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An unusual morning

January 20, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
On Thursday morning my host dad mentioned to me as I was leaving that there was going to a marathon in Sarajevo this weekend. At first, I assumed he was using the word marathon to mean race--everyone in the running community knows there's no Sarajevo marathon--but he said it was 42 kilometers, which is, in fact, the correct distances. I asked other people about it at Tito Running Club that evening and they confirmed that yes, there was going to be a marathon on Sunday and that they had entered 3 relays teams in it and were going out to cheer. It was being organized by another running club on the far side of the city whose existance I had until that point been unaware of. Were they faster than my club? Was this where serious runners trained? Did they have a stud staple of experienced marathoners ready to dominate this thing? I looked that their website. The race was called the "Unusual Marathon" and it was the first time it had ever been held. The description warned/bragged that this was not your traditional marathon, that we would be battling snow, traffic, pedestrians, and possibly smog and we ran along pedestrian zones and sidewalks. The site seemed to imply that the race didn't actually have a permit and the city definitely wouldn't be closing any streets for us. The confirm we'd run the correct distance, we'd have to track our entire race on Strava and upload it at the end. If we entered the track heading for the finish and had yet to see 41,195m on our phone/watch, we'd be allowed to zigzag around to make up the deficit in distance, but we absolutely could not cross the line till then. Well, I figured, gotta do a long run anyway this weekend. Might as well have some other people around.

The next day (Friday), I went to their website and though the deadline had passed I emailed them to ask if I could still register, and they said yes, come by the athletic facilities between 4 and 8pm the next day to pay the 20 marks (about $12 -- most marathons cost $80-200) That's what I what I was doing yesterday when I ran what was supposed to be 5 but due to my relentless curiosity ended up being 9 miles to the far side of town and wisely taking the tram back. I got home last night feeling sore and then had trouble falling asleep so only ended up getting 5 1/2 hours. In short, there was nothing ideal about my preparation for this race, save for the fact that I'd been training consistently since late November which increasingly long runs in recent weeks. I had also slept a lot "the night before the night before" so maybe that helped. Still, as I was jogging down the hill from my apartment to the bus, I turned around to grab a second pair of shoes and immediately the hill just felt unbearable. How was I gonna get through 26.2 miles like this?

I arrived literally 5 minutes before the gun went off, having gotten there through a combination of bus, taxi (once I figured out the bus wasn't gonna arrive in time), and a short jog (cause I didn't want to pay for the taxi to enter the parking lot). This would prove the be the ultimate test of my years of intensity club training. Though I had carbo-loaded (i.e. pigged out on an entire box of pasta) the night before, I literally forgot to each breakfast before I left, and so, a mere 15 minute before my race, I stopped to buy a pack of gummy bears to eat during the run (in lieu of a gel or goo) and then almost as afterthought scarfed down a heavily processed packaged croissant with Nutella inside. I hadn't neglected to hydrate fortunately so I arrived at the started line watered and fed, my only concern being whether my legs were actually too sore to run the entire distance.

The gun went off and off we went, all 100 of us, in the snow. The race started on a snow-covered track, wound along a snow-covered trail and over a snow-covered footbridge, and out into the crosswalk of a 6 lane boulevard where, much to my surprise, the race organizers had actually enlisted a cop to hold the traffic. This would turn out to the theme of the entire race. Literally every intersection I remember crossing had a police officer stopping cars (or who was presumably there for that purpose) and a volunteer directing the runners. And given that the race was involved 10 miles of city streets, that's a lot of volunteers and officers. They also had signs up, even at the point where no street crossing was to take place, with an arrow telling you to turn, and this was immensely helpful. I'd studied the map considerably last night, and even detoured to the what I thought was the trickiest part of the course on last night's run (the runners go through a pedestrian tunnel under the 6-lane boulevard, though this was totally unclear from the maps), but still, when you're out there running and you haven't seen a sign or volunteer for while, you start to doubt yourself. Thus, I was very grateful for the amount of effort they put into directing us for reasons that will become apparent momentarily.

