I started this blog a couple of weeks ago but then very nearly lost my computer after inadvertently leaving my backpack on an OC Transpo bus – I don’t recommend this by the way – I was super fortunate to be able to get it back after several days of thinking that more than likely I was out of luck. Since then the holidays sort of took over, but I wanted to finally get back to writing about my first marathon.
CIM was an amazing experience on so many levels: the race itself on Sunday December 3, the wonderful support we had, and the chance to meet some really incredible people.
Ahead of the race I’d wanted to have a buffer of three nights of sleep in California to recover from the trip and be optimally ready, and so I flew from Ottawa to Sacramento on Thursday evening November 30, via Chicago. The flight out of Ottawa had been delayed for nearly an hour, which made for an extremely narrow window to try to make the connecting flight. I have to really thank the woman who met me off the plane and raced me through the vast O’Hare Airport with it’s multiple terminals and gates. We eventually made it to the gate for Sacramento only to learn that they had just closed boarding. It was looking like I might have to spend the night in Chicago, until somehow, one of the people working at the gate called somebody and miraculously, they were able to get me on the flight in the nick of time.
I sat beside a very friendly ex-US military guy who would end up helping me to pick up my bag in Sacramento. He also recommended a great local Sacramento coffee shop, Temple Coffee. I love coffee and trying to find local places anywhere I go, and this one certainly lived up to what the guy told me when I went there on Friday morning.
As I wrote previously, Richard Hunter, who coordinated the VI participation in CIM, did so much to help us in the lead-up and throughout the weekend. He had arranged for volunteers to pick up those of us travelling from out of town at the airport. A woman named Annie was there to meet me when I arrived, and she even brought me chocolate, thinking that I might be hungry after the long flight, which was so nice. We made it to the Holiday Inn, where most of the visually impaired runners and guides from out of town were going to be staying, at 11 pm California time, which in reality was 2 am for me. Needless to say, it didn’t take me long to fall asleep.
I spent a good part of Friday morning at Temple Coffee which was very close to where we were staying, sitting outside on the patio in the 15 degree celsius sunshine and just appreciating life. Then in the early afternoon I met up with Greg Bricca, a local marathoner who Richard had linked me with – Greg was going to guide me for the first half of the marathon. Together he and I walked over to the Expo and picked up our race numbers, and ran into Rich and a few other VI participants and guides, before heading back to the Holiday Inn to change and head out for our first run together. Not only was Greg guiding me on our walk back to the hotel but he was also looking out for two other totally blind runners who headed back with us, one of whom had a guide dog and another who didn’t, hence he definitely had his hands full but we all made it back safe and intact. Greg and I ran for 33 minutes on a trail right behind our hotel and included 2 miles at6:10 to 6:15 pace, which we hit easily enough, although I didn’t feel especially great on it. I had not eaten a lot early in the day and on top of that, had just travelled the day before, but even so it was a little disconcerting as I’d hoped to feel a bit smoother although experience has taught me that you sometimes may not feel great in the days before a race and it doesn’t necesarily have much bearing on the final outcome.
That evening our entire group of 51 visually impaired runners, + guides and volunteers were shuttled over to the Sacramento Society for the Blind building for an informal dinner which they hosted for us. It was a nice event and a chance to get to know some of the other runners. I sat with another Canadian, Craig Spurrell who heads the Toronto Midtown Achilles group (Craig would run nearly an hour personal best in the marathon and qualify for Boston in the process), a Japanese woman who was coming to run CIM for her third time and who unfortunately was able to speak only a few words of English, a guy named Ben who works for Guiding Eyes for the Blind (the only school which trains seeing eye dogs to run with their owners as I found out), and a VI runner named Don Balcom who had run CIM a couple of times previously and who as he was telling me does 100 % of his training on a treadmill, mostly at 2 am before going to his day job. Don is an experienced marathoner who runs 80 to 90 miles a week regularly – I’ve touched that kind of volume only a couple of weeks in my life – and speaking with him reminded me of how new to this I am; it was great to be able to chat with him and pick his brain. The dinner didn’t go too late and by 8:30 we were back at the hotel and I headed back to my room, by way of the little convenience store in the hotel lobby to pick up Gatoraid and a few snacks.
