Posted: April 22, 2004

Athletics: A Run Through History: My 2004 Boston Marathon Experience

From Running USA Wire

EDITOR'S NOTE: John Meyer who ran his first Boston Marathon last Monday is the Olympics writer for The Denver Post.

By John Meyer

You could hear them from at least a half mile away, the girls of Wellesley College roaring their support and encouragement as we battled through the middle miles of one of the most brutal days in the 108-year history of the famed Boston Marathon.

For 12 miles we had been suffering through sweltering, near-record heat that would hospitalize at least 150 runners before the day was done, and we weren't even halfway from Hopkinton to Boston. Some of the wildly enthusiastic Wellesley coeds wore pink T-shirts with arrows pointing left and the words: Boston 13.5 miles. When we reached the famous "Scream Tunnel" at Wellesley the noise was deafening.

That always will be one of the most vivid memories of my first "run through history" because it was one of those magical Boston Marathon scenes I'd imagined for nearly 30 years. "You finally made it," I thought, my eyes momentarily filling with tears of joy.

For all of my adult life I dreamed of experiencing the world's most famous foot race, and when my time came it would go down as a race to be endured rather than enjoyed, a race when the primary goal was to avoid becoming a medical emergency and just get that coveted finisher's medal, whatever time it took.

Despite temperatures in the mid-80s and an excruciating battle with leg cramps that tortured me the last third of the race, it was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life. The official adidas poster for this year's race said, "Sweat, pain and exhaustion are all temporary. Finishing Boston is forever." That sentiment was never more true than this year.

One friend of mine, a talented 24-year-old runner who probably was fit enough to run 3:25 with reasonable temperatures, stopped at the 25K mark (15.5 miles) when another runner noticed her eyes didn't look right and her voice didn't sound right. Medics found her temperature to be 100.3 degrees, diagnosed her with second-degree heat exhaustion and sent her to the hospital in an ambulance. She cried for two hours, such was her dream of finishing Boston.

What is it about Boston that has this mystical hold on runners, especially marathoners? The New York City Marathon is a phenomenal race, touching all five boroughs with all of their rich diversity and finishing in Central Park. The Chicago Marathon is a great race, flat and fast, superbly run and massive in size.

But those races are products of the great running boom of the 1970s. They were inspired by the Boston Marathon, created in 1897 to emulate the first Olympic Marathon of 1896.

The Boston Marathon stood alone as the definitive event in running before running became a fad and a fitness boom for the masses in the 1970s. Boston is where runners go to connect with the history of their sport in a way only Boston can offer - if they are good enough to satisfy its qualifying times.

Boston makes a marathoner feel special because you have to qualify to enter. Most runners will never run marathons and most marathoners never will run fast enough to qualify for Boston. That makes running Boston a privilege, a distinction, an induction into an exclusive fraternity.

Boston also is a damned tough race even on a good day. You can read for years about the toll Boston's downhill sections take on the quads, you can respect them and believe you are prepared for them, but they have to be experienced to be understood.

The scene at the staging area before this year's race was fascinating. All of the runners knew we were in for a brutal day that was potentially dangerous. We knew temperatures would be in the 80s, that our times would suffer drastically and attrition was bound to be high. Yet the mood was far from grim. We were about to run Boston. The mood was optimistic, joyful, eager.

I'd had good weather for my previous nine marathons and knew sooner or later my luck was bound to run out. This time it did. Boston starts at noon, and it was 83 degrees when we began our long journey to Boston. By the finish it would be 85 or 86 degrees (reports varied), just short of the record high for the date (87).

I was careful to stop at every official aid station for Gatorade to make sure I got as much fluid as possible. I was struck by how many unofficial aid stations were set up along the way. Countless residents provided orange slices, ice chunks, Popsicles and even paper towels for wiping our brows. I can't imagine how much money those people spent to help us, but it was as appreciated as it was astonishing to behold.

