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first marathon columns

Jon Segal’s column about running the Big Sur Marathon is online here. And Ken Ottmar’s is here:

When I hit Point Lobos at Mile 24, a man and a woman who had to be in their early 70s passed me. Normally, I would have been very demoralized. But quite the opposite happened. I began imagining how many more people — older and more out-of-shape than myself — had finished in front of me. I had to finish.

Finally I hit Mile 25 and had come full circle. After five months of somewhat training, after numerous setbacks and minimal successes, I had reached “My Longest Mile.”

Inspired by their effort, I decided to go back and read the two columns I wrote for the Union Leader in 1999 about running my first marathon. A little embarassing, I’d like to think I’ve grown as both a runner and a writer since then! But here they are:

Reporter takes shot at Boston Marathon
By DEREK ROSE
Union Leader Staff
April 19, 1999
p. A1

At noon today, I’ll begin a 26.2-mile journey that will take me through eight towns.

By the finish, I expect my muscles to be in agony, my breathing ragged, my clothes drenched in sweat.

I’m hoping some 41/2 months of training will pay off and allow me to finish alive, in one piece, under my target time of 3 hours and 25 minutes.

But I’m not sure. How could I be? I’ve never done this before.

It was early December of last year when this business began. A beautiful, unseasonable day that made headlines: short sleeves and shorts in December?

It was a day, I decided, that needed to be praised and celebrated and what better way than a good long run?

I headed up Wellington Road, circled along Candia Road and found my way back home about a good hour and a half later, a run much longer than my usual five-mile jaunt around the Merrimack River.

As the good weather continued, I kept it up. When it turned colder, from somewhere I found the will to stay with it.

Back then, running the Boston Marathon was more of a dream than anything else, a thought held in the back of my mind. My good friend and running partner had run a marathon in Hartford a few months ago, and if he could . . .

Just about anyone, I think, who runs recreationally must have at least pondered running a marathon.

And Boston is the one to run, especially if you’ve grown up in Massachusetts, where Patriots Day is the start of a weeklong school holiday. I remember as a kid watching the race on Channel 4 with my folks, with Jack Williams and Liz Walker narrating.

“I’m hoping to run a marathon in the spring,” I’d tell my friends, as to avoid too much embarrassment if my plan didn’t come to fruition.

But I surprised myself, sticking to it even on days so chilly my sweat would freeze around my wool hat, making it a stiff helmet.

On days where I’d think about how cold it was and want to stay in my comfy, warm apartment, I’d be inspired by a man who would often run past my Chestnut Street rooms.

No matter how cold it was, I’d always see him running strong, always in the same yellow sweater and sweat pants, always just a few minutes past noon.

If he could run in this weather . . .

Somehow I’d find it within my power to get out there a little while later, slathering Vaseline on my face and neck to try and insulate them from the cold.

(I work nights here at The Union Leader, which does a number on your social life, but is great for getting in some good exercise during the day).

Somewhere along the line I’m not sure when I stopped using the word “hoping,” and started telling people, “I’m going to run the Boston Marathon this April.”

The Boston Marathon is unique in that to run, you first need to qualify by running another marathon, and pretty fast, too: 3 hours, 10 minutes for a guy my age (26). It’s part of the reason for its status as the marathon of marathons.

I don’t think of myself as particularly slow but I’m not that fast. So what I and many other runners will be doing is running the marathon as a “bandit,” or unofficial runner. We won’t have a bib number. We’ll start behind all the registered competitors, and we won’t have our time recorded by anyone save ourselves. But so what? We’ll know we’ve run it.

My colleague Mark Hayward asked me a few weeks ago if I had run a marathon in preparation for Boston.

No, I said, looking at him as if he were crazy. You just don’t do that!

No one but the elite train for a marathon by running one. For most of us, the stress of running 26.2 miles . . .

Put it this way: I expect today to be like that old episode of “Star Trek,” where Captain Kirk demands Scottie to take the Enterprise up to warp 9.5, and the ship starts to fall apart.

“She canna take any more, Captain!”

But in this case, what will be falling apart is my body.

I’ll be holding it together only through grit, will power and determination.

I just hope I can make it to the finish line before my warp core blows, and I have to rely on impulse engines!

I wrote the second story at a friend’s Beacon Hill apartment probably about an hour after I finished, so it ended up being very raw and immediate:

Reporter fights Boston Marathon’s hills to the finish line
By DEREK ROSE
Union Leader Staff
April 20, 1999
p. A1

It’s mile 8 of the Boston Marathon, and I’m feeling pretty good. It’s a great day, no wind, and I’m running strong.

Still, I’ve left behind my friend and running partner, Dylan Carson, and as I glance at my watch as I hit the mile marker, I realize I’m going too fast. It’s been 1 hour and a minute since I passed the starting line. I’m two minutes ahead of schedule.

