My First Marathon

Impressions of a marathon, the first one...

The day began with the shrill ring of the telephone. “It’s 6 o’clock.” My friend’s voice came through the wire loud and clear. I felt sick to my stomach. “You won’t go back to sleep now?” the voice said. I assured him that I wouldn’t and flicked on the bedside lamp in the Howard Johnson Motel.

I laid back on the pillow and surveyed the room. Laid neatly on the chair next to the coffee table were my shorts, shoes, socks, running bra and the recently cut off top that I had finished hemming up on the drive to Lafayette. On the table was a new roll of adhesive tape, four bandages (wide), a pair of scissors and most important of all, my marathon number, 663, printed on a large piece of white cardboard. Four safety pins laid neatly on top of it. It scared me almost to death. In two hours, the gun would go off!

“What in the world am I doing here?” I wondered grimly. I crawled out of bed, tried to touch my toes. Failed. Went to the bathroom. I told myself this had to be taken care of early. I turned on the shower, too hot, but maybe the heat would loosen me up so I could stretch. Once out, I tied my hair back tightly, no strands to fall in my face. On the counter was the Stress Tab bottle with the lid off. I remembered I had taken two vitamin pills at 4:30 a.m. on an earlier trip to the bathroom. Next to the bottle were the two aspirins I had brought along, ‘preventive medicine’ someone had said. I chewed them up and chased them with water. I didn’t want two undigested aspirins bouncing around during the race.

Veteran marathon runners love to give advice and, as an eager new (hopefully) marathon runner, I had taken it all in. I had tried to remember everything that anyone had said to me; Vaseline for vital spots, tape for the toes (Well, the two don’t mix.). Then I got out my running shirt and pinned on what I hoped was my lucky number, 663. Carefully, I slid it over my head, the sharp cardboard was so wide it hit my arms. I picked up the manicure scissors which I had used for the tape and trimmed around the edges. That was better. I looked in the mirror. Boy, did I look funny. The old cut-off brassier straps showing, tape under the straps showing, impossible to adjust the shirt now that it was cut off and had this funny sign hanging there.

A knock at the door! It was my friend, Curry Hall, veteran runner of four marathons. I hated his blasé attitude. “Do you want to go eat breakfast?” he asked. Breakfast! All I wanted to do at that moment was to throw up. He stood there calmly in his sweatpants and t-shirt.
“Well, I see you are all ready to run,” he said, looking amused. “You’ve got another hour and a half.”
I felt my face turn red. “O.K. Run along,” I said. “I’ll catch you.” I quickly changed back to a t-shirt also and my sweatpants.

As I ran to catch him, I wondered what on earth I could eat before a marathon. Indeed, why eat at all? As I tried to trot after him, I felt a pain in my right knee. That old, old pain that keeps trying to come back after the time I did the Harvard Step Test with Peggy at Trinity University three years before. By the time I reached the dining room, I had pains everywhere; in my side, my big toe, my left shin.

I remembered the stretching after the shower. Finally, I touched my toes, but painfully. After ten sit-ups I wanted to collapse and stay there. When I tried yoga, I got a cramp in my right calf. My heartbeat was up to seventy-six.
“Curry, I can’t run.”
“Nerves,” he mumbled as he ordered his breakfast.
I ordered whole wheat toast and coffee. He ordered me a large glass of orange juice. “Full of potassium,” he said.

I was still full after three days of carbohydrate loading. Something I doubted I would do again. At least I would not do the earlier part of the diet, carbohydrate depletion. After a seventeen-mile run the Sunday before the marathon, I started depleting. The first day wasn’t bad, but by the second day I felt really sick. Cheese, eggs, water, meat for three days. By Tuesday night, at the end of a six-mile run, in at least a twelve-minute pace, I was ready to lie down on the track and die. I ran into veteran runner Joe Fleming who said, “You look awful. Go home and eat and don’t run tomorrow.” Gladly, I took his advice and happily gave the last of the ground meat to our dogs. But it took me two days to get my appetite back and eat normally again. But I found the carbohydrate loading almost as difficult as the other, and especially since it was no-salad time or fruit to prevent bowel troubles.

My mind went back to the night before the trip to Louisiana. I had nearly finished packing when my daughter came into the room to survey what I was taking. “Mom don’t pack that shirt. You ought to cut off that old sleeveless shirt you run in all the time. You’ll be cooler.” I had bought a cute little pair of royal blue shorts and shirt to match to wear for the big day. “Have you worn those before,” she asked. I said no, and that I had been saving them. “Well, don’t take them. You won’t be comfortable. Wear those old blue shorts you train in all the time.” My vision of being noted as a fashionable runner faded. I would look just like I did on Memorial Park track. Sweaty, tattered and torn, it was bad enough seeing all the glamorous tennis ladies every day in their dainty tennis dresses and made-up faces, hair coiffed. Would there be no glamour for me, the lady marathon runner? I made a mental note to buy a good-looking warm up suit, but there would be no time for that now.

