I love rain - those who know me are familiar with the fact that I'm never as happy as I am when it's drizzling, pouring, dumping, deluging outside. I mean, after all, without rain we wouldn't have
double rainbows all the way across the sky. And for those of you who live in the Southland you know that we had a little sprinkling for the 26th annual L.A. Marathon yesterday.
A gentleman put up a very nice
photoblog of the 2010 marathon. To get a sense of this year's marathon, just add water.
Actually, water works nicely as a theme for this experience. For example, I didn't realize that these events were such pee-fests. Seriously. The night before, I realized that I hadn't adequately hydrated during the day so the morning of the race I downed two pints of water and a cup of what turned out to be surprisingly strong coffee, which meant that as soon as I arrived I had to go, and by "go", I mean go wait in an achingly long line for the port-a-potty. During the marathon itself, there were scores of dudes, and invariably they were dudes, some furtive, many more emboldened, leaned towards walls, embankments, posts, whatever, heads down, hands front. The constant rainfall must have made it seem like less of an environmental affront, seeing as how the rain would dilute and wash away such excreta. I myself could never go in front of so many people (I'm shy) and besides, seeing as how a public urination conviction should get you on the Megan's Law list, why risk it? (Although I assume the police had better things to do than arrest a couple of thousand marathoners for public urination.) I've already spent far too much of this post meditating about urinating in public, so onward.
All the stuff people say about these large races seemed to hold true: throngs of people (over 23,000) of all manner of ages, shapes and sizes gathered in a river of humanity (hmm, water metaphor again) waiting for the starting horn. What was perhaps different was the universal groan the crowd let out when the first fat drops of rain started falling right as we began to move to the start, but then we were off.
The course starts by running counter-clockwise around a portion of Dodgers Stadium, with this first little bit curving uphill, everyone determinedly trying to work out their pace, the rhythmic, soft
wisk-wisk-wisk of the plastic trash-bag smocks that many people were wearing as rain ponchos (the marathon organizers even suggested that you bring a trash-bag to use for that purpose). And then it's downhill into Chavez Ravine towards Chinatown, with a band playing the first of a number of musical running cliches (
Don't Stop Believin', the
Rocky theme,
Born to Run, hmm, no
Running on Empty...), but a point to make about the course is that it's actually kinda hilly. Everyone makes the point that one starts at elevation (Dodgers Stadium) and ends at the ocean (Santa Monica) which means that it is, ultimately, a downhill course, but there's quite a bit of discouraging variation along the way. The painful part of these hills is that unlike interestingly curvy singletrack trails, many of the elevations were extended straightaways, protracted grinds of admittedly gentle, but relentless, grades.
One of the advertising slogans of the L.A. Marathon is that there's a "landmark every mile," with the course going through downtown, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, etc., which seems a bit corny, but in practice I enjoyed it, like when we passed the Grauman's Chinese Theatre (which I remembered as the Mann's Chinese Theatre), where I had watched the original
Star Wars as a kid back in 1977. As a native Angeleno, it was actually pleasantly nostalgic to pass these familiar sites this way - after all, the world really does look different when you're on foot.
The rain came in squalls, the spaces between them shortening as the day progressed. Running down the hill from Disney Concert Hall, we passed through an intersection when there was a flash of light. I heard a runner to my right ask his friend, "what was that?" I'd noticed a camera on one of the signals and replied, "red light camera, I think." To my chagrin we heard the boom of thunder couple of seconds later, harbinger of the storm that worsened throughout the morning. I heard someone else sardonically comment to his neighbor, "hey, I thought they say it never rains in L.A." No, my friend, actually, it's that nobody
walks in L.A. - although running is apparently acceptable.
True to form, my mood lightened the worse the downpour got. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't always exactly comfortable and the chill made one's muscles ache, but given that I have tendency to overheat I thoroughly enjoyed the cool, and every time another sheet of rain would wallop us I'd find a grin on my face. I've always loved rain; one of my favorite childhood memories is of the 1983 storm that wiped out part of Santa Monica pier. It's not that I liked to play in the rain; I was a fastidious child and didn't like getting all messy playing outdoors, I guess I just liked the mood a stormy sky gave (I was a weird kid). Now, for some reason as an adult I've finally discovered the reason why it's so much fun to jump in puddles. You can also look at it this way: being constantly drenched meant that chafing was much less of a concern.
If you were to try to describe it to, say, an east African villager, you could say that a marathon is a big, urban group run. For giggles. The longest run I'd had before yesterday had been a 20 miler (technically, 19.91 miles, but who's counting?) (well, the GPS, I suppose...), but like I've been saying, if you can run 20, you can run an extra 6.2. The night before was when I began to have my first twinges of self-doubt. Drifting off in to non-sleep (so I guess I actually wasn't drifting off to anywhere), I lay awake thinking about the pain I was having in my right instep, the cramping I'd had in my quads during my twenty-miler, the pre-med student who'd collapsed in cardiac arrest in the 2010 marathon. During the night, however, I began to come up with a plan for the day, the timing for taking gels, plain water versus sports drink, how to pace myself so I wouldn't expend my reserves early, and going through this mental exercise seemed to help diminish some of the anxiety, and I began to think that the pain in my foot would go away once it warmed up (it did), my newfound insights into my body's workings meant that my quads wouldn't cramp (they didn't), and besides, that pre-med student is doing just fine now after resuscitation, induced hypothermia and an ICU stay.
