My best days as a marathoner were in the past, I realized that. My PR (personal record) had taken place more than five years earlier, in the 1992 San Antonio Marathon where I had a time of 2 hours, 42 minutes, 48 seconds, and came in 15th overall. I was proud of having done so well, but I was under no illusions that I was any great runner. The best in the world were light-years beyond me, capable of going under 2:07; plenty of women could beat me, too. I must emphasize this in order to avoid sounding full of myself. If I was OK and pretty good, I was still no superstar in racing flats. I did the best I could with what God gave me. I will now contradict myself by saying I did not train very hard even at my “peak.” Some of my racing buddies did interval workouts, cross-training and high mileage. They scoffed at my philosophy, which could be summarized by the phrase “What’s the least I can do and still be ready on race day?”
There had been a time—roughly 1989 to 1994—when just about every marathon I ran was below 2:50. But age was clearly having its effect. Lingering injuries kept me out of some races, and I was slowing down. Of my six most recent marathons (San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Dallas and Houston), only one had been under that 2:50 mark. As I drove my car north on Interstate 35 to Fort Worth on February 27, 1998, I was not entirely confident of my abilities in the next day’s Cowtown Marathon. This was the 28th time I would go 26.2 miles, and if I had learned anything it was that you just never knew. When you had reason to expect a fine outing, it could go bad—or vice versa. As my friend Jodi Zipp once said, "The marathon is a bear, and it can bite you."
Prior to this race, I happened to read in Sports Illustrated about an over-the-counter cold medication that was favored by many pro hockey players. It supposedly aided athletic performance by causing the heart to pump more blood. Never before had I even thought of trying such a thing. Painful as it is to admit, I spent about $2.50 on a package of the stuff. About half an hour before race time, I gulped two of the pills with some water.
The starting gun sounded, and we were off. As usual, some people got caught up in the excitement and ran like greyhounds at the start. I was never one to do this since the marathon is not a sprint. If I may say, one of the things I have done best in my racing career is to practice sensible pacing. It mattered not where you were at mile 5, 10, 15 and so on. There is an old nautical term I liked to apply: “Steady as she goes.” In other words, I ran my own race and did all I could to get to the finish line as soon as possible. Experience had proven the wisdom of holding something in reserve for the late miles.
We wound through downtown Fort Worth, passing the campus of Texas Christian University and assorted neighborhoods. I knew by the halfway mark that I was running well, and I had the benefit of seeing the faster runners coming back toward me on some long doglegs. I remember counting them off and realizing I was in 10th place. If I could hold on, it would equal my highest finish (San Antonio, 1995). But as the miles went by, I passed other runners. In at least one case, a man had stopped with cramps in his legs. Oh, the agony of the final miles of a marathon! Only a person who has done it can understand that exquisite pain. Up the board I went—9th place, 8th, 7th, 6th and then 5th. That last step occurred in about the 23rd mile.
The final three miles were beautiful, glorious, fabulous. Unlike in most marathons, I scarcely slowed down there. Yes, I wondered whether those two cold-medicine pills were having some effect. At that point, I did not care. But my feelings of joy and satisfaction were momentarily derailed near the end of the race. Allow me to explain. The organizers of the Cowtown Marathon had recently succumbed to the temptation of expanding their race by means of two- and five-person marathons. I never liked this idea because, as a hard-core marathoner, I felt like if somebody was not going the full 26.2 miles, he or she ought not be in that race. Go run a 5K or a 10K, of which I had done more than 150 each. The marathon was special, in my view, and should not be watered down.
The 26-mile mark was at the top of a hill. The runners turned right and beheld the finish line two-tenths of a mile away. The historic Fort Worth Stockyards awaited us. However, I heard footsteps. Behind me came a runner who had not gone the full distance. To his credit, he called out to me somewhat sheepishly, “half-marathoner.” He was acknowledging that we were not in competition since we had not run the same race. Some of the spectators did not know this and started yelling about what seemed like a fairly dramatic turn of events. Of course, it was nothing of the sort. In fact, I intentionally slowed down a bit to let him go ahead. I was incensed. I was not about to try and outrun a guy who had gone half as far as I had.
I finished in 2:47:01, came in 5th overall and 1st in the men’s masters age group (40 and over). For the latter, I received a big trophy with a Longhorn cow on top. It, with many others, now gathers dust in a storage bin in Del Valle, Texas.
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