Marathon Man

by Bill Rodgers

  When it came to preparing for the marathon, I fell back on what I remembered from watching Amby at Wesleyan. He worked out every day and never made an excuse to get out of training. So on Tuesday, even though my legs still ached, I ran twelve miles in the early afternoon and three miles later in the day. On Wednesday, the weather was warm and I ran eleven miles in the afternoon but had to turn in early because my jock strap broke.

  That night, I wrote in my training log: “The hard training begins tomorrow.” The next day I ran thirteen miles around Jamaica Pond in the afternoon and six miles after dinner. I was still one mile short of my goal to run twenty miles per day. Around midnight I got out of bed, leaving Ellen asleep beside me, quietly put on my shoes, walked out the front door, and ran through the neighborhood, lit only by streetlamps. I completed one mile, took off my shoes, snuck back into bed, and fell asleep. Twenty miles for the day. Now I was satisfied.

  No matter how cold or snowy it was outside, I stuck to the same routine—one shorter run, one longer run. For example, later that week, I ran four miles in street clothes and then in the afternoon I ran the final thirteen miles of the Boston Marathon course. By the end of seven days, I had run a total of 127 miles. That number reached 394.5 for the month of February. I was in a military of my own making.

  I found out about two road races that were within driving distance. Together they represented my last chance to test myself in a race situation before the Boston Marathon. My performance in these smaller tune-up events wouldn’t determine how I’d fare in the marathon, but I hoped it would give me an inkling as to whether I was ready for the enormity of the task ahead.

  I went down to New Bedford, Massachusetts, for the first race—the New England 30K Championship. I nearly pulled off the victory, but a guy named Rick Bayko beat me by thirteen seconds. I didn’t like losing—at all—but I was pleased with myself for having run the 18.6 miles in 1:24:1. My good time proved to me that I’d made solid progress in the month since I’d raced at Silver Lake. On April 1, in Cambridge, I ran a twelve-mile handicap and won it in 59:17. My confidence was sky high.

  Two days before the marathon, Amby arrived in Boston. On Saturday, we went on an easy three-mile training run together around Jamaica Pond. It was a fine spring day and I was happy to be spending time with my old friend. I felt some lingering effects from a chest cold I was getting over. I did consider that it might affect my breathing and overall strength during the big race, but I didn’t believe it was anything serious to worry about. We went on another run the following day. Again, it was warm and mild. This time we ran four miles through Boston Common. As we glided across the green, I looked up at the blossoming magnolia trees. Life was good. Then I heard Amby speak.

  “It’s going to be hot tomorrow, so don’t go out too fast. Be patient. Let your body adjust to the heat,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said, half listening to him, half watching the magnolias.

  “What’s your goal?” Amby asked.

  “I’d like to run a 2:20. Maybe 2:25,” I said.

  Amby glanced over at me, then said nothing for a moment. Finally, he said: “Add at least five minutes to that.”

  Add five minutes? I thought. How can I duel with the top runners if I’m behind them on the course? I’d been training for months and months, poured tons of sweat and sacrifice into this. If I was going to race, I was going to compete. A little heat was not going to slow me down. The remnants of a chest cold were not going to slow me down. Nothing short of Jock Semple was going to get in my way.

  That night, I wrote in my training log: “I’m aiming for a 2:20 but it’s probably more realistic to think of a 2:25. We shall see.”

  I woke up on marathon day, grabbed a cup of yogurt from the refrigerator, and ate it for breakfast. That was odd. I never ate yogurt. Whose yogurt was it anyway? Was it Ellen’s yogurt? I was out the door and on my way to Hopkinton to run my first Boston Marathon. No pancakes. No bacon. No carb loading. Nope. One cup of yogurt.

  Ellen dropped me off in downtown Hopkinton a few hours before the race started at noon. It was a comfortable morning. Not too hot. I went inside the high school gymnasium to wait with the other runners, at least those whom Jock Semple deemed worthy of admission. If the hard-nosed, irascible Scot didn’t deem you a serious runner—and he alone determined the criteria for “serious”—you weren’t getting inside, no ifs, ands, or buts. Jock made the doorman at Studio 54 look like a pushover.

