NOV-A-9

 

THE MARATHON-IN-THE-PARKS-IV

RUN IN THE COOL CHILL OF DERWOOD DAWN FOLLOWING THE OMEN OF A TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE

 

February 8—9, 2003

 

            Pre-marathon day dawned almost warm and got sunny after a couple of days of rain.  About mid-day, as it became sunniest, it seemed to get colder, with predictions from the low 60’s going to 50’s, then 40’s and mid-30’s at the start.  I went down to pick up my packet and Bib Number 503, passing a few still beautiful maples.  But the trees have been mostly rained off of their leafy glory, especially the maples.  I went on to Derwood which has nearly barren trees now, with all the leaves covering the ground.  As I picked up the mail, I heard a tap on the door and met Ernie Shifflett.  Ernie had come over to check on the status of the woods his large team had cleaned, both on the ground and in the canopy, clearing all the hanging limbs as well.  The hillside does look rather good!

 

            I went over a couple of items with Ernie then showed him around the gutted inside of the cave and out into the Great Room and Library newly furnished with heating and cooling ducts and the newly installed heat pump built in the storage room beneath the library.  Everyone remarks about the Breakfast Room, and the rear façade of the house and how stunningly beautiful it will be.  I showed Ernie the big stump at the site of the rear steps which will be built with a walk way up the Western deck along the Breakfast Room.  He will send in a smaller machine (since the  big one cannot get to it, requiring level ground and lots of space),  The larger machine would make about half an hour’s work of it, but the smaller one will be grinding on it for a couple of hours.  OK

 

            I then pointed out to Ernie the trees fallen down over and on the other side of the creek—the only area not yet cleaned up.  Ernie said he did not know that was still my property, and I assured him that it goes well beyond the creek for a couple of acres on the other side of the stream all along the lot lines of the people who live on Keats, beyond Kipling.  So, we walked back there around the garden and beyond.  I saw Ed Lubers and his wife Debbie, so we walked across his lawn, and into the area where I was going to show Virginia the garden I had been talking about.  That whole are back there holds five downed trees.  Ernie said it would be hard to get in there and to pull them out, so he advised that I just cut them down and let them rot on the ground.  That is what I will do, but as he is at it, he will clean out a few of the brush piles that Ed had been throwing there.  Ed reports on some close calls he has had with the neighbors whose house is now up for sale, a fixer-upper that has never had a paint brush or cleanup in the years that the prior residents lived there, now divorced.  The house is to be sold for $410 K, which will require a lot of work to get it into shape after that.  But, proximity to Candlewood School on one side and my woods makes it inevitable that someone will probably buy it, perhaps sight unseen.  The split up has affected the two sons, one of whom is being released from the Utah penitentiary after two years for crime, and the fourteen year old whom I had once protected after he entered my woods and chopped down trees with an axe, and I could have had arrested.  Instead, I set up an appointment after the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run in 2002 and I talked with his father and him about the woods and how it is important to preserve it.  We walked through it, and he was going to write an ecology project for school featuring the woods at my house and how it worked to protect the Chesapeake Watershed.  He ne3ver did.  Further he fired an air rifle at Ed Lubers daughter's window, putting three holes in the house, for which Ed brought in the police, and they threw him in a jail cell for a few hours, and came out with an injunction against his crossing the property line.  So, my attempt at trying to keep him from being arrested was not successful in keeping him from being arrested very long and winding up in jail for assault with an air gun at age 14—is any of this sounding like s familiar juvenile offense?  So, the Lubers have come through their own problem with the neighbors that did not involve malicious destruction of trees as the property under attack.

 

            For her own curiosity, I walked up to the house with Debbie Lubers and showed her around the new construction and the decks.  She said she was aware of a great deal of work being done here, but she thought it was just an “ass-on” not a total “Gut and Re-do!”  She had expressed an interest in doing something similar to enclosing their deck and making it into a Florida Room, which got further fanned to flame by my building project, so Ed joked that my housing renovation was \going to cost him a lot of money.

 

I got my carbo-loading dinner just before the beginning of the lunar eclipse, one night before the full moon.  So, I saw the crescent as the moon turned rust red, and then the totality, as the last sliver was extinguished.  With that, it is time for me to be in bed, since I should be up at the pre-dawn time when the earth’s shadow is only just leaving the moon back to the position of being the single major source of illumination at that hour when I have to make my way down to Somerville and Redland Road next to the Shady Grove Metro Stop to pack into the MCRRC allegedly heated tent in time to get the warm-up clothes stashed in the baggage check to be delivered down at Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda, the site of the Finish Line 26.2 miles away.  Are you all ready to come along for the next long run of the Autumn Marathons?

