April 21 - BOSTON MARATHON

AM/PM: 112th BAA Boston Marathon, 2:31:17 (PR), 65th place, 27 miles

I slept like a log the night before the race--so well, in fact, that I had to briefly remember that I was racing a marathon this morning when I got up. I don't remember what I was dreaming about, but it wasn't about running.

Erik, Fellows, and my GRC teammates took the busses to Hopkinton around 6:45 for the 75-minute ride out there with a sea of other runners. When we finally got to the Athlete's Village--think of a runner's Woodstock--the 90-minute wait passed quickly. I had just enough time to drink some Gatorade, get harrassed by some ROTC kids for pissing in the woods, and put on my number before it was time for us to jog to the start line.

The stories are true--too many guys go out much too fast at Boston because of the atmosphere and the first few miles of downhill. I would pass what seemed like hundreds of guys over the next 26.2 miles who made that mistake (check out how crowded we were in the beginning--Jake isn't even running on the asphalt). The race would ultimately brake down into thirds for me, separated by two major events along the way.

As a result of the thick crowd, a group that included me, Adam Ambrus, P. Murphy, Bain and Klim (Dwyer dropped back earlier, opting to run more conservatively) stuck together for the first 14 miles, picking up other guys along the way. With the pack we had going and the easier first half of the course, the first 14 miles of the race were a lot of fun for me. We joked around with each other, checked out the crowd, called out runners we knew, all while slowly moving up through the race. The crowds were thick from the get-go: almost every inch of the course had a spectator, and in many sections the crowd was 5-people thick.

After we passed the girls at Wellesley, whose screams we could hear coming from a half mile, I turned to Patrick and jokingly read off our split, "4:57...4:58...4:59..." because our pack of a dozen guys got a pretty big rush/ego boost running that deafening quarter mile past the school. Across the pack, I heard Klim yell, "5:15!" cracking basically the same joke. Weirdly enough, this was an important indicator to me. Here we were, crossing the half-marathon mark, still talking and joking around. This was a good sign for us because it meant no one was struggling yet.

In summary, before the race really started to hurt, Klim, Patrick, and Bain and I gleefully took in the atmosphere with some guys who had clung onto us, ticking off the splits evenly and running as a tight pack. We took the small hills very conservatively, knowing that the toughest lay ahead in miles 16-21.

Somewhere around 11-12 miles, we lost Ambrus and one of Dwyer's friends, who told me after the race that the pair moved suddenly with a 5:20 mile. I'd catch him later around mile 23, but I wouldn't see Adam again, who ran a pretty strong race.

Around 14 miles, I started to move away from our team. I had spent most of the race setting our pace, anyway, and though it wasn't deliberate, I started putting what I'd guess to be around 3-5 seconds per mile on them. This wasn't an easy move for me to make at all because up until this point, we'd been working together efficiently as a pack. No one was passing us. I nonetheless moved forward, keeping what felt like an even effort. I kept everything in control, paying careful attention to bodily signs. I also kept my nutrition consistent, taking Power Gels at miles 7, 14, and 19, and I drank Gatorade every 2 or 3 miles.

After a big dowhill around 25k, we hit the hills in Newton. Right around here, the race stopped being "fun," and I started to focus. I took each of the hills patiently, knowing that I'd get some recovery after each one. I pumped my arms pretty furiously, trying to stay with two guys I'd started running with (one guy in a Bucknell uniform named Jesse from DC whom I'd never met--a friend of Matias), while still relaxing and shortening my stride.



At Heartbreak Hill, the last of the infamous hills in Boston, I was hurting, and this was the turning point of the race for me. The two guys I was racing with moved slowly ahead. Suddenly, before I could see the crest of the hill, I was hit with a monster head rush; my entire body started to go numb. I knew what this was because I've felt it before: I was hitting "the wall."

In all of my previous marathons, after I hit the wall, I started running backward, my stride rapidly deteriorating into a death shuffle. Yesterday was different. Runners around me shuffled and suffered, but I hung on, still pumping my arms. I knew that once I hit the top of Heartbreak, the rest of the course was flat or downhill. Despite hitting my slowest mile since the first (5:55), I felt I had more left in the tank.

