Anyone who has set a stretch goal and then met the stretch goal knows this process:
• I can’t.
• Maybe I can.
• Yes, I can.
• I did it.
The Pat Tillman race was an adventure. Training for, entering, and finishing the P.F. Chang’s Arizona Rock ‘N Roll ½ Marathon was one part Quixotic and one part renewal.
I was in my doctor’s office last week for an annual physical, and we were talking about the race—I took my bib number for the race in to show him—and he asked how many people with significant arthritis finished the race? I told him that I didn’t know there were thousands of people on the streets. Then he said to me, “I know that you don’t consider yourself disabled, but there are very few people in your condition who would try to do what you did. Congratulations. I am proud of you. Now, let me feel your prostate.”
The Pat Tillman saga, described in another entry, led to an e-mail from a longtime friend who challenged me to the ½ marathon to be held in January 2010. He told me that if I trained, he’d come to AZ to run it with me. It was around Memorial Day that I took the challenge and began training.
I’ve counted Chris LaReau among my closest friends the better part of 5 decades. His story is a good one, best told by him. He’s run 5 marathons, 2 in France, one that wound its way through French vineyards and had rest stops at Chateaus where wine was dispensed and race participants danced to the music provided. Sounds civilized, right?
Anyway, Chris’ marathon stories are terrific. He and his sister, Valerie a marathoner in her own right who’s qualified for and finished the Boston Marathon, used the Jeff Galloway Run-Walk-Run method to train for, compete in, and finish marathons. Their stories of training in the dead of a Michigan winter beg retelling. Courage, dedication, and strength of character are run thick in the LaReau Family tree. Chris’ and Valerie’s parents are two of most genuine folks walking the planet.
The Galloway Method allows people like me, those who’ve tossed in the towel , to get off their kiesters, put one foot in front of the other, and get out the door. I took Chris’s challenge, bought Galloway’s book “Half-Marathon: You Can Do It,” and created the training schedule outlined in the book. It was Memorial Day. A full six months until the Rock ‘N Roll ½ marathon.
Galloway lays out a plan for people to gradually build distance over time. He teaches runners how to build endurance and to go farther and farther without hurting themselves. It was the perfect system for me. It would be crushing to begin training only to find that my body wouldn’t support the work or distance. I didn’t need that as an outcome. Galloway tells beginners to be careful. Find a pace that is comfortable for them, and so, armed with this advice, I began a slow, steady climb through the distances.
By football season I was into the nine mile range. Around Halloween, I did 10-miles. From Thanksgiving through New Years I was out doing run-walk-run training sessions for 12, 13, and 14 miles. Sunday mornings would find me out before dawn doing the 3 to 3.5 hour training sessions required for that week. I designed my training course so that I would be running east as the sun rose over the McDowell Mountains. Each Sunday there were two dawns: one actual and one metaphoric—a new day for Scottsdale and the dawning of much good stuff for me.
I can’t generalize about why most people run. The literature is full of theories. Everyone knows about endorphins and all that, but my favorites are the stories that running fires the deep corners of our molecular and evolution biology where running is tied to our very existence. I do know this, after not running for decades, running stokes something deep within that smoothes the bumps life’s loopy, lumpy road. In many ways, I have cashed a lottery ticket.
Chris lives in Savannah, GA with his lovely wife Catja. They flew into Phoenix on the Friday before the race. We would be joined on race day Mary Jo, a golfing buddy, who’s run before but never the ½ marathon distance. MJ wanted to experience and conquer the challenge, too.
We spent the weekend with Chris and Catja, having dinners, laughing, going to the pre-race expo, laughing, riding the new light-rail mass transit system, and laughing some more. Time stood still. Old friends being old friends together.
I was confident in my training, but as clocked ticked closer to the appointed hour, doubts crept closer, too. Dark voices from deep inside started spitting flames of doubt: “Who are you to think you can do this? You’ll quit. You don’t have the strength. You’re body can’t handle it.” Perhaps the most insidious were lines like: “Nobody will mind if you don’t do it. You have a million excuses. Make a good show and melt into shadows.” Then I reminded myself to shut up. I had trained. I was confident that I could conquer the distance. The Galloway System’s slow, steady climb through the distance was my shield. I knew I could cover the distance. It worked. Chalk up another victory.
The morning of the race broke crisp with broken clouds. Perfect running weather everyone said. And, after a few transportation hiccups, we found our place at the start of the race. Runners are divided into corrals by best guess of their finishing times. We’d all guessed 3:00 hours and so we were put in Corral 19. It took us approximately 30 minutes from the starting gun to make the starting line. Music blared, this was, after all, the Rock ‘N Roll Marathon, and when Kiss’s “Rock and Roll All Night” hit the speakers, everyone sang along. What irony! We sang even though everyone knew that the party was 13.1 miles in the distance.
Chris took over once the race started. Since we had three rookies and one veteran marathoner we agreed on a one-minute run and one-minute walk pace. This pace would get us through the race in about 3 hours. Chris watched his watch and called out the run walk sequence to our group of four. He navigated us through the maze of runners and walkers. He sang. He shouted encouragement to everyone who’d listen. He was loving every second of it.
The back of marathon is an interesting place. Those runners built for endurance and speed were well ahead. The back of the race is composed to people of all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, and ability. There is no archetypal back of the race runner. The back of the race is about community not competition.
There’s a significant difference between training for distance and being in the race. I trained by myself. I had a stopwatch and a pedometer. I knew I had trained for the distance, but what I hadn’t done well enough was make sure that my pace at the end of the race was somewhere close to my pace at the beginning of the race. For me, the race feel into three parts: part one: An easy gait and a light step; part two: tightening thighs and a gentle alarm that miles aren’t passing as quickly as I hoped they would; and, part 3: the grueling home stretch where doubt devils carpet bombed me between the ears.
Chris managed us through the race like a master. He knew what was going to happen to us as we wound our way through fellow runners. He knew that we’d be ambushed by our bodies. He knew that soon enough we go from being cavalier about the distance to long distance grinder determined to finish. He expertly led us into the marathon’s maw knowing that while each of us would follow it would take individual guts and determination to finish.
I am still confident that I would have finished without Chris’ expert guidance, but the experience would not have been as genuine or as rich had I gone it alone. Honestly, by mile 12 I had fallen a hundred yards, or so, behind my friends. The others waited for me to have our picture taken at Mile 12. We stopped again at Mile 13 for another picture. We were gassed at Mile 12 and did our best to run keep our last mile and to be running when we crossed the finish line.
Chris and I ran together toward the finish line, and, as we approached, he grabbed my hand and we crossed the finish line together holding hands. That summed the whole experience. He knew what it meant for me. That’s the kind of man Chris is. He always has been that kind of guy and always will be. I will never forget it. “That’s one you cross off the Bucket List,” he said as we gathered our balance, our wits, and our breath in the finishing area. Then it was off to get our medals and a cold beer.
Forgot to mention. We finished in 3:14. Not bad considering we stopped for pictures and a couple of visits to the port o johns.
Rock On!
