Think it's easy being a water boy?

Well before dawn last Saturday I parked my car on Eighth Street just off Constitution Avenue, double-checked the meter hours, tightened my scarf, pulled down my cap, and reported for work at Fluid Stop 3/17 at the National Marathon. In the frigid darkness (whose idea was this, anyway?) long rows of six-foot tables were taking shape on both sides of the Avenue, in front of the National Archives, and a TV crew was setting up nearby.

It turned out to be a fascinating day. Considering the size and scope of our station (at miles 3 and 17) and the intensity of the set-up process, I first thought this had to be overkill. Then it occurred to me that these folks had done this before, and knew better just what was ahead.

What was ahead was overwhelming. The first runners at about 7:15…a trickle…then the deluge. A dense mass of people swept by us for 40 continuous minutes, then thinned out for a while, then ended and gave us a 20-minute pause before the marathoners came by the second time.

People have no idea how exhausting it can be handing cups of water to runners. You think, holding two little paper cups at arm’s length, how hard can it be? Try it for a couple of hours  some time, without pause, in the freezing cold.

Sometimes people come at you with such intensity you want to drop your cups and flee. Sometimes they jostle and trip each other, or flail for the cup and miss. Some want you to jog alongside them and pass them the cup like a relay baton. Others run right for you, then at the last second skip you and grab their water from the next guy, leaving you ready to shout after them “Yo! What am I, chopped liver?”

The guy that won, Michael Wardian, does more than a dozen of these a year, and he’s off to South Africa in a month for a 56K, and then an 89K. And Saturday morning, as he cruised by Mile 17, he didn’t even glance at the rows of eager water bearers on either side. Didn’t feel our pain. Didn’t acknowledge our shivers. Just ran by.

I tell ya, it’s a jungle out there.

At the opposite extreme, the final runner passed Mile 17 just before 11 o’clock, after nearly four hours on the course and with nine miles to go, trailed by a DC police cruiser, an ambulance, and a row of trash trucks. He smiled, waved, took a cup of water and kept going.

Making lemonade

Bottom line on Saturday’s eight-miler: I had a hard and painful time. And I got a lot of good one-on-one coaching.

We ran in Rock Creek Park, from Pierce’s Mill north to Wise Road and back. Four miles each way. That makes eight. Our longest previous run was six.

Northbound was mostly uphill, particularly near the end. Coach Mark had warned us of “a bear of a hill” in the last half mile, but I thought he was playing mind games, overstating the hill’s awfulness so we’d feel great when we reached the top.

Wrong. The hill was a beast, and well before we reached the top, I was hurting. And had four miles left between me and my car. I turned downhill and made it another mile before I had to pull over to the side to stretch and massage my screaming right knee. At least three fellow trainees stopped to see if I was OK. Then I fell in with our mission mentor, Abby Smith, who was doing a walk/run rotation. I stayed with that for a while, then fell behind again, feeling like my right leg might fall off at any moment.

A couple of minutes later Coach Josh jogged up in the opposite direction, turned, and fell in beside me. “Did Abby send you to check on me?” I asked, and he replied, “Absolutely. So how are things?”

Well, let’s see…Not particularly winded. Heart rate OK. Left leg doing great. Right leg hurts from ankle to hip. Josh then convened a five minute clinic on everything from running down the road’s center line (the only level spot) to getting some new shoes with more stability and motion control. Pronating like crazy, aggravated by the skewed road surface. Plus, get serious about hydrating – you should have emptied that bottle twice already – walk in from here – ice the parts that hurt – take the next two days off – and come back slowly – it’s too early in the program to get hurt.

Somehow, I ended up feeling that there’s nothing wrong that can’t be fixed, and come mid-morning on June 5, I’m going to be River-dancing across that finish line. Maybe, if I can just address this one specific problem, I’ll have a breakthrough.

At a minimum, I expect a placebo effect from the new shoes…which will be welcome, because there are lines still lurking on our training schedule that say “12 miles” and “13 miles.” Remember, http://pages.teamintraining.org/nca/zooma11/jmckeonymw to donate.

