Running the 42K at 42

It was 4:30 in the morning and darkness was still draped upon the city streets. The feeble glow of the street lamps on the road up ahead easily gave way to the blackness, giving one the sense of a long and endless tunnel. The small area where I stood on that early Sunday morning in July, however, was ablaze with floodlights and a beehive of activity. It was a sort of organized chaos as close to 600 runners nervously massed at the starting line of the Manila leg of the 30th Annual Milo Marathon.

"Gentlemen…" the race organizer announced: "Start your engines!"

I let out a brief chuckle, temporarily releasing some of the tension that had been building up within me. I wonder what Pheidippides – the Greek runner whose historic run in 490 B.C. we were just about to reenact – would have thought of such an introduction. After the Greeks miraculously defeated a Persian army twice in number, Pheidippides was immediately dispatched to Athens to proclaim the victory lest the city-state surrender prematurely to the Persian fleet.

Pheidippides ran a distance of roughly 40 kilometers along the plains of Marathon, Greece. Upon reaching Athens and delivering the message, he collapsed and died from exhaustion.

The modern-day marathon is 42.2 kms, or just slightly less than the length of the entire South Luzon Expressway. It is estimated that over the course of a race, a runner’s feet will strike the ground over 50,000 times, pounding every single piece of bone and fiber in the body until numb. Somewhere near the 30-km mark, I had heard, many runners experience "hitting the wall" and develop an irresistible urge to stop. At this point, the runner has completely used up his or her body fuels and literally runs out of gas. The lucky ones manage to somehow continue while many others, weakened further by dehydration, cramps or overheating, simply stop dead in their tracks.

I’ve always considered myself a runner. People have described it as a lonely sport but I’ve always enjoyed the sweet melancholy of long runs. There are also times, though not often, when I get the sense that my body is operating perfectly – my stride, my breathing, and everything else just "feels right." At those times, I can look up at the birds in the sky and truly believe that I know a little bit of how it feels to fly. The marathon gave me the opportunity to achieve the ultimate running experience – the mountain that I just had to climb simply because it was there.

As the countdown continued, I glanced to my left and could just make out the silhouette of Jose Rizal’s monument. I found it morbidly funny given the very first marathon’s tragic, albeit heroic, conclusion that our race that day was to start and end at the site of where another hero was killed – Rizal Park.

When the starting gun fired a few moments later, I could almost hear the ghost of a Spanish soldier cry out, "Fuego!"

Like the sound of approaching rain, a thousand footstrikes instantly filled the air as we all charged into the semi-darkness. Curiously, Rizal Park is "kilometer zero" for the entire country – the starting point of all distance measurements in the Philippines.

From just across Rizal’s statue, we were to proceed south along Roxas Boulevard, passing over the EDSA flyover until we hit the Coastal Road. At that point, we needed to turn around, make our way back to Gil Puyat Avenue and travel its entire length before crossing into Fort Bonifacio via the Kalayaan flyover.

After making a final turn just before C-5 near the Heritage Memorial Park, we would then head back to Rizal Park and finish at the Quirino Grandstand.

The atmosphere was electrifying. With so much adrenalin pumping through your body, it is inevitable that you run your first few kilometers faster than your intended pace. Experienced marathoners know when to calm down and to settle into their regular rhythm.

Despite not having done much running over the past 10 years and having only eight to 10 weeks to train, I felt cocky and confident that I could finish it in four hours (elite runners do it in two to three hours). Somewhere along the route, a gremlin crept up behind me and whispered that I could really do it in three hours and 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, I listened to the little monster, and that, together with my inadequate preparations, would make me pay dearly later on.

It is amazing how such an event can make one instantly feel a kinship with several hundred strangers all at once. Just right after we started, a speeding car screeched to a halt on the opposite side of the street eliciting hundreds of curses and cries of "Hoy!" from us.

With so much sweat involved, you would also think that a restroom break would be the last thing you would need in the middle of a race. I don’t know how the women managed, but us men were like dogs. It was a good thing that when I got the urge in the middle of an island on Roxas Boulevard, it was still an hour before sunrise. I also found out that such continuous movement actually causes some people to develop loose bowels. I can still recall the sheepish look of a fellow runner muttering curses about his bad luck as he headed for some bushes along 5th Avenue inside the Fort. I suppose Ayala Land wouldn’t mind that much.

Up until about the 26th to 28th kilometer mark, the only thing that had really been bothering me was my left foot. My thighs felt a little tight and I was laboring a bit after finishing the long uphill climb beside the Heritage Memorial Park. Still, I felt generally fine under the circumstances. At about 12 kilometers to the finish line, disaster struck. My thighs started turning into giant knots forcing me to grind to a halt. All of a sudden, I felt like I was running on fumes. A feeling of helplessness overwhelmed me. I lurched and sputtered like a car on the verge of breaking down. When I finally staggered back to Roxas Boulevard, an official told me that I was just kilometers away from the finish line.

By then, my left foot also felt completely beaten up, jarring me like a boxer’s jab every time it struck the ground. I did not fully appreciate the saying "so near yet so far" until that moment. A runner just ahead of me collapsed on the pavement in agony. Screaming at his right calf, which had become as hard as cement, he pleaded with it to just give him the opportunity to finish the race. I stopped, stretched out his leg and massaged it. After a few moments he thanked me and urged me to continue on. He caught up with me several minutes later and actually finished ahead.

Mercifully, after 4 hours and 18 minutes, I reached the finish line, the 199th runner to cross it out of a field of 575. I managed a tired smile to my wife and friend from New Zealand. All I could really think of then, however, was how much I wanted to take off my shoes.

As I was leaving, a runner I had befriended before the race called out to me, "Better than sex!" I smiled faintly and shook my head. Perhaps the experience had not been "as good for me as it was for them." It was truly a humbling experience. I had gone into the race thinking that, in the end, I would feel like a boxer who had just knocked out his foe – with both arms outstretched in glorious exultation. Instead, I felt just fortunate enough to have survived. Nevertheless, I would not trade the experience for anything. Deep down, I also knew that I would have to do this again at least one more time. But for the moment, I suppose Pheidippides would not mind it so much that I also now claim the right to utter his legendary last words: "Rejoice, we conquer!"