At mile 21, I started racing. The two runners I had been with for the last several miles hung around, and I wanted to drop them. Meanwhile, we passed runners broken by the hills, only building momentum as we ran by. At mile 22, I looked down and saw 5:28--much faster than expected. The rest of the race dissolved into a blur. I tried to slingshot past runners fighting "the wall," and I jockeyed for the lead the same two guys, ultimately beating one and getting outkicked by the other. Meanwhile, I was gradually speeding up, negative splitting a course where the second half is definitely more difficult than the first. I definitely didn't expect to do that.

The last mile felt intense, especially making that final turn on Boylston Street. Not only was I reaching unfathomable levels of discomfort, but the crowds were confusingly thick, beyond my capacity to reason. Stands packed with people lined the course, and the noise was the loudest it had been since Wellesley. When the course dipped under an overpass, I got few erie seconds of quiet before making the final two turns around packed corners to the finish, where thousands of people waited in a tunnel of sound and excitement. Supposedly, 500,000 people lined the entire course to watch the race unfold, and I definitely believe it. If I had only seen up to 400,000 at this point, it seemed like the last 100,000 were packed into the final half mile.

I focused on the finish line and took it all in. Like I said--this was all very surreal. When I stopped, discomfort gave way to pain, as if "the wall" hit me from behind; for a few seconds, I couldn't breathe or speak. I crossed the line and almost lost it, my eyes welling with tears. Unlike Chicago in 2004, when I cried because of pain, at the end of Boston I cried tears of real joy for the first time in my life; thinking about it now I've never wept about something positive until then. I've wanted to race Boston since I've started running, not just because of the history behind the race, but because of my dad, who was hit and killed more than 20 years ago when he was out for a training run for his first Boston. Consequently, running the first Boston of my own and subsequently exceeding my expectations was very overwhelming for a few moments after the finish line. Walking back to the bus to pick up my bag, I felt a profound sense of warmth and peace. And when I finally met up with Valerie, I hugged her and cried some more.

So, not only did I run my first "successful" marathon (i.e. I didn't fall to pieces in the final miles), hitting a PR by 11+ minutes, I also ran the most personally meaningful race of my life--all at arguably the most famous marathon in the world. To be quite honest, it all felt pretty good, even though I physically felt like falling into a coma. I could win the Nobel Prize (not likely, I realize...), and this day will still be one of the most memorable days of my life--running or otherwise--because of what now seems like a perfect storm of events.

My GRC teammates that I started with ran well, too. Bain came 90 seconds behind me (Editors note: looking at the photos now, he moved with me through the hills and was breathing down my neck until the final miles); Klim was at 2:35, and Patrick and Dwyer crossed the line together within seconds of him. We took 4th as a team (after being in 13th place at 10k), and put five guys in the top 101. Every damn one of us ran a PR on a "non-PR" course, and we finished within five minutes of each other. As for the rest of us, Max, Ernst, and Jarrin also ran awesome races and were at or close to PRs. Fellows had a tough day, but was in good spirits, and Erik jogged a 3:17 despite being injured for two months. Ambrus ran a huge race, running away with a 2:29.

I got a lot of great phone calls, texts, hugs, and everything afterward from people who were following the race online. Both my mom and Valerie said this was the happiest I've seemed in a long time. I can't argue with that; I feel unbelievably thankful right now.

Anyway, enough of the long, emotional race report (there wasn't another way with this one...sorry). Here are the numbers!

Half Splits:

1:16:13/1:15:04

Total Splits:

6:02, 5:44, 5:49, 11:38 (4&5), 5:48, 5:50, 5:52, 5:46, 5:49, 5:48, 5:40, 5:43, 5:43, 5:47, 11:24 (16&17), 5:47, 5:39, 5:47, 5:55, 5:28, 5:40, 5:33, 5:49, 7:05 (1.2)