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FLRC Newsletter - Sep 2003 |
| Running Big Sur -- April 27, 2003 | |
Ever since I've gotten hooked on this marathon thing, I've wanted to do the Big Sur International Marathon (BSIM). Everything I'd read referred to the beauty of the course, the great organization and just the best overall experience compared to any other domestic marathon. The fact that the climate would probably be a whole lot better than CNY for this time of year, didn't hurt either. So, one cold, snowy, dreary day last December, when I had just returned from a run and was trying to get some feeling back into some part of my body, I went on line and signed up for BSIM. The marathon field was to be capped at 3500 and it filled in just over a month from when the applications came out. As soon as I was sure that I was in, Beach Boy songs started popping into my head. My dreams, from here on, all revolved around Frankie and Annette movies with a Baywatch twist.
The web site actually has a "slide show" that gives a photo and detailed description of each mile on the course. The marathon is run completely on US 1 which, for those of you that don't know, is a winding 2-lane road that hugs the California coastline. The course starts at Big Sur and ends in downtown Carmel. Wow! I was sure that Clint Eastwood (former mayor of Carmel) would be at the finish greeting every participant and thanking each of them for visiting his town. How cool is that? Oh, wait. On second thought, having ole Clint calling everyone "punk" and thanking them for "making his day" might not go over big with the local Chamber of Commerce and the race organizers.
Well, back to reality. I had run some marathon courses that had a fair number of hills but, by all indications, it looked like this course might be hillier than most. Contrary to all of my previous training, I figured that I'd probably need/want a strategy for this race. Hmm. . . . Maybe I should intentionally train on . . . . hills? What a great plan, I thought. I was sure that no one else had ever come up with that idea! But, I thought, where would I ever find hills around Ithaca??!? I asked a couple of close runner friends about this and, after days of pondering this question, they both came up with: "What about Buffalo Street?" Needless to say, they are now both off of my Christmas card list. However, not wanting to appear to be intimidated by this hill, I made it the focal point of my training runs. Considering the winter that we had, my training went pretty well. But, my "runs" up Buffalo Street were hardly that (Question: How fast must one move to have the movement considered a "run"?).
Before I knew it, the big day was almost here. We had booked a place on the Monterey Peninsula in a town called Pacific Grove. It was about 10 miles or so from the finish but close to a shuttle bus pick up point for the marathon. You see, for this race, all participants needed to be bussed to the start which is at Pfeiffer State Park just outside of Big Sur. Since the race is run on US 1 and the only way to get to the start is to use US 1, the now familiar "middle of the night bus trip" would be necessary. We left Ithaca, went to Philly, went to Denver, and finally landed in San Jose, an hour's drive to Pacific Grove. My feeling at this point was that all of this traveling should somehow be factored in to apply toward the 26.2 miles that I was going to run, thus reducing my marathon distance by, let's say, half. Yes, I was again slipping into and out of reality. This turned out to be a common theme for the weekend.
Pacific Grove is a beautiful area and I started to feel better about things after we dumped our bags in our condo. This part of the west coast is amazing. They have this big shiny thing out there that is always around wherever you go. I think the locals referred to this as the "sun"! After some well deserved (in our minds, at least) food and beer, we crashed fairly early. Tomorrow was Expo day.
Packet pick up was in Monterey about 10 minutes from where we were staying. It was a relatively small Expo so I really didn't spend much time there. The high point here was getting our goodie bag and our marathon shirt -- truly one of the nicest shirts you'll ever see. It is a full coverage hi tech shirt with a pastel watercolor scene of Bixby Bridge and the coastline. Asics didn't pinch any pennies producing this shirt.
