Sharing similar path to marathon
Sharing similar path to marathon
By Mario Fraioli
Telegram & Gazette – June 10, 2007
It’s often said that marathoners are cut from a different cloth. Tracy Flynn and I must have been snipped from the same piece.
Flynn, 47, of Shrewsbury, much like my 25-year-old self, is an Auburn native. The two of us have been running for more than 10 years, most Monday nights we run the same route from the An Cu Liath Irish Pub here in the city, and two weeks ago we both made our 26.2-mile debuts in Burlington, Vt., at the KeyBank Vermont City Marathon. If that weren’t enough, we both wore a yellow-green singlet on race day, and in case you’re wondering, no, we didn’t plan it that way.
“Are you sure we weren’t separated at birth?” Tracy asked me jokingly this past Monday at the An Cu Liath of all places, where we both ran personal bests for the 3.5-mile course that runs through the heart of the city’s canal district.
No, we weren’t separated at birth, nor are we related — heck, we didn’t even know each another until a couple of months ago — but this tale of two first-time marathoners certainly shares a common theme.
After years of competing at shorter distances, Tracy and I began toying with the idea of running a marathon at the encouragement of our respective running buddies. 5Ks, 10Ks and half marathons — those were things of the past, merely child’s play. It was time to take on the ultimate test, 26.2 miles of pounding the pavement. Enter the Vermont City Marathon, a “great first time marathon” according to marathonguide.com, which offers wonderful crowd support and a scenic course that finishes along the shores of Lake Champlain. Best of all, Burlington is an easy four-hour drive from Central Massachusetts. No need to look any further — sign us up.
Applications out of the way, the focus turned toward preparation during the early part of 2007 — five months of carefully prepared training and strategically planned races lie ahead for us. Thankfully, we each had the advantage of supportive clubs with knowledgeable coaches and great teammates.
Tracy, coached by Mark Perrone and Dale Ames, has been a member of the Central Mass. Striders for 17 years, and I’ve been training as a member of Kevin Curtin’s New Balance Boston team for the last three. And as either of us will tell you, neither of us would have made it to the starting line if it weren’t for these people.
On Jan. 1, unbeknownst to either of us at the time, Tracy and I started our five-month journey toward Burlington down the same road — Boutelle Road in Sterling to be specific, site of the annual Freezer Five road race on New Year’s Day. I took top honors in 26:25, and Tracy crossed the line 80th in 42:26, good starts to the year for both of us. Two weeks later, we both ran personal bests at the Frostbite 15K in Raynham before spending the rest of our winter logging long runs on Sunday mornings in addition to lonely training runs during the work week.
By the end of March, we were both running at the An Cu Liath on Monday nights and later in the spring we would hit the track on Tuesday nights for speed workouts with our teammates — Tracy at Worcester State and I at Bentley College — starting at 6 p.m. Our preparation was so eerily similar that I suspect our coaches were secretly in cahoots.
Whether they were or not, both of us survived five months of hard training and arrived at the starting line on May 27 feeling fit, confident and ready to go.
“I didn’t do anything different than I did in training,” Tracy said. “I just treated it like another Sunday long run.”
I followed a similar, pull-no-punches approach, racing in the shoes I had already logged a couple hundred miles in and wearing the same shorts, singlet, socks and hat I donned in every other race I ran this spring. When you’re going to be out on the open road for a couple hours on a Sunday morning, the last thing you want to deal with is an unwelcome surprise.
Once the gun went off, the feelings for us two novice marathoners were again mutual. The first 10 miles went by like a whirlwind; the last four seemed to take just as long. Maybe Einstein was on to something with his theory of relativity.
“I just tried to take it one mile at a time,” remembered Tracy, reminding me of my own mind-set once the going got tough on a lonely bike path somewhere around mile 20. “Those last four miles seemed like they were never going to end.”
Eventually, they did, though, and before we knew it, we were rounding the field at Battery Park amid the cheers of a few thousand people. The startling similarities of this story, however, end there.
“I was enjoying the moment,” recalled Tracy, who finished in 4:44:02. “I didn’t feel any pain once I made my way into the park. I felt like everyone there was my best friend.”
I, on the other hand, felt like I was going to die. Instead of living it up like a rock star, my legs simply felt like rocks. My only goal while sprinting away what life was left in my legs the last two-tenths of a mile was simply to cross the finish line standing up, which I successfully managed to do in 2:28:25. Heck, even when I stopped, my emotions were mixed — satisfied with my effort, yes, but man was I glad that was over.
A post-race ice bath that evening had me feeling somewhat coherent by dinner time; Tracy told me that after her ice bath she and her husband were bopping around downtown Burlington with hundreds of other achy marathoners. Walking down stairs on Monday was a small challenge, Tracy said, but by Tuesday night she was back on the track at Worcester State with her CMS teammates while I was at home lying on the couch wondering if my calves would ever feel normal again. I’d like to know what she filled her tub with.
Similarities, differences and my complaining aside, I won’t forget one of the last things Tracy reminded me of as we left the An Cu Liath last Monday night. For the first time since the race, it finally hit me.
“Remember,” she said, “we’re marathoners now.”