The Marathon

The Huff-to-Bluff Marathon

My daughters, Shana and Sheila, and my good friend, Kline Carroll, all decided to do the Huff-to-Bluff Marathon (May 2012) and asked me if I would do it with them.  Sure!  What have I got to lose—other than life, use of a limb, or pride? Losing the latter was guaranteed; the former were probabilities difficult to determine without experimentation. So I agreed to bring the old Clydesdale out from pasture and do the Thoroughbred thing one more time. I had done a marathon three decades ago, in my 30’s, when I was a real runner, doing 16:25 5Ks to age 40, cross-country at BYU before that, etc, but after the marathon, I decided a marathon is an absurd distance—borderline crazy. In fact, scratch borderline. But we crazies do crazy things sometimes.

For the first marathon, I prepared diligently: 15 miles on Mondays, 12 Wednesdays, 18 or 20 on Fridays, with short 6-mile runs the days between, for two months.  I even did a 26-mile run two weeks before, just to make sure I could do the distance without stopping. I knew one was not supposed to do that, but if I was already scheduled to do something crazy (like a marathon), then what does one more crazy idea hurt? The preparation served fairly well. I did 7-minute miles the first 20 miles (2:20 at 20 miles), but then got leg cramps and occasionally had to stretch, walk, and baby some cramping muscles the last few miles to finish in 3:15.

            However, now in my 60’s (instead of 30’s) and 60 pounds heavier (220 vs. 160), I hardly pass as marathoning material, though I’ve always stayed in decent shape, jogging a few miles every day except Sundays, every week, year-round, every year since age 13. That only means that I’m living proof that exercise alone does not keep the weight down. But to do dieting in addition? No! I’ve tried dieting, but always have to resume eating. Let’s face it, mortality itself is a slow death and dieting only makes it slower and a lot less fun. Besides jogging, I also dot summers with walks from 15 to 25 miles, so as I considered my daughters’ and friend’s requests, I figured I could probably alternately jog-walk 26 miles whenever, with or without preparation, which is basically what finally happened. My only goal was to reach the finish line before the food was gone. Every week, I’d tell my daughters: “I’ll start training tomorrow.” But not until it was time to taper down the distances the last week did I finally conform to the training schedule.  I did taper the last week. Oh yes, and I also did the carbohydrate-loading … for months … years! I’ve read that many trainers have tossed out the carbohydrate-loading idea. Which is too bad, that was my favorite part of marathoning. I did do an 11-mile jog-walk with Sheila once, and a 13- and 15-miler with Kline, all weeks apart, with my mere usual and daily doses of 3-to-5 miles the days between. My lack of preparation and default approach had one advantage: I’d suffer only one day instead of 3 months.

            The scariest fact was the math. Math and physics said that carrying 220 pounds for 26 miles was the energy and effort equivalent of carrying 160 pounds 36 miles. So my doing a marathon at 220 was the effort equivalent of doing 36 miles when younger. That was unnerving. I thought about trying to lose weight in the preceding months, to make the marathon easier, but finally decided: Nah, it’s easier just to run 36 miles.

            The day came—as it always does—and I arose at 4 a.m. to dress, oil up, and drive to the starting line. Oh yes, I got permission to start at 5 a.m., an hour before everyone else. I knew I’d be slow, and like I said, I wanted to finish before the food was gone. More critical than the race to the food was the porta-potty competition. I did not want to start with the crowd of 80 to compete in the porta-potty lines, along the bushless barren between Blanding and Bluff. After some sweating, no problem, but the first few miles can be a problem. Leaving at 5:03 a.m., alone and under the cover of darkness, solved all such complexities. As for the food at the finish line, after I learned that aid stations had all kinds of goodies every two miles along the way, I thought, “Maybe I’ll be full by the finish line.” My daughters had to remind me that this was not a buffet-athon, but a running event. Ryan Heck, the race coordinator, said, “If you finish the race weighing more than when you started, you’ll be a first.” Maybe that is the record I should have tried for. Anticipating my hour-early start, I told some competitors not to worry: they’d probably pass me while I was in the White Mesa Store having breakfast.