That took care of the pre-race jitters; the run itself was fascinating. In the first few miles of the marathon, I kept checking my GPS watch for my pace, intently slowing myself down or speeding up to match what I hoped I could sustain, but after a little while I had a better sense of how quickly/slowly I was actually going. The mental wranglings one undergoes... it's funny, I tend to be pretty relaxed and non-competitive (losing a lot of competitions as a child translates into a mellow adulthood) but I found that I'd have to tell myself not to try and "beat" the guy running next to me or not to get disappointed when the woman who looked old enough to be Yoda's mother would chug past me, light on her toes. I had some really blissed-out moments: running out of Beverly Hills and into Century City (hmm, escaping the materialstic world of the wealthy?) (not, I suppose, that Century City is exactly a slum), I heard someone shout out in encouragement, "you can do this, just think about the goal!!" That observation prompted the thought, no, one can't simply think about the goal, the termination of the run, but that I had somehow to enjoy that moment, in and of itself, engaging in a run, this rain and chill. On the other hand were some down moments: rather than bringing a sense of relief, mile 13 in Hollywood, made me think, just for a moment, exhaustedly, I've got to do this again?
It was mile 20 where I seemed to achieve mental running equipoise, since that's the longest I'd run prior; it also felt like the equilibrated point in the sense that the rest would really be downhill (but not in the literal sense - read the stuff about long, uphill straightaways above). The common wisdom is that the last 6.2 miles (10K) of the marathon is a different world unto its own - that's surely because we humans have learned to think in decimals, so twenty being a multiple of 10 probably gives some sense of closure, but that last 6.2 really did seem different.
Shortly after the 20 mile mark, there was a booth for Natural Ice Beer, with a smiling man handing out little cups of suds, not much, the size of the cup that you use to swish and spit at the dentist's. I heard the hipsters running behind me saying to each other, "no, it's still a little too early for that," whereas all I could think of was "what a great way to blunt the pain!" (I shoulda gotten another cup. One for each leg.)
You get into the VA at that point, where some grizzled looking Vietnam-era vets man the hydration tables. When I swerved towards the trash can and missed throwing my paper cup in, a grizzled, homeless-looking vet chuckled and said, "naw, man, you don't got to worry 'bout 'dat!" I grinned back and picked up the cup and chucked it in the trash. Which reminds me: I somehow couldn't bring myself to throw my paper cups on the ground. I realize that in terms of marathon-manners, it's permissible and even accepted that one would toss one's refuse on the ground, seeing as how one has to break world records and all one can't trifle with the niceties of dealing with one's own trash, but I somehow couldn't bring myself to litter - it's probably the same reason I couldn't bring myself to pee in public. Wandering off course to throw away my trash probably added a half mile to my total run (oh, wait - the GPS actually seems to say that I added 0.27 miles to my run - good to know).
The last leg of the race spanned from Brentwood to Santa Monica with a long, endless-feeling slope up before the final short drop down to the beach. This area formed part of my old college stomping grounds - for some reason there was a period of time when we would celebrate all birthdays with a trip to the Brentwood Cheesecake Factory, the habit of which contributed to my present need to run a lot - and running through the neighborhood was a treat. However, it was on this last little stretch of 5 miles or so through West L.A. and Brentwood where the spectators started to wear on me.
It's not that I hate crowds (well, they kinda make me feel uncomfortable, but not agoraphobically so), and I actually very much appreciated the fact that so many people came out and stood in the rain for hours, not just the volunteers who handed us cups of water and orange wedges, but also so they could high-five us and mispronounce my name ("you can do it, 'Ty Kim'!" - yo, it rhymes with "day", like "Taye Diggs") (I would've corrected them if I didn't need my breath to not die). There were all manner of colorful locals, like the one poorly-dentitioned woman near Echo Park who cheered us on and said, "it's great that you can do this, makes me feel bad for just drinking beer last night," to which I replied, "I did too!", the young Armenian priest who seemed to reappear at several points along the way, the middle-aged transvestite cheerleaders in West Hollywood I wanted to high-five but felt too shy to.
During that final leg, though, is when, in attempts to be encouraging, people started saying things like, "keep it up, just four more miles to go!" when it turned out that they meant 4.6 miles, so when the 4 mile marker came up it felt like that much farther (and further), or "you're almost to the top and then it's all downhill from here!" when the long slope meant that there wasn't really a peak, and the downhill portion just felt flattish. Encouragement from the spectators began to feel more like a taunt at that point with exhaustion setting in along with the colder winds whipping in off the Pacific, which meant, hey, we're almost there. And then, finally, the left turn southbound on to Ocean Avenue, the real final stretch and the final mile to the finish line.
