Steve Woo (Palo Alto Run Club Newsletter)
I’m here in DC, a
few blocks down from George Dubya’s White House, sitting at the Capitol City Brewing
Company waiting for some friends for brunch. Just
finished running the inaugural Washington DC Marathon this morning. The racecourse runs past this brewpub, and the
runners are continuing to stream down the street as I type.
In my re-hydrated
state of mind, I can enthusiastically give this marathon big thumbs and blackened toenails
up, despite all of the extremely negative publicity that this marathon has received since
its conception. Unfortunately, I had bought
into all the bad press and was probably more cynical than I normally am when it comes to
my marathon reviews—overall, this was a good debut effort for the organizers.
First off, the DC
Marathon was a major milestone for me in that I finished in a time that I haven’t
seen in nine years at the 1993 San Francisco Marathon, when I was still in college and had
youth, cartilage, and time on my side. After
several lower leg surgeries, I never thought I’d see this time again.
Finishing time aside,
I was just glad to be back in DC. My first
job outta college was in DC and I hadn’t been back since 1994, which means I missed
out on the scandalous Bill, Hillary, and Monica-Gate years.
Safe to say now that the new administration has brought back some dignity,
sanity, and order to the nation’s capitol. The
DC Marathon offered me an excellent excuse to visit my youth again and see some friends at
the same time. It was yesterday once more.
When I arrived in DC
on the Thursday afternoon before the marathon, the weather could not have been better. It was a pretty mild 60 degrees and allowed for a
comfortable jet-lagged walk through Georgetown. Friday,
however, was something else. It was
incredibly FREEZING and the temperature had shot straight down to 30 degrees, never mind
the wind-chill factor. In the morning, I went
for a 6 mile run from my hotel, down to the Capitol, and back down the National Mall, past
the Washington Monument, by the Korean War and Vietnam Memorials, to the Lincoln Memorial,
then past the White House, and back to my hotel. It
made for a somewhat anti-climactic marathon on Sunday, because the racecourse passed by
all of these monuments and by race day, I had already seen all the sights in this 6 mile
jog. That was probably the most bone chilling
run I’ve ever been on—one woman on the street looked at me in my shorts and
windbreaker and screamed I’d catch pneumonia.
After the run, I
headed down to the expo at the DC Armory near RFK Stadium to pick up my bib number. Uneventful expo—not too many exhibitors so I
was outta there in a flash. I’ve gotta
say though that the race t-shirt was quite disappointing. The
design on the front included a blinding combination of bright green and yellow
splatterings, with runners that looked like they were pulled straight outta Microsoft
clipart. On the back, almost every imaginable
sponsor’s logo was plastered on the back of the shirt—something like 30 logos. I’m not a walking billboard for these
companies, so you probably wont see me sporting this shirt much, except in my sleep.
Later that day, I
headed out to Falls Church in Virginia to see Stacey, a friend who was on my exchange
program in Hong Kong last Fall. There’s
a big Vietnamese community in Falls Church and she, being Vietnamese American, took me to
Eden, this Vietnamese strip mall where we chowed down on egg and pork rolls—it was
all in my strategic fat-load plan for the marathon. Then
we headed to Georgetown again, but it was so insanely cold, we wimped out and ran into
Georgetown Park, an indoor shopping mall. Later
in the evening, I went to Arlington to meet up with Adah, a 65 year old friend with whom I
taught English in China many mooncakes ago. She’s
a marathon talker, and consequently I a marathon listener, so that dinner went on for
almost 3 hours. Afterwards, I went back to my
hotel and forced myself to get a long night’s sleep, in anticipation of getting my
usual little or no sleep the night before the marathon.
No alarm clock for me. Small
wonder then that I woke up at 11:00AM on Saturday.
Saturday turned into
an endless day of phone tag, trying to hook up with old coworkers, but things fell apart
so we finally settled on meeting after the marathon on Sunday, before my flight back to LA
the same afternoon. Saturday afternoon, I
went on an easy 3 mile run, then headed back to the DC Armory for the pre race pasta feed. My only qualm, aside from the $15 ticket not being
included in the $75 registration fee, was that there was absolutely no water at the
dinner. Sure, there was pink lemonade, tea
and coffee, but it was kind of ironic that no water was to be had even though “H2O
Entertainment” was the organizer of the marathon.
