There’s a moment in Mel Brooks’ The Producers when Gene Wilder as Leo Bloom is hysterically ranting and raving and Zero Mostel’s Max Bialystock throws a glass of water on him.
BLOOM
I’m wet! I’m wet! I’m hysterical and I’m wet!BIALYSTOCK IN A DESPERATE MOVE TO STOP BLOOM’S HYSTERICS, SLAPS HIM ACROSS THE FACE.
BLOOM
(holding his face)
I’m in pain! And I’m wet! And I’m still hysterical!
That’s kinda how I felt throughout the 122nd Boston Marathon.
In order to get to the Hopkinton, the start of the 26.2 mile course to Boyleston Street’s finish in Boston, I first had to get to the Common. It’s just slightly too far to walk from my AirBNB to the Shawmut T station but I did it this morning at 5 AM. In the rain. And the wind. And the cold. It would be at varying degrees of intensity of those three elements throughout the run, and never to a null set that might have resulted in an “oh, what a pleasant day to be running!” environment.
Upon arriving at Athletes’ Village in Hopkinton, I experienced what was a Woodstock light – a field wih all the mud but none of the free love, bad acid, and rock ‘n’ roll bands.
Unlike last year’s amble and shuffle about for photos and memories, I mainly hung out inside Tent # 2, downing a hot chocolate and then refilling my glass with hot water to serve as a kind of hand warmer. Outside the tent, the rain fell and now and again a gust of wind would rip through the area, sending collected pockets of water on the tarpaulin material cascading down in a flash flood.
And this is what we were going to be running in.
And this is what I paid to do with my Monday.
Swell.
I was lucky enough to have qualified in the first wave of runners, meaning I got to make the long walk to the starting corrals beginning at 9:15 AM.
We were all in this together, runners braving the wild “spring” weather. This is Angela, a Canadian runner who I happened to snap a photo with as we waited to head out.
She was kind enough to snap a photo of me… but I kinda wish she hadn’t as I look ridiculously fat.
I can blame the clothes but that’s only part of it. There are a number of photos here where my face looks like the balloon artist overfilled the latex and I have that bloated, bursting at the seams chubby face that is anti-chiseled, more Buddha than Greek mythology. I could blame the cold and rain for somehow distorting the image, as if a raindrop on the lens created a funhouse effect. But that would be disingenuous spin on an all too verifiable truth.
I mean look at this – I look like Satchmo and Sasquatch were genetically combined in CRISPR.
Sorry… sorry. I recently saw RAMPAGE, the Dwayne Johnson monster disaster pic that’s the most Uwe Boll movie not directed by Uwe Boll. So not only am I sorry for that CRISPR reference, I’m incredibly sorry I saw RAMPAGE.
But I digress…
I stripped off my less than $3 sweat pants, which fit me as they would a circus clown, baggy and comically unflattering. Despite the wind and the rain and the cold, I couldn’t see trying to run in them; I would’ve been more at home in a 1980s Los Angeles gang with my pants dragging down at my ankles. I kept my $6 GapFit shirt on as it had my bib pinned to it and I hoped it would provide a modicum of warmth in the coming miles. But size wise it might as well have been a circus tent on me as it only seemed to make me seem extra plump and ungainly. Fat is the word I might use. God, I hate how I look in these clothes… and I try and tell myself that it was a necessity as the invention of Eddie Murphy Nutty Professor-ian proportions but, ugh, I really, really, REALLY hate the few stray photos of me in these things. Given that I never doffed that GapFit shirt throughout the run, one can only assume the official MarathonFoto pics, for which I pre-paid $60 for, will highlight the girth and not the accomplishment of the day.
Those MarathonFotos though, however they may turn out, will be the only photos of me on the course. Due to my frozen extremities, I couldn’t get my iPhone out of my pocket to snap shots even once over the 26.2 miles… not even at mile 23 when Meg was cheering me on. But to be honest, a friendly face and warm hug at that moment was more important than anything else and she helped inspire me onto the finish. So, thanks, Meg.
I was able to get back to my AirBNB and grab a shower before a mad dash Lyft to the airport. I’m sitting on the plane winging my way to the West Coast to catch a flight to Nepal and I thought maybe I’d do a rolling recap of the stray thoughts that went through my brain during the marathon. This obviously isn’t contemporaneous as I wasn’t dictating my thoughts as they happened… but it’s contemporaneous adjacent as I finished the race roughly seven hours ago.
