The 1986 Boston
Marathon
 I sat in the back seat of a yellow school bus, watching Boston
recede behind me on the grey windy morning of April 21,1986.
The tires hummed on the Massachusetts turnpike and a collage
of images rolled away into the distance, the most striking
being the outline of the John Hancock and Prudential insurance
buildings. The bus was filled with lean chattering runners,
part of a long convoy of yellow buses threading out of Boston
that morning for Hopkinton, twenty-six miles to the southwest.
The stage was set for the 90th running of the Boston Marathon
and it was also set for a changing of the guard.
John Hancock had taken over the role that the Prudential had
played for the previous twenty years at Boston - that of chief
race sponsor and site of the famous Boston finishing line. The
two companies are neighbors on Boylston Street in the Back Bay
area of Boston, not far from the shore of the Charles River.
Hancock was about to do what the Prudential had done in
another time - usher in a new chapter of Boston Marathon
history.
Amby Burfoot ran to the Prudential Centre in 1968, the day he
ended America's long Boston drought and won the race before
half-delirious crowds. The Prudential beckoned Bill Rodgers,
not once but four times to the laurel wreath waiting in its
shadow. And the same frosty landmark, on a hot afternoon in
1977, pulled Jerome Drayton home, a victor so parched for
water, and so furious at race organizers because of it, that
he could scarcely savor his triumph. The Prudential, in 1980,
was also the destination of Rosie Ruiz, the impostor who stole
the cheers of victory that belonged to Jacqueline Gareau.
Visible from
Heartbreak
First visible
as Boston marathoners top Heartbreak Hill at twenty-one miles,
the Prudential figures richly in the tradition of a race known
worldwide for its love of tradition. It is natural to resist
the abandonment of tradition and the Prudential could not
bring itself to let go of Boston's tradition as an amateur
race. But the point came when even the Boston Athletic
Association could no longer resist the pressure for prize
money marathoning. So tradition died and the Prudential
withdrew. Hancock, the company with the newer and taller
office tower, stepped in, hurling Boston overnight into the
modern marathon world with a ten-year sponsorship deal for $10
million - enough to buy a lot of laurel wreaths.
The old finish
line at Boston was a strip of paint across Ring Road, a
service lane paralleling Boylston in front of Hynes Auditorium
and the Prudential Centre. It had become something of a shrine
over the years, so many were the marathoners who had run
across it or posed by it for commemorative snapshots.
I had gone over
on Saturday to look at it and was surprised by what I found.
Faded and scarred after a year of neglect, it was scarcely
visible amid parked cars, construction equipment and piles of
building materials hauled in for a major construction project.
Ring Road was closed and all but gone, gouged away by earth
removers. And Hynes Auditorium, marathon headquarters for many
years, looked as though it had been bombed.
I thought of
Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley sprinting shoulder to
shoulder down Ring Road in 1982 at the conclusion of the
fastest Boston Marathon in history, Salazar snatching victory
2:08:51 to 2:08:53. And I thought of the cheers that shook
Back Bay the day Joan Benoit crossed that same line in 1983,
arms flung high, the clock reading a fantastic new women's
world record of 2:22:43. Now there was only the wind, whipping
bits of garbage about, and the drift of passersby down
Boylston in the direction of the new finish line next to the
Boston Public Library at Copley Square.
Near the
Lenox
In truth, the
new finish line was closer to where the Boston Marathon had
ended for decades - next to the Lenox Hotel on Exeter Street -
than it had been at the Prudential Centre. But it didn't seem
that way to me. The view of history is always obscured by the
part we've witnessed personally.
Copley Square,
bounded by the library, the Hancock building and the Westin
Hotel, was the centre of activity for the 1986 Boston
Marathon. Colorful tents and bleachers had been put up and a
big billboard announced Boston is Back. Runners entering the
Westin, the new race headquarters, paused to gawk upward at
two giant Sock Racers fixed to the outside of the hotel, an
eye-catching Nike shoe promotion.