Went to bed at 10PM. I fell asleep for a good hour, then had to get up
and take care of some bladder business, what with all that water in my system. I figured by then it had to be like 3AM, but I
looked at the clock and it was only 11PM. I
tossed and turned the rest of the night, and the last time I checked the clock, it was
3AM. So after getting up at 4:30AM, I must’ve
gotten a total of 2.5 hours of REM-less sleep. Fortunately,
I wasn’t feeling too out of it when I woke up. Got
dressed quickly, and rushed to meet the hotel shuttle to the start.
From the Marriott in
downtown DC, what could’ve been a 15 minute run, or a 5 minute metro ride to the
starting line, turned into a 30 minute merry go round on the freeway. Our driver couldn’t get through to the
starting area because they had blocked the main exits.
Driving around in circles, we passed the Pentagon several times and saw the
side of the building that was hit on 9-11. I
didn’t even know it was the side that was hit until someone pointed it out, noting
that the reconstruction has been moving along quickly and they expect to complete it by
the one year anniversary. Outside the
building, there’s a countdown clock, US flag, and a banner that reads, “Lets
Roll.”
Our bus finally made
it through at 6:15AM, with enough time to spare before the 7AM start. It was a bone chilling 35 degrees when I woke up,
but it warmed up to 41 degrees by the time we arrived.
The starting line was at the Arlington Memorial Bridge, right behind the
Lincoln Memorial. I was moping around and
whining to myself about how cold it was and thinking back to the past several months of
70-plus degrees of winter training in LA. Was
deliberating whether I should run with my windbreaker, but opted not to since I figure the
temperature should rise to degrees more akin to what I’m used to getting in San
Francisco.
Before the start, a
few prayers were said by church leaders each representing Christians, Muslims, Jews, and
Buddhists. There was a major marathon
controversy with DC churches because the course street closures were going to impact
people on their way to Palm Sunday church services. Organizers
compromised and pushed the start time up an hour earlier to 7AM. They blamed their lack of foresight on the event
calendar that they were using, which didn’t identify March 24th as Palm
Sunday. But c’mon, Palm Sunday and Holy
Week go hand in hand with Easter, so this excuse didn’t fly well with too many
people. Neverthenonetheless there were many
cheers for the runners, and no jeers, from people on their way to church.
The organization at
the start was fairly laissez faire—but there was no pushing, no shoving, none of
that, “Excuse me, I need to get to the front.”
I pretty much could have toed the starting line with the elites if I wanted
since there were no corrals, and the 8000 runners that were said to be registered didn’t
feel like much more than, oh, 3000-5000. Only
took about 10 chip-seconds for me to cross the starting line. Yet again, I had given no serious thought as to
what particular time I was looking to run. I
had run the LA Marathon three weeks earlier, and I was using this as my last long training
run before Boston in three weeks.
The first 2 miles ran
down Constitution Avenue, on the northern side of the National Mall, past the same
memorials and monuments mentioned above (Lincoln, Vietnam, Washington, etc.). My first mile split was 7:00 flat. There were no pace groups running below 3:20, but
I figured I could at least run a 3:10—though, from the start, my mile splits were all
hitting 7 minutes even for about the first 5 miles. This
didn’t jive with a 3:10 finishing time. At
this pace, I’d run a sub-3, which seemed pretty far-fetched at the time since I wasn’t
too confident with the kind of training I’d been doing. Still, I felt great and told myself to hold on to
7 minute miles and see where it would take me before I eventually crashed.
Mile 2-3 took us away
from the Mall and up Capitol Hill, then towards RFK Stadium in the eastern outskirts of
DC. Miles 4-10, which took us through
southwest DC were extremely uneventful and boring, with nary a national monument in sight,
though if you turned around, you could see the Washington Monument and Capitol in the
distance getting smaller and smaller until it seemed like they were several marathons
away. Spectators along this portion were
sparse, and I was just looking forward to getting back into the city and seeing the marble
monumental skyline.
After about mile five,
my pace started coming under 7 minute miles and I was thinking to myself, “You’re
setting up for a big crash, slow down.” One
big problem was that several downhill stretches found me charging down the hills and
making good time, especially when we came back down Capitol Hill, this time on the
southern side of the Mall and past the same monuments again. By this time, it was past 8AM, and many of the DC
tourists had woken up and were in full force on the course cheering on the runners. The added shots of adrenaline inspired a few quick
strides to pick up the pace, and by the halfway point I was at 1:28. I assumed I couldn’t run a negative split, so
the best I could manage would be a 2:56 finish if I maintained my pace. I would’ve been happy if I finished with a
3:10, but a sub-3 was somewhat appealing. But
hey, I was already halfway there, so what was 13 more miles—a few dish trails, or
maybe just a few times laps around Lake Merced, right?
