Boston Marathon 2009 Race Report

Finally the big day was there: the "113nd Running of the Boston Marathon". Steffi and I had arrived the day before, and spend the day watching the invitational one mile, visiting the expo, and having pasta dinner in a restaurant near to the hotel (instead of the official pasta dinner). The weather forecast was looking good, with the exception of a strong Eastern wind that was going to pick up as the morning would progress.

In the early Monday morning, that wind was fortunately not very noticeable yet, but instead it was very foggy. Fog = no wind, so I had no complaints. A short subway ride (whose only other passengers also carried the characteristic yellow bags) brought me to the Boston Commons, where a long line of school busses was waiting to take us to Hopkinton, the start of the race. In the bus I sat next to a runner who is a teacher in the Coos Bay area in Oregon, the birth place of Steve Prefontaine. He told me that he has children in school whose fathers had run in highschool with Pre, and that running was still a big thing in the area.

Athletes Village

The bus ride went quite smoothly, and I therefore arrived three hours before the start of the race in "Athletes Village". I had a couple of things to do there: visit the Port-a-Potties, eat and drink something, and meet up with the fellow members of the West Pennsylvania Track Club, because I was a member of their Masters team. Food and drink was distributed everywhere, but for one station there was a very long line: the coffee.

Apparently recent news on the effectiveness of caffeine as a performance enhancing drug had reached many people.

Meeting up with the West Penn people turned out to be harder. We were supposed to meet at 8 am near the medical tent, but it turned out there were two medical tents. Moreover, I had only met one of the team before, and he wasn't there. In the end I did manage to meet up with Jim and Karl, and we made a photo in front of the "Welcome to Hopkinton" sign, which was dragged into Athletes Village for the occasion.

And then it was high time to move to the start, because while we were busy making the photos the announcers had been telling us for quite a while to get going. In the end I arrived in my corral only minutes before the start. I had hoped that the lower corral (5 instead of last year's 8) would allow me a view of the start, but unfortunately it was still hidden behind the hill. Anyway, one advantage of arriving late is not having to wait very long for

The Start

This was the first time I ran a marathon for the second time, so I finally had the advantage of knowing what would be ahead of me. The challenge of Boston is overcoming the particulars of the course. The first miles are roughly downhill, then there is a long stretch that is more or less level with rolling hills. By mile 15 there is a final plunge down, followed by four hills between mile 16 and 21. Then it is downhill and level to the finish in Boston.

My plan was to run as conservatively in the first part of the race, leaving as much energy as possible for the take on the hills, and then have enough left for the final 5 miles. Last year I just made it through the hills, but then ran out of steam on the final stretch. My goal pace for this race was 7:05 minutes/mile, and I was going to stick to that, and only run faster on the downhills. In previous marathons I had always initially run faster than goal pace, but then regretting it and ending up with so-called "positive splits": running the second half slower than the first. In my first marathon in Berlin I ran a 3:30 minute positive split, in Boston last year a positive split of 4:15, and in New York a positive split of 2:05 minutes.

The first miles

Running conservatively is almost a given in the first miles, because everyone is packed close together, and overtaking only takes up energy without giving much of a benefit. I treated the first mile as a warmup, because even though this is the most downhill mile of the course, I took me 7:28 minutes to run it. In the end this turned out to have been my slowest mile of the whole race. Although it took several more miles to be able to run my own pace at will, I was running with people with more or less the same pace as me, so once things spread out a bit, I had a couple of miles right on target: mile 2 in 6:55, mile 3 in 6:53, mile 4 in 6:53, and mile 5 in 7:02. This was all reasonably on schedule, because mile 2-4 were all net downhill, but mile 5 featured the first uphill. Although we were sent off by an enthusiastic Hopkinton crowd, the first part was rather quiet until we reached Ashland. The locals in Ashland were out in full force, with children offering water and oranges.

Train support!

The first part of a marathon is always so deceptive, because it just feels easy, and there is no real way of knowing how much you can coast along, and when to push a little for speed. Only the watch can tell you to what extend your real pace matches the goal pace, but even then factoring in the hills is not very easy. Anyway, it was time to enter Framingham, another charming Massachusetts village, and coming through we were very very slowly overtaken by a train that was riding parallel to the road. It was only a little bit faster than us runners, and it honked encouragingly. The weather at this point was fairly good: the temperature around 10 degrees and a milky sun. The only thing that was less optimal was a steady headwind (that would grow stronger as the race progressed).

Fortunately, with so many runners there is almost always someone to draft off, so all in all I was not hindered very much by the winds. I think at some point on this stretch I passed Team Hoyt, the father with his son in a wheelchair who are a well-known fixture of the race. After mile 5 the course pretty much leveled off, meaning that there were as many uphill as downhill parts. For the next seven miles I kept a steady pace with mile times of 6:56/7:03/7:01/7:01/7:04/7:05/7:02.

