B Strong

Meb.  The mere 3-letter name says it all.

Pure American.  Runner-extraordinaire.

He won Boston, watching an insurmountable end of the race 90-second lead be reduced to a mere six seconds in the last mile.  As a world-class elite Kenyan runner valiantly tried to haul him down on Boyleston Street he hung on and won, repeating to himself, "Boston strong, Boston strong, Meb strong, Meb strong."

You see, tragedy visited this great race, the Boston Marathon, the oldest continuously run marathon in the world, last year when two immigrant men planted bombs upon its course and killed and maimed people as was their sole intention.  Men who had come here as boys, benefited from all the advantages our great country has to offer, and found hatred inside of themselves instead of reaching for greatness as Meb did.

You see, Meb came here as a boy too, as a war refuge, ran track in high school and then at UCLA where he won national championships, became an American citizen and continued on to greatness as an American marathoner.  His name goes up there with other great American male marathoners such as Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers.

It's no secret that Africans are the best marathoners in the world currently, with Kenyans especially standing out.  No American had won a major world marathon in decades (London, Berlin, Chicago, New York and Boston); a Kenyan usually was standing atop the podium.

Until Meb astonishingly broke through in 2009 and won New York.  The Africans let him get far out front and then couldn't bring him down at the end.  (My former running buddy A met Meb the night he won New York.)

Meb outran all his pursuers at New York, they were asking each other what his strengths and weaknesses were and nobody in the chase pack knew, so lightly did Africans regard Americans.  He was strong, Meb strong.

His time has never approached 2:05, which is a time which the elite Africans regularly reach and once, an American (Ryan Hall).  He PRed yesterday at 2:08 (at age 38), his prior best was a 2:09 when he won New York a half-decade earlier.

He is a consummate professional, unfailingly polite and gracious, and a master tactician.  He won a silver medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and came in fourth at the London Olympics two years ago.

I personally thought that was his swan song, at age 36 he had won an Olympic medal, an American major and he outdistanced a world class field at London save for the tight lead pack of 3 medaling African elites.

I came in from a noontime run yesterday and immediately googled "Boston Marathon 2014 winner."  When the name Meb immediately popped up I was astonished and proud.  (I have met Meb twice at DC races.)

Grasshopper and Po

The phone rang yesterday and I picked it up. "Hello, this is Peter."

"You’re responsible for this, you know."

"Excuse me?"

"It’s your responsibility that this happened. I just wanted you to know."

I didn’t recognize her voice right away. In this age of emailing instead of calling, a person’s phone voice is not always immediately recognizable. I stalled for time. "What am I responsible for?"

"My BQ."

Ahh. Running. "You BQ’d? Congratulations!" I was still stalling.

"Yes, and I owe it in large part to you for getting me started down this path, coach."

A running pupil. I ran through my trainees at the recent ATM Program I completed, just before my association with my running club blew up in a generational conflict over respect, fealty, honesty (ethics) and dedication to others, or lack thereof, and I resigned. "No, I didn’t do anything. You did it all." Still stalling.

"You don’t know who this is, do you?"

"Give me a hint."

"Long runs, track training, my first coach."

"Uhhh..."

"You paced me in the Marine Corps Marathon..."

"OMG!"

"Yes! And I BQ’d yesterday in only my second marathon, with a 3:40:56."

"That’s right, you were going to run a marathon in California."

"Yes, the California International Marathon in Sacramento."

"Wow, how did it feel to make it by four seconds? Were you crazy that last mile?"

"Uh, actually, Peter, I needed a 3:45, not a 3:40."

"Wow, you crushed it!" (Right: Me and my former pupil before the 2008 9/11 5K at the Pentagon.)

I thought back to coaching she in 2006, when she first showed up midway through the program in a small group I was leading. I had the fast group and she could keep up from the start. I ran with her in track that year, too. She was dedicated.

I subsequently asked her to coach in programs I directed, and she became a valued member of my coaching staff who I came to depend on. She progressed to where in 2008, she became the first, and so far only, student of mine who has bettered me in a race. This has happened more than once.

The first time it happened, I hoped it was an anomaly. Due to the staggered start (the women started after the men), she never actually passed me during the race. But then she started showing an annoying tendency to catch up with me in the last mile of long races, and crushing me the last mile.

At last year’s MCM, her first marathon, I "helped" her out by jumping in with her at MP 11 and pacing her the last 15 miles. Me, the veteran of seventeen marathons, showing the rookie how to do it.