I started off the race in 6th. When you're near the front of a race, it's almost instinctive to count what place you're in, or if it's not for you, then its a habit you should cultivate. I tried to get a good look at the leaders but they were out of sight within blocks. By that time, however, I'd shuffled my way into 4th and then 3rd, cautiously of course. The last thing I wanted was to be the guy who goes out too fast and then dies hard. I knew my teammates for Tito would be cheering when I got to the first turn-around at the western edge of the city, and I didn't want to embarrass myself by finishing the race in place farther back than where they saw me.

Still, the pace I was going just felt right. Gentle, no hard breathing, but any slower would have felt like I was making a conscious effort to run slow. I had absolutely no idea how fast I was going and though I had Strava running on the phone in my pocket, I was afraid to check. One thing that this marathon didn't provide was mile markers. Or, errrr, kilometer makers.

As we approached Dariva, the riverside promenade below my house on the west end of town where everyone likes to run, I became aware that my constant efforts to go easy, or maybe my listening to This American Life on my headphones rather than focusing on the race, had led the 2 guys behind me to almost catch up. Just then, however, as we battled up a long gradual 2-mile uphill in the snow, I heard my teammates cheering and decide the time was nigh' to breakaway or at least showoff (I must admit it was some of both). I turned up the heat until I was breathing hard for the first time at cruised all the way up to the 1st turnaround, powered my teammates' cheers. To my dismay, I saw the two guys who'd started out too fast were now several minutes ahead as they passed me going down, yelling to me "Hajde!" (Hai-Day), which roughly translate as "go for it!" Well, I figured, they must not be in the relay. I was fairly sure the first hand-off in the three-person relay was back where my teammates had been cheering. No way now I have a shot at first. At the very least, I've got to defend my spot on the podium. I had indeed seen a literal podium next to the track before I left. What's more, I was still ticked at myself for having given up during 1.5ish mile Race of the Cure this fall as resigned myself to 4th place, missing 3rd by less than a second. Would my inner loser again triumph? I had to WANT this BADLY enough.

On the way back down Darvia I passed the handoff area again where my teammates were cheering. This was only the 2nd aid station I'd encountered on the course. The first had a table with cups of water but no one handing them to you so I had to grasp for one on the tables edge which I accomplished successfully through a spinning motion that looks very out of place in a marathon but might go over well with the Harlam Globe Trotters. This time there appeared to someone standing next to the table holding a water cup so I grabbed it out of her hand and sloshed it down. She let out a shriek, presumably because the cup was too full and I'd gotten water all over her in the process. I later went out to lunch with this woman, who turned out to be a member of my club, and learned that she was not, in fact, handing out water--she about to drink that cup and I had inadvertently stolen it!

The race headed back into town along along the same roads by which it had come, paralleling the river all the way to the track. From there it would overshoot the track for another 6 miles and then double back, ending where we had started. Thus, the whole thing was one long wiggly line, but one that you started in the middle of, so it didn't quite feel like a boring out-and-back. Besides, it was a pretty route, and if you got bored of the scenery, there was the snow and ice to contend with, which underlay about 1/4-1/3 of the total mileage. I wasn't dangerous to run on since the snow was well packed and the ice a bit slushy and dusted with a fresh coat of snow (it was literally snowing as we made our way out and back on Dariva), but it did all some technical challenge as you tried to figure out where to step so as to waste the least energy. The icy parts down the middle of the path would cause you to slip backwards just a little while the snowy parts on the edges would cause you to sink in just a little, so at times to there seemed to be no winning. Really, it was the puddles and slush that took the least out of your stride and consquently took the least toll on your hips. This was the part of my body that was sorest before the marathon, as well as my quads, though so far in the race neigther had acted up. Still, its always unnerving to feel before the race the way you usually feel halfway through and know that the reason for that is the very snow and ice you're about to contend with.

