The Graduation

(When Runner’s World cut me loose as a columnist in 2004, I wasn’t ready to stop magazine work. This year I post the continuing columns from Marathon & Beyond. Much of that material now appears in the book Miles to Go.)

2005. I can’t think of an emptier end to marathon training than to come to the race alone. Teaming up for our first event, the Newport Marathon, meant that no one had to finish this way.

We trained as a team. Then on marathon weekend everyone saw the support team that helped the runners get there. Spouses, parents, children, grandkids, partners and friends came to Newport on the Oregon coast. Many of them met each other for the first time at our own pasta dinner.

The largest number came in support of Paula Montague. She uses the name “flyingmama” in her email address. Paula is the mother of three daughters, “and my 16-year-old sister is like a fourth.” Those four, and Paula’s own mother, were in Newport.

A few weeks after the marathon, Paula would undergo a medical procedure (she wouldn’t call it “surgery”) to correct a non-life-threatening heart irregularity. Her concerns were more immediate: knee pains that had all but stopped her since our longest training run.

As I mother-henned the team on the course, the last to pass my spot at three miles was Paula. I asked about her knees. She grimaced, shook her head and asked for the tube of Biofreeze that she’d left with me. We next met up at 11 miles. This time she smiled, shouted “I’m better now!” and stopped for a hug of mutual relief.

Our next runner ahead of Paula at that point, Michelle Martin, appeared fearless. She’d started boldly, given her condition.

On our first day together back in January, the runners filled out an information sheet. I asked if any physical condition might affect their training. Michelle had written, “Can discuss later,” then added a smiley face.

In April, Michelle announced that she was pregnant. I might have urged her to postpone the marathon for a year if she hadn’t already rejected that idea. “My doctor gave me permission to keep running,” she said, “if I keep my heart rate below 140.”

I was never clear if she mentioned “marathon” to the doctor. Michelle wore a watch that beeped when she was scheduled to walk for a minute. Only sometimes did she heed it.

Into her fourth month on race day Michelle still didn’t look like a pregnant woman – or run like one. She passed my spot at 11 miles, running a minute per mile ahead of her pace goal, seeming worry-free.

But the marathon wasn’t yet halfway finished. It was Michelle’s first, just as this would be her first child. A lot could happen in the second half, of a marathon as with a pregnancy, some of it unpleasant to anticipate or to experience.

   

A first marathon is like a first love. No matter how beautifully or badly it goes, you will never forget it. I can’t recall my breakfast menu this morning or much about the run that preceded it. But I can recount in loving detail my first marathon day. And that was at Boston, in 1967.

    

That first marathon day can change you in ways that you couldn’t have imagined before running the race. I had intended to finish the one marathon and then retire to fun-and-fitness running. But this one led to dozens more marathons plus a few ultras – and finally to coaching my first team of marathoners.

   

After their graduation exercises at the Newport Marathon, I wrote to the runners, “I’ve never been prouder of more runners on a single day. Each of you gave me chills for your own reasons as you hit your finish line at Newport – in a race that didn’t start at seven o’clock this morning but four months ago in your first training run with this Team.

“Even if you didn’t run the time you’d hoped for, remember that veteran marathoners say the same thing about their races as pilots do about their landings: any that you can walk away from is a good one. All 16 of you finished and can walk away proudly.”

   

The greatest benefit of this program wasn’t the training plan or the coaching. It was the support that these runners shared for these months of Sundays.

“You helped each other do what you might not have done alone,” I told them. “Ultimately that is what you’ll remember most about this marathon.”

Later. Our final finisher that day, Paula Montague, sobbed with the greatest joy and relief that her knees had allowed this. Her heart procedure two weeks later would bring even more success, and relief.

Michelle Martin lost her time goal to the long lines at the potties but finished the race. She would deliver a healthy daughter that fall.

Ten of our 16 runners were first-time marathoners. One of them, Laura McClain, ran like a pro. She alone on this team paced herself to negative splits.

    

“I had never been on a team of any kind, nor did I participate in sports in school,” Laura told me. “I was too shy and scared. This group was the first organized sports thing I’ve ever done, at almost 40.

“I was so extremely nervous the first couple Sundays I thought I would throw up. It wasn’t so much the running I was scared of, though I was definitely scared of not keeping up, getting lost, wearing the wrong thing, tripping or looking foolish somehow. Finishing the marathon was as big of an emotional breakthrough for me as it was physically.”

You never forget anything about a breakthrough this big. It changes how you choose your next test, face it and then graduate from it.

(Photo: Our second marathon team, for Portland 2005.)

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, Pacesetters, Running With Class, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]