A mile is a surprisingly lengthy measure of distance, which may seem funny-sounding considering we'd just run 25.2 of them, but Ocean Ave. seemed to stretch on and on, and it began to feel like I was a contestant in the novella "The Long Walk" by Richard Bachman (a.k.a. Stephen King), stumbling on in to my own psychosis, when finally, in the gray distance, you could make out the orange finish line banner. It felt like I kept running and running while the banner grew no closer, the rain and wind becoming more stinging, and it felt like all of the other runners started surging past me while I kept the same monotonous pitter-pat pace (one sonofab - well, it's a family show, so you'll have to guess son of a what - had decided he'd save up his efforts until the very end and sprinted, yes,
sprinted down the last mile while the rest of us stared disgustedly at his back - or at least I stared disgustedly at his back). For some reason the event organizers had placed a penultimate chip-timer strip a hundred yards or so from the finish line which confused me for a second, wait, do I hit the "stop" button on my timer here? when I noticed the final timer strip at the finish line itself ahead of me, and then it was over, across the line, the chip-timer squawked and I hit my GPS button. Done!
Sort of. It turns out that there's actually about a mile from the finish line of the marathon down to the finish line festival pavilion where one's drop bag is taken, where one is reunited with one's family, and most importantly, where the Michelob Ultra beer tent (free beer to each runner) (while supplies last) was, and that mile, that actual final mile, was where the real pain began.
Now, if the weather were fine, it'd be difficult enough to have to try and walk another full mile, but with the rain and wind soaking and gusting everyone who'd at that point stopped running (and therefore stopped generating heat), there were real problems. I received one of those mylar space blankets before I received a finisher's medal (funny thing; you know how I've been talking endlessly about running ultras and how that was my real goal, but that I should probably finish a regular ol' marathon first? Well, a little part of me had thought not to bother with receiving a medal just for finishing when the real target was 50K/50 miles/100K, but I realized that it'd be peevish/needlessly contrarian to decline one) (and besides, the little old lady who hung it around my neck made direct eye contact with me) (and notice? "peevish" has "pee" in it - full circle!) and wrapped it around my shoulders but the real cold started setting in at that point, and now with a wet cap and sopped shoes I squelched on for what felt like another 20 miles. The crowd was oddly subdued; two lines of spectators had formed a sort of corral down which a column of runners now walked, but a race official had instructed everyone that they could walk on either side of this lane, but that we needed to keep moving. Normally, I imagine that there are finishers flopped down on the grass, laughing and chatting excitedly about their accomplishment, but rivulets of rainwater streamed everywhere, and instead of excited runners there was a tall, gaunt, mustachioed race official directing people into the warming station they'd improvised in the lobby of the Georgian Hotel. The L.A. Times' sports blog noted that thousands of runners were evaluated for hypothermia, with 25 transported to local hospitals for treatment.
The festival pavilion was wet and muddy, like a marathoning Woodstock, only less cheerful (less PCP, too), with family and friends crowded and huddled under the tents. An ice-cold Michelob Ultra was the last thing I had in mind, Lance Armstrong's endorsement of the product notwithstanding (dude, I realize that your accomplishments are pretty awesome, that money may be tight since you've retired from your cycling career, but seriously, is that the best your agent got you? Shilling for low carb beer!?). I staggered over to the bag-drop area, and I began to think a series of items: this must be what hypothermia feels like, I have to change out of wet clothes which would be one of the best things to counteract hypothermia, and that I had a dry pullover fleece in my drop bag - actually, it was the only thing in my drop bag. My wife finally found me at the bag-drop, where I was pawing stupidly through the bags, unable to locate mine, wracked with shivers, lips blue, speech slowed. The friend she came with, who was waiting for her boyfriend to finish, gave us the keys to the ancient minivan they'd driven up in, and a little bit later I was finally dressed in the semi-dry attire that my wife had thankfully brought with her, warm cups of soup from the Cuban restaurant a few doors down fogging the windows and finally taking the chill out of my marrow.
It was probably around mile 12 or 13 that I began to repeat one mantra, "clear eyes and full hearts can't lose," which was tempered by a thought I'd plagiarized from an essay by David Foster Wallace, which was that this thing, this marathon, was a supposedly fun thing I'd never do again, that perhaps I'd view this run through the lenses of a bucket-list, off from which I could cross it once I'd finished this one. But today, with the little whimper that's come to accompany any required physical action (don't ask me to climb or descend stairs. I'm so sore and move so slowly - remember the steamroller scene in the first Austin Powers movie? I'd be crushed, but it wouldn't be for lack of trying, I just can't move quickly), I sat down at the computer and yes, started this post, but also started looking up the Long Beach Marathon, which takes place this October, and ultramarathons that take place in California, I wonder if I could persuade my running buddies to go on one of these...
