05-OCT-C-8
EVENTS OF THE MCM-30—
MY 25TH MCM AND MY CENTENNIAL MARATHON, MARKED ALONG THE COURSE OF MY FIRST ONE!
October 30, 2005
I went by Metro to the DC Armory/Stadium Metro stop, since the big Expo was located in the Armory, where once I had gone for the packet pickup of the one and only DC Marathon. I had gone then by Bronco with Joe Aukward and had seen all the displays and picked up the bib and number, for a first time event (one of several Inaugural Marathons Joe and I had run). The following year was one in which I had pre-paid the high cost of the marathon and then the ex-convict race director heading up something called H2O Entertainment citing “National Security” canceled the race without asking anyone in the City, Security or otherwise, and ran off with the non-refundable funds from thousands of runners who were left out in the cold—and he was several hundred thousand dollars richer. His phone and office were disconnected and he skipped out of state. So, my only memories of the DC Armory for marathon packet pickup were form a fly-by-night operator. But, the MCM is going strong with 30,000 runners to commemorate their thirtieth running. And I am one of the senior citizens of this race, I found out, with people in the media interested in my twenty five MCM’s as well as the significant number of my marathons to this point making their the 100th!
Then, I opened the official program and saw that the oldest runner is an 84 year old man who has run 160 marathons and 26 MCM’s—so they should go interview him instead! There is a lot of hoopla, of course, even more than is associated with the typical marathon, since the MCM is everyone’s choice as the all time favorite first-time marathon course. Since among every yuppie’s “to-do life list” is the running of a marathon at least once, this means there are a lot of first time marathoners coming to buy the special jackets, and to do TV taped interviews before and after their own personal DVD of the marathon, in which the cameramen try to catch everyone on tape and then splice that into the tape as many times as they can over the general footage. I had bought one of these once, when Joe and I had run the inaugural Marathon in the Parks, when we were seen as part of the overall videotape with about six spots in which we were focused on as the runners do jour. I believe, I will get out with my stiff and creaky joints (still hanging on from the jostling in the snowy Rockies---I fell more like I have already run the marathon than someone getting ready to do so!) But, then, I am always “not ready” for these events, and I am always “starting up” with some pain in somewhere, which I treat through the time-honored means of ignoring it and it goes away generally about the time something else becomes the prime concern. And, I have enough of those to make all annoying twinges go away quickly!
I have a heavy burden of “deliverables” for the ELDP course, with one of the instructors promising in a bizarre email that no one’s “conceptual framework looked good on the first or third or fifth draft” meaning that the thesis process is going to be the kind of torture in which everything must be re-re-re-done so often that all the corrections will be corrected and all of it likely turned back to what was said the first time around. The “hazing rite” of making this as difficult as it can be made to instill a sense of pedantic scholarship is the whole point, since I have got my degree and you don’t, so there. But, when applied to me, I can remind them, that, no, in fact I DO have and advanced degree or two, and don’t need to smile all the way through the servility of the hassles in the name of perfecting the process.
I have been working rapidly on the development of a new trip into a new field for the first time to Kigali Rwanda, an area into which the Physicians for Peace had hoped to be going, and I had just by accident started up the process through my seatmate on the Denver-bound flight introducing me to the local Pastor Jupa who has invited me and will coordinate the on-the-ground activities of the Rwanda clinics as part of his United Methodist Mission endeavor in both the Kigali capital and the outlying clinics in Gisenyi and other parts of rural Rwanda. (See 05-OCT-C-5) I have used the March period of Spring Vacation for medical students and other who might accompany me, but this, of course, runs afoul of the ELDP course weekend March 10, 11, 2006, as well as interfering with the invitation I had to come to Toledo to introduce my nominees for the MMHOF induction of 2006. I may have to juggle the dates to straddle two different spring vacation weeks for both seniors and sophomores who might be interested in taking the program, and will try to also work in the potential brief visit to Virunga Valley, site of the famous “Gorillas in the Mist.”
But, for now, as was said on the morning of D-Day, “Away all boats!”