So here goes:
Gosh darnit! This cold is miserable. And this wind is even miserabler. A least I’m in good company; all of us runners are enduring the conditions. Nope, nope. Screw that. I’m just miserable.
Should I quit? There’s a med tent. They’d probably drive me back to Boston.
Man, maybe that Rosie Ruiz was on to something….
The one time I quit a race in media res, it was going to take them so long to evac me to the finish that I wound up dropping back IN (see Ventura Marathon 2017).
I can’t quit. But ye gods do I want to.
Oh, good gravy, Marie! That wind just cuts to the bone… and the rain smacks me in the face like a thousand tiny needles. It’s as if I were using that Spencer Gifts era PIN THING but not just long enough to make some goofy metallic punk art; it’s like all the time. All. The. Time.
The girls of Wellesley were out in full force just before mile 13. There’s a tradition of kissing that I bypassed in favor of high-fiving… not because there weren’t several women puckering but with the inertia of the field of runners there wasn’t a safe way to stop and properly lock lips. If a kiss is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.
I have long wanted to find a more mature Wellesley alum (or more mature undergrad) to kiss along the way but I always hesitate. What if this goes horribly wrong? What if she’s taken aback or unwilling and slaps me with her purse, decrying me as a “masher?” In the current #meToo movement I was even more cognizant of potentially unwanted “advances” so despite being tempted to rush over and kiss a lady I opted not to. For the record, that does NOT make me an enlightened male worthy of praise. If anything, the fact that I was thinking about an untoward sexual harassment is indicative of how far we still have to go.
Overall the spectators and volunteers were small but mighty. I’m always impressed with folks who come out and cheer in the best of days – while we runners get to see the sights, those working the aid stations or cheering us on are stuck in one place for far too long. The few times I’ve tried to see people racing, it’s always been way more stressful and difficult than logging the miles on the road. So a tip of the hat to folks out there on any given day and a SPECIAL low to the ground kotow bow to those folks out there in weather like we had today. In Wayne Campbell and Garth Ancier speak, “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”
This $2 Spider-Man hat I bought from Goodwill on a whim has really paid off in spectator comments. I guess as IP goes, it’s recognizable and popular. But a lot of street corners were reverberating with cries of, “Go, Spidey!” and “We love you, Spider-Man!” and “You got this, Spider-Man.” Plus, I found the vague double entendre “My spidey-sense is tingling! Kiss me, Spider-Man!” that was shouted by a Wellesley girl way more palatable than her neighbor’s sign that read, “Kiss me… I’m already wet.” Stay classy, Wellesley. Stay classy.
Heartbreak Hill in the early 20 miles range is always anti-climactic. Even in my 2012 “virgin” Boston experience I was oddly underwhelmed by the challenge. Yeah, it’s a hill. And yeah it comes fairly late in the course. But it’s not that bad. There are way worse challenges it seems to me on this course… especially on a day like today. I slowed, to be sure, as I often do when running up a hill. But when I got to the top and folks were congratulating me on conquering “heartbreak” I wanted to tell them there’s other far more devastating and debilitating heartbreaks in life that I’m not sure I’ve conquered so this hill is perhaps not that big of a deal. I’m glad to not be running up it anymore, sure, but, ya know, as the kids say, “whateves.” Do they still say “whateves?” If not, I’m saying, “whateves.” It’s the new “fetch.”
Passing the Citgo sign with one mile to go, I realize as I gaze at the clock time that even though I’m not 100% sure what the differential is between clock time and my chip time, I’m not going to BQ at Boston. I wanted to. I thought it would be a nice way to cap what is looking ever more like my last unicorn run with the BAA. But unless it took me more than 6 minutes to cross the starting mat (and that seems VERY unlikely), I’m not going to pull that off. Whether it’s the wind, the cold, the miles, the years, or some combination I’m not entirely sure (actually I am… it’s a combination of a lot of things), but I am entirely sure that the clock keeps ticking and I’m passed the BQ cut-off. Nonetheless, I’m persisting and pushing through the pain, the exhaustion, the rain, the wind… and as I turn into the home stretch on Boyleston, the crowd roars… not just for me but for all the runners who are so close to being done.
Actually, no, a lot is for me. There aren’t a lot of Spider-Men out on the course being cheered on by name.
Go, Spidey, go. Run, Kevin, run.
The Finish Line Selfie Photo:
