THE EVENTS AROUND, AND THE RUNNING OF,
THE 2ND ANNUAL MARATHON-IN-THE-PARKS
WITH JOE
Nov. 18, 2001
Wonderful! This has been a full running weekend, following a week in which neither
of us had put on any miles except in the last of our training runs on the bright
and beautiful Veteran's Day run ten miles over the middle part of the same course
we ran in superb competition in the second annual MITP!
I had promised Joe on our run on Veterans' Day that I would try to accommodate a visitor who had come to Washington to work on a documentary on post-Gulf War Syndrome. The fellow's name is David Block, a blind reporter, whom Joe had met during the paraOlympics competition and who had reported on Joe's guide runner Steve Nearman crashing with a cramp, letting go the string which sent Joe off the track and crashing into the spectator fence, where he broke ribs and-already qualified for the Sydney Olympiad-- dashed Joe's dream of running for America in Sydney. Always one to look on the bright side of any problem, Joe's staying home from Sydney resulted in the conception and birth of Michelle, now five months old. I can tell you from rather close first-hand participation in the family life of three small kids what it is like being a sighted person trying to manage!
I picked up Joe on Saturday morning and packed the three kids in their Camry, since it is outfitted with car seats, to the YMCA at Old Georgetown Road, the site of the 19th annual Turkey Chase that Joe and I will be running together on Thanksgiving morning. We dropped the kids off with Betty at the day care center she works at there at the Bethesda/Chevy Chase YMCA, and we drove downtown to a small hotel right next to GWU. I picked up David Block-a big guy, rather loud and a very noticeable presence, who carries a white cane but still has some residual vision after having had congenital cataracts. He talks at a volume that has everyone in a restaurant sharing in his opinions, which are rather strongly held and loudly voiced-as he says, wearing his reporter's hat. He said one thing that was quite disarming, that is, "My struggles with serious depression are much more disabling than my vision." Joe had picked the restaurant and actually had called them regarding their special holiday "Turkey menu" which each of the three of us had. It was sunny, warm and incredibly balmy as I walked through the downtown alongside GWU campus, with a fellow waving a white cane holding on to either arm. The streets were filled with young chicks in short shorts and tank tops, and as a faithful commissioned guide for the blind, it is my job to carefully describe the events and features in the environment around us!
We had a good visit in the Scholl's café, with a team of waitresses who were from Cuba (as it turns out, so is David's father) Greece, and Jewish Philadelphia (which David also shares in ethnic past and present.) He was working on what he had thought was a cover-up on the chemical weapons of Saddam Hussain to which hundreds of thousands of US GI's had been exposed in the Gulf War, and had been with a self-financed film crew doing a photodocumentary at the Vietnam Wall. He was mainly interested in raising funds by contributions for what he thought was a worthy cause.
I somehow got both of them and David's bags loaded into the Bronco and dropped him off by leading him right onto the Acela Amtrak as it was boarding for Philadelphia, while Joe sat in the vehicle. This is a high-risk maneuver, since the security precautions in and around Washington have changed everything, including the inability to park, even transiently next to Union Station, and it would not do to have a too close inspection of the occupant of the vehicle to see if he would be driving it off, with his white cane in the seat with him. Handicapped access has been one of the casualties of heightened security measures.
MITP packet pickup
At Leland Community Center
I came close to running out of gas (19.8 gals in a 20 gallon tank), but I had noticed that the gas prices had dropped dramatically everywhere but near my home, so I picked up the tankful on the way out of DC. I then followed a "MapQuest" computer generated map to a place I had never heard of let alone visited, the Leland Community Center, which turns out to be tucked away in a quiet residential neighborhood behind the Bethesda Farmer's Market. I could not believe the brilliant yellows and reds of a few trees that had still not dropped all their leaves, so I took a few photos of Joe in this balmy environment. I am trying to make a scrapbook for Betty of the large number of races Joe and I have run. I even found out at the packet pickup that there would be an inexpensive video service that would take a course video and have four minute-long clips of whatever runner reserved it. Joe was interested for the sake of his family who may not have seen us running together.