  As I waited in the high school gymnasium, I looked around at the other runners milling around. I’d never really seen runners before who weren’t from New England. Here, I saw runners from all over the world. Many of them had run here before. Most had competed in top international events. A few had even competed in the Olympics. For the most part, runners of the same country gathered together. The Finns hung with the Finns. The Japanese hung with the Japanese. So on and so forth.

  Serious American contenders like Tom Fleming and Jon Anderson, who unbeknownst to me was also a conscientious objector, walked by me as if I were invisible. I overheard a couple of writers making their picks. In their eyes, I was less than a long shot—I didn’t even exist. One of the reporters commented that until somebody beat the record time set by the sport’s king—Olympic gold medalist Frank Shorter—he couldn’t call himself the best.

  On the other side of me, I heard a group of top runners sarcastically joke about having to pay their own way to run in the most famous marathon in the world and how there was no prize money for the winner. I was just happy the entry fee to race was only two dollars. Today, it’s $150.

  I wish Charlie were here to keep me company, I thought to myself as I stretched my quads. Did he even know I was running today? I don’t even think I told him. I know I didn’t tell anybody else. Not my parents or my sisters. Not Jason. Who knows where he was? Probably hanging out on some beach, listening to the Grateful Dead. Charlie was probably helping some messed-up kid detox from heroin. Or if he had the day off, he was relaxing at home with his girlfriend. My dad was probably giving a lecture or grading papers or writing a research paper. My mom—I have no idea what she was doing, but I’m sure it didn’t involve sitting still for more than two seconds. I knew that neither my mom nor dad would be watching the marathon on TV. They had no interest in the sport. Not a lot of people did.

  I approached the starting line, filled with high hopes of delivering my best performance yet. The bumpy old road was jammed with runners. Jock had given me a high number, 38, allowing me to stake out a spot near the front of the field.

  I stared straight ahead at the narrow street and the sharp ninety-degree turn just two hundred yards ahead. I didn’t particularly like this. Everybody tensed, ready to shoot off like a rocket. What would happen when every rocket was shot off at the same time down a narrow chute? It was a nerve-racking couple of seconds, like waiting for the ground beneath your feet to slip away.

  The gun went off. Too late now. I was part of the sprinting stampede and I either kept powering forward or risked being trampled. I reached the end of the straightaway and veered hard right. My eyes widened a little. I had no idea we’d be running down a small mountainside.

  I charged down the descent, surrounded by runners, all bigger than me, jockeying for position. Once I reached the bottom of the hill, and realized all my limbs were still attached, I made a quick sigh of relief. Everybody spread out and I was able to lock into a fast pace near the front of the pack. I was running hard, determined to stay up with the top runners. I was ready to do battle. Bring on Captain Hook!

  Here, with one mile behind me and twenty-five more to go, I realized something was wrong. My lungs weren’t functioning at full strength. Bad sign. More alarming still, my body was having problems cooling down in the heat.

  The heat! It came out of nowhere. In my journal, just three days earlier, I noted the conditions during my thirteen-mile run around Jamaica Pond: “cold,” “in the 30s,” “typical New England Bullshit Weather.” I forgot the oth
er characteristic of typical New England Bullshit Weather: Temps could fluctuate on you at a moment’s notice, and without any warning. When I got up, you have to remember, it was around seven in the morning. I walked outside. It felt like an ideal day to run the marathon. Like the TV weatherman always said, “A nice beach day.”

  Then I arrived at Hopkinton and I was inside this building for three hours. I didn’t know it was slowly warming up outside. Suddenly, I went outside, jogged over to the start, and bang! The gun went off and I started running. Next thing you know, the temperature was climbing toward eighty.

  Mile after mile, I felt the full force of the sun burning my skin. I had no way to block out the scorching rays. The roads were wide open through here, sky-wise: There was not a lot of tree cover. I looked over at my shadow moving along beside me—how nice of it to provide shade to the road while I melted like an ice-cream cone in the blazing heat.