On the bus to
Hopkinton, I flipped through the Marathon Edition of the
Boston Globe, handed out free as we boarded. It was packed
with race reports and features, including the names of all
runners in the field of nearly 5,000. I thought of what
Canadian newspapers could do for their hometown marathons if
sports editors put their minds to it. But running a marathon
rather than reading about one was a more immediate concern. My
attention strayed to the landscape beyond the bus window. I
wondered as we sped past the fields and houses, and leafless
April trees, how I would ever be able to run back to Boston.
Twenty-six miles can seem longer in a bus than it does on
foot.
Also on
my mind was the fact that I was here by the grace of the
Boston Athletic Association. I had not earned the number I was
wearing on my chest in the same way other runners on the bus
had done - by running a qualifying marathon, within the past
twelve months, of two hours and fifty minutes or
faster. For males under forty that was the requirement gaining
admittance to this the most ruthless "open" marathon in the
world. My best time was hardly within an hour of the standard.
Appealling to
the BAA
So last fall I wrote a letter
to the BAA, enclosing a copy of a book I had written,
Boston: The Canadian Story. I
explained that I had spent more than a year researching and
writing it, that the work had immersed me in the storied
history of Boston, and that I felt almost a part of the race
as a result. I wasn't subtle. Just once, I pleaded, could I
run the Boston Marathon?
A man named Harold Rathburn
wrote back a kind and generous letter. "Although we have
qualifying standards," he informed me, "it is also an
invitational race. And as a member of the Board of Governors
it will be my pleasure to invite you to participate as a
numbered runner." There are events in my life that have meant
more but the list is not long. Rathburn was as good as his
word. My number - 1409 - was waiting when I arrived in Boston.
As the bus turned into
Hopkinton, with its tall church spires and prim New England
homes, I felt apprehensive. In a classic tale of marathon woe,
I had pulled a groin muscle eight days before the race. It was
healing well but would it stand a marathon? I had nightmare
visions of being forced to quit the only Boston Marathon I
would have the chance to run.
Rain was spitting as we arrived
at the Hopkinton Junior High School and disembarked. The name
of the town jumped at me from a school wall, as it had been
jumping at me from signposts all the way from Boston. It
reminded me of an error in my book, one that had slipped
through despite countless proofreadings. No one had pointed it
out to me for almost a year after the book was published but,
incredibly, I had mispelled Hopkinton. It came out Hopkington
- with a g. I tried to put it out of my mind.
Throwaway
Clothes
So many runners had crowded
into the school that there was almost no room to move. I found
a narrow strip of floor in the gym and tried to relax, making
another stab at reading the Boston Globe and then attempting
to sleep. Finally, I gave up and went outside. The rain had
stopped and lines had formed at a bank of portable toilets in
the parking lot.
A handful of runners wandered
about the playing field adjacent the school. I put my running
bag on a Boston-bound bus and donned some throwaway clothing I
had brought to keep warm during the final wait for the gun.
Then I set off for the starting area, half a mile away at the
head of the main street in Hopkinton. As I walked down Hayden
Row, the street where the marathon started in the days before
the running boom churned up unmanageable numbers and it became
hazardous for the runners to make the sharp right turn onto
the main street, it occurred to me that never before had I
been dressed so ridiculously in public.
I was wearing a large green
garbage bag. My head poked up from a hole in the top of it and
my arms stuck out through slits in the side. There was a rip
the size of a bowling ball in the sleeve of my sweater. And my
legs were clad in what probably was the ugliest underwear ever
put on the market by Stanfield's Ltd. Topping the ensemble was
a jaunty blue Mercedes Benz running hat, included in the
official BAA running kit. As a group of runners walked past I
heard one mutter, "Boy is that guy in trouble."
The Boston Marathon begins at
the crest of a mile-long hill on Route 135. An hour and a half
before the race, state troopers had cordoned off a section of
the starting area for the benefit of television interviewers.
