I hadn't figured out how to drink on the run, so I had wet shoes and increasing thirst. I started to notice one leg hurt because we were always on a slant (to drain water from the road surface) so now I had to run only on the white line in the middle of the road.
You only notice it if you're having a bad day, but the course is continuous slight uphill for 14 miles (from about 7 to 21). I noticed. Every step, I noticed. Dehydrated, sunburned, limping, blistered. Waves of people passing me. People in lawn chairs in their front yards drinking beer.
About 20 or 21 miles, a bike pulls alongside me (yeah, no crowd control then) and the guy says the runner he was pacing dropped; could he pace me? Then he said I could still break 3 hours. I had no watch, couldn't do the math to figure out pace, but this sparked me.
I started speeding up. As uncomfortable as it was, I was drawing energy from seeing that I was passing people again. My brain wasn't working, much too hot, but the faster I went, the sooner it would be over. I finally saw a race clock at 25 miles. There was no way I could have broken 3 hours.
The bike pulled off the course before I could yell at him for misleading me. I limped to the finish in 3:05:50. Not bad for a 17 year-old sprinter. Now I just had to endure the ride home with Mom and the 3 days of walking down steps backwards until my legs worked again.
After my first marathon, I assumed it would be the up-stairs part that would be the problem. I very quickly figured out that it up was good, down was hard. Have you read duel in the sun? As a recent runner, I was fascinated at how primitive race support was then. You lived it.
💜