THE SUNNY GREAT DAY OF THE THIRTIETH RUNNING
OF THE MCM, MY SILVER ANNIVERSARY MCM RUN,
AND MY CENTENNIAL MILESTONE
A long time back, Milt Scheps had introduced me to his son, who was in the Intel Corps of the Marines, and he sent me a Marine Corps singlet. Subsequently, his son was married, moved, and then got a promotion in the Marines Intel division and was a middle eastern intelligence operative, and through that position I had written a recommendation for the GWU Elliott School of International Affairs from which he had subsequently graduated. I brought out the Marine Corps singlet for its last significant run, and had planned to retire it with a few new flourishes in a significant race. On the back side of the singlet are sewn the five year badges from the marine Corps Marathon Running Club, after they certify each of the year’s completions of the races, the five, ten, fifteen, and then twenty year patch which I had achieved in the Millennium Year. Over the top of these badges in indelible ink was a new patch sewn on this year, announcing:
25th MCM!
100TH MARATHON!
It was a beautiful day for a silver anniversary and a centennial celebration!
I had got up early despite the “Fall Back” and driven the Audi to GWUMC, and then had got into the special Metro trains, starting for the first time in history at 5:00 AM to accommodate the 30,000 runners for the Thirtieth Running and the quarter million spectators. Few of them close enough to read the numbers on the venerable singlet, being officially retired today, did not comment on it. The young women of the two hundred first-time marathoners in the MCRRC club all decked out in their special first time marathoners' singlets (which were inscribed on the backside “Marathon: a 10K race after a twenty mile warm up”) would say “You Rock!” The “older women” (those who had already completed at least one marathon had said “You beast, you!” And the younger men came by me with a salute and a “Congratulations, Sir!” with several saying “I am going to try to be you when I grow up!” It was all good fun.
When they were going to interview and photograph me at the start as an unlikely senior eventer, I recalled that the magazine of the Marine Corps Marathon had shown the oldest participant was an 84-year old man who started running at age 60 to control his being overweight, and after losing 60 pounds in the first year, kept on going to have completed 160 marathons—all of them as a senior citizen. I said “You have quite a few senior runners here far more experienced than I and every one of them has a special story. I just came out here one fine October morning and haven’t quit doing so since.” They asked me invariably which was my favorite of the (at that point still 99 26.2 milers) and I would reply, “Usually the one I am doing at the time. But certainly this one would have to rank high on that list, since it was my first one started and finished on this very spot a quarter century ago.”
Nobody supports the logistics of a marathon like the marines (with innumerable “volunteers”—“Company B! Police the grounds! Hooraahhh!” That is why it is and remains the world’s best “First time marathon” and 9,850 of the runners in the two starting waves were attempting their first marathon---a third of the pack. And then there was I, on another fringe of the pack, without as many individuals represented, but with some redoubtable “Ground Pounders” The Five Men who have run each of the thirty starts of this race. One had passed me last year as he had started by congratulating me on the four five year patches on my back, until I noted his “ground pounder singlet” and as he pulled out around the US Capital on the prior course ( a relic of the pre-9/11 route in which we used to run through both Pentagon and US Capital—both of which were targeted on 9/11/02 and are now bristling with combat units packing heavy automatic weaponry and concrete barriers to vehicular intrusions) he called back to me: “See you at the Fiftieth!” And, he most probably will!
The only thing I had going over him with his (at that time 28 ½ MCM runnings) is that he had only done one other marathon and that was Richmond once, so he had only come up to the 30 marathon number at the finish of the MCM-29. He was fascinated by the number of others and the exotic places that many of them had been run. The other people who had asked me also seemed quite taken with the variety of the races in so many out-of-the-way places, especially the ones at high altitudes. I had mentioned the Steamboat Springs Marathon “the Prettiest Run in the West” as a repeated favorite, and, of course, The Boston, the only one I have done half as often as the MCM—and my runner up for the “Happening” that it is. But many were intrigued by Prague through Medieval streets, or especially the Antarctic Marathon that had propelled me into the Seven Continents Club. The high altitude running of the Everest Marathon in the Nepali Himalaya should not eclipse the very high and spectacular running of such marathons as the Rand Run in South Africa or the Ultra Bighorn Run. The popular runs like the Rock and Roll San Diego, or the special Inaugural Runs I had done with Joe like the first (and last) DC Marathon, the Baltimore Marathon and the first Marathon in the Parks (on a “pass” this year) were of interest, and everyone wanted to here about the really BIG marathons like the London, the 100th Boston,, and—now—this one, which certainly is propelled into one of the largest on Planet Earth in taking on thirty thousand wannabes, and now at three decades old, a venerable classic in the terms of the Baby Boomer running boom of the 80’s an 90’s.