By this point, I
started asking myself how I was gonna pace myself the next 13 miles. Nothing scientific here, or anything requiring any
heavy calculations. I decided to just pick
off runners ahead of me, since they were all probably aiming for sub-3, using the downhill
sections of the course to speed up to save time and leave a bigger buffer for me at the
end, and just chilling on the uphill portions.
The water stations
were set up at every other mile. The cool
weather, which probably kept me from taking in more fluid than I should have, and the
staggered water stops kept that nasty sugar high at bay this time, so I wasn’t
running around with a nauseous expression on
my face the whole time. Miles 14, 15, 16, 17,
18 all went well…….and so did miles 20, as well as 21, 22, and 23. Fast forward to mile 23.5 and what could have
developed into a major international incident, with headlines that might have read, “Brit
strikes Chinese-American in Diplomatic Quarters.”
Running down Embassy
Row, which to the context-clueless and uninformed is a stretch of embassies in DC, I was
picking up my pace nicely, and coming up on a runner who had about twelve inches of height
over me. As I was passing him, appearing a
bit startled, he asked me, “Are you racing?” in his heavily accented Queen’s
English. “Racing?” I thought to
myself. Images of high school cross country,
burning lungs, numb legs, and gasping for dear life, as well as elite Kenyans, prize
money, and 2:10 finishing times were some of the immediate “racing” thoughts
that came to mind. Racing? I was feeling relatively comfortable and if I was
racing, it wasn’t against anyone in particular.
I laughed and said to the guy, “No I’m not racing.”
Now, sit down if you’re
not already, and brace yourself for this……..
The dude physically
and verbally ASSUALTED me!!!!!!!!! He angrily
shoved me with his right hand, hitting me in the shoulder and burst out, “Then get
the (expletive deleted) off the course!”
“What’d I
say?! What’d I say?!”
I thought about it for
a few seconds and realized the semantics of it all. By
his definition of “racing,” every registered runner is “racing,”
regardless of effort, so he must’ve assumed I meant that I was just on a leisure
Sunday morning jog and invading his personal space. I
then clarified, “No, no, I’m **in** the race,” as I pointed to my bib
number, which the claude should’ve seen anyway before he hit me. Regardless, there’s no excuse for this kind
of behavior on or off the roads—I don’t care if he’s still bitter that the
UK lost the thirteen colonies or Hong Kong, or that me may have missed his morning tea. “Brit strikes Chinese-American,” aint
exactly the kind of headline you want to be making these days. The guy apologized, though at that point I was
irked, yet civil, and took off, leaving him for dust.
There seems to be a
disturbing trend of violence developing at the marathons I run. Back at the LA Marathon, volunteers were
recklessly throwing water at me without my invitation, and now in DC, an attempt to
retreat to the days of royal imperialism. “Cant
we all just run along?”
After my run-in with
the charming Brit, I came up on mile 24 at 2:40. Eegadz,
I hadn’t been on this kind of pace for ages. Had
to average under 7 minutes for the next two miles to come in under 2:55, so I sped up,
picking off runners one by one and then, hey, look up there on the left. It was the building where I worked my first job
outta college, then down the block was Cap City Brewery, Tony Cheng’s, my old metro
station exit, and Chinatown. The memories
were gushing back. Like GU through the
hourglass, these were the days of my life.
Coming outta
Chinatown, we hit mile 25. I knew I had a sub
3-hour finish coming up, but I wasn’t sure by how many minutes I’d make it. Hitting Pennsylvania Avenue, I glanced to the
left, seeing an enormous Capitol building gleaming on what turned out to be a partly sunny
day with the temperatures topping out in the high 40s, then turned right onto the final
stretch to the finish at Freedom Plaza. Managed
to get in one last half mile push to the finish, coming in at 2:54:02 and good for 27th
place overall.
Hung out at the finish
area long enough to get a massage, and was feeling better than I do after most training
runs, so I decided to walk back to my hotel to change.
Came back here to Cap City and am now waiting to meet up with some
conservative cronies from the past, Monkey Boy and Joanne, and Stacey, for lunch. When in Rome, or when near Maryland, do like the
Marylanders. The local crab cake delicacies
will make up my post marathon gorge, then it’s back to couscous and pasta tomorrow.