I am registered with Number 1169 and by special arrangement with the Director, I have managed to get a second Champion Chip, so that Joe and I are registered as a unit, he with the chip they rented us and I with my Boston Marathon Chip which I had purchased. We got some popcorn from the Massage Therapists, whom I had teased saying that the only reason I could talk Joe into running this distance with me is that we had both got a massage after the Baltimore Marathon (Joe's first ever) and I had promised him I would get him in early to enjoy the same service at the Finish Line of this race.
We came through, and we did indeed arrive early at the massage tent!
A BABYSITTER STAYS ON AFTER PASTA
Joe and Betty had wanted to go to a "Parents Night Out " in the Potomac home of one of the parents of their school-one of their first-ever adult evenings since Michelle's birth five months ago. On their anniversary in the spring, just before Michelle was born, I had offered after a long run to take them out to celebrate their anniversary dinner. The kids had a great time, but Betty was confined to her home at that point, so we brought her home the dinner we had each enjoyed six months' back. We had gone out for our Victory Dinner on return form the Baltimore marathon four weeks ago, and this time the whole family could enjoy their choice of restaurants-the Boston market in Bethesda, and you may have seen the picture of the group, with Joe and me sporting our medals, and even little Joey beaming for the camera. I had said I thought we could already plan our Victory Dinner celebration for the after-MITP run, but Joe and Betty were really concerned that they had been unable to get a babysitter for the evening before the race for the event that they had really wanted to attend.
With a great deal of hesitation, Joe had called and suggested that he would like to fix another spaghetti dinner, the kind that he and I had after midnight as I was flying in at the end of my long travels, coming in late the night before the Inaugural Baltimore Marathon from the Rockies of Colorado-but this would be an earlier pasta loading, except that it would be followed by a favor. If I could plan to crash, again, on the couch, could I baby sit the three kids, who already knew me well as they really would like to go to the event on Saturday night?
So, that is how I became a floor-pacer for Michelle at about ten o'clock when she woke up and realized I was no good to her since I could not supply what her mother could offer. When Joe and Betty came back later, they found the two older kids in bed in their jammies (although Joey insisted that they should fit over the sweater he had been wearing while playing out in the yard) and me lying on the couch with a sleeping five month-old on my lap.
THE SECOND ANNUAL MITP-
AND WE HIT THIS ONE OUT OF THE PARK
Joe and I were up at 5:00 AM and out the door just after 5:30 to go up to my neighborhood where I parked in the Shady Grove Metro parking lot. We stripped down to sorts and a long-sleeve tee shirt at the car, and despite the fog, Joe and I both wore dark glasses-in my case to cut the glare of the bright sun that I expected to burn off the fog about mid-race. It never lifted until, mercifully, we were bathed in warm sunshine at the finish line when we needed it when wet and shivering after we had turned down the engines.
The race was superbly well planned and organized with over a thousand volunteers from our club-the MCRRC-it makes one proud! The course was different than the first running last year, and it was set up for us to have put on about ten miles before we even got started in the trails of the Needwood Bike Trail through Aspen Hill and passing Ken-Gar. It went off without a hitch at 7:00 AM sharp in a cool moist fog, down Redland Road, turning up Crabbs Branch to Shady Grove, turning right on Muncaster Mill, and then right again on Redland, passing within the sight of the deer in my woods at my house, to turn up left at Needwood Road, and coming close again to my house at Oak Meadow. I then ran up what turn out to be a surprising number of hills around Lake Needwood with flocks of Canada geese hanging right overhead loudly calling to us. I had cautioned Joe in advance about a couple of points I thought might be dangerous, and the advance preparation did us well. A sharp right angle turn onto Southlawn drops precipitously into a 15* downhill course. We had started out at a pace just under and around eight minutes per mile. This was far better than our Baltimore performance in which we had hammered the front part along with the "rabbits" in the front line; in Baltimore, I remarked with alarm at the first mile, the 10K point and the Ten Mile points: "Joe, this is a lot faster than either one of us are unless we are talking about sprints!" Those mile points were 7:15, 43 minutes and 84 minutes, and we had still to reach the serious hills as the sun and temperature climbed. We were better paced at an even eight minutes at the start, and never really got out of the eights-steadily winding them up with each passing mile. We were in a group of very competitive "hard-core" runners, and we passed as many as passed us, staying in the front quarter of the 2,023 registered runners throughout. We came up to the half at the Aspen Hill parking lot where we hit the mat as the clock showed 1:49-this was a good start for a sub-four pace.