One essential feature on every Yuppie’s “Life List” of “To Do” achievements has been to run a marathon, or just look like a marathoner. The best way to “look like a marathoner” is to be one! So, the explosion in the “charity runs” in which one is going to go out for “Team in Training for leukemia or Joints in Motion, or Jimmy Fund for cancer research or Multiple Sclerosis sponsored races are selling the guilt-free do-gooding of charity combined with the “shouldn’t I just once in my life try to take on something impossibly hard, and persist in it until I have actually accomplished it” feel-gooding. But, I had one goal for the day—not the time I was shooting for (just keep ahead of the bus!) or an age group placement (I had read about the competition in the group of not yet elderly runners in their seventies and eighties, and was willing to concede to these hardy intrepids right up front) but to enjoy this one as much as the first one run on the same course a quarter century before. And, I did.
OFF AND RUNNING,
IN THE “GOLD” WAVE
The Metro was packed with nervous warm-up suit clad runners, each sucking on some type of energy aid strength booster (mine had been a bowl of cold cereal and OJ, not too different from the daily fare.) I got out at the deep underground station at Rosslyn and rode the four and a half minute escalator to the surface as we swapped stories on the way up with an all-first timer group. I walked over to the Holiday Inn where I had prepaid the MCRRC Hospitality Suite—one of the best things that our running club does each year. There I met Cliff, the massage Physical Therapist with the Reston Runners and pre-paid for the only massage I get each year for after the race. There was a photo line up of the couple hundred first-time marathon group with their coaches and I shot photos of this anxious exhilarated bunch while one bystander asked why I was so laid back when everyone had the jitters. I then took off the Boston Marathon jacket and the Bull Run Run Ultra fleece to reveal the patches that told the story, and he understood why I did not have to run to the bathroom every five minutes. The other reason I did not have to make that particular run is a maxim learned many ties over on the long bus ride from downtown Boston to Hopkinton that few of the Metro riders I had seen this morning had a chance to learn---hydrate well only after you leave the confines of the bus!
I could not decide upon the “dress code” of the day. It had been 36* on the dashboard of the Audi on driving down this morning, but it would be clear and warming up to the fifties by weather prediction, with no precipitation. I did not think I would need running sunglasses (probably not a good call) but I put on my venerable Boston Marathon cap with the visor. I was toying with the idea of a long sleeved shirt to wear at least to the starting line, when I gambled and elected to go with only the venerable Marine Corps singlet with no other protection from the Haynes Point winds except to run faster and generate more internal heat. This was a good call, fortunately, but along with quite a few others, I did get a rather strong dose of sun exposure during the later day when it actually got to the low sixties. But, all in all it was a near perfect day for running weather and ideal for spectators as well. I had picked up a trash bag to wear over the shorts and singlet during the thirty minute wait between the 12,000 runners launching at 8:15 AM in the “Red Wave” and the 8:45 AM launch of the 18,000 runners of the “Gold Wave” with the Wheel Chair racers preceding us by four minutes.
I walked to the starting line passing two large “Lightly armored vehicles with Marines policing the entrance to the very well-fenced gates. It is hard to hide anything in a runner’s costume for the marines to search as suspicious packaging, so I was waved through. I thought that it was rather humorous for me to be running the “Inaugural Army Eleven and a Half Miler” three weeks before when a suspicious package under a bridge we would be crossing canceled and diverted the race, but I would not take it in the same good graces if a similar “Security Breach” canceled my 25th anniversary and added, say six miles more to 26.2! I was glad the Marines were in charge, since, as per usual, they run a tight ship, with HumVees and helicopters watching for any suspicious activity.