The focus of attention was Steve Jones, the British marathoner
who once held the world record and missed reclaiming it by a
single second last October in Chicago. Jones had hoped to run
Boston but was sidelined by injuries. Elite runners who would
compete for the hefty pot of $250,000 prize money had not yet
made their appearance.
First
Congregational Church
A few yards behind, on the lawn
of the First Congregational Church, a crowd had gathered for a
10:30 a.m. Runners' Service. The master of ceremonies was a
marathoner named Bob Brandon and music provided by a
gospel-belting singer named Lisa (Mullen) Itse. The text for
the service Hebrews 12:1, was, "Let us run with endurance the
race that is set before us." It was a cheerful, if windy,
service and clearly appreciated by the many runners who filled
the church lawn, their heads bowed in prayer.
As the clock edged closer to
noon, and the tension rose, I spotted several elite runners
warming up in a parking lot behind the church. Peter Butler
was there, prancing about like a nervous racehorse, although
his name would be missing later when the finishers were
counted back in Boston. Butler was among the fastest runners
entered with a marathon best of 2:10: 56, a time he ran last
December in winning the Sacramento Marathon. The second
fastest Canadian time ever, it was a mere 47 seconds short of
Jerome Drayton's durable national record of 2:10:08.
Also warming up was Rob de
Castella, a man as powerful in the flesh as he looks in
photographs. Wearing blue and white warm-ups, he was blasting
back and forth across the parking lot like a sprinter, a
tip-off to the way he would attack the Boston course that day
- breaking Salazar's course record with a blazing 2:07:51.
Then a door flew open at the
side of the church and out filed the full parade of elite
runners. I stood there with Chris Jermyn, a 2:56 marathoner
and co-worker from The Canadian Press in Ottawa, and watched
them head through the trees to the starting line.
The Aura of
the Elite
World class athletes have an
aura about them, a presence that sets them apart. Ingrid
Kristiansen of Norway strode by, feet clad in those strange
Sock Racer shoes. A couple of days earlier I almost bumped
into her as she jogged through Copley Square. She was relaxed
and smiling then, waving at everyone who called her name. Now
she was the image of concentration. She hoped to become the
first woman to break 2:20 but would settle instead for mere
victory in 2:24:55.
As the race announcer called
down the final minutes to noon I mercifully got rid of the
last of my warm-up costume and made my way through the mass of
humanity to the area corresponding with my race number. I was
dismayed to find myself shoulder to shoulder with runners who
would fly through the course in the 2:30s. The BAA had not
taken leg speed into account when it issued my number. I
belonged at the back of the pack.
I always feel very much alone
in those final moments before a marathon, even with thousands
crowded around me. It is still a daring thing to do, to run
twenty-six miles. Society has grown used to the image of the
marathoner in these aerobic times but it has not got used to
the marathon. Despite the impression created by mass marathon
starts, only a tiny fraction of the population has ever tried
to run such a distance. When I run a marathon I ask my body to
do more than at any other time and I know it can always
refuse. It has happened before.
A marathon can seem more
important than anything but afterward it is often a blur, a
jumble of fragmented memories. For me, nervousness seems to
wipe out most recollections of the early miles, concentration
fills up the middle of the race, and the last miles are
absorbed by what George Sheehan calls a rising tide of pain. I
sometimes learn more from a newspaper the next day than I
grasp while running the race, everything but why a marathon is
worth running in the first place.
Johnny
Kelley
At the boom of the starting gun
a human river spilled out of Hopkinton. I caught a glimpse of
Johnny Kelley, the grand old man of the Boston Marathon,
winner of the race in 1935 and 1945, now 78 and running the
race for the 55th time. Crowds applauded. Bands played. And we
were on our way. My focus narrowed quickly to the flipping of
digits on my watch and the passage of mile markers. The towns
went by one by one. At Natick, the wind whipped greyly across
a roadside lake, presumably the same lake Tarzan Brown leaped
into while leading the race in the 1940s. Then came the
spine-tingling cheers of the women of Wellesley College, their
welcome enough to make the rest of the race seem ordinary.