Joe had wanted to do really well in this race. This was the hometown crowd, and we were running with a lot of our own club mates. His whole family might be there at the finish line-and we might be far ahead of them if we were on our present pace since they were going to go to their ten o'clock mass. He was feeling good and asked me often if the slow pace I had taken in the Marine Corps marathon two weeks ago coupled with our long and good training runs was now paying off. He said, like big John Riggins, our duo seemed to pick up strength in the second half and we would finish strong.
We were rather quick at the water stops. The aid stations were almost ideally designed with only a quarter or third of a cup of Ultima or water, so we did not spill or waste any of the fluid, and I would hold up at a slow run, and put a cup of Ultima in Joe's left hand with my right, and then reach for the water to replace it after he had chugged the first-and we never halted to walk or stop.
We were on familiar turf. Not only that, but the emotional reaction to seeing Joe and me coming at the runners or watchers in the tight turns on a trail-width of sigmoid curves through the pretty woods, still holding golden leaves was amazing. First, they would wonder why we were linked, when they saw the chartreuse shoestring between us, often obscured when I had to "body" Joe around turns or he had to hold my arm in maneuvers I would signal in advance in our usual staccato. We were both wearing dark glasses, so there may have been some confusion as to who was leading whom. When we came up on someone from behind, we could not easily pass him or her without some signals, since we two would have to remain on the paved path and also get extra room to pass especially on turns. There is a competitive reaction toward being passed in any race, and the first response would be "what do these two guys think they are doing, overwhelming me on this hill?" Then the penny would drop. Joe had his "Joe---Visually Impaired Runner" singlet on, but that logo is only seen after we pass. And we were dong a lot of passing.
"Go, Joe!" Is the uniform response on the double take, and everyone cheers on a fellow striving just as hard as they are, but having to do it by running through the dark, depending on the trust in the guide. We heard our names shouted form spectators seeing us coming on, so that these must have been club members or old friends who knew us. And there were the kinds of screams that only rock stars get from seventeen year-olds, to which Joe would respond "You know how to make a middle-aged man happy." Even the Montgomery County Police would cheer us on by name.
We threaded around the loops added to the run before we got to Jones Mill turnoff and it was at this point that I realized that we might be able to realize Joe's dream of a good performance on the home town turf if we did not falter. I was determined that we would not slow down, whereas all around us from the twenty mile point on, the good runners whom we had swapped spots with-and who therefore already had seen us in passing-they us or we them-would swing wide of the trail to pull around, and we realized that we were considered serious competitors in this race-no handicaps accepted on either side.
As we crossed Randolph Road, Joe heard a remark that he passed along to me. There was a curb on the front side, whereas there was a ramp on the far side, and I had to verbally warn him of the first hazard and let him know of the sound change in the second. A Montgomery County cop had said to the fellow running in front of me "Give him room!" having picked up in an instant what the chartreuse string meant and that I had to see the curb to guide Joe over it. Without hesitating, the runner jumped to the side and over we went without missing a beat. We never tangled or came close to stumbling, even on the small drainage grates or frost heaves or root humps on the tarred trail. Joe heard what he then reported to me with some satisfaction. One of the spectators looked up and said: "Look at that! Can you believe that?" And a man said: "But, the really impressive part is consider where they are in this race! They aren't taking any advantage since they don't need one!"
Joe liked that.
I had warned Joe about one hill that we knew about, and everyone else did too which was about a 450-yard stretch of ten degrees just beyond the Viers Mill soccer field. But, from my experience last year, I remembered that there is a surprise at the point no one wants surprises-around 23 miles-with a 250 yard 15* pitch uphill. Joe said, "OK, Glenn, let's hit it!" We did. It hurt, but we were the only runners running up that hill. Each of the walking runners we passed burst out in applause-Joe acknowledged "Nice run, Guys; and you too my man!" while I could only smile along as I was hyperventilating to purge the lactic acid out of my calves."
