The Gummiest Marathon in North America
Steve Woo (Palo Alto Run Club Newsletter)
Alright no one likes a critic, but when a marathon committee touts its event as "The Best Organized Marathon in North America", plasters this all over race literature and media publications, and has volunteers reiterating this to everyone, it's only begging to be placed under a microscope.
Now lemme first say, before you continue reading this, that the Portland Marathon was one of the better marathon experiences I've had and I highly recommend this marathon to anyone. But few have addressed the scrunched-up foreheads and noses of runners asking, "Huh?", in response to the self-generated "organization-hoopla" surrounding the marathon. Herewith is this runner's not-so humble commentary.
Only a month before the Portland Marathon, I decided I'd run it to see what the hype was all about. I'm currently in training for the Athens Marathon, and was starting to lose patience with my training and could not imagine running many more long runs for the sake of running a long run. So just to make training a little more interesting, I said I'd use Portland as a training run for Athens, two weeks following.
Arriving in Portland at 2PM on Saturday, I went straight to the expo to register. The late registration fee was $95, jacked up from the normal $50 fee. Now that's an organized scam. But organized-race-fee-scams do not a "best-organized-marathon-in-North-America" make, since most marathons do this. Nothing unique here.
So I continued the search for those elements of "best-organization."
Walking around the floor of the expo, I was looking for the CliffBar, PowerBar, PromaxBar, etc. vendors handing out free samples. None were to be found, though PowerBar did have free samples of their new Gatorade-wannabe drink. Aside from this expo-flaw, or perhaps sponsorship-flaw, it was your typical marathoner's flea-market--and I write this with affection and positive regards.
The marathon did have quite the organized deal with Niketown across the street, though. Free marathon posters were available....but not at the expo site. You were first required to go to Niketown, where you were greeted by a display of "marathon-essentials merchandise," to retrieve them. Clever, very clever.
Alright, so much for the expo. Whaddabout the marathon itself?
One thing that sticks out in my mind was the lack of bushes and shrubbery at the start of the marathon. At the SF, Napa, and Big Sur marathons, a tree is your port-a-potty. The Portland start, however, was near City Hall, with no signs of the otherwise ubiquitous douglas fir that dots every other part of Oregon. With no alternative, I was forced to traumatically wait in line at a port-a-potty for the first time in my life. To the marathon's credit, the port-a-potties were well- organized and pleasantly-aligned. OK, maybe it's just a personal bias, but a natural-setting makes for the best marathon start and shorter lines at the port-a-potties.
Baggage check-in should normally be a simple procedure, however, I had to stand in line for 5 minutes to give them my bag. Rather than hand out bags with race numbers at the expo, the guys were jotting down numbers on the bags on race-day. Perhaps a little dis-organized here?
Chip-timing? Given that we are used to the spoils of the latest gadgetry in Silicon Valley, many of us could hardly conceive of running a marathon without chip timing. Portland's response to the chip is that, because the marathon is so well-organized, it does not require these techno-gadgets. In the past, the marathon says it's only taken 52 seconds for all runners to cross the start-line. For the straight-outta-luck runner who finished the marathon 52 seconds over the qualifying time for Boston, perhaps he might have been better off running a dis-organized marathon employing the chips.
Split Timing. OK, OK, you think I'm whining, but it's nice to be able to look at a clock at every mile marker, rather than wait for a volunteer to announce times, which they dont always do, understandably, especially if they need a break and must wait in line for a port-a-potty because there are no douglas firs around. The only clocks on the course were at the start and finish. I was, however, very appreciate of the little girl with the big, and somewhat obnoxious, mouth at mile 19 hollering, non-stop on a blow-horn, "You've been running for # hours and ## seconds!!!" She had real spunk.
Liquid refreshment--aah. Aqua, Gatorade, and PowerGel were plentiful along the course. It was oh-so-organized.
Gummy Bears. Now this is not something I experienced, but on my flight back to SF, I was talking to another runner who said they were handing out gummy bears along the course. Nothing wrong with that, I thought--just a little odd trying to chew those things on a 26 mile run. A little too effort-intensive for me--what's next--corn nuts? But then she pointed out that runners were throwing the gummy bears along the road, making for a sticky course when the rubber hit the turf. Had the marathon been a little more organized, they might have considered coating the gummy confections with non-stick PAM.
At the finish, they announced the names of all finishers as they crossed the line--well, all of them but me. I guess this was because I late-registered, so maybe the announcer sensed dis-organization on my part, refusing to acknowledge my dis-organized finish.
The post-race area was grrrrrrrreat. It was organization overflow here. This was perhaps the best spread of post-marathon refreshments I've ever seen. Aside from the essential Gatorade, PowerBars, and bagels, they supplied a wide array of Trader Joe's chips and cookies (and these were of the UN-healthy variety--none of that lowfat/nonfat garbage), popsicles, grrrrrapes, Yoplait, some kind of premium Snapple-imitation, etc.
Perhaps the best-organized element of the Portland Marathon is reflected in this year's t-shirt design. For those runners that require graphic stimuli, the shirt might have irked them a bit because it contained none. I thought it was pretty clever, though. On the front it reads "Portland Marathon 1999 Finisher" and below it are like 15 lines of text which, at a first glance, just look like advertisements. But the text provides directions of the marathon course itself....."Start near City Hall. Run down 4th Street and pass Niketown. Make a right at Salmon Street....Pass Pioneer Square....Cross the St. John's Bridge...blah blah blah." This text was also printed on the race bibs, so, with such great planning, NO ONE could possibly get lost along the course! Now that's organization!
In addition to the t-shirt and medal, the marathon was quite generous about finisher's paraphernalia--perhaps a little too much so. Each finisher also received a long-stemmed rose (sans the thorns, which the volunteers sheared, in organized-fashion) to reflect Portland's nickname, the "City of Roses", a douglas fir seedling (so when you see that 100 foot douglas fir across the street from Ocean Beach in SF, you'll know where I live), a lapel pin (looking like something I got out of a gumball machine several years ago at Safeway, these pins solidified the Portland Marathon as the most overly-organized at distributing finisher's paraphernalia). My fave was the douglas fir--now I will have my own port-a-potty growing in the backyard.
Alright, alright. Dont get me wrong. I had a good time while I was in Portland--all 25 hours of my stay--it's like a scaled-down version of Seattle, only without the attitude and money. The marathon does earn it's place among the best marathons in the US and, for the most part, is well-organized, but as for that "best-organized" claim, what's up with that? No one likes a cocky marathon--that's what L.A.'s for...........um, uh-oh.