At midnight I was packed; sweat suit, old shorts, old extra shorts, old extra shirt (the newly cut-off one to be carried in the car next day for hemming), Band-Aids, tape, vitamin pills, rubber band for hair, Vaseline, A and D Ointment, sunscreen, visor (an old one in place of my pretty blue new one to match the pretty blue shorts.)

“Drink up,” Curry said, “It’s seven. We’ve got to get George and go.” George Kleeman had roomed with Curry but declined breakfast. I think he was right. We had driven over together from Houston along with Gene and Lida Askew who were in another hotel in Crowley. Needless to say, my mind was overflowing with advice given freely for four hours the day before.

I quickly changed shirts again, covered up the 663 with my warmup jacket, applied lipstick. I wasn’t going to die a paleface. Skipped the mascara and powder thinking of the sweat. Farrah Fawcett had said, “Sweat is beautiful!” Ha, maybe on her! Nevertheless, I defiantly dabbed Norrell behind my ears.

Curry and George were waiting in the car. “What are you drinking now?” Curry asked. I had a can of V-8 Juice in my hand which I had brought. “Peggy said it was full of potassium,” I answered. “Want some? I have more in the room.” They both declined.

I untied my shoes, trying to find the hole I knew was in the tongue, but had never used. “George could you find it? I don’t have my glasses.”
“Have you ever tied them that way before?” he asked.
“No, but someone said to be sure and do it.”
“Well, don’t. Don’t do anything you never did before today. It will bother you. Just put a double knot in your laces.”
“Curry, Peggy said you put electrical tape on her laces last year.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he answered.
SILENCE
George mumbled something like, “You’re as nervous as Peggy.” I ignored him and looked out the window, trying to sip my V-8 Juice. I noticed a woman getting her morning paper. We were driving through a subdivision. Her hair was in rollers, her bathrobe was tied loosely. I secretly wished I were more normal. I hadn’t been able to enjoy a leisurely Saturday or Sunday morning in weeks and weeks. I always had to be running as the sun came up to make up for lost time during the week. “Catch up on your mileage on weekends,” they all said. It isn’t easy to train on a five-day work week. How dumb I must be. This time in my life when I should be having my second cup of coffee over the editorial page. Better, I should be having breakfast in bed.

Suddenly there were crowds, hordes of warmup suits covering the entire roadway system. Each filled with youthful male bodies, an occasional young woman. The only women I saw my age were wives of men my age. Loving wives hovering over their men before the race. I stood alone. I didn’t see a soul I knew. Curry and George had disappeared in the crowd.

I saw a filling station across the highway. As I neared the 'ladies' side, I saw that no less than ten men were waiting in front of it. One mumbled, “Men’s side out of order.” No one offered to let me in ahead of them. Didn’t anybody know that this was my first marathon, and the gun would go off at any moment?

Back from the restroom, I remembered my V-8 Juice still in Curry’s car. I found him, and he unlocked it for me. Oops, a good thing I came back, as there was my plastic bag with toilet paper for my hoped-not pit stop. I tucked it into my shorts. I drank more juice. No more would go down. I was on the road. Two minutes to go. I set the can in the ditch and deplored the fact that I was littering.

All of a sudden everybody started to run. I never heard the gun go off. Into the distance as far as the eye could see people were running; all of them, it seemed, passed me instantly. I knew I was last in line. After running at least 45 seconds, I too passed the starting line. I heard someone say, “I’m going to run with her.” It was Joe, a University of Houston student who had run with me in the recent 20K race. We ran the same pace. I was delighted. I had promised to run with Lida Askew, but she was nowhere to be seen. (I learned later that she and Gene were two minutes late. We never found each other in the crowd.) I was disappointed not to have Lida as she was a veteran runner of fifteen marathons and a good friend. I had hoped she would at least get me through the first twenty miles.

Joe and I started at an even pace. “What are you going to run?” he asked. I said, “Well I’d like to do the first miles at a ten-minute pace, then to a nine and a half minute for a few miles. Is that O.K.?"
“Yeah,” he said, “I don’t want to burn out the first few miles.”
And so, off we went.