Shortly after we passed MP 25, she kicked up the pace by several notches during her twenty-sixth mile and my fifteenth. She left me in the dust, far behind as she burned about a seven-minute last mile to finish in 3:51. I couldn’t keep up with her. (Left: Me and my former pupil after the 2008 9/11 5K at the Pentagon. This marked the last time I finished ahead of her.)

Now she has surpassed my marathon PR by almost ten minutes. It is a poor teacher whose pupils do not surpass him.

Congratulations Sasha, my good friend.

My first marathon

In 1970, I was a high school senior at an all-male boarding school, full of vim and vinegar, and I thought it would be cool to finish the Boston Marathon. I always looked for challenges that were different.

I was a wrestler in high school, but otherwise I had abandoned two years of running JV cross-country in order to play house (recreational), and then Fifth Form (club), football. You'd have to be a preppie to know what I'm talkin' about.

I think that high school cross country meets back in the 60s were 2.6 miles. The Boston Marathon had been in the news because that's where a male accosted a woman athlete and tried to drag her off the marathon course to ensure the "purity" of the sport of long-distance running, which hardly anyone even cared about back then. You see, women's constitutions were considered to be delicate, a myth I knew to be ridiculous, even in my youth. (Right: The way it was in 1967.)

I would be over 18 on the day of the race. I thought that I could do 26.2 miles, thanks to the energy of youth, even though my longest runs up until then (other than 5 mile training workouts which consisted of twenty quarter mile laps interspersed with 220 yards of walking) were those 2.6 mile cross country meets. I think a couple of meets might have been 5Ks. All I had to do was run the distance I was accustomed to, times ten. If I had to walk a bit in the latter stages, what was the big deal? Such is the brain of a teenager.

My guidance counselor at the school turned me down flat. Maybe he was wise and knew that I couldn't make 26 miles, no way no how, without a base.

I was irked because otherwise I was doing whatever I wanted on weekends. Meaning I'd sneak away from school for weekends in NYC while my stodgy stay-at-school roommate "checked" me in with the housemaster on Saturday nights. ("Oh Peter's here too. He's asleep.") Those were the late Vietnam years, when authority sort of adhered to "don't ask, don't tell" when it came to youth.

The problem was that the Boston Marathon was run on a Monday (Patriot's Day in MA) and I couldn't finagle being absent from school on a Monday in NJ without securing permission from a responsible school official. Permission was not forthcoming.

Sh*t, since I was already 1-A (that's draft lingo, I was draft-eligible because I refused to take a student-deferment as being an unfair entitlement), I thought, How could anyone refuse a request of mine?

I always regretted that missed opportunity to participate in the Boston Marathon before the advent of qualifying times.

My last marathon

I was in Boston yesterday, and I ran a marathon. Yeah, that Boston and yeah, that marathon. The bottom line: 4:15:35 (9:45).

Running it was a last minute opportunity for me and I certainly hadn't trained for a marathon. My last 20-miler was in September and when I tried to do a 16-miler in October, I crashed and burned at 12 miles. I ran a 10-mile race in January but then I hurt my toe and I had been taking it easy ever since. Lately I have been running low mileage on Saturdays at a 12-minute pace with the 10K Group Training Program that I coach for. Recently I did an hour of serious running before one such meeting with a friend, followed afterwards by four more 12-minute miles with the group, but that's been about it for my base.

Predictably, the wheels came off after 11 miles. My per-mile time slipped out of the eight-minute range into the nine-to-twelve minute range, and I started run/walking. However, approaching Heartbreak Hill, I told myself that I would never again be at the bottom of the most famous hill in all of runnerdom after having already traversed twenty miles on foot, and I was going to run all the way up it to the top, no matter what. Mentally fortified, I ran the next three miles and then I had a couple of more brief walking forays before running the last mile and a half to the finish.

I'm not embarassed about my time although my placement sucks, about 18,173/22,849, in the bottom twenty percent. My forever favorite marathon is still New York City, which I considered to be deceptively hard, but a Boston newspaper columnist called the NYCM a "JV race" compared to Boston, adding, "This is where hearts are broken, and sometimes bodies." Second-place finisher Daniel Rono said, "Boston is the toughest of all." I agree. Those hills (mostly downhills with a few wicked uphills) are crazy. My legs are totally on fire today.