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The Phoenix Runners
215 Av 53e
Lachine, QC
H8T 2Z3
or DVD you would like reviewed? Mail to:
The Phoenix Runners
215 Av 53e
Lachine, QC
H8T 2Z3
Why I Run - Why I Run - In The Beginning
Club: Hill Runners of Hunterdon, Hunterdon, N.J., U.S.A.
Following high school, where I had been very active in numerous team and individual sports, I developed into a spectator instead of a participant. Lack of regular exercise, getting married to an excellent cook, and smoking 28 cigarettes a day (not 25, not 30) for fifteen years, I had become a non-athlete, a slob, by the time I was 33. A cancer scare in the family that ultimately turned out to be benign had an enormous effect on me. I quit smoking “cold turkey” on Feb. 28th 1982. For some unknown reason, three months later I decided to take up running. Probably it was to prevent any more weight gain; I had already gone from 132 lbs to 169 lbs since high school.
The first night was pathetic. I didn’t quite make two blocks. I was gasping, retching, coughing, etc. The second night I made the two blocks. A local track was half a mile from the house. I started driving (!) to the track so that I could start to more accurately measure my progress. Somewhere around the end of the first month I completed a mile. I was in ecstasy and improvement was dramatic over the next few months. My mental state was benefiting as much as my body, I think.
A good friend who was an experienced runner (at this point I had discovered the difference between a jogger and a runner - a jogger is someone slower than you, and a runner is faster) convinced me to try a 20 km (12.4 mile) race that September. I think it wouldn’t have been quite so bad if the weather hadn’t been 90 degrees Fahrenheit with oppressive humidity. The last words the starter said before firing the gun were “it is officially dangerous to run today - go easy”. Before the end of that race I had reached a new level of patheticness. I vomited (hell-I threw up) @ the 19km mark and again at the finish. I was miserable, but I had finished.
Five months later this “friend” somehow convinced me to run a marathon - the National Capital in Ottawa, Canada. I started to read as much as I could about this ultimate of events, desperately trying to cram what should be years of gradual preparation into a few months of intensive training. My friend again ran with me, and as is the case in most marathons, the first 30 kilometers were relatively easy.
Many years later, I realize just how sadistic the organizers of that race had been. At 20 miles, the course was at the bottom of Parliament Hill. At around 20 miles, the glycogen, or fuel, for most runners, is depleted, and any hill looks like Mt. Everest. I hit the infamous, but very real, “wall” that afflicts all but the most elite marathoners. I had covered the first 20 miles in 2 1/2 hours. It took another 2 hours plus to manipulate the last 6.2 miles. I lost three toenails; I had two broken bones in my feet; I had hypothermia; and four times I nearly fell into the canal that straddles the last 10kms. Medics in emergency vehicles and bicycles would periodically question whether I was all right and if I wanted a lift. Well, I was hardly all right, but no way was I going to quit, because I desperately wanted to be able to say I had finished a marathon, and I knew I would never, ever, do this again. I finished in 4 hours and 32 minutes. Again, it was pathetic. The next day I couldn’t walk down stairs unless I took them backwards.
Four months later in Montreal, I ran another marathon - 20 minutes faster. In May 1984, I returned to the scene of the original battlefield - Ottawa - and conquered that marathon. This time I ran 3:51 and felt on top of the world as I exuberantly covered the last few hundred yards with my wife and children sharing in my triumph. I have run over 40 marathons since, including New York, Paris, and Boston. None were as difficult as that first one, but every one is a challenge, and I never enter one unless I have done adequate preparation, including a number of 20 mile training runs. You can’t cheat the marathon.
As I really found out in that first attempt, most marathons are not pleasurable while you are running them, but I keep going back because I really enjoy the planning, the training, the camaraderie, and the excitement before and after. When I finish, I relish the achievement. Sometimes this is immediate; and sometimes this takes a few hours, days, or weeks, and I know that I have done something that not one person in a million can do. I am a marathoner.
Bruce Marshall