I crank it down a notch, but I can’t help but wonder: Gosh, maybe my target time of 3:25 is too conservative. Maybe I can break 3 hours and 20 minutes here.

Yeah, right. I should have known.

I’m coming up on mile 13. Wellesley College. These beautiful coeds are leaning over the fence, screaming.

I edge over to the side, and high-five the ladies as I run by, thinking this is why I’m running Boston.

As I cruise down the hill to the halfway marker, it looks like I’m right on schedule. But now I’ve got a twinge in my right leg. Jeez, so soon? There’s still another 13.1 miles to go.

I keep running. The coeds are gone, but people are still lining the streets, yelling words of encouragement.

Just before the race started, I had a friendly Hopkinton resident draw a big “D” on my white CoolMax T-shirt.

“Go D!”some people yell as I speed past. It’s great.

Mile 16. I’m feeling a little ragged. As I stop to grab a drink at a water stop, Dylan speeds past me and slaps me on the shoulder. “No stopping!” he tells me. He says he’s feeling great, with a lot of energy left. Jeez.

I run to catch up, and run with him for a little bit. But before too long I realize I can’t keep up, and I’m left eating Dylan’s dust. Another 10.2 miles to go. I try not to think about it.

Mile 17. The mile markers seemed to come so much quicker at the beginning.

Gosh, I ask myself, what possessed me when I wrote yesterday’s article for The Union Leader? Telling thousands of people that I hoped to finish this in 3:25, in a front-page story with my picture on it! My words seem so cocky now, so egotistical.

What was I thinking?

I start pondering how I’m going to write the story I’ve promised my editor by that evening: “Well, I didn’t make my target time, and I finished behind my friend Dylan, whom I’ve beaten the last three out of the four races we’ve run together, but . . . ”

But . . . nothing, I tell myself. I haven’t trained for four months to give in now.

I keep running.

Mile 18. I am sorely tempted to make an obscene gesture to all those people yelling “Go D!”

It’s so easy for them, standing there on the side of the road as I climb this hill.

Don’t they know that it would be a lot easier to slow down and take it easy if they weren’t yelling at me?

I jockey over to the edge of the road, to hear their yells better.

At least, I tell myself, I’ve come to the end of Heartbreak Hill. People had been telling me all week it’s not as bad as it’s reputation, and I guess they were right.

Mile 19 or so.

Jeez Louise.

I thought I was done with Heartbreak Hill.

That is not the case.

It is really a series of three or four hills, and this looks like the worst one.

I grit my teeth.

But it’s no use.

I can’t keep this up.

I move over to the center of the road, and slow to a walk.

People are still lining the course. I don’t meet their eyes.

I feel as if I’ve failed them. And myself.

I had imagined a lot of things happening during the marathon. Being reduced to a walk wasn’t one of them. Finally, I see one man on the sidelines looking at me.

“You!” he mouthes at me. “Go!” He waves his fist.

I oblige, running up the last bit of the hill.

I wish I could say I kept running. But I didn’t. I couldn’t make myself. My legs felt like iron bars. My foot was falling asleep.

I alternated between a run and a walk, like a good number of runners beside me.

The fans lining Commonwealth Avenue made all the difference, prodding me onward, if only in spurts.

For the last mile, I finally managed to pick it up and run all the way.

I cross the finish line some 3 hours, 48 minutes and 50 seconds after I crossed the starting line.

I shake a fellow runner’s hand, and he tells me, “Good job.” But it doesn’t feel all that good. I’m very disappointed.

As I stumble through the various runners’ areas, grabbing a banana, I think about a hand-written sign someone was waving on the last mile or so of the course: “Just finishing is winning.”

In a sense, that’s true. And I do take some satisfaction in that. Three hours and 48 minutes is not a terrible time to finish one’s first marathon, I think.

But in another sense, that’s just a bunch of namby-pamby nonsense. I wanted to do better! My friend Dylan finished way ahead of me, in 3:30:30.

I’m not sure what went wrong. Did I go out too fast? Did I not train well enough? Was it that sickness I contracted after running the Eastern States 20-miler three weeks ago? Or do I just not have it in me to run as fast as I think I can?

No, I tell myself. I can do better than this.

And I will. After all, this year’s marathon season has only just begun.

I did go on to run the New York City Marathon that year in 3:38:18, as well as the Jacksonville Marathon in 3:26:50. But still have to qualify for Boston …

This year.

1 comment to first marathon columns

  • Thanks Derek for your comments on bandit, because it’s very encouraging. I plan on doing it this year as well. Best wishes to you. I’m kind of nervous though never doing it before. But I do wish to qualify for it one day. See you on the course. I’m doing it to support my fellow military members (civilians also) deployed in Iraq…. as a reminder to never forget and remember the freedoms we enjoy each day.

    Take Care,

    Enos

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