Myrtle Beach Marathon -- Hanging On For Dear Life!

Last Thursday, I hopped in the car and headed south on I-79.  This was a date I had circled on my calendar many months ago.  Time to run the Myrtle Beach Marathon!    

Ain't nothing like a ROAD TRIP!  Sunset over the New River gorge. 

I made it as far as Winston-Salem, North Carolina before crashing at a dump of a Motel 6.  The room smelled like it had housed a smoker's convention and some homeys hung outside my door partying for most of the night.  

The next day, I drove down to Myrtle Beach.  I stopped counting the Waffle House's along the way but I do confess I like their egg white omelet with a splash of tabasco sauce and a side of tomato slices.

I'm here!

I checked into the motel and headed straight to the convention center to pick up my race packet.  Myrtle Beach is an "interesting" place.  While it sounds good on paper, as I drove around, I found it to be schlocky, touristy tangle of amusement parks, golf courses, and calabash seafood restaurants.  Do you like gun shops, next to strip clubs, next to billiard halls (smoking allowed), next to a Bob Evans?  Then Myrtle Beach is for you.  Do you like saltwater taffy, kettle corn, and boiled peanuts, with a funnel cake or two thrown in for good measure?  Then come to Myrtle Beach, and you will think you've died and gone to heaven.  To each his own I guess.

Scintillating view from my hotel balcony -- a vacant mall with a roller coaster behind it.  Oh, the splendor!

Later in the day, to dissipate my stress, I went for an easy 3-mile run to check out the course.  Flat as a pancake and perfect for those looking for a PR or a Boston Marathon qualifying time (a BQ, for short).  I caught a bite to eat and headed back to the hotel to get some sleep.  

Race morning, I headed down to the starting area, the parking lot of a huge shopping mall complex, for a couple of 5-minute runs and some stretching.  Then the magical moment arrived!    

Some almost 7,000 runners toe the line in the pre-dawn darkness.

I was concerned about getting caught up in a logjam of runners in the early part of the race so I plowed through the crowd up towards the head of the pack.  Then the gun went off.

This is a tale of two very different races.  The first 20 miles went about as well as I could have dreamed. I was floating steadily around 7:30 - 7:40/mile and experiencing no difficulty at all.  My repaired knee felt fine.  Mentally, I felt fine.  I was hitting water at the aid stations every two miles.  I took in my standard race table fare of Endurolytes and Hammer Gels.  No problem.  As I neared mile 20, it dawned on me that I was way ahead of PR pace and, for the first time, I began to realize I was within legitimate striking distance of a BQ, a 3:30 for my age group.  Looking back, I am not so sure this was a good realization to have.

Then, out from the shadows stepped what my friend Eva and I refer to as "the mean dog".  So begins the second race.  In general terms, the mean dog is a metaphor for the totality of insecurities, doubts, and fears one feels as driven by an external stimulus.  In my case, the external stimulus was the lack of glycogen, i.e., I had hit "the wall".  Somewhat predictably, this occurred circa mile 20.  Suddenly, my perfectly executed race wasn't so perfect anymore.  Suddenly, I felt kernels of doubt that were growing with each foot stride.  The mean dog was definitely off its leash.  My initial strategy was to ignore the mean dog.  Mentally, I worked through the steps to derive the expectation of a quadratic form y'Ay but that did not help.  I sang cheesy 80's pop tunes to myself, but that only temporarily masked my growing suffering.  Thinking about trips I was going to take in the summer, unrequited love, the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, how many times I've seen the Cleveland Browns play live ... none of it could take my mind off of my own compounding misery.  

I became increasingly tired and my feet were becoming harder to lift.  My hip flexors were starting to tighten and my calves were engaged in this shaking rigor.  The knee with the new ACL was now objecting to this sudden surge in mileage.  My panicking mind began to oscillate back and forth between a jumble of crazy, haywire thoughts and lightheaded nothingness.  Occasionally, I battled panic and desperation, as I began to run the math calculations through my mind -- "Shit, I just ran an 8.  Let's see ... let's see ... that's a withdrawal of 30 seconds from the time I banked.  So ... does that get me in at 3:30?  What pace do I have to hold then from here on out?"  Then, for no apparent rational reason, I began to become cranky, testy, angry ... pissed, actually.  I became pissed at the cop who would stop traffic at a major road while it seemed the whole frigging world waited for me to hurry it up for 100 yards to make it safely across.  I became pissed at old, blue-haired ladies sitting and clapping in lawn chairs telling me I looked great and I only had a few more miles to go.  I became pissed at dozens of Catholic school kids shouting at me and trying to hand me water at every aid station.  For the love of God, be quiet, stop looking at me, and let me finish this damn race!!!  Around mile 24, I became nauseous.  The weather seemed unseasonably warm to me (it did, in fact, reach 72 that day).  With every bit of mental strength I could muster, I kept telling myself "Run.  Don't stop.  Pick it the hell up, Phil.  Go.  Go!!!"  I was putting everything I had out on the course.  The words Sarah texted me the night before rang in my head, "Run them down!".  The words Joey texted me the night before rang in my head, "Go get it man."  The words Eva texted me the night before rang in my head, "The dog may be mean, loud, and strong.  But you are stronger."

Finally, I came to mile 25.  Then I knew, I knew I had this race in my grasp.  My closest friends know the type of year I had last year and several tall hurdles I had to cross.  They know, and I know, all the time I spent so utterly focused on this race.  It is not at all my intent to lay on the melodramatic sugar to all that I have said here.  Suffice it to say that I was so happy and so humbly grateful and as I reflected on these feelings and the path that I've walked, I shed tears that last mile all the way to the finish line at 3:24, a PR by 20 minutes and a BQ by 6.

I hobbled over to the medical tent and had to sit down because I was just trashed.  After several minutes, I went and grabbed some food and beverage at the runner's tent, moseyed over to my car and did some stretching, popped some Ibuprofen, and then proceeded to go on a hunt for the tallest, darkest coffee I could find for the ride home.

Damn forest fires I encountered an hour out of Myrtle Beach.  The guy on the right decided to relieve himself while waiting.

The culinary crown jewel -- a South Carolina sweet potato

In closing, qualifying for Boston represented a challenge I had set for myself, a goal to shoot for, nothing more, nothing less.  Everyone is different, and everyone has different goals they set for themselves.  For some, finishing a marathon is a goal.  For others, running a marathon for speed is a goal.  Both are wonderful accomplishments.  Neither is better nor worse relative to the other; they're just different and unique to one's personal universe.  My 3:24 would be a joke to runners far better than I am.  My buddy Ben wants to be able to someday dunk a basketball.  That too would be wonderful accomplishment.  There's no patronizing going on here.  I take nothing for granted, and am deeply appreciative for any goal that I, my sister and her family, and my friends can meet.  And I always ... always ... try to live life one hour at a time.