  At that point in the race, it was becoming extremely difficult to stay on pace with the leaders. My body was working much harder than it should’ve been. I shouldn’t have been feeling any fatigue, but I was. I was at war with my body. I still had the remnants of that cold, and the heat magnified my symptoms. The heat magnified my feelings, too. I had entered the heart of darkness. That’s what the race had become for me—a dark jungle. A nice beach day! Ha! A “nice beach day” is a terrible day for a distance runner. An experienced runner like Amby or Jeff Galloway would know this; they were experienced. I was out there flying by the seat of my pants.

  I had no back-up plan. I should have had a back-up plan. I was going to run hard no matter what. I should have considered, “This is going to be a hot day. How will that affect me?” I thought back to the day before, running with Amby in the park, and him warning me about not going out too fast in the heat. Now I was paying the price for failing to take his advice seriously. The marathon can be a cruel sport, no question about it. I was about to learn exactly how cruel over the next twenty-four miles.

  The feeling of running in the heat over a long period was something new. Finally, around mile six, I pulled up. I couldn’t believe it. I had never stopped during a race in my life. I didn’t stop once at Silver Lake and that was twenty miles. I raced straight to the end. I was feeling bad, but I told myself to persevere. Keep going. Keep moving.

  Every so often, a grueling effort can win you a marathon but in most cases it’s the very thing that will cause you to lose it. It may sound counterintuitive, but truly sustained focus is a by-product of a relaxed mind. The harder I tried to make my body do what I wanted it do, and force my mind to concentrate, the more physical and mental tension I created. This produced the exact opposite of what was intended, knocking me further off balance while exacerbating the feeling of fatigue and cramping. I was learning an agonizing lesson: You can’t force yourself into a perfect rhythm and flow; it only comes when you stand out of its way and let it appear on its own.

  As I ran past the Framingham train station, at the 6.5-mile mark, I could hear the spectators cheering me on from the side of the course. It did nothing to motivate me. I was too busy fighting against the heat and losing miserably. This was crazy! It felt like the absolute dog days of summer!

  I didn’t sense any other runners near me as I continued to run headlong into the eye of the storm. This was the first time that I had suffered dehydration during a race, and it was not fun. I thought to myself, Maybe if I stop and walk for a little bit, I will start to cool down. So that’s what I did. But it was too late. I was doomed.

  When you start to hit the wall so early, that wears on you mentally: to know how much farther you have to go and that you’re already beat up. It’s like being on a sinking ship. It’s very depressing because there’s the feeling of “something is totally wrong here. What the heck did I do wrong?” That’s the feeling I had.

  Each mile, the struggle to put one foot in front of the other intensified. I was no longer running for victory. More like a small, defenseless animal. I felt like I was in a boxing match, being punched all over my body. I started to get side stitches. Awful, painful side stitches. They forced me to start doing the marathon shuffle: I took weak little steps but without surrendering to a full walk.

  Around mile 8 or 10—who knew where I was at that point—my legs began to cramp. My hamstrings began to twitch. I should have consumed more water early on, I thought to myself. Of course, I don’t think they had official water stops on the course that day. If they did, they were very limited. For a long time, Boston was a real shoe-string-budget affair. All the races were. Kids on the side of the road offered me orange slices. I remember gesturing to them with my hands, saying, “Water! Water!” Craziness.

  Things were different during the early years of the Boston Marathon. You could have a handler who could follow alongside you as you ran. They had people going along on bikes with special drinks they had prepared for their runner. Some of them were bizarre concoctions, like arsenic and tea; things to stimulate or jolt the athlete back to alertness. I know what you’re thinking: I’ll stick with Gatorade. But sports drinks hadn’t come to Boston even by 1973.

  As a participant in the world’s most famous marathon, you couldn’t expect more than a few official water stops, which would be conveniently obscured along the route. Perhaps the BAA officials were concerned that the demands of pulling off a sub-2:15 time on the hilly New England terrain weren’t nearly insane enough. Following his 1977 win, Jerome Drayton would have the audacity to complain that competitors should get adequate water while they ran a marathon. The response of race administrators was, “Look, this is the way we’ve always done things. And we’re the Mecca of marathons. So if you don’t like it, don’t come.” As a matter of fact, in 1927, race officials, looking for a way to keep costs down, decided to eliminate water stops altogether. With temperatures hitting the eighties, many runners collapsed from heat exhaustion and had to be helped off the course.

