Boston Massacre II

There’s this one scene in the 2000 remake of the film “Gone in 60 Seconds” when Nicholas Cage’s character, Memphis -- a retired car thief, who under dire circumstances, is forced to steal 50 cars in a span of 72 hours -- scouts a 1967 Mustang Shelby GT 500 he calls “Eleanor” in a parking garage that he plans to steal, but has failed to do so on past occasions.
While Memphis is getting a closer look at the car, his friends began to softly talk among themselves:

Donny: Eleanor is Memphis’s unicorn.
Freb: What's a unicorn?
Donny: Fabled creature, you know, the horse with the horn impossible to capture. It's the one car no matter how many times you try to boost, something always happens. They had a rough history. She almost got him killed a couple a times. Flipped one on the Harbor Freeway.
Kip: He went off the Long Beach Pier once.

After watching this scene in this film last Friday, I realized something -- the Boston Marathon is my unicorn.
For the second straight year, I went to Hopkinton determined to do well and looking to have a good marathon and I ended up in Boston bloodied, beaten down, and staring at a horrid time attached to my name in the final results.
And it sucks. I trained harder this year than I did for last year’s race. Aside from a dismal run at the Stu’s 30K in Clinton, Mass., everything went well in the months leading up to this event. I even ran a 4:12 at the ING Georgia Marathon in Atlanta.
And I bombed -- again. I feel like the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s who lost four Super Bowls in a row. I get on the biggest stage -- and in running, that stage is the Boston Marathon -- and things come crashing down.
This year, things began to come crashing down for me at the end of Mile 15 when I started cramping up in my right thigh, then my left thigh. A mile or two later, when I was trying to run over and grab a cup of water, I stepped the wrong way on a T track in the middle of the street and twisted my right ankle. Then I was starting to feel cotton-mouth, even though I was taking in fluids every other mile or so. Then my nipples bled. Then came Heartbreak Hill and some increased pain in my ankle. Then came the cramps again.
The next thing you know, my 4:12 in Georgia blew up into a 4:56 in Boston. I saw a picture of me crossing the finish line; my fists weren’t waved in the area and I didn’t look like I wanted to celebrate. I felt like the Russian men’s hockey team when they came home from the 1980 Olympics with a bronze medal after they were upset by the United States in Lake Placid.
I really don’t know what happened, and while the pain and swelling in my ankle have finally subsided from that unmemorable day, I still have been questioning myself 10 days later. I haven’t had the urge to run -- I haven’t gone 10 days in a row without running since the end of December -- and I haven’t looked ahead to running any races in May or June.
Looking back on everything, maybe running four marathons in a span of 6½ months wasn’t a good idea. Maybe I burned myself out and I didn’t know it. Maybe when I jokingly told another runner that I hoped to finish in 4:59:59, I subconsciously set that time for myself. Maybe, maybe, maybe …
Again, the Boston Marathon is, as I heard a runner call it, “The Holy Grail” of marathons. No one really cares about how superb you do in Atlanta, Las Vegas, or Newport or any other marathons. It’s Boston that people associate marathons with, and for good reasons. The history, the tradition, the best of the best running in this race, the streets lined up with fans from the start of the race to the final 0.2 of a mile on Boylston Street. I can go on and on …
I will admit, there have been some very good things to come out of the race. I raised $701 to the American Cancer Society and I had an excellent time at the DetermiNation breakfast the morning before the race and the expo. I ran in front of thousands of fans, and I didn’t get mauled by any crazy Wellesley College girls.
But would I ever do this marathon again? I doubt it. Maybe I’m jinxed when it comes to this race. I really don’t know. But one thing’s for sure, this race is my unicorn, just like the one on the Boston Athletic Association logo -- but a lot whiter and with bigger wings.

I kept my promise

Next week is the almighty Boston Marathon, but this weekend, I decided to have a little bit of fun -- “the calm before the storm” -- and run in two 5Ks, the RIDA Nutrition Fuels Fitness race at Goddard Park in Warwick and the Officer Thomas Giunta 5K in Fall River.

I wasn’t shooting for any big times or fantastic finishes in either race -- just a good run in one of my favorite parks for a 5K and then my old hometown. I did land a much better time at Saturday’s RIDA event (22:36) than I did at Sunday’s Giunta 5K (23:32), but I think I had a good enough excuse for that time.

I wore a running skirt.

Yes, like I promised at the end of January, if I raised $700 for the American Cancer Society, I would run in one of southeastern Massachusetts’s biggest races of the spring in a skirt. So I raised $701and I kept my promise. And it really felt weird, not because it’s every day that you would see a guy running in a skirt, but it was tough to adjust to one.

I wore the leopard-print one that I put in my final January post and matched it with an old Poison concert t-shirt (a member of my running club who will remain nameless offered to double his donation had I wore it). I got a lot of strange looks from some folks and a lot of laughs from others, but I pinned on the back of my t-shirt a sign that reported I was doing it for the American Cancer Society and some people praised me for what I was doing.

As far as the race, right from the start, when the race took runners up a hill for the first three-fourths of a mile, I felt the skirt being really loose around my hips. Was it going to fall? That’s what I asked myself, so I tried to get a bit comfortable by starting to run with a little bend in my hips and I kept my strides a little shorter.

Then halfway through the race, I felt some “freedom” in my skirt and “stuff” starting to “fly” about. But I managed to keep things under control, especially with a lot of fans on each side of the course, and continued to run at a 7½-mile pace.

Meanwhile, the reactions to my skirt continued. I got some long stares from some folks who seemed to try to figure out what was wrong with the picture of me. I freaked out one little boy, who yelled, “Hey mom, that bald man is running with a skirt!” Some old guy on Bedford Street absolutely lost it and started gurgling something in Portuguese.

As for the rest of the afternoon, I put away some chourico and peppers and Fall River chow mein at the post-race buffet and went to the Elks Club on North Main Street for the second post-race party, which included six kegs of beer, some more food (hot dogs and Portuguese soup), a live band, a raffle, and some very, very good company.

And there was some good news that came out of this race. In addition to the record number of runners (somewhere around 1,350) that registered for the race, it was announced that this was NOT going to be the final race, which was advertised as the 16th and final race on the web site and quickly picked up steam around the local running community. It seems like a local police officer is going to carry the torch and take over as race director, so that was very good news to hear! I will be back, but as for the skirt ...