I had a surprising shoe failure in this run-the first I have ever had. My favorites-the light Reebok DMX's I had run the Baltimore and the MCM were doing well unit the half way point, when the arch support twisted and cut into my right arch. I could not fix it on the run, and the twisted support had blistered the arch then sloughed the skin. Joe asked if we should stop to pull it out. I said "There is no tomorrow, Joe, this is the last of the fall series." Joe said, "Big John Henry and the Marines would be proud of you!" I never did stop, and today I am limping, but it will not require a lot of leg work between now and Thursday---when Joe and I run the Turkey Chase 10K-and I will then have a different set of shoes and will wear the blister-free socks I had loaned Joe to run in today.
Joe had said there was no tension on the string throughout nearly the whole race except on wide turns on roadways. In the bobbing and weaving on the trails the string would have been too long to "Crack the Whip" and I had "bodied" Joe left or pulled his arm right. Now, there was tension. We had mastered the hills, but now the flat stretch of the old B&O railbed rails to trails cutting through Congressional Golf Course lay ahead between mile 23 ½ and 25 ½. The tension was now on the straightaway from Joe to me. He gave me the Marines drill sergeant chants and encouragement to pick it up to finish strong. I had promised that when I saw the 26-mile post in the tunnel under the Air Rights building, I was going to kick into a power sprint for the Finish. There were two young women walking, one of them crying, as we came up on them, and I said, "Joe, this pair needs a little bit of encouragement. He cheered them on, and when we had passed them and they saw his shirt logo, they cheered back and fell in behind us. Just their luck-I saw the tunnel ahead.
"OK, Joe," I said; "Now, there is no tomorrow. Can you hear the shouts at the end of the tunnel?" I saw the 26 mile marker dimly ahead and now the tension (which had not been there at all for most of the race and had been from Joe to me for the last mile) suddenly switched polarity. I kicked out of the tunnel and saw Steve Solbeck, tireless volunteer, directing the runners on a sharp right turn toward the Finish Line. I pulled out so firmly that Joe lost the string, and he was on a trajectory into a shouting crowd. With all the noise from all sides, he was unaware of directional force and the string was loose in my hand. I reached over and clamped my hand on his wrist and hauled him around, cracking the whip with his arm, and loosing none of our speed but just pivoting in the trajectory, raised his arm high and sprinted for home in lock step.
Lyman Jordan was the announcer, and was looking down to see what name matched number 1169 when he looked up and burst out "And here comes a BLIND Runner, Joe Aukward and his guide; Imagine! Well under four hours for the finish of 26.2 miles and in the front of the pack; Joe an inspiration to us all!" With the chirping of the mats under our chips, I had to haul up and pull Joe back with the "Stop Joe" call. I punched my watch at 3: 56. 16; and we coasted over to get our Mylar blankets and medals.
Joe was leaning over and a couple of the aids came up to ask, "Are you all right?" "You bet he is!" I answered. Joe said, "You weren't kidding about the kick at the end!" I said, "I had to pay you back for the 25th mile!"
THE FINISH LINE FESTIVITIES
We wasted no time going straight to the Massage Tent. I got Joe to a massage table where he was well taken care of-and a real habit forming experience has been re-enforced. A young lady named Lori whom I had met at the packet pick up at the time we got our popcorn yesterday took me. She knew just where the left pyriformis was and what it wanted to do after the race was over, and she made it spasm less after manipulating it. I collected Joe from his extended blissful massage table respite, and collected food and drinks at the Finish Line heavy metal music booming lines. Joe's chip was taken off his laces, and we picked up the packet I had checked to get him dry clothes.
In my jacket pocket was my cell phone, and we called Betty. She had driven down with the kids after mass, but could not get close because of the road closures, so she went back home. I go my metro pass out, and Joe and I and a crowd of Mylar blanket-wrapped unwashed runners took over the Metro cars to return to Shady Grove-a LONG way away from Bethesda.
I drove Joe home, where he recapped the race into my tape recorder, as he plans
to order the videotape for family, and then got de-salted in a shower. I had
offered and the family accepted the "Victory Dinner" (this Marathon
is fifteen minutes faster than Baltimore and we both feel better after it!)
so we went off to the same neat restaurant we had celebrated their anniversary
six months ago, but this time Betty could join. The kids loved it, and we had
another medal-wearing celebration, before popping a Vyoxx and returning to the
normal events of our coming week---if normal can be said to include a 10K linked
Turkey Chase run on Thanksgiving morning, four days after our linked PR Marathon
in the good run of a great race-the Second MITP.