  At this juncture in my first Boston Marathon, I had a pretty good idea how those competitors must have felt in 1927. My mind had shifted into the off position, too hot and weary to think. I was taking water from anybody offering it. Mile after mile. Stop, drink, stop, drink, stop, drink. But it didn’t matter how much water I drank, it did nothing to quench my thirst. I was telling myself, This is miserable. This is miserable.

  Oh, how I had let the easy downhill start seduce me. I had flown down that first descent like a banshee on fire. Done in by the same reckless aggression that had caused me to occasionally run afoul of the law when I was a kid, pick a fight with my neighbor Gerald, and accidentally burn down a train car.

  In Natick, scores of runners began passing me, particularly older runners. That was a surprise. Never happened to me. I always ran at the front with Amby or whoever I was up in the lead with. I was already knocked down, beat up, getting cramps in my legs, and then everyone started passing me: that was destructive, debilitating, depressing. It was not fun at all, because I didn’t know why this was happening to me. I thought I was going to run a good race, like at Silver Lake Dodge.

  By the time I reached the Newton Hills, I had stopped along the course around thirty times from ripping cramps. It felt like somebody had strapped burning charcoal embers to my sides. My brain was a boiling pile of goop. This is ridiculous, I thought. What was the point of going on? My body was beat to a pulp. I didn’t want to spend the next several days in the hospital being fed intravenously. What if they took me to Brigham where wanted posters with my likeness probably still hung on the walls?

  Of course, in my dehydrated state, there was another possibility: I could keel over and die right there on the side of the road. Or I could try to trudge up the next hill, tear an Achilles tendon or a calf muscle, and then keel over and die. When I finally finished counting the myriad ways I could so easily be picked off, I made a decision: I was going to drop out. But not before I made it up Heartbreak Hill.

  I dragged my pummeled body up the steep incline, one agonizing step at
a time. My long, skeletal legs were shot. I was having problems with my hamstrings and calves. I had cramps all over my body. I had a cramp in my neck! I moved slowly. No gas in the tank. I was a dead man marathon shuffling.

  I staggered to a stop at the crest of Heartbreak Hill and bent over with my hands on my wobbly knees. At least I had made it to the top under my own power. At least I had something to show for 21.5 miles of hard effort. This was my “victory.”

  I straightened up and gazed out at the city skyline below me. I knew that my apartment was not far from where I stood. Like it or not, at that moment, I was in full view of the spectators lining the streets below. Some of them started to shout up words of encouragement to me: “Keep going!” “Hang in there!” “You can make it!” I was too beat up to respond. I could’ve used an IV of fluids. Of course, they didn’t have medical attention back then. Just words of encouragement.

  Somebody handed me a can of soda and I instantly guzzled it, craving the sugar. The soda had a bad effect on my stomach. I felt sick. Of course, I hadn’t eaten anything all day except that cup of yogurt. I started limping home, fried to a crisp. What a terrible sport this is! I thought to myself. What was I thinking?

  Once I got home, I began licking my wounds. I couldn’t decide what hurt more: the cramps that lasted for the next six hours, the worst sunburn of my life, or my pride in thinking I could compete against the world’s top runners.

  Gradually, my appetite came back and I went about replenishing my severely dehydrated body. Now came the fun part. Trying to figure out what I did wrong.

  My training had gone well, I thought, but once the race got under way, I had made all the mistakes a beginner could possibly make. I didn’t adjust my strategy to the weather conditions. I didn’t drink enough water beforehand. I ran too fast at the start. I held firm to my unsustainable pace. I didn’t feel my way through the early stages. I didn’t pay attention to my competitors to see how they were reacting to the heat. I had been too cocky, too naïve, too full of myself after good showings at a few local races. I had wanted too much, too soon. I was thinking about top ten when I should have been looking to just finish. I was shooting for a time of 2:15 to 2:20. Man, was I wrong. In that kind of heat? Lunacy. The winning time was 2:16, for crying out loud!