Saturday morning started out with a group breakfast sponsored by Guiding Eyes where Pam McGonigle, a former US Paralympian and gold medalist from the 1992 Barcelona Games in the 3000 metres shared her story and her more recent experience running with her guide dog. After that, there were volunteers from the Delta Gamma surority, whose mission is to assist individuals who are blind or low vision, available to guide us to the race Expo, or simply to head into the city for anything we might need or want to do. As a blind person travelling on your own in a new city, it was incredibly nice to have people available and willing to simply help you to get around. I ended up walking around with two volunteers – we went into Old Sacramento, which is a really interesting part of the city where a lot of the old west feel has been maintained, with wooden sidewalks and cobblestone roads – they helped me to pick up a couple of Christmas ornaments and we had lunch at a Mexican place. We took pictures together by a huge Christmas tree and everybody was very much in the Christmas mood. It wasn’t especially warm that day but I remember thinking how strange, and great it would be to spend Christmas in a warmer place (we’re in the middle of a deep freeze with temperatures in the minus 20’s with wind chill as I write this a day after Christmas).
That afternoon I took a nap for an hour and then met up with my other guide, Jacob who would be guiding me for the second half of the race and we headed out for an easy 4-mile jog. Almost right away there was a sharp little rise in the terrain and I somehow managed to trip and landed hard on my left elbow and right knee. I was ok, a little shaken up but all in all I’ve fallen very few times in my years of running and it happens to everyone from time to time. Jacob felt bad but honestly it is an occupational hazard of running as a blind person, and running in general. We had a great rest of our run and once back, I was able to get cleaned up and ready for the banquet, where I sat with Jacob as well as Greg and his wife. Richard had arranged for Marla Runyan, a runner who had represented the United States at both the Paralympics and later at the Olympics in the early 2000’s, to come and share her inspiring story which really helped to set the tone ahead of Sunday’s race.
Sunday morning started early with my alarm going off at 3:30 am. I had gotten about 6 hours of sleep but they were good hours. I played around with the kuerig coffee machine in my room until it finally worked, as I’m useless without coffee first thing. Richard, who along with his organizing committee really thought of everything, had arranged an oatmeal breakfast so that people could have something in their stomach ahead of the 7 am start time. I ate a bowl of oatmeal with dried cranberries and a banana and washed it down with water and some more coffee, and then headed into the lobby to wait for one of the 5 am shuttles which would take us out to the race start as this was a point to point race – luckily the finish was only a few hundred metres from where we were staying.
Once on the road, I remember having the slightly unsettling thought as we drove the 40 minutes or so that this was far, and that we had a long way to run back. Greg, who would be guiding me to halfway, was going to meet me at the start as his house is near to the race start and it didn’t make sense for him to come all the way into Sacramento. I shared a seat with one of the guide runners who in each of the past seven years had flown out to be a guide in this race on his own dime. He was telling me about having been recently diagnosed with a serious health condition, but that his doctors were watching him closely, and that it wasn’t going to stop him from running and doing what he loved. That resonated with me a lot. Here was someone who was making it a priority to help another runner who needed his support, someone who wasn’t dwelling on what might happen but who was making the best of things, doing what he loved doing and offering what he had to offer in the service of another person. It made me realize that everybody bears a cross of some kind, whether blind or sighted, experienced or new at it, whether focussed on a specific goal or whether the goal was to finish. I met so many people during the CIM weekend who had overcome real adversity to be at this race, people for whom running had changed their lives in such profound ways, and it was incredibly humbling. It really spelled out for me the insight that at the base of whatever it is that motivates us to train and set our sights on completing anything as crazy as 26.2 miles on foot, it is the commitment to running for it’s own sake which truly helps to reshape us and open us up to ourselves.
When I started training for this race back in September I had this idea that I wanted to aim to run sub 2:40. I had no real rationale for this other than I thought it was possible, based on what I’d run on the track which of course doesn’t necesarily equate to the marathon. With training not going as well as we’d hoped in the fall, Josh thought it might make more sense to aim for 2:45. He had said mainly to have fun with it though and to not worry too much about the outcome. In the days right before the marathon, I’d started thinking that running 6 minute pace would definitely be too fast, but that perhaps 6:10 to 6:15 might be manageable – this would put me in 2:42 to 2:44 range. This was the plan which Greg and I had agreed on – to settle in at that pace and definitely no faster, and to just see how it went. The VI runners had a separate start 5 minutes ahead of the main field, which meant we wouldn’t be with the main pack and would have a clear road.
