The Year of Running Dangerously

NOTE: On March 5, 2000, I ran in the Los Angeles Marathon after training with the L.A.Roadrunners for four months. At the time, I'd gotten some interest from the editor of Runner's World for a first person piece about the experience. My angle was unique, he told me, since I was inspired to run after the birth of my son the previous July. I'd wanted to get in shape so I could be healthy enough to watch him grow up. However, although I finished the marathon, I also wrecked my foot and in the process wrecked my chances of getting published in Runner's World. I haven't run a step since the marathon, except to run to catch the occasional airplane. As I wait for my foot to heal, I try to stay in shape by riding my bicycle. It finally occured to me that I hadn't been very smart in the way I went about running. The whole time I was training, I was literally one step away from disaster. What follows is a draft of my marathoning story written before it was killed.

By ED BOND

Imagine one of those legendary California homes that seem to perch so precariously from the seaside cliffs on the coastline, supported only by thin pilings anchored in rock. Think of those pilings slipping off their foundation and you've got a good idea of what my legs and ankles can look like in bare feet.

That's how flat-footed I've been all my life, one good tremor away from disaster. So, of course I had to try to run the 2000 Los Angeles Marathon with those feet.

A year earlier, I celebrated the 1999 Los Angeles Marathon as a chubby couch-potato who watched the run on television for all of 30 seconds before flipping back to the Sunday morning cartoons. I exercised infrequently. I used food to get me through writer's block. I got winded going up a flight of stairs.

One cycle of the calendar later and there I am running through the pelting rain with 20,000 other Angelenos as we circle USC, pushing myself through the pain along Wilshire Boulevard, plodding through the broiling sun on Hollywood Boulevard.

It was on Hollywood Boulevard, just as I crossed under the Mile 20 banner when the pain suddenly jabbed across the top of my foot. I had to stop - briefly - to stretch and take a pain pill before plodding back onto the course. Our family doctor had wondered if my flat feet would let me finish a marathon. Now I wondered too. Although he encouraged me to exercise to lose weight and bring down my cholesterol, people who run marathons do so, "For some other reason," he said.

My reason, what had changed me in just seven months, was my little boy and his mommy waiting for me somewhere up in the distance.

"Well, I've come a long way," I said to myself.

At first, my main enemy was the 17-year-old living inside of me who remembered long Saturday morning runs along the boardwalks in New Jersey, track meets and cross-country training. Years as a newspaper journalist, eating candy bars, fast food and drinking beer, had turned that high school athlete into a marshmellow.

Anytime I did try to jog, that 17-year-old in me would get frustrated at so much effort with so few results that I would quit. My wife Amy silently worried about me, but at only 34 it seemed my running days were over.

But then, I didn't count on how much Jack would change me.

As Amy grew larger as the birth of our first child neared, I'd stand next to her, rubbing my own ample belly and joke, "You know, I think I just felt the baby kick."

In the quiet after his birth, I stood over Jack in the hospital nursery stroking his hair and promising him a good life. But when I later saw from the hospital photos that I really did look as pregnant as Amy, the joke was too real to be funny. Unless I ran, I wouldn't be keeping any promises.

So, I ignored the 17-year-old. It didn't matter how well or how far I ran. I just ran.

At Mile 21, I called Amy on the cellphone and find out they're waiting for me at the corner of Wilshire and Francisco, which she tells me is about a mile from the finish. Suddenly, I'm counting the minutes to them more than the miles to the end.

But why this slow plod? While training with the L.A. Roadrunners, I ran 10-minute miles.

I was in more trouble than I realized.

"I can't believe you were able to do what you did," a foot specialist told me a couple days after the marathon. He pushed my foot and told me to resist. I couldn't. "I shouldn't be able to do this," he said as my foot gave way. My posterior tibial ligament, a key to my foot's foundation, had over-stretched like a crusty old rubber band.

Why a marathon? For someone who was just starting out jogging again, to go for a marathon makes as much sense as a weekend camper trying to survive in Antartica, or a go-cart racer jumping into NASCAR. But it made sense when it happened.

At first, I just realized I'd do better running with a group, and the L.A. Roadrunners were meeting 7 a.m. every Saturday to start their training run in Venice, not far from my home. The first time I saw them was in a 5K run in Santa Monica. As I struggled to the finish, Coach Pat Connelly gave me a high five and told me to pump my arms. I was hooked.

Next to that annoying 17-year-old inside of me, bad shoes would be my other enemy. When my old pair of jogging shoes wore out, I carelessly bought replacements at a department store sale. My flat feet, turning in with every step, made quick work of them. On a 15 mile training run along the beaches in Santa Monica and Venice, I struggled in pain, oblivious to the fact the shoes were destroying my feet and legs.

