Jim Craig
Briefly:
saw the first, next-to-last, and last laps of the women's Oly trials on Sunday .. yay girls!
Re-qualified on Monday with 3:54. So far as I have discovered, the ONLY advantage to getting old is that qualifying for Boston is easier.
Lengthily:
got stuck in a noisy, tiny room in the Onyx Hotel, right over some loud ventilation equipment that thundered and shuddered all night long, not good for a light sleeper. Management kindly rebuffed my request to change rooms with a gentle reminder that if I didn't want the room, somebody else would, or words to that effect.
Since I am not very smart about eating in the days before a race, I'd be the first to admit that I might not have been able to sleep anyway; the gigantic spicy chili dog I had in the Austin airport stayed with me for several days.
I'd planned to join the Boston Deads to watch the Women's Trials Sunday morning, but I was counting on getting in touch with the group via a cell# belonging to a lady from StL that nobody answered, and nobody called back. Maybe she didn't make the trip, or the cell phone got left on the bureau at home.
Nobody's fault, just one of those things that happens.
Anyway, I got up early Sunday morning without having actually slept, cranky and bloated, with no idea where to go or what to do. At the last minute, back in Austin, I had tossed into my suitcase a recent "life of Jesus" by Chuck Swindoll, so I read that for awhile and realized that what I mostly needed to do was go to church.
I set out for St. Paul's, an Episcopal Church on Tremont Street that I visited last year. They have an 8:00am service, which meant I would miss the ladies' Oly start, but O well.
On the way over on the subway, looking at my little street map to find my way, I remembered that the church is actually on the first outbound loop of the Oly Trials course. Hmm.
I arrived about 7am, as the sun came up, and recognized the reverend approaching across the Boston Commons to open the place up. I launched into a little apology, about how I would be coming into the service a few minutes late, but I didn't get it going before he cut me off with his own little apology, about how he was delaying the service a few minutes, because he just really wanted to see the Olympic Trials ladies go by on their first outbound loop.
So, the Very Reverend John Streit, fully vested, stood on the curb with his regular parishioners, and me, and we all hooted and hollered and clapped and danced around as the finest athletes in the world came by on parade for us. Then we went inside and had church. The sermon was about not worrying overmuch, since you'll probably wind up where you need to be, when you need to be there, with whomever you're supposed to be.
As Lynn mentioned, by that point in the trials, a tall young woman with a big, thick, long, dark ponytail, and a red shirt, had pulled way in front of the pack. I couldn't figure out who she was .. I'm no authority, but she didn't seem to match the descriptions and pictures I'd seen of any of the likely frontrunners.
A couple of hours later I was caught up in enthusiastic throngs surrounding the Hynes Convention Center, site of the expo and packet pick-up .. and also about 500m from the finish line of the Trials. As I arrived, so did the Trials ladies, considerably more spread out now, on their next-to-last lap. Being pretty tall, I had a clear view of Boylston Street over the other onlookers.
The girl in the red shirt was still way out in front! It was a breezy day, and over on the north shore of the Charles River there must have been a stiff headwind for somebody to battle, way out in front like she was, with nobody to trade off the lead.
Deena Kastor was in second place, easily recognizable now with her bib #1, in a group with several blonde girls.
The girls at the very back mostly looked miserable, with arms going back and forth instead of forward and back, some running bent over, some hammering at their thighs with a fist to try to beat out a cramp. Somebody in the crowd remarked that nobody in that group had probably ever been at the back of a pack before.
I went in and got my race stuff and came back out just as the girls returned, finishing their last lap, with 500m to go. The crowd was deafening, and I did my share of shouting; my throat is still sore.
Deena was about 200m in front now, smiling and running strongly, with terrific form. She looked a lot better than she had on the previous lap. No wonder -- the race was hers.
The girl in the red shirt was not far behind, also with classic form, clearly tired and disappointed I thought, but determined to finish well. Then one of the blonde girls, who turned out to be Blake Russell. Most runners never look as good in their entire lives as those women did finishing that grueling race; I know I never have.
I learned later that the girl in the red shirt was, as Lynn noted, Magdalena Lewy-Boulet. The BAA posted an interview with her that I read about a month ago, with no idea I would see her run and wonder about her.
She is a Polish immigrant who is eaking out a very humble living as coach, raising a young child, and keeping a marriage together. When she and her husband went to get their citizenship papers, expecting the usual 3-hour welcoming ceremony, they were handed their papers and sent home after 5 minutes.
It was 9/11.
In her only published remarks in the Boston Globe after the race, Magdalena joked about her $20,000 purse, "Maybe now I can afford a massage."
Blake Russell gave BAA an interview too. As most people know, she has somewhat deformed feet that have given rise to all manner of injuries; she has mega-bunions and her big toes point into the middle of the shoe.
She couldn't even make it through a marathon to qualify for the trials, having to rely on a kind of loophole for really fast 10K runners. She said her husband told her he only loves her from the ankles up, and she doesn't blame him.
During most of the race, Deena and Blake both were as mystified as I was about the identity of the girl in the red shirt. Nobody figured it out until the very end of the race. But now we know.
Monday:
Hoarse from hooting at real athletes, still bloated, but not quite as sleepless, since the air blowers at the Onyx went unaccountably slient for a couple of blessed hours, somebody with my bib# and a chip arrived at Athlete's Village in Hopkinton.
I didn't know if it was me, because I forgot to have my chip verified at the chip-reader station the day before, what with all the excitement of the Trials going on outside.
Silly about eating and sleeping, yes, I am, but I have read a lot about training for these things, and I knew I had gone through all the preparation that I could without injuring myself, or over-training. The weather was sunny, rather warm & humid, but basically fine, unlike last year with remnants of a Nor'easter to chill and terrorize us.
My seatmate on the bus out to the start offered a good suggestion: use the average pace function on my GPS to monitor progress. Otherwise, the course can really be punishing -- I mean even more than the average 26.2 miles. The first 16 miles trend downhill, about a 500 foot drop from the start.
About mile 12, there is Wellsley College. The girls are amazingly, alarmingly loud; you can hear them a mile away. Last year the bad weather seemed to charge them up; high-spirited anyway, they were hanging precariously over the barricades and kissing people, even snotty faced old men (ahem). All this cranks up a person's speed control even higher.
After Mile 16, Honey, the party's over. There is a destructive 5-mile stretch of mostly uphill, capped off with the infamous 200-foot climb of Heartbreak Hill. Then all you have to do is run a 10K.
So it's easy to go out too fast, blow up in the hills, and die 1,000 deaths in the last few miles. I've done that twice, having to walk through the little choppy hills close to the finish .. very embarrassing & demoralizing, though the Boston crowds cheer for everyone just the same.
This time, though, I slowed down in the bad parts, and hung on through the last few miles, without having to walk at all.
I was 30 seconds slower than last year, but given that I started in corral #19 instead of #15, and thus cluttered up with slower runners .. and it was really pretty warm & humid for most of the race .. and, I never felt like I was actually in the process of having embalming equipment hooked up to me .. I'll take my re-qualifier and limp away happily enough.