Marine Corps Marathon Memories

Driving past Arlington National Cemetery on Friday, I saw preparations for today’s (Sunday 27 Oct) Marine Corps Marathon, and the scene brought back a flood of memories, most of them good, some not so good.

I ran the 1998 version of the race, also held on the last Sunday of that month. I finished, taking a leisurely four hours and twenty six minutes to do so. I was on a solid sub four-hour pace until I hit the famous “wall”, and man, did I hit it. I was able to summon a bit of self-respect and run the last two miles or so, but there were three slowly walked miles before them.

At the time, I was 33 years old and in some of the best shape of my life. I track every bit of physical decline since to that day and that race, but I am still glad that I did it.

The inspiration for the race was my girlfriend at the time, a dedicated runner and previous Marine Corps Marathon participant. Some point earlier in that year while discussing the race—maybe it was the 97 version—I made the decision that I would train for and run the race. I also decided that it would be my one and only marathon, a decision I have kept to. She was very supportive, and as I trained throughout 1998, I imagined my smiling honeypie greeting me at the finish line as a conquering hero. Then she got posted overseas and so my race was a solo effort.

I won’t bore you with the details, but running for over four hours is pretty boring. It was a gorgeous day, and the good people of the region come out in force to cheer you on. There was a stretch on the course as it was then run that ambled through “Haines Point” in Southwest DC prior to crossing one of the highway bridges over the Potomac back to finish in the vicinity of the Pentagon, and very, very few people were there to cheer. I think this is where I began to slow down.

The worst part of a marathon is not running it, but preparing for it. Many training programs build you up over time, increasing the number of miles you run until the point where you run a couple of 22 mile or so practices. Those were killer. No cheering crowds, no well-placed hydration tables, none of it. Just mile after mile of the Washington and Old Dominion trail, with your car parked strategically so that you can jump off to get some water on the up and back.

I’ll never forget one day late in the summer before the race, I was on a long run, and I was not feeling it. Off in the distance, I spied a man walking toward me in what appeared to be his waiter’s garb, presumably on his way to the dinner shift somewhere. As I approached from the downwind angle, his earlier bath in bad cologne reached out to me, and just after passing him, I had to stop and dry heave for a bit. Good times.

Having never asked detailed questions of anyone about the start of the race, I was somewhat surprised to see people walk off to nearby trees or clearings off the road to find a nice place to squat to relieve themselves. They were everywhere. I suppose I should have figured on it, but I didn’t.

I spent most of the next four hours concentrating on someone ahead of me who I wanted to pass, no matter how long it took. As I said earlier, the “wall” was real, at least for me, and while I never considered leaving the course (again, I think it hit at mile 21), I figured I’d walk for the rest of the day. The crowds thickened in the last few miles, and I think their exhortation aided me and getting back to a jog, and then a solid run to finish.

When I finished, I walked back to my apartment in Arlington, where downstairs there was a little convenience store. I bought four Haagen Dazs ice cream bars and waited for the massage therapist I engaged for a one hour session, thinking it would go a long way toward recovery. It didn’t.

The next day, I went to work at the Pentagon, a Pentagon that didn’t have all these fancy escalators like it does now, just a lot of stairs. I was sore, I was a little cloudy, but I was otherwise ok. Until I tried walking DOWN a flight of stairs. Oh my goodness, but that was painful.

I didn’t run again until one semi-nice day in January of 1999, and at the end of that run, I felt a little stitch in my right hip that would grow into the eventual chronic—and then serious—pain of osteoarthritis that necessitated the first hip replacement (2006). I pretty much walked with a limp from 1999-2006. Gave up the other hip in 2015.

A few months after the marathon as I was slowly moving across country to my XO tour in San Diego, the woman with whom I’d maintained an inter-continental relationship for the previous year—the inspiration for the marathon run—revealed herself as somewhat less constant than one would have hoped. As I drove by the preparations for this year’s marathon, I thought of her, and there was a sharp, little pain in that memory, not unlike the sharp little pain I felt in my right hip in January of 1999. I am better off without them both.

Grieving Zuzu

This has been a very hard week, trying to get over our little Zuzu’s death. For so long, two big black labs were part of many decisions we made each day. Then it was one, but there was no less of an impact. Would we be home to let her out? Can we get someone to watch her while we go away for the weekend? Did I close the little saloon door we had to keep her in the kitchen? Did I get her medicine right?

All of those thoughts and memories are gone, replaced with a dull ache. I rise early, and for years, there has been a little contest with me and the dogs about whether it is time for them to eat or time for them to go back to sleep. Most of the time, we were in synch. If the sun were peaking up, I fed them. If it were before sun-up, I didn’t. But there was always the moment when I came into the kitchen to make my coffee, where I would make eye contact with first two, then one, dog, and we’d have that little stare off about whether it was late enough for me to get the bowl filled. I’ve come out into the kitchen each morning since Zuzu died and longed for that moment.

The trappings of dog ownership having become too much an emotional load to bear, we have removed much of the evidence of Baloo and Zuzu from their domain (the kitchen). There remains their couch, which is coming out to my office to replace the overly large leather monster that dominates it. That’s right, my dogs had a couch. Right there in the kitchen. We’d wash the slipcover regularly, and when proper company was over, it became seating for people, but most of the time it was a place where they chilled. Now we have two chairs and a little table there,

Zuzu and Baloo in 2020.