Sunday—Marathon Day (You're probably thinking: "Finally!"). I met the shuttle bus at 3:45am for the ride to the start. The ride is the reverse of the course that we would be running in a few hours. You couldn't see much since it was still the middle of the night but the constant strain on the bus engine gave me a pretty good idea of what the course would be like. In the bus chatter, the guy sitting next to me had said that he had run this marathon before and after the 2 mile hill leading to Hurricane Point (@ the 12 mile mark) it was just a "normal" marathon the rest of the way. Well, sleep deprivation caused me to buy into that and my nervousness decreased some. The buses dropped us in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. Actually, we were at Pfeiffer Park. It was a scene out of "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" with the portable lighting and thousands of people wandering around obviously looking for a place to sit (or, the Mother Ship) and catch a few Z's. The temp was in the 40's with little, if any, breeze. Historically, the temps for this marathon are in the low 60's after the early morning fog burns off 1-2 hours into the race. The other thing you could always count on was what ranged from a gentle breeze up to a "pick ya up and toss ya" wind (thus the name Hurricane Point). One never knew what they would experience until they got out there.
6:45 and chaos ruled. How to get 3500 people on to a narrow 2-lane road in 15 minutes. This was the only apparently disorganized part of my whole experience so far. But, somehow, it happened. 7:00—the gun sounds. An interesting note—the start is downhill and then flat for the first few miles, just enough to suck you into start thinking that maybe all the horror stories about the course weren't true. One thing that I immediately noticed (being the quick study that I am) was that through the early miles at least, the road had significant bank to it. I guess that was in case we got running so fast, and inertia took hold, we wouldn't go spinning out of control and over the cliffs. Whoa! I've got to get this reality thing under control.
Well, the predicted fog decided not to show up on this particular day and there was almost a total lack of any kind of breeze. It was a hazy sun kind of day with temps in the low 60's. The hills started around mile 6. These were more of the rolling type or long gradual ones. So far, Buffalo St. seemed to have served me well but all I could think about was the climb to Hurricane Point at mile 10. At mile 7 we got our first ocean view and it took one's mind off of what would lie ahead. Just before mile 9, we reached the top of another relatively steep hill, rounded a bend and started a mile long downhill leading to the Little Sur River Bridge and the beginning of the climb to Hurricane Point. The course hugs the coastline here winding around and offers absolutely breathtaking (no pun intended) views. As they say on the Website: "If you look across the horseshoe shaped bend (at this point on the course) you will see runners ahead beginning the long journey up Hurricane Point. It is best at this point NOT to do that."
The Taiko Drummers were set up at the bottom of the hill giving rhythmic encouragement (not unlike the Vermont City Marathon). It was time to suck it up. The road winds back and forth while climbing all the while. You can never see the summit (Hurricane Point) until you come around about the billionth curve in the road and get the spectacular view of where you've been in one direction and Bixby Bridge a mile in the other direction. Here you are entertained by a guy that just happened to be passing through the area with his grand piano and decided to do a little performance for all of us.
The next 2 miles (13 & 14) are gradual downhills (crossing Bixby Bridge) and, according to the guy on the bus, the beginning of the "normal" marathon part. Well, if "normal" is half uphills and half downhills I guess he was right. At mile 21, we started to see the first real signs of civilization since we left Big Sur. We actually started to see spectators that weren't volunteers or relay people. Mile 22 brought us into Carmel Highlands, a series of short steep hills with a rather steep cant of the road. More spectators. At mile 24 the course flattened out and we were offered fresh strawberries by the locals. At mile 25, they have what is referred to as: "D minor hill at D major time" (The theme of the marathon is classical music. Get it?). While this hill is only about ¼ mile long, it seemed much longer. At the top, you could see the finish and what looked like most of the population of Carmel. A nice touch was that most of the Marathon Organizing Committee, in their blue blazers, was there at the finish to shake your hand and offer their congratulations (No Clint, though!). Another nice touch (that I forgot to mention) was that at every mile along the course there was someone there calling out your pace and another person giving you your estimated finish time.
A quick cup of soup, beer and assorted goodies was waiting for us and then the bus ride back to Monterey. (Just a note: a quick count after the race showed that the last 14 miles of the course — the "normal" part — included 13 hills.)
In my opinion, the BSIM lives up to the hype. It is challenging (for me, at least) but well worth doing. It would be hard to do better for scenery and organization. This is now on my list of marathons to make sure that I do again.
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