As I hobbled the last couple of miles, I hooked up with another L.A. RoadRunner named Mike Braney, a 61-year-old training for his third marathon. Mike struggled too, but he helped me keep a pace. Mike pointed out the landmark - a yellow wall on the Venice Boardwalk - where we were too stop. We finished well.

Then as we turned to walk back to our cars, Mike tumbled to the ground, unconscious, breathing erractically.

"Somebody call 911," I yelled at the crowd. He died of a massive heart attack, but not only had he finished his 15 mile run, he helped me to finish too. It was a lesson that would stay with me.

Exhausted and still stunned, I went to the karate school where Amy was studying for her purple belt. Jack, now about five months old, rolled on the mat during the class. I watched him thinking how life and death can be so close.

A trip to a running store and the right pair of shoes seemed to fix my foot problem, but I also felt like Rip Van Winkle. The changes in the runnning world surprised me. Advanced shoe technology, Power Gel, Gu, and Body Glide, were all new to me.

But I was uncovering new problems. After an hour of running, bleeding from nipple chafing turned my T-shirt into a twisted, maternal horror show inspired by Steven King. At the end of runs, I often looked like a multiple gunshot victim. And, nothing seemed to fix the problem completely.

Sweat washed band-aids off my chest. Large adhesive pads had little success. Mole skin - a recommended favorite by my running store - didn't always last. Sometimes a second skin kit worked for part of the run. I would try a variety of combinations and finally two weeks before the marathon a coolmax shirt helped the most but was still bloodstained at the end of the marathon.

But there were good changes. The weight started to come off. I felt stonger, more confident. Although I never had been a morning person, the combination of a baby and the marathon training, made it possible for me to get up at 5:30 or 6 a.m. I rediscovered the dark chilly world of newspaper carriers, bundled up walkers, joggers and other early risers. As the full moon hung in the western sky over the marina, I ran along the Ballona Creek bike path in near perfect pre-dawn darkness.

And, I was having fun. I enjoyed the whispering thunder of a thousand footfalls at the start of a race. At the end of the Southern California Half-Marathon in January, I picked up my pace a mile from the finish. The 17-year-old inside me told me to pick up my knees. My stride opened up. As I turned the corner onto the last block, the run turned into a sprint. Three other runners started to sprint with me.

Then, the sprint exploded. My calves slapped the back of my thighs as I found more speed. Running neck and neck with the others, I found some more speed, and then a little more. "Go Road Runner," somebody yelled to me.

Edged out at the finish line, I couldn't catch my breath in the chutes. I was laughing too hard.

The foot pain returned in early February, but I decided it was tolerable. I made sure my shoes were still intact and the week before the marathon I rested completely. The morning of the marathon, the pain was gone.

At 5 a.m., making my pre-run oatmeal and packing my gear as a rare but drenching Los Angeles rain poured outside, I turned on the kitchen light and found a handful of small pink roses in a little vase on the table. "I'm so proud of you," Amy wrote on the card. "You're going to do great."

Later, in the hotel which served as the staging area for the L.A. Road Runners, Coach Pat Connelly stood in the middle of the room with hundreds of us surrounding him. He talked about the medal they give out at the finish. "You can't buy it anywhere," he said. "You can only earn it."

As we waited in the starting corral on Figueroa Street, the more than 20,000 of us were pelted in the rain. The crowd let up a sound that was part cheer, part groan. We were getting wet no matter what, and many were learning all but the simplest of rain gear was folly.

Waterlogged sweats shed like snake skins and were tossed on the chain link fence around us. As I inched to the start, my foot turned sluggish and heavy. Someone's sweatpants had wrapped around my ankle.

Crossing the starting line, I went into a relaxed jog. All around me was the light rustle of cutout trashbags, Hefty, Glad, Bradlees, Sears, the best alternative to heat-trapping rain gear.

On my left, a hopeless optimist ran with an umbrella though rain assaulted us from every direction. This distinctively Los Angeles race was peppered with sights such as a flock of Elvis impersonators - complete with sound system and Elvis painting - and a platoon of superheroes.

"Good luck marathoners," a fire truck's PA system blared at us as we passed. The volunteers and the few spectators who braved the rains with us, helped keep our spirits up. A church sounded its bells as a nun stood in front and rang a hand bell for us. Homeowners turned up their sound systems and blasted us with music. Giggling teen-aged girls yelled cheers. A Japanese group played drums. Clusters of spectators stood in the rain and waited for friends and family.

"You guys are crazy," I said. "You're gonna get wet out here." They laughed. It took a quirky bit of determination and a sense of humor to either run this race or just watch it. I called Amy from Mile 12, thinking how typically Los Angeles this was for marathon runners to use cell phones. As I flipped open the phone, I notice the bystanders watching me. "That's it," I said. "I'm ordering a pizza."

I ran slower and slower but kept going. At water stations the white cups scattered on the ground like artificial snow. Elsewhere discarded banana peels turned the street into an eery autumn scene. Along Melrose Avenue, the rains started to give up on the race and our early enthusiasm yielded to a sun-baked forced march.

