California International Marathon December 3, 1995 Man on the Edge of Time: The Sequel When last we left our Boston aspirant, he had finished Humboldt Redwoods Marathon in mid-October with an excellent, solid race but a time which was nine minutes late and a dollar short (or is that $50 short?). 3:34 doesn't get you in when you're 46, or even 53. But, Humboldt being my first real marathon I was happy to look on it as a training run and a learning experience. Unfortunately the only thing I really learned was that I'm too slow to qualify for Boston! Well, along comes Cal. Intl. this weekend to give me my second chance, with a bonus gift of 500 feet net downhill. Unfortunately there was some bad news too - on my feet and working my tail off at the race expo for 4 hours Friday and 7 hours Saturday. Definitely not proper marathon preparation. :-( Some good food and the company of friends at the Florentine revived me a bit. My friend Karl heard me talking about going out at 7:40 pace and said that sounded good, he didn't think he was really in "marathon shape" and although he's definitely faster than I am said he'd like to run with me. I'd been demonstrating the "Race Calculator" feature of The Athlete's Diary for two days and showing people how you could run 20 miles at 7:40 and 6.2 miles at 8:15 and that would produce a 3:24:29, and that was my working plan. Early to bed, early to rise, bus to the start, meet Karl and other friends. I told Karl I didn't think I could afford to lose too much time at the start so we pushed to a "reasonable" position in the pack, from where we took only 12 seconds to make it to the starting line. A wise decision! Now I was aiming for 7:40's and Karl had promised he wouldn't let me go out too fast and even the race instructions say take it easy on the early "rolling" miles but by God there's a lot of downhill in that first 10 miles and what they call uphill wouldn't pass for an anthill at Rancho San Antonio where I train :-) I do NOT think I was pushing too hard but the early miles went like this: 7:51 (crowds+12 seconds), 7:19, 7:12, 7:22, 7:23, 7:29, 7:29. The miles were just clicking by; I've never in any race felt like they were coming up as quickly as they were in this race. This is too easy! Seven miles by and I haven't had a single mile as slow as my target pace yet. Round about this time Karl is wondering if HE made a big mistake, and asks "Say, didn't you say you wanted to run 7:40's?" Not only the general pace was too fast (according to plan), but everytime we got to an uphill I would push just a little harder (contrary to all advice and sensible race strategy) and end up a few yards ahead by the top. I told Karl I was sorry, but my "identity" is as a hill runner and if I'm going to push anywhere it will always be on the uphills. Things did eventually come to a more sensible steady-state, and the middle miles went by in 7:40, 7:50, 7:32, 7:39, 7:48, 8:58(!), 6:27 (just *slightly* misplaced mile marker there!). So there was a stretch of 7 miles where we were almost dead on 7:40. The miles continued to just fly by. Running with someone else was certainly helping this feeling, I'm sure. Somewhere during these miles we realized we had been running pretty much the entire way in the company of a woman (back around mile 3 or so she had even asked me if was comfortable in my singlet, and when I said yes, she took off her sweatshirt and heaved it to the side of the road). As we got into the teen miles, I realized that Karl was spending less time by my side and more running with Ann. ;-) Somewhere in here a woman with powerful shoulders passes by - it's Missy LeStrange, the world's most awesome age-group triathlete, a 40-something woman who can do a 10:30 Ironman, routinely winning her age group by an hour or more. By the time I gather my courage to say something, she's out of reach. She only needs a 3:50 to qualify for Boston; hell, she's done that in Hawaii! After the halfway point there aren't as many good downhills - you actually have to do the work yourself! 7:50, 7:42, 7:38. Still cruising through 17. During this time, Karl (and Ann) were really helping me. They were running just slightly faster than me, and after a while they might be 5 or 10 yards ahead. Well, I didn't want to lose Karl, so I'd put on a surge to catch them, then settle back. This happened repeatedly; probably Karl wasn't even aware. But he was definitely pulling me along in this stretch. 7:57, 7:48, 8:02 through 20. Deterioration is setting in but I'm still hanging on. Karl's got so much excess energy from holding back that he's high-fiving every spectator on the route. I urge him to go on and let me struggle on alone. Karl and Ann start to pull away as my legs are getting more and more sore, and my stride turning from a flowing, graceful thing into a survival shuffle. The next few miles go by in 8:18, 8:30, and 8:31. All the while I've tried to keep Karl in site and put on another surge to catch him, but it's no use; that strategy has stopped working. When mile 24 goes by in 8:39, I know I'm in serious trouble. All along, they've been calling not only times but paces at every mile marker. Throughout the race, I had been hearing numbers in the 7:30's, then eventually creeping into the 7:40's; I believe it was mile 24 where I heard the dreaded words "7:49 pace." 7:49, of course, is what I need to average for 26.2. I figure it's bad luck to try to calculate things too exactly, but somehow I know that if I don't manage to turn this slide around, I'm not going to be in Hopkinton next April 15. I'm not passing too many people running, but I am passing a LOT of people walking. I figure they're the ones who already missed their qualifying time and I'd probably be doing the same thing, so GET GOING YOU IDIOT! (Yes, I'm allowed to talk to myself that way). Give it everything you've got!!! The next mile is 8:26 but by now I wasn't looking at my watch; I knew I'd just get preoccupied with thinking and calculating when only one thing would help now and that was RUN LIKE HELL so all I could do was chant my mantra PUSH PUSH PUSH. That and the fear of wasting all my training plus all the good wishes from so many of my friends must have worked because mile 26 was down to 8:08 which is a miracle because my legs were REALLY dead at this point. Round the final corner and Barry Spitz the race announcer says "And here comes Steve Patt the Software Guru" :-) and I cross the finish line and stop the watch and it reads 3:25:23 and I'M GOING TO BOSTON. :-) :-) :-) :-) Hey, 36 seconds to spare, NO PROBLEM. :-) Thank heavens for the TRUNC function in the B.A.A. computer. :-) I have to say I NEVER thought I would/could do this. Given both my natural speed (or lack thereof), my limited training time, and my inability/disinclination to follow any but the most general of training plans, this was a chimerical dream at best. It was only because I was already going to be in Boston that I thought what the heck give it a shot. In my heart of hearts I did not think I had a chance, and after a 3:34 in my first serious marathon in October I still didn't think so. I knew CIM was faster, but I doubted it was 9 minutes faster. I owe a HUGE debt to Karl, who undoubtedly pulled 36 seconds out of me in those middle miles. I probably wouldn't have made it without my Ultimate either, together with my triathlete's transition mentality. At every water stop, I'd fly through and grab a cup or two of water and dump it in the Ultimate on the run, drinking later. Karl came out of every water stop 10-20 yards behind me, having to catch up. If I saved 3.6 seconds per water stop, that was the difference. And the GU, which I was consuming at the rate of one every 30 minutes, which does a great job of staving off the inevitable. And finally, the fear of failure, not massive failure like 9 minutes which is easy to take but the fear of failing by 10 or 15 or 30 seconds which put the fear of god into me the last two miles. We passed a lot of people holding signs saying "Boston or Bust" and by god if I didn't make it I was going to bust trying. But I made it! :-) See you in Boston!