As I headed back into the city, I took out my headphones and focused on the race. By now I was trying harder than I was the first 8 miles, though I would later learn that I was still going more or less the same pace (6:42-6:56). That's how marathons are though. Or any race for that matter. During the second third of them you need to feel like you're picking up the pace just to stay even. I flew down Wilson Boulevard, popping some gummy bears in my mouth and relishing the one place where the wide-open street was free of both snow and cars. That proved to be my fastest mile. Shortly thereafter, as I crossed the river for the 7th time, I caught sight of something stranger. There up ahead I was four runners, wearing the same white sweat-wicking race shirts or uniforms as they guys who'd gone out super fast and dropped me. Who were these people? Were they warming up for the third and final leg of the relay. But as I closed on them, I realized that made no sense. It was still to early for another relay leg (we were only about halfway) and besides, they'd been "warming-up" for over a half a mile and presumably would have to run back. As I pulled up alongside them, finding my own path through a snowy parking lot, I saw there there there two women and two men, and that the men looked an awful lot like the 2 race leaders I'd seen at the turn-around. They cheered for me as I went by. My mind did not seem to be working at its usual speed, but gradually the thought occurred to me over the next half mile: these women were the second legs of their respective relay teams, and those two guys, who I'd originally thought were on track to win, were the first legs of those relays, already finished and now pacing their slower teammates! Oh my God, I thought to myself. That means... I'm ... in ... first? In a MARATHON?

The second half of the race was harder than the first, both due to fatigue and terrain, but the thought of winning buoyed me along. Here I was, for the first time in my life at the head of a marathon, in a city where people (in my club) now knew me and were cheering my name. I managed the pedestrian tunnel without incident, squealing down the stairs as I gripped the banniser, and swinging wide on my way out around a pole through a field of thick snow. I briefly made a wrong turn, or rather, failed to turn, at a place where the road split, but the volunteers who I guess I'd initially not seen redirected me back on course before I'd wasted more than few strides. There was no one else in sight. I crossed the boulevard again, glided past the snow-covered airport runway where a plane was taking off into the mist and where I couldn't help but think about the hundreds of civilians who'd been gunned down trying to escape across it during the siege, and then flew through suburb of Ilidja into the entrance of the carriage road that leads the source of the Bosna River (from whence Bosnia derives its name). This proved to be by far the most unpleasant part of the journey. The carriage road is lined with tall neatly plant rows of trees and I probably very pretty if you're being pulled by a horse. In contrast, I was fighting with the worse snow-and-ice conditions yet, listening to a rather depressing podcast, and could see my fate FOR THE NEXT 2000 meters! That's something you never want to see. It's like the Salesianum death march, replacing the uphillness with snow as your nemesis and extending your view so far ahead that your view is only interrupted by the resolution of your eyesight or the curvature of the earth and the tree your see is too damn small to tell which. I eventually gave up on listening and focused on singing to myself "You Can't Hurry Love" which has a good Motown 50s vibe, matched my footsteps, and felt lyrically appropriate to my predicament. The snow became easier, somehow, and all of a sudden I was going uphill. This was the one the part of the course I'd never been and I'd misread the map somehow, leading me to think it was a steep mountain I was about to go up rather than a gentle ascent. Better yet, as I passed the mountain spring and pools at river's source, the road became mercifully clear of snow and I was flying again (Strava would later show I'd dropped close to a minute).

With delight I reached the church at the end of the carriage road where two volunteers where checking off bibs, I thought about asking them to confirm that I was in first, but by now that was a silly question since no one had passed me coming back the other ways, save for some tourists on horseback. I measured the time it took to reach the next person heading outbound and saw it was about a minute, meaning they were two minutes behind me. Well, I thought, that's a good lead I have, but not unshakeable. I still have about 40 minutes to go. Besides, even if the guy behind me was on a relay team, I wanted to have the glory of entering the track first!

The carriage road was more bearable this time, and I flashed a thumbs up or said "Bravo!" to everyone whom I passed. I got back out into town and then headed in on the main boulevard, arriving at long last at the turn for the track. I knew there was no one to challenge me, but all the same, I wanted a finish I could take pride in--not a kick exactly, since I wanted to be able to return to training in the next day or two, but a tall swift stride. As I entered the track for one final lap, being careful to wipe out as I turned, I heard over the loudspeaker "Matthew Simonson!!!" and then something indecipherable in Bosnian. A big cheer rose from the crowd as I pounded down the back stretch and into the final curve. No need to hold back now. As I came onto the home straightaway the inflatable arch over finish line burst into view and I saw they had stretched a tape across it! The level of organization of this supposidly "unsual" untraditional seat-of-your-pants sort of marathon never ceased to amaze me. I get to break a taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape! And with that, I did.

It was my slowest marathon ever.

It was the first marathon I've ever won.

And it felt pretty darn good!