At the New York City Marathon
last fall I thought the New York spectators were the equal of
those in Boston. I was wrong. New York crowds are as noisy but
there is an extra dimension at Boston, a quality that can only
be explained by ninety years of tradition. Boston cheers the
marathon along with the runners. The place echoes with the
memory of great deeds and great names like Longboat, DeMar,
Miles, Pawson and Cote.
The rain returned somewhere
past the half way point, a light spatter increasing to a
steady downpour. The temperature dropped and the rain took on
a light sting. As my running shoes slapped through ever larger
puddles I grew concerned. The groin pull that had worried me
for a week caused no problems but the hills found a tense
hamstring muscle and tugged it with each stride. Visions of
being forced to quit flared anew.
The hills at Boston are
legendary, despite a net drop of almost five hundred feet in
elevation over the course. Judged rightly, Boston can reward a
runner with the race of a lifetime. But it can also be deadly,
the easy downslope of the first fifteen miles killing the
muscles quietly, delivering the runner empty into the Newton
Hills. There are four main hills, ending with Heartbreak Hill
at twenty-one miles. None is extreme - even Heartbreak rises
only ninety feet - but taken together, and at the point they
come in the race, they can pounce on the unsuspecting. More
Boston marathons have been decided in the Newton Hills than at
any other point along the course.
'All Downhill
from Here'
Crowds cheer runners over the
crest of Heartbreak with the cry, "It's all downhill from
here." The words are well meant but not especially accurate.
Although no serious grades remain, the rest of the race is not
all downhill or even flat.
The big barrier always for me
is to break four hours and I knew I had my work cut out of me.
Coming through the hills I had begun to fall off pace and was
now confronted with the task of picking up speed to reach my
goal. Thankfully, I could not spot the Hancock and Prudential
buildings in the rainy distance to remind me how far I had to
go.
What gets runners through those
final miles remains a mystery to me. The pain can be so
relentless and cumulative. Spectators help but they cannot
run. I found myself growing less and less aware of them as I
went along. Even on Beacon Street, where they pressed so
closely they shouted into our ears, I scarcely heard the roar.
The bear was truly on my back.
Yet my legs did not give out.
With a mile to go I caught sight of Gloria Norgang and Margot
Arseneau, two friends from Ottawa waiting in the crowd on
Commonwealth Avenue. Their cameras clicked as they cheered me
past. I wanted to thank them for waiting so long in the rain
but it was all I could do to nod and keep moving. Half a mile
later I turned right onto Hereford Street, flowing in grim
file up the final hill, then sharp left onto glistening
Boylston Street, still lined with screaming throngs. And
there, looming through the gloom, was the sweetest sight on
earth - the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
Among the
Bandits
I crossed it in 3:58:32, a
straggler among the numbered runners but still accompanied by
hundreds of bandits. They deserved a better name, I thought.
At least here. The lure of Boston is not confined to the fleet
of foot. I knew why they were there, and that the struggle we
had shared was the same.
I finished too late for a
marathon medal. The last were handed out at three hours and
fifty minutes. I will not receive a race certificate nor will
my name be recorded in the official results (although the
Boston Herald was good enough to publish it the next day). But
it doesn't matter. What matters is that I ran those twenty-six
sacred miles.
I shuffled slowly through the
finishing chute, the wind grabbing at a mylar blanket around
my shoulders, and made my way across Copley Square and down
the street toward my hotel. A woman from Dallas fell in beside
me, her hair matted with rain and sweat, her lips blue with
cold. She walked on bare and blistered feet. I had begun to
mumble words of sympathy when I felt her hand on my arm.
"It's okay," she said.
Her eyes shone and she flashed
a smile.
"I've just run the Boston
Marathon. And so have you."
Note:
This article
was originally published in Athletics Magazine, Toronto, July,
1986. |