The temperature was around 7 degrees celsius at race time with hardly any wind – perfect. We set out and right away were on a slight downhill. I could hear Don and his guide behind us. I felt relaxed and easy, and Greg was feeling good too. Greg’s watch told us we had run our first mile in 6:25, a little slow. We were on our own. I don’t really think we consciously increased the pace that much – if anything we just started to warm up – because after that we were hitting right around 6 minutes, 5:57, and it felt easy. We kept telling each other that we needed to hold back, and we would slow down a little but inevitably we would still be running 6:05. After four miles or so the elites started to catch us – the eventual race winner would run 2:11. As they came passed us, a few of them said, keep it up you guys are looking great, which was amazing as they were racing hard – such is the generosity of spirit of so many in the running community.
I didn’t carry water with me but after 6 miles I began to take either water or electrolyte every 3 miles at the aid stations we passed. I had taken a jell just prior to the race, and took two more, at miles 8 and 16, and this strategy seemed to work well for me – I’d struggled in training with this but on the day I felt good. We got to 10 miles in 60:50, and reached half way in 1:20 exactly, and I felt great. At this point Jacob took over. Greg stayed in the race and would go onto run 2:54. With a set of fresh legs, we ran the risk of going too fast and I told Jacob I was really just aiming to hit 6:10 to 6:15 pace as much as we could. With this being my first marathon I just didn’t want to push too hard too early. I was still feeling good through 16 miles but starting to hurt a little. I remember thinking, just 10 more miles to go, just think of it like a tempo run. I knew as people said that in the marathon the race would really begin after 18 or even 20 miles, which we got to in 2 hours 2 minutes. I had done a 21 mile long run in training and beyond that I knew I’d be in new territory, and I just tried to stay as relaxed as I could and really let the race come. Just as Greg had, Jacob was telling me everything I needed to know, putting us in the right position with other runners around us, giving me just the right amount of encouragement, and not pushing too hard. We did lose ground for sure between 18 and 24 miles, with a 6:20 mile in there and another mile with an uphill where I think we ran a 6:35, but we also had a 6:14, a 6:12, so things could have definitely been worse. It wasn’t my breathing that was the problem, aerobically I felt comfortable, it was my legs which just got so much heavier and more difficult to lift as the miles past. Those last miles were interminable it seemed – it felt like it would take forever to reach another mile marker.
Finally, we were getting back into Sacramento and the roadside was lined with crowds of people. We hit the 25th mile and I think the adrenalaen from the people cheering, coupled with just wanting to finish and get it over with gave me a shot of energy because we were able to get back to a 6:05 mile for the next one. We were passing a few people and I tried to go by hard each time and to forget how much I was hurting because I knew they were hurting more. Jacob and I eventually turned into the final straightaway. I thought we had a few hundred metres still to go, but the finish came more quickly than I’d expected. I had a little bit left and if I’d known how close we were to the line, could have maybe eeked out a few more seconds. We finished in 2:42.09, which gave us second overall among VI runners, behind Chaz Davis who ran 2:38.24.
I was thrilled with how our race went and I really feel I couldn’t have asked for better on the day. There are rare moments in running when the stars align. I could not have done it without the amazing help of my two guides, Greg Bricca and Jake Huston, without the incredible support given to me by Rich Hunter and his team of volunteers before as well as during the weekend, without Josh’s coaching and guiding support, without the support of the other guides who played such a big part in helping me to prepare for CIM, and without the encouragement of other friends as well as my family – thank you so so much.
This marathon was supposed to be a one-off for me, but as Rich Hunter wrote to me in an email about a week after CIM, this is a beginning, and he could be right – it is true that one thing can so often lead to another. The CIM race has a connection with the Boston Marathon through the Massachusetts Association for the Blind, and they offer a spot as well as accommodation and some travel support to participate in Boston for the first VI finisher at CIM who has never raced in Boston before. I was fortunate to be the male recipient of this award. It’s an incredible opportunity. Boston will take place on Monday April 16 and barring the unforseen I’ll be there.
One of the many other poignant things that Richard said over the course of the CIM weekend was that each person has the capacity to positively impact a single person. He explained that this was the mindset which helped him to build the VI component of CIM from a much smaller event ten years ago to what it has become today. The numbers and the tangible impacts of the event on the scale of what he has put together are very evident, but it’s the intangible things – the conversations and stories and time spent together with people for whom running for its own sake, life for its own sake is a common denominator which will stay with me and which I think will ultimately flavour the impression and the experience which so many of us will take away. It was a privelege to get to share the road, and to share a little piece of life with some amazing people. I feel lucky to have been given the chance.