The Huffies: 2012

Good Evening From the Huffmans!

It has been entirely too long since my last post. Times have been busy with young Charlotte growing quickly, Janet being back at work and with the seemingly endless number of things to look after around the house.

Charlotte is growing and changing at an exponential rate. Some changes are fantastic, others not so much. Over the last couple of weeks, Charlotte has started standing up and walking (assisted), climbing stairs, and generally acting like a little monkey.

The Canada Day long weekend marked Charlotte's first time sleeping away from us for an evening. Yup, brave Nan & Dada Huffman agreed to take the Peanut for the night while mom and dad went out to Orleans for a party to celebrate the wedding of longtime friend Adrienne and her new husband Chris. It was a fun night for all and Charlotte behaved spectacularly for her grandparents!

Charlotte has been doing quite a bit of swimming/splashing in the backyard pool lately and generally seems to like it. She has quite a few teeth and enjoys many different foods!

For those who have not yet heard, my mother hosted a 'gender reveal' dinner in early June where we found out that we will be having a little boy in the month of October! Yup, a little brother for young Charlotte to (hopefully) look after and to whom she can show the ways of the world. We are very excited and looking forward to his arrival, name TBD! (We are also a little frightened of having two little monkeys running around the house!)

Hope all is well with everyone and that you are enjoying this rapidly-moving summer!

Love,

Janet, Wes and Charlotte

Janet enjoying one of the many courses at her birthday dinner at Atelier!

The family out enjoying the Ottawa Marathon in late May.

Charlotte working on her standing at Nan & Dada's

Charlotte organizing Nan's drawers.

Charlotte and Dad at the 'Gender Reveal' event. Charlotte chose pink (wrong!)

Cousin Tai feeding Charlotte (more!) strawberry shortcake on Father's Day!

“...you should adopt the attitude that THIS IS NOT A RACE. It is an experience.”

These final tidbits of wisdom, e-mailed to participants the day before Monday’s Boston Marathon, proved to be prescient for all and useful for a few as the 116th running of Boston (my first) unfolded. Unfortunately, the “experience” that the organizers were making reference to was of the genus horribilis as Mother Nature dished up one of the hottest Bostons on record with temperatures hitting 87 fahrenheit in Boston, and higher values for some of the earlier portions of the course inland.

Athletes’ Village and Pre-Race:

Boston is a logistical undertaking of biblical proportions and the folks at the Boston Athletic Association have things ironed out with impressive military precision. For runners, it is a very long day that begins well before you run your first step. I had set my alarm for 4:45 a.m. to give me enough time to get up and get sorted before heading down to Boston Common to load onto one of the many, many school buses for the ride out to Hopkinton at 6:00 a.m. Unlike most friendly neighbourhood races, Boston has a 10:00 a.m. start time (previously noon, until the change to its current start time in 2007). All 10 rooms in the B&B we were staying in had guests who were there either to run or to support someone running the race. One of the fellows at the B&B, Tanner, was getting a ride down to Boston Common in the morning from his dad and they were good enough to let me hop in with them, negating the need to negotiate Boston’s public transportation early in the morning. Overall, this early part of the morning was smooth and uneventful. The 40+KM ride West to the little town of Hopkinton felt like a long drive but passed quickly enough as Tanner and I chatted about running, work, life etc.

The Athletes Village is the staging area where runners relax, stretch and generally hang out whilst waiting to be called to head down to the start line on Main St. in Hopkinton. It is basically like a small refugee camp but with more Nike shorts, port-a-potties and free bagels. Tanner and I arrived on the early end of things and had no trouble finding some shade and high quality cardboard boxes to stretch out on under one of the big white event tents. The place filled up quickly with newly arriving runners and the two hours we had to wait flew by easily chatting with Tanner and a few other runners, listening to some tunes, reading a bit of USA Today and taking frequent trips to the port-a-potties. I actually felt a bit chilly in the shade, even with the extra t-shirt on that I’d brought down to Hopkinton, I even allowed myself to become a touch delusional, thinking that maybe the weathermen had gotten it wrong and that perhaps today would be just a crisp, lovely Spring day in Massachusetts (I was wrong).

