While Anthony enjoyed his run in Brooklyn last weekend, he was not eager to run another half-marathon any time soon (if ever). He and Jane, however, had signed up for the Boston Half-Marathon the following weekend, and he offered me his spot. I decided I'd run it for fun, not for a time, to see what it was like to do two half-marathons on consecutive weekends. There are two that I'd like to run in October that are only a week apart and I wanted to see how it would feel to do two back to back. I figured I might be a little on the tired side, but seven full days of rest (the Brooklyn Half was on a Saturday and the Boston one was on a Sunday) ought to be sufficient. I thought.
Anthony's girlfriend Jane, her sister Lucy, and her friend Wes and I all started walking the mile or so from Anthony's apartment to the starting line an hour and a half before the race was scheduled to start. I was the only one who'd run one of these before and so I tried to buoy the spirits of Jane and Lucy, who were nervous. Wes was nervous too, although for a different reason: he hadn't registered for the race and was wearing a photocopy of my (Anthony's) number. The color wasn't an exact match, and Wes is the type who doesn't like to get caught doing things he's not supposed to do, although we figured the odds of his getting yanked off the course were slim. We arranged a meeting place with Anthony and lined up.
We made it!
After the gun went off, we crossed the starting line before three minutes had passed, which surprised me; in both New York races I'd run, it had taken far longer, between five and eight minutes, to get through all the corrals to the starting line. Having crossed it, we immediately ran into trouble (no pun intended). Generally, I like running in a pack. It's a lot easier somehow. It's endlessly aggravating, however, to run in a pack that's going a lot more slowly than you want to go, or a pack which is really tight. This was both. The four of us ran together for the first half mile, then Wes and I struck out to try to get clear of the herd. I weaved, ran onto the sidewalk, squeezed between people, and none of it seemed to get me anywhere. It was probably three miles at least before I even began to get out of the gridlock. Once I did, my pace was decent and I figured I might be able to get sort of close to my previous two times. However, by about mile four, it was obvious that I wasn't going to come even close to touching it. Already I felt fatigued, and the miles seemed to drag by.
In addition to being tired from the previous week, the heat slowed me down, too. It was sunny, warm, and breezy, which is the perfect storm in terms of dehydration. In the previous two races I slowed twice for a gulp of water at hydration stations because I figured I should. This time I stopped at each table but one for a total of five times and drained the cup of water I was handed each time. I felt thirsty and sticky in between and scanned the horizon constantly for the next table. They were every two miles, which didn't seem like nearly enough. Jane told me later that race officials reported that there was more congestion than they'd planned for at the water tables and that volunteers weren't able to keep up. She had trouble with this, but it wasn't so bad for me, perhaps because I was a little ahead of her. Wes said that when he finished the race, a volunteer dumped an entire cooler of water over him and made him sit down because she thought he looked like he was over-heating.
Before the race. Lucy made us all t-shirts (Wes chose not to wear his). Mine says "Beth, 13.1" and Lucy and Jane's say "Little VB" and "Big VB" respectively.
The last four miles were agonizing. My right hamstring flirted with a cramp, although it never actually seized up, and I didn't have the energy to run even the very last stretch at a quicker pace. People passed me left and right and I didn't care. Anthony, who was waiting near the end, saw Jane and Lucy finish but missed Wes and me. I didn't see him either. I finished with somewhere around a 1:56 - I haven't looked up the results and forgot to stop my watch - which is pretty pathetic compared with my 1:44 in March.
Lucy and I waited a few minutes at the finish line for Jane while gulping down free samples of Vitamin Water. Lucy enjoyed herself and said she'd do another one. Jane said over her dead body... We collected our medals, found Wes, and met up with Anthony to walk the mile home. While it seemed like a VERY long walk after the race, I wasn't nearly as sore the next day as I expected to be, which may be because I didn't sit around afterward. I'll have to keep moving after the next race to see if the same thing happens.
Jane, Lucy, and I showered and then Anthony escorted us to a restaurant where we wolfed down lunch. Unpleasant as the race was, I have to say that it made my meal taste unbelievable.
I'm glad I ran the Boston Half. But I'll have to think long and hard before doing two in a row again.
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