"Victory! Victory!" someone says off on my left, determined yet tired.

"You mean we can still win it?" I say knowing full well the elite runners were home eating lunch by now.

"There's still hope."

Later, on Orange Drive near Hollywood High School, the sensor pads that record our achievement of 18 miles scream at the timing chips tied into our shoelaces. By now, my thighs were screaming too.

We welcome encouragement anywhere we find it. Along Hollywood Boulevard, people laugh as I take my own photo picture in front of the Mann's Chinese Theater.

A street person runs up to a woman talking into her cell phone and he yells, "She's running. She's doing great."

Then, the simplest statement. A man holds up a parking enforcement sign: "NO STOPPING. TOW AWAY"

I'd taken Jack with me when I went downtown the day before to pick up my timing chip and numbers. Then we drove most of the marathon route. I knew to expect a brief downhill slope from Sunset Boulevard onto Manzanita, followed by a series of serious hills on Virgil Avenue before the final stretch on Wilshire.

On Manzanita Avenue, letting the gravity and momentum carry me along, my mind briefly drifts into a pain-addled reverie. "I am beyond pain/ I am the asphalt / I am the race/ I am. . . going. . . down. . . hill"

Now, about four miles from the finish, I made the mental breakthrough. I forget about my aching foot and the sore thighs. On Virgil, as I grab some vaseline for my chafing armpits, a 10 year-old boy walks the route saying, "Somebody give me their hat, so I can have one." The specially made L.A. Marathon running hats we wore had become too hard won by now.

"I'm sorry," I tell him. "We worked too hard for our hats."

Then, the hills.

I ignored that 17-year-old inside and allowed myself to walk parts of the uphills, but kept a promise to myself to resume running - OK plodding - as soon as I hit the crest of each hill. I force myself to pick up my pace after the last hill.

With Wilshire in sight, a woman sitting on a beach chair at the Mile 24 banner calls out to me, "You've done great. You've gone 24 miles."

"So? This is the finish?"

"Yes," a woman runner on my left says.

"But you know what, they had to put our medals up on Mile 26."

By then, who cared? I could see Wilshire. Up there somewhere was Jack and Amy. They could be anywhere around the next corner. My pace starts to pick up some more. The resting must have helped. I find I have something left.

I move from a slow plod to a light jog. Then a little faster as I approach a water stop on Wilshire.

"I'm gonna win. I'm gonna win!" I shout at the volunteers.

They ignore the delirious runner. But I'm managing the pain. I go faster. I cross under the banner for Mile 25. A little more than a mile from the finish, but no sign of Amy and Jack.

No matter. I kept running hard. I'm pumping my arms now, breathing hard. "What else do I need my legs for this week anyway?" I say to myself.

We cross over the Harbor freeway into the heart of downtown as wicked wind whips us, driving us back. I tilt my hat into it and keep going.

Finally I reach Francisco, actually only two-tenths of a mile from the finish, a small difference to Amy, a big one to me.

"Amy?" I call out. "Amy?"

A familiar, but empty baby stroller sits alongside the road. A stranger stands by it. But as I get closer I realize it's our friend Julie, who had been keeping Amy and Jack company for the past six hours.

"She had to go change Jack. She left only two minutes ago." Twenty-five miles of running for my son and I missed him because of an overflowing diaper.

Oh well. I run hard into the canyons of Downtown, turning left onto Flower Street, probably in the last group who could be described as actually running.

"Pacing," I tell myself. "Gotta remember pacing next time."

And, again, I start sprinting the last two blocks. No one is with me. I have the finish line to myself and spread out my arms like a champion.

"There," I think. "That should make a good picture."

The next moments are a blur of staggering around. Volunteers took the timing chip off my shoe. They tell me not to sit down. As I move forward, I realize this is a rare moment when a person could feel unabashedly proud.

Now, as I limp to a woman holding a medal, I modestly take off my hat and charmingly nod my head to her. She places it around my neck. "Congratulations."

It took me 6 hours, 5 minutes and 32 seconds to finish, at least an hour longer than I thought it would take me at my worst.

But I didn't know I was injured.

The foot specialist prescribed physical therapy for my damaged foot and in the weeks and months after the marathon I learned how terribly weak my feet have been all my life. Without arch supports and good running shoes to counter the inward turning of my feet, my legs and ankles look like building supports that been knocked out of position by an earthquake.

The physical therapists have given me a marathon of exercises to strengthen the muscles and ligaments of my feet and taught me a way to walk so that I can build a natural arch in my feet. When I start running again, I hope to have feet stronger than ever.

Meanwhile, I ride 26 miles on my bike 4 to 5 days a week until I'm ready to run again. But I will run again. I know it because the marathon taught me I'm not a quitter.

I guess Jack and I will be learning to walk together.