Race Report: National Marathon in D.C.

My daughter runs to meet me around mile 16, on Constitution Avenue:


The last runner in race, juggling as he goes:


Don't let the sweeper catch you:


Later that day, my first beer in three months:



My wife took the pictures; I didn't bring my camera for this run. I'm not one of those runners who fights for PRs, so I wasn't worried about losing time. But I was a bit worried about finishing. This wasn't my first marathon—that was the Illinois Marathon, a year ago—but I didn't have time to train as well for this one.

I finished, but I was right to worry. The National is a challenging marathon with a lot of hills. It starts with a long gradual climb toward Capitol Hill from the east, which you have to repeat after mile 13. There's also a sharp hill from DuPont Circle up to Kalorama Park and Adams Morgan. (Years ago, on a business trip to D.C., I remember hitting that hill on a short run from my hotel and not being able to take it.) Somewhere after mile 23 in Anacostia, there's a final rise that's a real killer.

But what really made the race hard was the weather: By the time I finished, it was over 75 degrees. And of course I wasn't trained for that kind of heat. My last long run had been in freezing, pelting rain and tree-ripping wind; the one before that, I was climbing over piles of snow on every curb.

The race was well-organized and I had fun, but I wouldn't recommend it to most slow marathoners, especially if you're the kind who finds it helpful to run in a crowd with a lot of spectator support. You have to qualify with a sub-5-hr. marathon to run it. My previous race was 4:50, and that meant I started in the very last corral. Most of the people in that corral were signed up for the concurrent half-marathon. Since it was also their last corral, it meant that I was sharing the course with people who were about as uncertain of their ability to complete 13 miles that day as I was of finishing 26. I'm hardly going to complain about them—we slow-motion, long-distance joggers are a band of brothers and sisters—but it isn't easy psychologically to watch so many people dropping out or walking just nine or ten miles in when you still have 16 to go.

And when the halfers split off, the back of the pack got very lonely. Spectators are pretty thin in this marathon (probably because it starts at 7 o'clock) and that's especially true in the back half, which runs through an industrial and warehouse district in the SE quadrant and then through a shadeless riverfront park along the Anacostia.

Even so, I loved the course. I go to D.C. often on business, and it's a city I've had mixed feelings about. It's full of interesting people and impressive architecture, but the downtown and the Federal buildings are a flop in terms of urbanism. Because government buildings take up whole blocks, you can walk for a very long time before finding a cafe or a shop--and when you do, it's likely to be a Starbucks or an Au Bon Pain. It just doesn't feel like a city in those parts. But the race course quickly breaks away from Monumental Washington and into D.C.'s real neighborhoods of painted brick row houses, bars, restaurants and universities (notably Howard). It turns out to be a beautiful, lively town.

Seeing my wife at kids and mile 16 helped get me through the hard slog. So did a runner I met as we limped through mile 24. I had just just pounded down a Powerade and let out a loud belch. That inspired the guy next to me to tell a joke:

Two strangers, a man and woman, have adjacent bunks on a train's sleeper car. The man takes the top bunk, and the woman takes the bottom bunk, which is near the cubby where the blankets are kept. The lights go out. A half hour passes. The guy calls down to the woman below:

"Its chilly in here. Can you hand me another blanket?"

"I have an idea," she says. "How about just for tonight we pretend we're married."

"Sounds like a great idea," he says.

"Good... get your own f----ing blanket."

Five minutes later, he farts.

Okay, that's pretty terrible. But it ate up a quarter mile of pain. Thanks Mystery Joke Guy!