To minimize start line congestion and get everyone off and running as smoothly as possible, the marathon goes off in 3 waves, one at 10:00 a.m., one at 10:20 and the final one at 10:40. Tanner and I were both in Wave 1 and the call to head down to the start came not long after 9a.m. The walk down to the start corrals is about 3/4 of a mile from the Athletes’ Village, down a quiet residential street in Hopkinton. It was on this walk that I started to realize exactly how hot and direct the sun was and how challenging a day it might be.

The Run

After mentally bouncing around different goal times in my mind over the months and weeks leading up to the run I finally settled on what I believed was the best approach considering the weather, my fitness, and the fact that I was still getting over a lingering cold: run easily and relaxed to the top of Heartbreak Hill at approximately mile 21, then finish strong going into Boston; screw the finish time, screw the splits. The first few miles were fairly pleasant and easy going, mostly downhill, with a few minor climbs. The scenery in the early miles is decidedly rural with few spectators and not a whole lot for runners to look at, other than the thousands of heads bobbing up and down as you look down the road. The early going was warm but my gentle pace kept things feeling pretty pleasant. I went through 5k in 23:43 and 10k in 47:42 and felt good about my approach to the race. It was around the 10K mark that I already started to see a few people pulling over to the sides of the road and walking. Things were getting warm, fast, and as the sun climbed ever higher in the sky the shadows emanating from the right side of the road retreated to the margins. I drank pretty well a full cup of gatorade at every refreshment station (sometimes part of a second cup) and took at least one cup of water to douse myself, wet my hat and try to cool off as much as possible. I went through 15K in 1:12:25 and was still moving well and enjoying the race. Though there were tons of other runners around throughout my entire race, I never really “fell in” with any one particular person or group and I kept mostly to myself and focused on the pace. Somewhere around 20K, things started feeling much hotter and more laborious and I continued to suck back gatorade and some water. It is a fine balancing act trying to stay properly hydrated on a hot day but not overdoing it to the point where one’s stomach is sloshing or where gastrointestinal issues are cropping up!

I split the half in about 1:43 but despite my very relaxed first half, the heat of the day was getting to me and I knew it would be a pretty dirty finish. I used every possible avenue to try to mitigate the effects of the unseasonably warm weather: I stuck wet sponges inside my top under my armpits, I took baggies of ice and dumped them down the front and back of my top, I put ice cubes under my cap, I took cold wet paper towels that supportive spectators were offering and put them on the back of my neck, I ran through little ‘spray tunnels’ the organizers had set up (essentially, little car washes for the runners). All of these measures provided some psychological relief but didn’t really seem to help my running!

The Newton Hills are a series of four hills starting at approximately mile 16 and peaking with Heartbreak Hill at mile 21. Despite coaxing myself up all the hills in the most gentle manner possible, I was fried by the time I got to the top of Heartbreak but relieved to be done with the worst of the hills. By now, my motivation to eke out any kind of decent time had been sucked out of me by the effort of running in the heat, all I cared about was getting the finisher’s medal and getting to the finish line as efficiently as possible.

By this time there were loads of runners who looked utterly defeated and were just walking as best they could towards the finish line. I saw numerous people on the sides of the road trying to stretch out cramped, failing muscles, some were in worse shape and were being attended to medical personnel or well-meaning spectators. In all, over 2,000 runners would get some sort of medical assistance for dehydration, heat stroke, heat exhaustion or other medical challenges.

I don’t have a lot of specific memories of my run down Heartbreak, through the city of Brookline and into Boston, other than wanting badly to see my wife and daughter at the 40km mark and wanting to get to the finish. I did not allow myself to start taking walk breaks as for me, once one starts with the walking it is difficult to resume running for any period of time and you are essentially prolonging the horror, albeit with a slightly lower level of pain!

