Flashes of Panic

For the fourth year, I talked with the bike spotters all afternoon. We’ve finally got the communications part down, though moving cell phones are always sketchy. (I’d like to know in what planet cell phone connections are clear and reliable no matter where you are, provider propaganda notwithstanding.) This meant that I spent the race on my feet in the press room, with a land-line phone handset clamped to my ear (they were sore, afterward,) dialed in to a conference call of disembodied voices to whom I provided information, both spontaneously and on request, coming to my group from the bike spotters. I get the idea that I was feeding more than just OLN this year, but I can’t prove that; just that now and then I’d hear a voice I’d never met asking me for data. (“Can you run down the men’s pack? What was the last split for #10?”)

It’s always agitating for the first few miles, but when things start to settle out, it’s gratifying work. For one thing, I never feel like I’m out of touch with the races. The men or the women might be out of sight for a few minutes while TV cuts back and forth, but somehow it seemed to be the case that whichever race we were currently getting spotter info about was the one the TV wasn’t showing.

Apparently when the lead women went by, the Mile 19 pace clock wasn’t working, so nobody got a split—athletes, press room, anyone. I don’t know if or when it came on; we didn’t get a split for the men, either, but that could’ve been the spotter not paying attention.

One of the women’s spotters got highlighted on camera early in the race: the truck shot pulled out a bit, so he was in the frame, and someone circled him on the screen for a minute. I don’t know what that was about; I hope they were pointing out that he was a part of the race organization, not some random meathead who decided to ride with the leaders.

Late in the race, the men’s trail bike got more useful than he’d been early on, giving us regular updates on Alan Culpepper (not so exciting, but we were being asked for the data and we had it, which was satisfying,) and then they started mentioning Brian Sell. He kept moving up, gaining places with nearly every mile, and while I don’t know if any of it made the TV commentary, I could hear the guys on my call saying, “Wow,” with some regularity.

I got tapped for some information which wasn’t really spotter data. Are the leaders really on record pace? (Yes, by some definitions: they didn’t break the ungodly checkpoint records set by Juma Ikangaa in 1990 before he was tracked down and put out of his misery by Gelindo Bordin, but they were ahead of Cosmas Ndeti’s course-record splits at nearly every checkpoint.) On Hereford street, they asked, can Cheruiyot really make the record? (Yes, if he puts the hammer down now, and he did. I guess they wanted to make sure the announcers weren’t waxing hyperbolic.) Later, they wanted to know how Meb’s time stacked up against American performances historically? (Tied with Benji Durden for 8th all-time, best since Bob Kempainen in ‘94.)

Later, I talked with Dave Kuehls, who had my iaaf.org gig for this race. He was brainstorming points for his report and we agreed that the men’s first-half splits had been unreasonable by any measure. 1:02 and change? A pointed out that that can’t have been far from Meb’s half-marathon PR. Nobody, but nobody, can run the second half of the Boston course well after an opening half like that; it’s a minor miracle that Sell didn’t mow down Meb and Maiyo as well, and a credit to them that they could hang on. I slipped in an opinion: “These guys are running absurdly fast.”

Even at that, from 25 miles on it was plain that Cheruiyot was in a world of hurt himself. He looked back several times and his pace was leaden, not the fluid power his coach Moses Tanui used to have in the closing miles. The only reason Maiyo and Meb didn’t catch him was that they were hurting even more. Another opinion: “He did that the hard way.”

When the broadcast shut down, I called my former roommate (already on the road home) with the news. When I made it on the T, there were shuffling zombie-walking runners coming on as well, and I wondered why anyone would want to run a marathon. Ouch.