Lawrence Block - Step by Step

Still, one of the walks was of marathon length. And whether or not they kept track of finishers’ times, there would be a clock at the finish line, and, hell, I’d have a watch, wouldn’t I?

It might be an interesting experience. I’d been in marathons with people who didn’t seem to care how long it took them to finish — the Purple People in Anchorage, for example — but I hadn’t yet been in a race that wasn’t a race. With virtually all of the participants not runners but walkers, and with most of the walkers just out for a stroll, I might find myself up among the leaders, instead of at my usual spot in the back of the pack.

I could feel the notion settling in, like fog. I tried to keep it at bay, to will it to be gone, and that worked about as well as it does with fog.

Why not do them both?

Well, why not? Logistically, it made a certain amount of sense. I could fly to Salt Lake City for the marathon, then to Las Vegas for a few days with my cousin, then to Portland. And then home, flushed with triumph. Or just flushed.

But did it make any other kind of sense? Well, maybe. I would probably be ready for a marathon by the time Salt Lake City rolled around, if only to let me know whether I had any business entering the twenty-four-hour FANS race in June — and, in the process, helping prepare me for FANS.

I wouldn’t be pushing for a fast time in Salt Lake City. I’d seek only to finish the race at a comfortable cruising pace. They offered walkers an early start, so I could take it easy without worrying that they’d close the finish line before I got across it.

If I did take it easy, the race wouldn’t necessarily take all that much out of me. It’s not distance all by itself that takes a toll. I’ve been in short races that left me more exhausted than long ones, five-mile and ten-kilometer races that proved much harder to recover from than some marathons.

“This may sound crazy,” I said to Lynne, and went on to tell her what I had in mind. Let me just say that it’s unsettling when you’re prepared to listen to the voice of reason and hear instead from someone who’s as crazy as you are. I suppose I should have expected as much. This was the very woman, you’ll recall, who, in response to my gingerly suggestion that we might seek out some of those Buffalos, announced unequivocally that we should go to all of them.

“I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “If you take it easy, there’s no reason you can’t do two marathons a week apart. People do that all the time, don’t they?”

“Those clowns I met in Mississippi,” I remembered, “were going to do Mobile the following day. Twenty hours after they finished one marathon they’d be starting another.”

“I don’t know that you’d want to go that far,” she said. “But a week apart sounds reasonable” — reasonable! — “and you’ll enjoy spending a few days in Vegas with Petie. And if you don’t feel up to the second race—”

“I’ll say the hell with it.”

“Exactly.”

“If I can actually complete both races, I’ll know I’m in good shape for Minnesota in June. If one of them’s a disaster, I’ll know not to register for FANS. And whatever I wind up doing, I’ll just be doing it, you know?”

She thought for a moment, then nodded. “For yourself,” she said. “Not for the book.”

On Thursday, April 17, I flew to Salt Lake City, and Saturday morning I showed up for the marathon. I’d signed up for an early start time, and they got us off at 6:12, right after the bicycles. The bicycles weren’t racing, there were minimum and maximum speed limits for them, and I wasn’t ever quite sure why they were there, but then I wondered that about myself as well.

It was cool at the start, but not too cool, and it was bone-dry, with a strong wind blowing. The course was point-to-point, with a substantial net drop in elevation, but there were a couple of uphill stretches that took their toll. I looked at my watch from time to time, and my pace didn’t vary much; I covered four miles the first hour and every hour after that until the last, when I found an energy reserve and picked up speed. I don’t know how much the headwinds hurt — the elite runners complained about it, and their times were nothing special. I don’t know how much of a role altitude played. I know I had no trouble going the distance, and crossed the finish line with a net time of 6:26.

Nothing hurt. I took the TRAX train back to my hotel, took myself out for a good halibut dinner that night, and went back to my room to watch Joe Calzaghe beat Bernard Hopkins on HBO.

In the morning I went to the hotel gym and put in a half-hour on the treadmill. I did the same the next day, and later on I flew to Vegas, where my cousin Petie picked me up at the airport. I stayed at his house for three nights, and walked each morning on the streets of his gated development. They’d been very recently asphalted, and it was like walking on a rubberized track. I was out there for an hour each morning, getting ready for Vancouver.

Right up until Thursday, I gave myself the option of skipping the second race and flying straight home. I hadn’t even registered for the race, you didn’t have to sign up in advance, and I could change my ticket and cancel my hotel room if I wanted. But I felt fine, and if the Salt Lake City race had taken anything much out of me, I couldn’t detect the lack of it. Thursday afternoon Petie drove me to the airport, and I flew to Salt Lake City and on to Portland, took a cab across the Columbia River to Vancouver, Washington, and the next morning I put in a half-hour on the treadmill.

My event, slated for Saturday, was a marathon, but it wasn’t a race. The whole weekend was billed as a walking festival, and consisted of a whole medley of races that weren’t races, but walks of varying distances to be taken at one’s own pace. You started whenever you chose within a window of a couple of hours, and you finished when you finished, and nobody was there to record your time.

Or to keep you from getting lost. When you set out they gave you a map and a sheet of detailed instructions, telling you where to turn and what streets you’d need to cross with caution. There was no traffic control, and sometimes you had to wait for the light to change.

A Volksmarch, they called it. A German word, the translation of which would seem to be self-evident. It was more like hiking than racing, although one could certainly endeavor to cover the course as rapidly as possible, because once you did, well, you got to stop and go do something else.

Interesting.

To get a sense of what it was going to be like, and for something to do, I signed up for a 5K walk Friday afternoon. There was a 10K on offer as well, but I decided that might be a little too much the day before a marathon. I got my card stamped — you carried this yellow card with you and presented it at various checkpoints along the way, to prove you’d actually covered the route and not spent an hour or two in a saloon — and I started out, and at one point along the way the 5K walkers zagged while the 10K crowd zigged. The people immediately in front of me turned out to be 10K walkers, and I, alas, zigged when I should have zagged, and went the whole ten kilometers after all.

I figured that was probably stupid, but you could say as much about the whole idea of walking two marathons a week apart, so the hell with it. I got a look at the city — American Vancouver, the natives call it — and decided I liked it. And in the morning I put on my Salt Lake City shirt and a pair of running shorts and showed up at the desk to get my yellow card stamped.

And it was a strange experience, a marathon but not a race, with a follow-the-directions element that gave it points in common with orienteering. I used racewalking technique, and I moved at my cruising pace, and it was humbling to note how many people who wore street clothes and carried backpacks and walked in a very ordinary nonracing fashion somehow managed to move at a faster pace than I. They were just walking, for God’s sake, and they were leaving me in the dust.