run at the Boston Marathon. It’s unlikely that you will engage in active conversation with spectators during the race, therefore, your shirt will serve as an important medium of communication between you and your fans (if only for a day). Typically, the Boston crowds will either respond emphatically by screaming whatever is written on your shirt, or not at all. With spectators along the course numbering over half a million, if you hear them hollering your name, chances are they’re not really screaming for you, but rather for the guy running next to you who coincidentally has “your” name written on his shirt. Sorry to break the news to you. Although you both have the same name, might it be considered poor race etiquette for you to soak in the cheers and applause that are being showered directly upon him and his shirt? Perhaps, but this remains an issue best left for the lawyers to debate.
To alleviate this concern, it’s critical that you consider how common your shirt may be among fellow runners. Half a thousand other runners may be wearing the same motivational t-shirt that they picked up for free at the expo in exchange for signing up for a new 20% interest VISA card. An effective communicator always has the interests of his audience at heart, and wont bore the crowds with the same “Just Do It” shirt that everyone else is wearing, or burden spectators with a lot of text or hard-to-depict graphics on his shirt—it’s really best to keep it simple for all parties involved. Bear in mind that the crowds will be passed by over 15,000 runners, so they cant really offer more than a 3 or 4-syllable cheer for any individual runner. They love to scream acronyms, especially the kids whose vocabularies are still developing.
This year at Boston, with emotions still riding high from
USC’s showing among basketball’s Elite Eight, following the school’s dismal
football season, I decided to don a simple, but crowd-pleasing shirt with the letters
U-S-C across the front. The results were
incredible—for almost every step along the course, there were crazed spectators
chanting, “Go USC (Trojans, Southern Cal, SC, or some other variation of this)!” The Wellesley chick with the “Go
California” placard was quite receptive when I passed her, and even while running
past Boston College, the students were exceptionally supportive, despite their recent
Sweet Sixteen loss to USC. However, what
really made wearing my shirt worthwhile was when I smugly passed the dude wearing the UCLA
shirt. “Go SC--Fight on!”
The Village Outhouse
A bundle of delicacies I had packed
in my sweat bag,
And it felt like trick or
treating just op’ning my pack.
My ClifBars-- how full of carbs! Chocolate PowerGel, how full of caffeine!
My gut was still bloated, my
mouth like a camel’s
Uggghhh….my bladder was
ready to go.
The road to Hopkinton had some bumps and some potholes,
That shook the bus and my
bladder, like a bowlful of jelly.
(45 minutes later…….)
The Runner’s Village was
in view, a site for sore eyes,
And I cried when I saw it, my
bladder in tears.
But a squirm of my hips and a
ripple through my stomach,
Soon gave me to know I had
everything to dread.
Begging the driver, I spoke
just six words,
“I need to get off
NOW!” then ran for the trees.
After I was finished taking care of business, I boarded the bus again to the roaring applause of everyone on the bus. Apparently, my weakness of bladder and threatening demands on the bus driver gave inspiration to others to hop off the bus and make for the bushes.
Finally arriving at the
Runner’s Village, as always I was grateful to have made it to the start of another
marathon after past surgeries to both calves and a knee.
With three hours until gun time, I surveyed the village looking to claim some
property on which to stretch and chill out. Then
I ran into PARC-ers Kirsten K. and Dave O’n., and we ended up staking out a fragrant
area of grass in front of the port-a-potties, along with an Ironcouple in training for the
Canadian Ironman. The hours passed relatively
quickly, then we made our way to the corrals, when I spotted Roberta Gibb, the first
female to run Boston in 1966, warming up.
Settling into corral #2, I wasn’t sure how my hip/quad
might act up during the run. I was just
hoping for anything better than 3:10, in order to qualify for next year’s marathon. Training for this year’s Boston was
especially difficult given the insanity of my class schedule, and I didn’t want to
train for another marathon just to qualify for Boston 2002.
However, soreness would ultimately plague my hip/quad throughout the marathon.
Minutemen
Picking at the scars of my knees and
my calves,
And nodding in thanks towards the church at the start, I was ready to go.
The jets thundered above, to the runners gave a launch,
And away we all flew like the
flanks of the minutemen.
And I heard the crowds
exclaim, as we ran out of sight,
"Happy Patriot's Day to
all, and to all a good race!"
Epilogue
Immediately into the start of the marathon, I could feel a subtle tightness in my hip, and I was anticipating trouble down the road. However, I was running mile splits around 6:40 for the first 5 miles or so. I tried to pace myself slower, but the same splits kept coming up until about mile 7, when I really started feeling the soreness spreading to my right quad. By about mile ten, I began to slow my pace because I knew Wellesley was coming up at around mile 13, and I wanted to look and feel half decent while passing the girls there. Indeed, the ladies did not disappoint, and high-fiving the strip of fanatical Wellesleyans is something every male marathoner should strive for at least once in his lifetime.
After passing Wellesley and receiving that added shot of
adrenaline, I was feeling relatively strong, hip and quad aside. I made it to the halfway point in 1:28, and
figured I could run a positive split of 12 minutes and still qualify for next year. The Newton hills would be coming up around mile
17, and I figured I should hold myself back. However,
I freakin’ couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t able to slow my pace,
especially when my quad and hip were feeling the impact every time I landed on my right
foot.
Then it dawned on me—it’s my shirt! My USC shirt.
As mentioned above, I couldn’t escape supportive spectators cheering
“Go USC!!” along the entire course, which made it all but impossible to feel
sorry for myself and my hip/quad. The energy
of the Boston crowds really pushes you to run a pace faster than you would otherwise, for
better or worse. Crowd support at Boston is
unrivaled at any other marathon I’ve run and, to its credit, Boston may be the only
city in the world in which all of the locals know the distance of the marathon, and
don’t think a half marathon is as long as a marathon.
After Heartbreak Hill at mile 21, it’s all downhill towards
Boston. By this point, I was running at about
2:55 pace, however, my hip/quad were REALLY killing me and I was expecting that Id be
hitting the wall and walking soon. However,
with the frenzied crowds getting more dense and louder as the course approached Boston, I
couldn’t do much but suck up the pain and push as best as I could. Closer to the finish, the Red Sox had just beat
the Yankees, and rowdy baseball fans were emptying out of Fenway Park onto Boylston and
the surrounding streets. With the crowds
swelling, I made the turn onto the final Boylston stretch and realized a sub-3 chip time
was in reach, but I had to do it right—chip schmip, I wanted to clock an
official sub-3. I crossed the finish in
2:59:54 with a hysterical grin on my face, knowing how closely I squeaked-by under three
hours, and only 4 seconds faster than my time at Boston last year.
Merry Christmas and Happy Patriot's Day!