They were also a gaudy group. Besides the BDU-clad Marines, there were Mardi Gras bands of Marine performers complete with feathers and beads playing at the start, and huge screen TV’s on top of semi-trucks showing the runners as they started with the first wave. I could even photo myself crossing the starting line on the big screen, I thought! I sat and stretched the left pyriformis as I got to my corral. I did a quick inventory and was surprised at how good I felt. I had been stiff and sore for the prior week since coming down from the Maroon Bells struggling between pack mules in coming through fresh snow on the elk hunt. I had ignored twinges and the lack of any concerted training and come out to take it just as it comes. A young woman was on the pavement stretching out as I got up. She and I talked about what had motivated her to try her first marathon, and her new husband standing next to her said they had honeymooned in Steamboat Springs and were convinced to go back to try there for their “second” marathon if they made it through this one. He turns out to be a new intern at the US NNMC and we chatted for the interval between launches, and I did not even recognize when the time came for the start until the howitzer went off.
It was a great day for spectating! I ran up the George Washington Parkway on the Virginia side. Here the leaves were green in the crisp fall air. Only across the river did I see some real fall colors and that was where the red maples contrasted sharply with the white spire of the Washington Monument. It was a grand day for showcasing the “Marathon of the Monuments” since Washington was on display at the season of its second best—since nothing can beat spring time in Washington.
I ran rather too fast, doing the inventory of minor twinges and ignoring them one after another until they all went away. I figured I would run at a pace that was comfortable and the first half was between 7.5 and 8 minute miles, bring me to the half way point in just under two hours. I met Paul Antony n the Key Bridge Georgetown side, and shot pictures. I had encouraged him to make a try at this run for his first three years ago, and he wanted to talk about some of my recent travel experiences and his (he had just returned from Kyrgyzstan) but did not want to use that much breath. We were separated at a water station in mid-Georgetown before the bagpipe band, but I caught him again in the back half of Rock Creek Park on the MD side. When I got up with him the third time it was passing the Lincoln, and I was running strong and he was suffering. I suggested he come along with me—as I had pulled the young woman whose name I had never learned to the finish of the Army Extended Ten+ Miler—but he was fading and walked onto Constitution Avenue from which point I had not seen him again. I got into a few conversations along the way, a couple of them in Spanish from a group of Costa Riquenas. Most of the people who spoke to me were verbal because of the patches on my singlet, a good way to get them started on why they wanted to do this race, and whatever would make anyone do it again, and again.
We rounded the front of the capital this year without making the urn around it, which has always been my usual DC Mall running route. This time SWAT team members were interposed between us and the rotunda—a different, less “user-friendly” era. I was spotted by a few of the Marathon Foto photographers who shot pictures, usually before I recognized that they were there in front of me kneeling, or in one case lying in the roadway. I kept going as the turn around the Lincoln for the long and lonely stretch out Haynes Point came up and settled down to a nine minute pace as my quads tightened up. I was half way out Haynes Point when a woman came to me and introduced herself as Mary Foster, MCRRC Club administrator, running along with her daughter Tess just next to her who was trying her first marathon and she wanted to borrow some inspiration. I believe the sight of my singlet probably did not make her a happy runner at the 19 mile point going out to the statue of the “Awakening” emerging form the sod—a photo op for me, to try to determine if he was being buried, going down, or coming up—as all of us at that point in the race were trying to figure out for ourselves.
