Pony Espresso Express
Dear PE’s:
Sunday, December 13th was a banner day for me. Having run 128 prior marathons, I certainly did not expect to make any startling new discoveries…but I did! As I have done for the past 10-15 years, I started the race with a dear friend, John Nerness, a physician from Vero Beach, Florida. We had each run this race 27 times in a row and were planning on #28 together. It started out like each of the other Honolulu Marathons we’ve run. We met in the lobby of my hotel at 4 am and took pictures and greeted family members. We walked to the start of the race with thousands of others in quest of conquering the mythic marathon distance. We heard the gun go off at exactly 5 am and we ran carefully to avoid walkers (where did they come from?) and watched the fabulous fireworks which lit up the still dark and starry sky. We ran conservatively (with John’s son Curt, also an established marathoner and physician) through the first half, all pretty much stride for stride. At that point, John suggested that I run ahead since he was feeling a little “under the weather”. I took off and ran easily and within the limits of my training and abilities. Much to my surprise, I actually continued to pickup the pace and finished with my single fastest mile (if you call 8:50 fast) and cruised under the finish banner with a negative split of more than 7 minutes! Now many of you have probably done this…but for me, it was an entirely new experience. In fact, I’ve never even been within 10 minutes of an even split! I’ve often told neophyte (and veteran) marathoners that the race is really a 10K race…with a 20 mile warm-up or that the 2nd half of the marathon starts at mile 20, but I never truly embraced the concept myself. Like thousands of others, I’d always get caught up in the moment and go out at 10k or half marathon pace assuming I could hold it. I never did! Sunday was different. This is not to say that it was fast. Nor did I come even close to my fastest times. But this was more satisfying than any of the prior efforts. I got to run with my “old friend” and meet many “new friends” and do something entirely new and different. At the end, I ran into a sports columnist for the Honolulu Star Bulletin. It would have never happened had I not finished just when I did. Below is the article which appeared the following morning in the paper. This was my reward:
Marathon’s 5-hour gang keep each other going
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Dec 14, 2009
I’d like to introduce you to someone, but it may be too late.
If you were at the Honolulu Marathon yesterday, there’s a good chance you’ve already met John Backman, a 63-year-old cardiologist from San Diego who not only talks the talk, but talks the run — seemingly the entire run, with plenty of vocal chords left to keep chatting after the 26.2 miles.
I met Backman a few feet beyond the finish line at Kapiolani Park, right around the 5-hour mark. He was getting his picture taken with a young lady who had also just completed the run, and a lot of conversation was involved. I figured they were maybe father and daughter.
“Oh, we just met,” the woman said.
Then a few minutes later, a guy dressed like Yoda floated through the finishers’ chute. Backman gave him one of those “You da man” point-and-nods, like teammates do after big plays.
“Thanks, Yoda. You helped me through that rough stretch. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”
The wise one nodded and pointed back.
Later, Backman laughed when I asked him about his costumed friend. “Yoda was cool. We were playing tortoise and hare. I picked him up between the 17 and 21 (miles). That stretch I was walking, but then I would run and catch him, then walk and run again. I knew Yoda had power.”
This was Backman’s 129th marathon and he’s finished here 28 years in a row. I asked him how many people he usually talks to — how many friends does he make — at each race.
“Probably 25 to 100,” replied the good doctor. “One guy today, I picked up at the 22-mile mark. He was a Marine. I said, ‘Come on, you’re a Marine. You’re tough, you can do this. He started running again.”
My 10 minutes with Backman yesterday made getting up at 3:30 a.m. worth it. He was three Red Bulls, without the crash.
Proper training: “I push consistency over intensity. Consistency trumps intensity, like in bridge.”
Aging: “We learn there’s more to running than beating the clock.”
Starting exercise at a late age: “Get out there. It’s one step at a time.”
THE 5-HOUR finishers are the most interesting and diverse — a cross-section of everyday society. To me, they are stars as much as the elite runners who cover most of the course before the sun peeks over Diamond Head.
Many of these middle-of-the-packers are first-timers, many are veterans like Backman. Quite a few think it’s Halloween, like Yoda. One of the bigger curiosities yesterday was two guys who came in under 6 hours simply wearing jeans and T-shirts.
A barefooted runner or two is always in the mix, and beginning to despair for an angle, I was chasing down a sole man when Backman’s magnetic field pulled me in. Something just told me I had to talk to the chatterbox when I heard him say something about being “stoked” about his “negative split.”
If I’d ever learned that term when I ran in the ’70s and ’80s, it’d gone the way of my knowledge of things like Rico Carty’s lifetime batting average: Once locked in for no apparent reason, now erased. Backman explained cheerfully. A negative split is when you complete the second half of the run faster than the first. “I never had a negative split before, ever,” he said, joyously.
Maybe the negative split is a reward for his positive attitude — that contagious we’re-all-in-it-together ethos of the middle-of-the-pack marathoners.
Reach Star-Bulletin sports columnist Dave Reardon at [email protected], his “Quick Reads” blog at starbulletin.com, and twitter.com/davereardon.
Thanks to all my mentors…past and present. Thank you John and Curt. And especially, thank you Dave Reardon, for being in the right place at the right time. There must be gods and muses of the marathon who look favorably on aging but determined athletes 🙂
Happy Trails,
JRB