            Beginning at 5:03, the first 10 miles were quite pleasant. Settling into a rhythm, alone in the dark and quiet of the gradual dawn, I then watched the sun rise, and quite enjoyed the jog to White Mesa, completing the first 13 miles in 2:20 (just under 6 mph), though 30 years earlier I had run 20 miles in 2:20 (8 ½ mph). (Of course, now I was carrying 220 lbs instead of 160, and 13 to 20 is nearly proportionate (inversely)  to 220 vs.160, so it’s less a loss of strength than a gain of weight.) Worthy Glover, Sr, saw me, but did not recognize me and did not know that I started 57 minutes early. He later told me, “So that was you? I saw you and thought: he doesn’t look much like a marathoner, but he’s way ahead of everyone else.”  A twang in a tendon of my right foot at mile 3 and again at mile 8 was remedied both times by a few walking strides. About White Mesa, the leaders passed me.  After descending White Mesa hill, the left hamstring began to complain, then the right knee. About mile 17, Neil Joslin was roadside taking pictures. I hollered, “Hi Neil, how are you doing?”

“A lot better than you,” he answered.

How did he know?  Was it that obvious or did he just make a good guess?

From mile 17 to mile 21, I completed the transition from a decent stride to not-really-a-stride-at-all to a ginger limp. Not long after the left hamstring and the right knee’s continuous complaints, both thighs felt like splintered baseball bats, then the left groin’s connect-place felt like it was disconnecting, and several other muscles joined in a growing choir of whiners—and not even in tune. After 21 miles, my walk wasn’t much slower than whatever else I thought I was doing. Of course, no one had figured out, like I had, that I was really doing a 36-mile effort equivalent. So through these last miles, the wimps only doing 26 miles began passing me during my 36-mile effort. About this time, a guy passed me with a T-shirt that said on back: “No whining!” What nerve! Who does that T-shirt think it is, telling me what to do? Whining was the only thing that felt good.

Along the route was a sign “Road Damaged.” I assumed it was referring to my legs. I didn’t mind when the sub-3-hour leaders passed me. I expected them before White Mesa, so to hold them off until the Mesa was a pleasant surprise, but as the miles passed, so did a lot of other people. Being passed by real runners like Josh Nielson and the Francom family—Steve, Taylor, and Brielle—was almost a privilege, but eventually even real slow guys were passing me. I’d look at each and think, “He’s barely moving!” Yet he had just passed me. That realization was nearly as hard as my cramping hamstring. I also got used to women passing me.  Until a woman passed me who was carrying a backpack. Then an old man, even older than me, passed me. Then, as if those two were not humiliating enough, an older lady, older than me, passed me.  And to think she had started an hour after I did! Of course, all of them were only doing a 26-mile effort.

Perhaps I shouldn’t feel too dismayed. As I explain to my classes: men’s faster times in general are not because men train harder. The only reason that guys, on average, can run faster and jump higher than women is because a higher percentage of men’s body weight is muscle to propel the lesser percentage of whatever else. Nature devotes a certain percentage of women's body weight to simply being beautiful, but nature knows better than to waste anything on trying to make men beautiful, so we men start out as lean mean being-mean machines, but as age endows us with more mass to make muscle lower percentages of the total, then trim women should be able to beat us, which was another fact verified in this experiment. It's simply physics. And it feels better to think of all this as my contribution to science.

Nevertheless, when the 70-year-old lady passed me, I quit running and started walking and writing this article.  I had thought about bringing a book along for the final miles, but decided I was already carrying enough extra weight. However, I did put pen and paper in my pocket for writing the article.

Actually, what more forcefully limited me to walking was cramps in my diaphragm or other rib-cage breathing muscles. I’d have to stop and arch my back to stretch the diaphragm and breathing muscles to stop the cramps so that I could breathe. I was fine while walking, but running 36 miles in 5 hours-plus required a lot of oxygen exchange and had me breathing very hard to carry that weight that far. So toward the end, my breathing-muscles began cramping and had me walking most of the last 4 or 5 miles. Those cramps happened in a workout too, but never had in all previous years. So I guess I am getting old, but doing 36 miles in less than 6 hours isn’t bad for an old guy!  My daughters did well—4:28 and 4:33—and I achieved my goal too: I reached the finish line before the food was gone.

The next day I saw Cory Raisor, another participant, walking ever so slowly and carefully. I rolled down my car window: “Hey, I recognize that walk!  I have one too.”