Wellesley

By now it was time for the scream tunnel, with the girls from Wellesley College screaming their lungs out and like sirens enticing men to stop and kiss them. Although... not just men, two girls had a big sign saying "We kiss lesbians". By this time I was starting to feel a bit nervous about my pacing strategy, because all the hard running was still to come and my relative conservative pacing left me no "money in the bank". The road now brought us into Wellesley proper, and the half-marathon point. After a mile of 7:08 (there was a slight uphill after the scream tunnel), I reached the 13.1 mile point in 1:32:14.

Although the race was half done distance wise, I still had no good clue where things were really going. The running was going well, the pace seemed ok, but what would the hills be like?

The Newton Hills

Two and a half miles after Wellesley the road took a deep plunge down to Newton Lower Falls. This downhill was so steep that is was almost uncomfortable to run. Immediately afterwards, at the 16 mile marker, the first unofficial Newton Hill (but according to some the worst of them all, although I don't agree) started. Now the challenge was really on. Strangely enough, I felt exhilaration climbing this first hill. I finally felt I could unleash myself with no reason to hold back, and it felt good to test my strength against arguably the longest but less steepest of the hills. I ran the miles before the hill in 7:00/7:03/6:58, and then the mile with the first hill in 7:07. In mile 18 we made the turn at the Newton fire station, right onto the second Newton Hill. Because this one was steeper, I had to delve a bit deeper in my reserves, but managed to keep the pace still feeling strong. My pace slowed slightly to 7:12, but I was

happy enough with that. Mile 19 was a mile without hill, so I picked up the pace to 7:01. Then in mile 20, the third hill loomed, short but steep, which did slow me down a little bit, but I still ran the mile comfortably in 7:14. There now was the 20 mile marker that is pictured in every Boston book or leaflet, signaling the final challenge: Heartbreak Hill. With people left and right of me walking, I pushed for the final bit of pace, and made it up, on step at a time. Time for mile 21: 7:14 minutes. I had survived the hills!

The final stretch

Last year I had also survived the hills reasonably well, but had run out of energy in the last miles. The challenge was not over yet, far from it! The backside of Heartbreak Hill gave a half mile downhill breather, but then it was back to business. Mile 22 in 6:58, good pace, but of course assisted by the downhill. Could I keep it up with the course flattening out? Then the strangest thing happened: my right leg suddenly started to limp, for no apparently reason at all! I didn't feel anything strange, my leg just didn't do anymore what it was supposed to do. The only thing I could think of was to give it a good shake. That seemed to help a bit, but unfortunately it was not the end of it, because briefly afterwards a cramp shot through my right calf. It subsided after a few seconds, but it did give be a scare, because I had already seen people at the side of the road pulling at their unwilling limbs. I didn't want to join them! Apart from this, the running actually went pretty well: I seriously started overtaking people now, including someone dressed up as

Captain America in a very warm suit. Fatigue was kicking in, and the scare of my misbehaving right leg, but mile 23 went by in 7:05, exactly goal pace. We now reached Cleveland Circle and turned into

Beacon street, and assisted by a very gradual downhill slope I ran mile 24 in 6:57. I would have felt very good about that time if it were not for the misbehaviors of my leg increasing in frequency. I had another limp that I again got under control with some leg shaking, and a few brief stabs of cramp in the calf. Now the end was really in sight: the Citgo sign at the 25.2 mile point was clearly visible. Just this long boring road along the train tracks. I plodded through it in 7:10, and there the Citgo sign loomed over the street, a slight uphill along Kenmore Square back in to Commonwealth, a last underpass, around the corner on Hereford Street, and there was the last stretch on Boylston Street with the finishing arches in sight. The last stretch! And only 200 meters before the finish my leg started limping again, no, not now, one more shake, and then it fortunately worked again to allow me to finish in style. Last 1.2 miles in 8:45, or a 7:08 pace.

My final time: 3:05:23, a new PR, and as fast as I could have hoped for. And... a positive split of only 55 seconds. I finally managed to run almost even splits!

After the finish

Drinking, drinking, eating, the silver cape, and being very very cold because of the wind, collecting the medal, and the long walk to the luggage bus. I was very satisfied, but also very tired and cold. And, as I discovered later, very salty in my face, and therefore every medical person asked me whether I was ok. I met up with Steffi (after wrapping myself in every piece of clothing in my luggage bag), and we watched more people finishing, which was very nice.

We saw the pink tutu man, and a group with Bill Rogers in it.
I think Steffi saw him, but I didn't. I thought about waiting for Steve Runner, but I got too cold, so we decided to go back to the hotel, where we watched the elites race on the laptop. The end of a perfect day!