It seemed like we were doing an eleven-minute mile. Our adrenalin was turned on for sure. We slowed down and at the mile five, Joe computed that we were still doing an eight-and-a-half-minute mile. Still no water. Finally, at mile seven there was some water. Nothing else. We stopped and drank. At mile nine there was a black family with ice. I picked up a cup off the road and filled it with ice, sucking on each piece until it melted. The rattle of ice in my cup kept time to my steps. This same family met us three times farther down the road.

Joe asked, “What’s the farthest you’ve ever run?” I told him twenty miles. “Good,” he said. “The most I ever did was the 20K (12.2 miles). I wonder what will happen when I reach twelve miles?”
I assured him he could run farther, but I silently wondered just how much farther. I doubted that he would complete the marathon, especially when he told me he had been averaging thirty-five miles a week. I had struggled to do fifty miles a week and still felt inadequate. But he was strong and young and, after all, some people have done it on much less than that.

At mile fifteen we became aware of the heat. Long periods would go by without conversation. We began to pass people who were walking. Joe dashed off across the road shouting that he would catch up. I looked away. I had been suppressing the urge to stop. The desire was gone now. Joe caught up. He seemed full of energy. He couldn’t believe we had gone nearly sixteen miles. We seemed to gain strength in seeing runners who had passed us so quickly early in the race, walking. I felt sorry for them. I knew they were all better runners than either Joe or me. Heartbreaking.

Big yellow mile markers loomed up at us from the pavement. Joe computed our time. “We’re doing a nine-minute pace. We’re going strong,” he said. The sun was getting hotter. Our shirts were wet with sweat. My 663 was beginning to tear. I re-pinned it while I ran. My shirt was wet. The paper was wet. Joe’s number was now tucked in the elastic of his shorts. It, too, had disintegrated. Lost numbers littered the pavement.

There was Harry McCloud ahead. “Good luck!” he shouted as we passed. He was walking a stretch. Then Ed Lang appeared. He was walking but joined us for about a mile. He looked like he was hurting. I couldn’t get over it. I felt great. So did Joe. We kept in step as we ran.

Joe said he would shave his head before the next marathon. I said it protected him from the sun. His hair was shoulder length and I wondered why he didn’t put it into a ponytail. We talked about his potential career. He was taking pre-med. We talked about my son’s career. We discussed our training and why we ran. How long we had been running. People we knew that ran. We talked about doctors, orthopedists, podiatrists, chiropractors, and the pros and cons of each. I felt like we were old friend, and yet, I couldn’t remember his last name.

Only later would I look back and marvel that once in the marathon, all doubt that I would finish left me. All self-consciousness about my sex, age, or ability vanished. I was on my own. I was equal. I was accepted as a runner, and I accepted those who ran with me. There was no distinction other than fast, moderate, or slow. Good will abounded. All wanted to do their best. Each to his own. My neighbor wanted me to do my best, and I wished the same for him. Doctor, lawyer, candlestick maker, it made no difference. There was no class distinction. We were all friends. We respected one another. A great feeling. A unique experience.

“Gal, you’re outrunning me. This is embarrassing,” he groaned. How old are you anyway?”
I said, “Fifty-one.”
“Oh, this is terrible. You’re older than my mom, and she can’t get up in the morning without her coffee and cigarettes. You’re even older than my dad.”
I was too tired to laugh. Water ahead, thank goodness.
“Joe, keep walking when you get the water. I’m afraid we will freeze up.” I had felt my joints complaining at the last aid station.
“Oh my God,” he said as we ran past a dead opossum. The agony of death was on its face. My chest began having vague pains. I remembered my two daughters saying, “Mom, promise to stop if you get chest pains.” I decided these were not chest pains, but I began to breathe deeply. Was death close at hand. I could still see the opossum.

It was getting hotter. Where were the clouds. I remembered Peggy saying it rained on them the whole way the year before. No luck today. People were stopped ahead, drinking and spraying themselves with a garden hose that had been stretched from a farmhouse across a ditch to the road. Three women in the shade clapped their hands and cheered as I jogged up to the hose. I waved and smiled...and sprayed myself. The cold was startling, but then it felt good. My number 663 was coming off the last safety pin. As we started up again, I jerked it off and crammed it into my plastic bag. “What’s the bag for?” Joe asked.
“Toilet paper”
“Oh, to wipe your face with?”
“No, for a pit stop.”
He was embarrassed. I wondered if I would have to make one and began searching the bushes ahead. There was an opening to a rice field. What if I went behind the bushes into that field and never got up again? I would never be found. The vision of the dead opossum appeared again. I kept going. Joe said, “Lord, you pick ‘em up; I’ll put ‘em down!” I was too tired to laugh.

