[Oe List ...] My report on running the Boston Marathon

[Herman Greene]

*Background: The race was on April 16. The temperature was in the 30s at
the beginning and in the mid-40s at the end. Rain was constant and
sometimes came down in sheets. Wind was in our face at 10-20 mph with gusts
to 32 mph. This marathon, as all others, was 26.2 miles long. The Boston
Marathon has been run since 1897. It's the granddaddy and the most
prestigious of all. It's a metro-wide festival. The run is from Hopkinton,
MA, to Copley Square in Boston. 2800 racers sought medical help. 59 were
taken to the hospital, mostly from hypothermia. Thirty-two thousand were
registered for the race. Seven thousand failed to finish or didn't run. I
was toward the end of the finishers as explained below.*


*The Report:*











* Every race you learn something. The conditions I ran in were totally new.
Not only was the weather bad during the race, but because the ground was
soaking in the "athlete's village" I had to stand for over an hour before
the race and then walk a kilometer to the starting line. This was my 21st
marathon. I'm very satisfied with my race, but it was my second slowest
ever, about 5:48. My slowest was when I tore a muscle and walked the last
12 miles. My time then was  6:15. I could say I'm just getting old, but I
ran a 4:30 marathon in November 2017, so I don't think I've declined that
much.Much of my slowness this time came from having something happen to my
left groin at mile 7. I had to shorten my stride from there on. From mile 7
on I ran about 13 minute miles most of the way but even slower toward the
end. I didn't walk!. So my achievement was putting one foot in front of the
other and staying with it.The weather was a huge factor. The wind and rain
drop body temperature and I read that  with hypothermia comes shortened
breath. I never felt I could breath well and that makes all the difference.
I didn't have serious hypothermia because fortunately I did decide to wear
a gore-tex type suit, but the weather was still a factor.The injury came
out of nowhere. I didn't take a wrong step or anything and I have never had
an injury in my left groin. I thought it might have been a groin pull but I
think it must have been a spasm of some kind, possibly with some tendon
strain. At the expo, a person handed out a homeopathic cream for cramps as
well as homeopathic pills for cramps. I think they saved my day. Without
that medication I would have had to walk and walking beginning at 7 miles
which would really have been bad.  I'm changing my mind about the tapering.
I think the most important training ends about three weeks out and that one
should taper more than I did the last two weeks. I was pushing because an
injury kept me from running in weeks 5 and 4 before the race. Tens of
thousands of people run marathons each year. They are all heroes in a way.
Training for a marathon is hard and running one is hard . . . and you never
know what might be coming at you in a race in terms of weather or
injury.Aside from all this, the day was perfect. That strange logic of the
marathoner takes over . . . the more grueling the experience, the more the
spirit rages within. Pain is good! When's the next race?!Well, for me this
really may be my last. It's been glorious and I feel I had a glorious
ending. Plus it was great having Sandi and her brother and sister-in-law,
Bob and Kristen Strong, as my team. We had a grand time.Herman *



-- 
__________________________________________________
Herman F. Greene
2516 Winningham Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-942-4358 (ph & fax)
hfgreenenc at gmail.com
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