Miles 21 through 24 seemed like they went on forever. My pace continued to slow and the legs seemed to become less and less responsive. As we say in the business, it sucked. I finally saw my wife and daughter shortly after the 40k mark. They had walked out from our B&B, just about 500 metres away from the race course. As is usually the case in races, I spotted my wife before she spotted me! In all fairness, there were a lot of runners going by and we all had the same indistinguishable, crappy, exhausted gait by that point. I stopped for a couple of quick kisses and a photo, then it was time to wrap up the race.

I would like to say I cranked it in from 24 miles but I had absolutely no kick. Crowds line both sides of the course along this stretch and are very enthusiastic. I recall a very painful little dip via a tunnel under a couple of roadways, then a right on Hereford street for a short stretch. FINALLY, I made a left onto Boylston St. and could see the finish line a looooong way down. Crowds here on Boylston run 3-4 deep all the way to the finish. I just tried to keep it straight running down Boylston and to savour a small amount of enjoyment that I was finishing Boston. Mostly though, I was happy that the pain in my legs would only endure another couple of minutes.

Post Script

I crossed the line with a time of 3:39:23. Good enough for 4,477th place overall! It felt amazing to stop running. Then, while walking through the massive finish area, I hear people calling “Wes, Wes, Wes!!!” Recognizing the voices but having difficulty rationalizing their place in Boston, I turned to see my parents frantically waving away behind the barricades. On their way back up from Florida they had covertly booked a hotel in Newton and come out to see me finish Boston!!! I ran over and we had a hug and some “fancy meetin’ you here!” conversation and then proceeded to make my way through the finish area to the family meeting area, where we were reunited.

After some misdirection due to street/sidewalk closures, we finally escaped downtown Boston via the subway. Though I felt reasonably good after the race riding the ‘T’, the moment I stepped out of the air conditioned train near our B&B the sun and heat of the day totally KO’d me, my body had had enough for the day. I limped back to the B&B, barely mumbled a ‘hello’ to my lovely wife and stumbled into the shower. As I sat down cross-legged in the stand-up shower, waves of nausea passed over me until I vomited up my Gatorade recovery beverage, a bottle of water and a fruit cup of mandarin orange slices I had at the finish line (nice job on the recovery beverage, Gatorade). At this point, I felt worlds better, I finished my shower, took two tylenol and crashed on my bed for a nap!

On The Crowds

I haven’t run in that many really large races but I can’t imagine a city getting up more for a race than the people do in the towns along the Boston Marathon route. I wish I could send a big thank you card to everyone in Massachusetts for the way they get behind this race. People come out in huge numbers to watch the event and support the runners in not only emotional but also very practical ways. Aside from the plentiful official refreshment stations put out by race organizers, there are literally thousands of spectators offering things to runners: cups of water, cups of Gatorade, orange slices, bananas, licorice, jelly beans, popsicles, freezies, ice cubes, vaseline, moistened paper towels, sponges, beer, chicken on a stick and so many high-fives your hands would sting if you obliged every young kid holding out their hand. Many of the residents with properties bordering the race route brought their sprinklers down to the end of their lawns and pointed them on to the racecourse for the runners, some climbed A-frame ladders and used their hose nozzles to shoot a fine mist out over the course, all of these efforts were so very welcome in the rather extreme temperatures of the day.

Aside from all the help, many people are just out for a wacky party day, which can be very entertaining at times. I saw a guy dressed as Santa, another in a full Spiderman costume and a third dressed as Gumby. Lots of people are out drinking beer at the side of the course and cheering in a very uninhibited manner!

A big part of the reason why I don’t have as many specific memories about my run and the actual course is that I just spent so much time soaking in the day and the crowds. It is an assault on the senses that, unless you’ve ridden in the Tour de France, I don’t think you can ever be prepared for.

Soooooo...that’s it. A bit long, yes; I guess when you wait 10 years for a race you have lots to say about it afterwards!

Thanks for reading! I look forward to the day when I can again blog about a really positive race result.

W.H.

(2012 Boston Marathon Survivor).