A dead skunk soon appeared before us on the road. We circled around it. I breathed through my mouth. Whew! The number of dead animals, snakes included, was incredible.

Nineteen miles. A man who had passed us about four miles back was lying face down on the road. Three people were carrying water from the rice field and pouring it over him. We ran on by. More and more people were walking. An ambulance passed by lights flashing. Helicopter police overhead. Police patrolling the road. At least if I die here, I’ll get help, but it will be too late, I thought. A truck with live and what looked like some dead bodies drove slowly by. Joe and I were no longer talking.

He was beginning to breathe hard. I congratulated myself for running all those miserable days last summer. Glad for the nine and ten miles a day in hot sun. Glad for the fifteen-, seventeen- and twenty-mile runs. Glad for the carbohydrates. Glad for the whole wheat toast that morning, the orange juice and the V-8 Juice. Glad for the vitamins and aspirins. And wonder of wonder, nothing was hurting. Not my knee, not my hamstrings, not my feet, not my shin splints. I felt good. I felt strong. And I even felt cool after that last hose treatment. And at last an aid station with ERG. I drank two cups full and felt pain when I walked. It didn’t go away until I started running again. Joe was still with me but slowing down.

The bridge was up ahead. Did they say it was twenty or twenty-two miles? How much farther? My mind was beginning to fog. If it is twenty-two miles, how much more? 22, 23, 23, 23. I couldn’t think anymore. There was someone ahead who ran like my friend Gloria McCloud, but she had been out of sight from the beginning. And wasn’t she wearing yellow? It was Gloria, in red. We spoke. She was slowing down for the bridge. My strength kept flowing and I waved for Joe to keep up. He stayed with me to the top, but I lost him on the way down. I felt alone. I felt devastated. My friend of many miles wasn’t with me any longer.

ERG was on the other side of the bridge. I gulped two cups full. This might mean the difference later in whether or not I finished. It hurt to walk. I tossed the cups aside and resumed my pace, but it was harder this time. I remembered hearing people say if you stopped this far along, you’d never get back to running. I believed them. (I found out later that Joe laid down at the bottom of the bridge at mile 23 and had fallen asleep. He never completed the race.) I was still trying to figure out the distance. I laughed to myself. My mind had been so muddled since the nineteenth mile that I hadn’t been able to figure out the miles. I had told Joe we had eight miles to go. He corrected me. I felt foolish. I couldn’t think.

We were both trying for a four-hour marathon, and knew we had to keep our pace. At each time check he would figure out how far we had left and the pace we needed. It helped to know that. I recalled that it had been said at twenty miles, you had only run half a marathon. My feet began to hurt. My legs ached. My chest hurt. My fists were clenched. I tried to relax. I could feel the heat of the pavement coming through the soles of my shoes. The back of my neck hurt! I moved over to the grassy edge. Cars kept going by, too fast. Earlier they had passed slowly, carefully, exhausting their fumes in my face. Now they zoomed off in a fury, it seemed, at having the road taken up with runners. I felt wobbly and out of step. I was slowing down. An aid station was up ahead. More ERG. Amazing. I couldn’t get over having ERG this far down the road, when we had none for the first half of the marathon. Only water for miles and miles and precious little of that. I walked again and drank. I started up again. Must have been doing a twelve-minute mile. I couldn’t get going. I was out of step. “Come on, Edith, let’s go!” It was Gloria. She was no longer my competitor, but my good friend and also veteran runner.
“I’ll try,” I gasped. “I think I might have just hit that ‘wall’ everybody keeps talking about.” Gradually, I felt my strength coming back. My pace steadied. We ran perfectly together, like marching in time. Now I can make it, I thought. I’m O.K. Suddenly, I discovered I was having to hold back for Gloria. I could hear her breathing heavily. “Try a change of stride, Gloria,” I said. “It rests me. Remember, you told me this.”

But she was falling back. I wanted to grab her hand and pull her along with me. I thanked her for getting me going again and felt sad leaving her. But grateful that she had come along to help me at just the right time.