Like any other marathon I knew it was crucial to make sure I didn't start out too fast. But how do you know the right pace when you're experiencing conditions you've never experienced before? You can't plug your data from your last 20-miler into a computer - time, pace, heart rate, air temperature - to get the proper pace adjustment for running a marathon at 85 degrees. I thought I was being conservative running 8:30 miles on mostly downhill terrain early in the race (I averaged 8 minutes per mile when I ran my qualifying time in Chicago last October) but it was way, way too fast and I would pay the price.

I was starting to feel occasional cramps as we approached the famous "Scream Tunnel" at Wellesley College. I'd been reading about the Wellesley coeds for decades and looked forward to hearing them pull us through mile 13, but I was amazed at their volume and enthusiasm.

By Wellesley the course had dropped 400 feet from the start in Hopkinton. Ahead of us was a short climb, two more downhill miles and then the 4.5 mile section of hills that leads to the infamous Heartbreak Hill on mile 21.

The race turned into a real struggle on the hills of Newton. My cramps steadily increased in frequency and intensity. My pace slowed considerably and it became less of a race than an endurance test, like climbing the West Ridge of Everest. I was determined to finish, no matter how long it took.

Before long, though, I even began to wonder about that. It is unthinkable for me to drop out of a race, but I started noticing runners on the side of the course waiting for medical attention. Some looked like they were in serious trouble and needed help immediately. I began to realize this was becoming a very serious situation. Those runners had been determined to finish, too. I had to accept the possibility there would come a point where I'd have no choice about going on. Later I would learn my 24-year-old friend begged the medics to let her continue running, but they told her there was no way her body would get her to the finish line.

I kept checking myself for symptoms of heat exhaustion. I never got disoriented or dizzy, so I kept going. I'd just have to find a way to keep my legs moving when they were locking up with almost every labored step.

The crowd support, which had been amazing almost without interruption since we left Hopkinton, got even stronger, louder and more fervent as we approached downtown Boston. All major marathons have enthusiastic, supportive crowds, but there's something different about the crowds in Boston. Bostonians understand what the Boston Marathon means to runners, to the sport and to Boston. They know the way this course tears down the quads, they knew this year's conditions were horrendous and they seemed to feel an obligation to pull us through.

Less than a mile from the finish a guy in the crowd who had already finished dangled his finisher's medal for encouragement as I went by. That got me through the final minutes of my run through history and I hobbled across the finish line with a time of 4:27:19.

That is a horrible time, by far the worst of my 10 marathons, 57 minutes slower than my PR at Chicago six months ago. Had it occurred under different circumstances I would have been humiliated by it, but I'm actually kind of proud of it. It wasn't because I didn't train hard enough, I trained as hard as I could and did everything else I could to prepare. It wasn't because I didn't run as hard as I could in the race. I didn't wimp out, I gave it everything I had. In the final miles when my pace became ridiculously slow, I was going as fast as I could. Even if I had paced myself perfectly early in the race, I still would have run a crummy time, probably in the 4 hour range.

I'm disappointed in the outcome, but I'm not disappointed in myself. One friend of mine, a far better runner than me, ran Boston in 2:51 last year. He ran 3:49 this year. It was that kind of day. Bill Rodgers, who won Boston four times, dropped out at mile 21 the first time he ran it on a hot day in 1973 when he got dehydrated. Temperatures that day in 1973 were in the high 70s, not the 80s.

More than 1,100 were treated for dehydration, heart ailments and other medical problems. Of the 18,002 who started, 1,209 did not finish. Last year's men's winner dropped out a mile from the finish. The women's winner, Catherine Ndereba of Kenya, fought cramps the last 2K and sat in a wheelchair for the awards ceremony.

"I felt like I was dead," said Ndereba, who staggered across the finish line.

My quads feel like somebody beat them with a baseball bat, but I love the marathon now more than ever. I finally ran in the world's most famous foot race, I survived an inferno they will talk about for years and I got a finisher's medal I will cherish forever. My daughter Stephanie got to see the Boston Marathon (Erin goes next year) at mile 19, where she held a sign for me that said, "Go Dad!! Luv you! Mr. Marathon."

I just wish I didn't have to wait a year to do it again.