 

MITP-IV

26.2 MILES FROM DERWOOD TO BETHESDA

IN THE MONTGOMERY COUNTY PARKS OF MY OWN

BACKYARD

 

            Well, I set a personal record.  I have just broken five hours—a first for me in a marathon. Unfortunately, this was on the FAR side of five hours, and not the front.  In other words, I have just done the slowest marathon of my life in a bright clear and cold day, with ice on the running trails along my usual running routes through Needwood and within a stone’s throw of Derwood’s manse—even though I am not resident there at this moment for reasons of lack of plumbing, power, heat and other amenities soon to be replaced by more than adequate luxuries.

 

            It all started with the full moon—magnificent as it hung over the Redland  Road starting line when I arrived at 6:00 AM—a moon that was not at all obvious just a few hours earlier when I had been looking at the sliver of the moon, like a gem on a ring, get extinguished.  It was cold, bitter cold, so that even with gloves on, I had no feeling in my hands.  I wore a long sleeved tee shirt from my Boston Marathon, under a singlet with the bib and number, and stripped the warm up pants to shorts.  I went into the allegedly heated tent for the pre-race waiting area, and found most of the heat was generated by the bodies compacted in the tent.  I spoke with a few first timers, and to at least one veteran.  I was the one who had done the most marathons and looked the part with a Boston shirt on to boot.  I was probably passed by almost all these people in the second half of the race.

 

            I started out strong and made good time on the hilliest part of the course, running out Shady Grove Road and then winding through my neighborhood before entering Needwood Park.   If ever there is a territory that should be familiar to me this is it. I came up along the half in good time, and started thinking about many things that have been on my mind lately, with just one small glimmer that I could potentially qualify for Boston with a good sub-four hour time.  If I had kept going, I would have.  I didn’t.  In short, I did the first half of the course in under two hours and the second half in over three!

 

            I had race walkers passing me, and I thought I was running!  I had shuffled along with no particular problems—no cramps or blisters or other specific items to blame, but a large worry about a future not related to running.   For a moment, I thought, “This is what I should expect—maybe a signal that I should run only shorter races than half marathons, or do the longer races, even Ultras, but just plan to come in at the back of the pack from now on.  Nah! 

 

I started rehearsing what had gone right:  after the DC Medical Licensure Hearing, a “pro forma” event in which they essentially admitted that the incompetence of their contractor in bungling my timely application for renewal was their fault, I called the Council to ask what had happened after my hearing.  Ms. Antoinette Stokes said “Good news: you have your license—number 6537—and everything is fine.”  I replied, “Yes, that is the license I have had all along for over three decades, but what happened to my fee for renewal?”  She said “Oh they cashed your check.”  “Did they find the one for $240 for my original application?”   “No, the one for $680 for being late.”  “You mean I am again being asked to pay for the incompetence of the contractor who had dropped the ball?”  “Well, they figured you were renewed as of the original date so your license will again expire on Dec. 31 2004, but the new contractor will not give you the same problems—we hope—as the last one, and the additional penalty fee just pays for the processing of your complaint against them.”

 

So, the general rule is: you can pay us now or you can pay us later, but we will get the maximum in fees we can extract from you and you DO seem to want to keep renewing this license, even if you do not need it.  I can simply shrug this one off, and say that this is the bureaucratic Catch-22 that I may just as well swallow, since they cannot possibly be made to look like they have done anything as rampantly incompetent as they have done in botching the renewal with a year of monthly calls and letter and faxes (each of which they seem to have lost despite copies being field on each time I sent them one,  “Further good news: You will not have to sign a release acknowledging that you have been practicing medicine without a license, since you have neither been practicing medicine in the District of Columbia nor have you been without a license.”  The inevitable further question “Then why am I paying a penalty fee” never came up again before she signed out with a further congratulatory note as though I had been through some exculpatory process.  So, this is not what I was worrying about.

 

The house renovation in Derwood is going well.  It is very expensive, but it is also very high quality, so that is not the worry.  Even the woods are getting cleaned up at an as yet undisclosed cost.  OK.

 

What had me concerned is not something to be described in a quick and easy statement, but it certainly did slow down my run.  If I could have purged it and moved on, I surely would have, and I would have banked a Boston Qualifying time for the following year, since I will be on the Amazon River during this coming Boston in April 2004.  But, I did not forget about it, and spent an extra hour or more in the Derwood woods, while almost everyone around me had passed me in my reveries.  It was a good day for a race—just not my day for the races.

 

I stopped at the massage tables after the run and got a sports massage which helped—although my feet cramped up as soon as I took off my socks because of the cold.  I feel fine, and hardly like I have done a strenuous race, probably because I hadn’t/

 

Virginia is giving her major faculty recital tonight.  So, it is a big day for performances, and I trust hers goes better than mine.  I hope she is able to focus on her music and not be distracted thinking of other things, which we may yet be able to talk about later.  I will have to move on to other things to work on, which may be more nearly in my control or with a better yield.

 

So my fourth (of four) MITP’s and my 91st marathon has been memorable, but not for the reasons I might necessarily have chosen; but every new experience is a chance for growth of some sort. I hope this one may be especially so.

Return to November Index

Return to Journal Index