George had promised to come back for me and run me in at the twenty-four-mile mark. I wondered if he would. I peered into the distance for a glimpse of him. Where was the twenty-four-mile marker? A pair of green shorts were running towards me. Dr. Livingston, I presume. Stanley couldn’t have been any happier than I at that moment.
He was smiling. “I just ran Mary Ann (MacBrayer) in.”
“Where’s Lida?” I asked.
“She’s behind you a couple miles.”
I was shocked, for I had hoped I would catch up with her, thinking she was ahead of me all this time.
“George, can I make it in four hours?”
“I don’t know. We’ll try. Keep up this pace and you might.”
We ran silently. I passed another aid station. Shook my head, no time now. Only a mile and a half to go. Was it one and a half to twenty-six miles or to the finish? I knew those 385 yards would seem like two miles.
“Just six blocks this way,” George said. “And six blocks after the turn and then you’ll see the finish ahead.” I was slowing down. George kept encouraging me. My legs were like two dead weights. I was a robot that had been turned on. I was like a mechanical toy than needed winding. I was running down.

We passed the courthouse, the tower clock said 12:00. I knew I wouldn’t break four hours. George asked if I knew my number. I reached inside my pants for the plastic bag. He pulled out the tattered number and gave it to me. I heard cheering, smelled smoke from the Bar-B-Q stands and held up my number for all to see. I saw nothing but a smear of faces but heard the warm hand claps and cheers. Suddenly, I was holding onto a table, spelling out my name to somebody. I didn’t think to ask what my time was. George had disappeared. He had gone back to get Harry.

I had done it. I had finished a marathon. My marathon! My legs, my body, my heart, my lungs, my willpower. I felt like I was getting the heaves. I couldn’t breathe. Curry leaned across the table with a cup full of Sprite, but I couldn’t drink it. I had to have air. I found an open space. I tried to lie down and Curry, who was by me wouldn’t let me. We walked. My legs ached. Oh, how they hurt. I couldn’t breathe. Why did I feel so bad when I had been feeling good for so long? I couldn’t talk. Curry’s son appeared. I hardly recognized him. He came into focus. He was smiling. I threw my wet, wadded up 663 into his hands and whispered for him to keep it for me. I saw a port-a-toilet. A little girl was waiting. The door opened and I unashamedly pushed ahead of her, commanding her to let me go first.

I felt better. The child was gone. I wanted to explain to her, to apologize. Curry was gone. At last, I could lie down on the grass without him there to stop me. I lay face up in the hot sun freezing to death and dozed off. Time passed. I came to life again finally. I laid there and listened and watched. People were rubbing their legs, nursing toes, drinking cokes, beer, laughing, sleeping, hugging. Finally, I sat up and realized my feet were wet. I untied my shoelaces and took of my soaked socks. I wriggled my bruised, taped toes and surveyed the damage.

A dark-haired man came over. He was smiling behind his beard. “May I ask how old you are, Ma’am? I took your picture as you came in to show my track club back in Alabama.” I didn’t know whether to be complimented or insulted. I chose the former. He introduced himself as Dr. Alan Robertson, an internist. Was I a medical oddity, I wondered? Or just a healthy woman who finished a grueling twenty-six-mile run? “I’m fifty-one,” I said. “What was your time?” he asked. I said I didn’t know and that I had forgotten to ask. He said he would go find out for me. I told him my name. He returned in a few minutes with my official time: 4 hours, 49 seconds. About a nine-minute pace, he said. I just smiled. I was delighted, but still chagrinned that I had missed breaking four hours by so little time. Still, 350 out of over 700 entries was not bad, just about halfway. I was proud of me. I was exhausted. I was excited. I had done what I set out to do. After much doubting over the months, up until a few weeks beforehand, I had kept saying, I ‘might’ do the Crowley Marathon. Then I finally decided to say, “I would” after “hope” sounded so weak. Never before had I felt like this. A feeling of real accomplishment. The nearest thing would be to climb a mountain. Curry came over with his trophy. “What did you win?” I asked. “You won one, too,” he grinned. Go get yours on the table over there. All the marathon finishers get one. My first trophy. I struggled to get up. I had to be pulled to my feet. Once up, I felt O.K. Someone handed me my warmups. My coat felt so good.

The ride back to Lafayette seemed to take forever. Only twenty-six miles, but it seemed to take an awful long time. Did I run every step of the way? As I gratefully sank into a hot bath at the motel, I wondered what I would be able to do in the Dallas Marathon, or Houston. After all, Joe had said, “I’ll run with you in Houston.” I couldn’t let Joe down. He got me through the first twenty-two miles of this one. . Now it was my turn to help him.

Note: Edith actually did make her under four-hour goal in her first marathon. As she said in her story, she was so far back from the starting line, she never even heard the start gun go off and was the last runner in line! By the time she and the other 700 runners crossed the starting line, she had no doubt spent at least a minute just getting there.
It wasn’t until the mid-1990’s that chip timers attached to shoelaces were first used in races. This enabled runners to get an accurate finishing time for their race.