Capital City Marathon 2007

Marathon number 14 is in the bag. It was a great run and I’ve never felt better during a race. The day was bittersweet for me, though, as I found myself surrounded by my family of Maniacs and Boomers but also filled with suspicion and mistrust of a new friend…. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Saturday night Tet, Karl, Divechief, Rasmussenmp and Rnrwife had dinner at a neat little place down by farmer’s market. It was the first pre-race dinner that I have attended where everyone was a Boomer and a Maniac (or Maniac spouse), so the conversation revolved around various marathons: which ones to run, which to avoid, comparing notes on how to prepare for frequent marathons, etc…

Sunday morning was cool and wet. I met up with Hippo, Karl, Tet and SR Lopez at the start but quickly settled in with a group of Maniacs that I hadn’t really run with before. The first 7 miles were full of conversations that only Maniacs would find interesting, mainly how to train when you only have one to two weeks between marathons, how to recover and strategies for running doubles (two marathons on two days). We decided that someone needs to write an Owners Guide for Maniacs since none of this information is available anywhere except as pleasant conversation during races. It felt like a casual Sunday stroll with my best friends. I had decided not to wear a watch and run by feel, knowing there would be no clocks on the course, so I was not surprised to discover we had been running a 12 or 13 minute per mile pace. Around mile 7 the hills started and marked the beginning of my favorite part of the Capital City Marathon. I bid goodbye to my buddies and started the roller coaster run through the forests, farmlands and inlets of southern Puget Sound. At mile 13 I asked another runner what our split was: 2:16. A bit slow, but I am trying to let go of time goals so after a quick assessment of all operating systems (all systems running smoothly) decided to be happy with it and continue to enjoy myself. The miles ticked by effortlessly with mile 24 appearing out of nowhere along with Mr. Dove offering to run with me over the next mile. Mr. Dove got me to mile 25 and the start of a long descent to the finish line. I crossed amongst cheers from my family and co-workers (one of the hugh benefits of a hometown marathon) in 4:16. A negative split of 2:16/2:00.

Everything was wonderful. I felt great, I was in my town, I had just run my favorite course: then I checked the results. My son’s baseball coach, a 46 year old fitness runner who logs 15-20 miles per week, had finished 3rd overall. He finished ahead of well-seasoned, fast Maniacs; our local race favorite who logs 100 mile training weeks and several other talented, trained runners. I had just met the coach this year. He is a great guy who has been spending a lot of time with the little Dovelet, believing in his abilities and offering that tough mix of discipline and encouragement. He is also highly competitive. As much as I like Mr. Coach, I doubted his ability to run his first marathon in under 2:30 hours. I went home wondering how this could happen and what I should do about it. I checked race results on the internet… maybe he was a sandbagger or just humble and hadn’t mentioned his racing to me. Nope, no race results except a DNF at our local ultra several months ago. I continued to fret about this all night, trying to decide what to do. Monday morning the local paper had front page coverage of the race, Mr. Coach was still listed as 3rd overall. I decided I would wait until Monday night’s baseball game and innocently ask “how’d the marathon go?” before I alerted race officials.

Before the game start, Coach walked up to me a said “Did you see this morning’s paper?”

(Oh no, here we go, the moment of truth…. Get ready Dove….)

“Yes,” I replied “You ran a great race”.

“No, I didn’t. I ran the half and someone at registration forgot to make the change. I knew I had a different colored number than everyone else, but didn’t know why. I’ve spent all day trying to fix things. This is so embarrassing.”

Whew! My red alert signs were back to green, crisis over, faith in friend restored, universe is back in balance and I don’t have to worry about my son being coached by a cheater.

Marathon 14 is in the bag.