OUR SUMMER MARATHON/HALF MARATHON TEAM HAS RAISED $120K SO FAR!!

You've still got your health...

There’s a well-worn joke – actually a whole family of jokes – in which one guy relates an absolutely staggering chronicle of misfortune piled upon woe piled on disaster. His friend listens sympathetically, then notes, “Well, you still have your health.”

Back in my earlier incarnation as a PR entrepreneur, one of my most valued clients was Edison Electric Institute, whose annual convention was a highlight of my year. My contact there was Tony Anthony, a man of wit, charm, good cheer and great imagination. I had fallen out of touch with Tony since joining the ranks of the full-time employed about three and a half years ago, so I was shocked to hear he had died over the weekend. Cause of death was a heart attack, apparently quite unexpected. Tony was not near retirement. He was roughly my age, maybe a little younger.

At the other end of the scale is the news, which rippled through my Squatting Toad writers’ group over the last few days, that a young writer one of our group has been mentoring for the last year or so actually sold the novel he was working on – as part of a two-book, million-dollar deal followed within days by a movie sale that added another half mil to the pile.

More on Squatting Toad in a later post, maybe. For the moment, suffice it to say we are six middle-aged guys (OK, maybe a little older than that) for whom the news of life-changing wealth dropping on some undoubtedly undeserving youngster was not as well received as you might think. The email exchange reached a point where one of us actually asked, “Am I the only one who sees inspiration in this tale?”

When I related the story to my wife, she said the author “probably has a gorgeous girlfriend, too,” to which I replied, “Well, if he didn’t before…”

What does all of this prove? Nothing, except that, as someone once said, life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Right now, the only long range plan I have is focused on getting through a 13-mile race on June 5. But as Coach Mark keeps saying, “it isn’t a race, it’s an endurance event.”

Kind of like life, if you’re lucky. In the end, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on, the lone and level sands stretch far away, and the torturer’s horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

And I’ve still got my health.

As always, you can encourage more of this drivel by contributing here.

Two runs and a jump…

The jump is in my fundraising account, which has gathered in more than $1,000 in the last 10 days. I continue to be surprised by the zeal with which people are contributing, as well as the size of the donations.

My old bud Steve Perry put in $131, which seemed kind of odd to me until he explained that (a) this was $10 per mile and (b) if I don’t finish the race, he wants change. He also says he lives near the course and often mans a water stop on race day. If I see Steve coming toward me holding out a paper cup…

The two runs were a five-miler on the National Mall Saturday morning and a four-mile “hilly” run in today’s early morning hours. Saturday’s run was sociable and pleasant, starting at Third and Penn and traversing the south side of the Mall, the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, Reflecting Pool, and Lincoln Memorial before reaching a turnaround point on Ohio Drive.  Given some stuff to look at and some folks to run with, the five miles seemed, if not effortless, at least nowhere near as hard as I’d expected.

This morning’s run around the neighborhood (seeking out hills to climb) was cold, dark and lonely and prompted diverse reflections on the Oscars, the Big Bang, the Meaning of Life and the not-unrelated question of just what the heck I think I’m doing.

Interesting book review in the Post Sunday on how artists and their works change in old age. Good to know, I guess, that Verdi was 80 when Falstaff premiered. I keep reminding myself, also, that Winston Churchill was older than I am now when he became prime minister in 1940.

On the other hand, to paraphrase my old hero Tom Lehrer, by the time Mozart was my age he had been dead 25 years.  

I may also have another way of turning time on itself. I’ve now had three consecutive runs interrupted by untied laces. And being a “man of a certain age,” if I once bend over to tie my shoelaces, nine times out of 10 I’ll discover I need a rest room…soon. The coaches have promised a clinic on lace-tying, though I suspect they’re joking. But just to be safe, maybe I’ll buy a pair of those little clippie-things they sell for kids’ shoelaces.

What do you think, maybe Buzz Lightyear?