The second least favored part of the racecourse is the long and up sloping Fourteenth Street bridge. I realized that I was about the only one running since everyone seemed to take that desolate stretch over the Potomac River to walk in the breeze. I had determined not to walk a step of this race and didn’t. But, it was lonely. At the far side the crowd picked up again and the shouts with my name (an indelible marker form the MCRRC Hospitality Suite made sure that strangers had a name with the beleaguered seas of faces, quite in addition to “Captain America” whom I had seen at the start, and at many points along the run—now heavily salt encrusted with his heavy costume and mask. A young couple who were talking with me had asked a lot of questions about which was my favorite marathon in planning their next one during the first half of the race, but in the second half, she was vowing never to try anything so hard again in her life—a common reaction we have all shared. They are probably going over brochures again this morning! But as a group of people shouted “Go Glenn! In our direction (he was on my left side and my name was on my right arm) he asked “Just how many people do you have out here on the course cheering for you?” I replied “I thought they ALL were!”
In fact, I recognized very few people in the spectators and about a half dozen among the runners. At least I see the runners long enough to make some identification, whereas the spectators all seem to disappear from view so rapidly. A few of the spectators who had raced around to try to see whom they had come to cheer for were recognizable on their third or fourth pass—including a number of stunning women who were making increasingly suggestive shouts about the rewards of this endurance performance once they got their heroes back to the home front. Ah, and you wondered why I have kept coming back to do this race again and again?
Virginia has a new course last year which leads around the upscale “above ground” shopping malls of Crystal City. I only know that area form the “Crystal Underground” where the Metro has its own labyrinthine catacombs. But, there are plazas filled with tents and one blessed spot where cold beer was being handed out to the runners. A young woman was standing out in front with a Ziplock bag of mixed cocktail nuts—my favorites—and I scooped a handful—but they are hard to eat on the run without aspirating, so the beer came along just in time along with the gooey “Cliff Shot” high energy gel. I came around the plaza and crossed the mats there that are presumably there to keep someone form jumping over and short-circuiting the course—but then I would have paid for more than I came to run! I was not looking at a finish time but realized that if I kept the pace, I would be over the finish in Four hours and change. I did decide to get an early relief form the tightness in quads and hamstrings; I crouched in a squat and stretched slowly. This always does wonders the first time it is done, but the second yield only half the relief, and there third and forth at shorter mileage intervals gets only ten percent the benefit, so I held off beyond Haynes Point until I was doing the squats about every mile at the end, trying to time it for the water stops which were handing out PowerAide at the first tables and water at the second.
The marines were invariably polite and helpful. As I passed the Mile 24, it seems they were intensified in their manners—“Congratulations Sir!” “Hoorraaah on your Centennial Sir!” “Twenty Five MCM’s Sir! Why that’s more than my age!” Yeah, right! They were good for the run.
I saw mile 26 where the Mardis Gras band had been on the grassy bank as I rounded the bend to climb the several hundred yards of Mount Suribachi. I knew it would be there, and had warned a couple of running mates at that point, but it is out of sight and at a sharp turn exactly where no one would like to encounter a steep hill after the 26 miles prologue, so many stopped and walked. I put my head down and bulled up the hill to the Iwo Jima Monument, and then took off my Boston Marathon cap and held it high over my head, and with a smile, sprinted the last 300 yards around the turn to the finish line through a sea of faces who were all cheering—none of whom I recognized but all of whom I appreciated.
I got the medal and also was photographed –fore and aft, to get the badges—by the Finish Line photographers of Marathon Foto. The orderly throng of runners kept separate from the spectators was so dense that I could see and recognize no one and kept walking toward the food line. I saw a large lineup of UPS trucks which have held the baggage of all the runners—except mine which were in the hospitality suite. I drank several liters of the special juices and kept on going around the ring where a large number of strangers congratulated me on seeing the singlet, as I carried the Mylar blanket in one hand, the day having warmed up to the point that I did not need it. I walked to the MCRRC Hospitality Suite and ate a bit of stew and go the massage that Cliff had awaited my return to administer. I felt good upon standing up and walking to the Metro to get to GW to reclaim the car and drove home.
Would I do it again? Of course, in just a few more heartbeats! I am still planning a few exotic runs, like the one on Easter Island, and, of course, I no longer have to register for the MCM, since I am an automatic entry each year as a multi-veteran. I will no longer have to count now that I am in triple digits, but will do them as they come along and I feel like it. I may try to join the Ground Pounders in the Fiftieth!