L.A. MARATHON : The Real Pain Is at Back of the Pack : L.A. Marathon: It’s tougher for elite runners to run slower. The majority of 20,000 truly suffer.
Pick a paradox:
Why is it that elite runners at the front of the marathon--the ones who run five-minute miles for 26 miles--have an easier time during the race and recover from it faster than the shuffler at the back of the pack who takes six hours to complete the run?
Why is it more difficult for a 2-hour 30-minute marathoner to run the race in five hours?
Isn’t it interesting--and cruel--that the athletes who are best equipped to run longer in heat and difficult conditions are the ones who are in the elements for the shortest time; and those less able to handle heat or cold are exposed for three and four times as long?
There has never been anything fair about a marathon, except that it’s assumed that it distributes pain equally. But does it? Much of the attention in today’s eighth annual Los Angeles Marathon will be on the elite men’s and women’s field, with the occasional glance behind them. The top runners will have earned admiration, but how are the accomplishments of the plodders measured?
Consider the abilities. Marathon race directors don’t provide the disclaimer: Kids, don’t try this at home. Marathons have become so accessible that some of their mystique has faded. Perhaps because of the exercise boom, we have lost respect for running 26 miles.
So, the undertrained and the overfed line up and put their bodies through agony and no one understands. Now, in praise of the slow.
“I’ve always told people, ‘If you could take the minds of the six-hour runners and put them in the bodies of the elite runners, you’d have a champion,’ ” said Mark Plaatjes, who won the 1991 Los Angeles Marathon and has run 2:08:58. “They are so strong and determined. They have so much tenacity at the back of the pack. It hurts so much more for them.
“They are in pain from the first mile. We (elite runners) are hurting only from about the last four or five miles. People don’t understand when they watch us running. The first 20 miles, I feel nothing.”
Not so for the runners at the back. The elites are ushered up front to the starting line at the last minute, but the rank-and-file are shoehorned in for blocks behind the start. In a race the size of the L.A. Marathon, it can take five minutes for the runners at the back to even reach the starting line.
“Once you get to five miles, things start to hurt,” said back-of-the-pack runner Gerald Lazansky of Palm Desert, who completed his third L.A. Marathon last year in 6:21. “Then, about 10 miles, other things start to hurt. It becomes a mental game. Last year I had shin splints the whole time. You have to fight through all that. The thing is, we’re out there so long. When you’re at the two-hour mark, you still have three hours to go.”
Bob Sevane, longtime coach of Joan Samuelson, has chosen to move from coaching elite runners to helping club runners. Sevane said he has a new appreciation of the back of the pack.
“Who sacrifices more, the professional runner or the person who has a job, a family and a life?” Sevane said. “I’m working with a woman who works and has two kids. She gets up at 4 in the morning to get in her runs. On the weekends, when she wants to go for a run, she sits the children in front of the TV, puts in a tape and runs around the block for 20 miles. They’ve worked out a system where the kids will pull the blinds so she’ll know if there is a problem.
“Compare that to a paid professional runner who runs in the morning, takes a nap, runs in the afternoon and gets a massage. If you look at what they sacrifice, compared to the recreational runner, it’s not even close.”
It’s obvious that the elite athlete’s superior training and genetics allow him or her to run faster, with less pain. But it’s not true that they feel nothing.
Kim Jones, the third-fastest American female marathoner of all time, knows something of pain during the marathon.
At the 1990 Boston Marathon, Jones’ feet began to blister at the 10-mile mark. Through the next 16 miles, the blistering worsened and all the skin rubbed off the bottoms of her feet. The bleeding, which at first had been severe, eventually stopped, but to relieve the pressure on the soles, Jones began to run on the outer edges of her feet, causing pain in her knees and shins.
She finished the race in 2:31:01 and couldn’t walk for a week.
But aside from that trauma, Jones agrees that elite marathoners don’t experience the pain that observers might think.
“I think it’s much more difficult physically for the back-of-the-pack runners to finish the last 10K,” Jones said from Boulder, Colo., where she is training for the Boston Marathon in April. “But it’s harder mentally for the elites to finish the last 10K, because that’s when the competition begins, when you really have to think tactics.”
Another paradox: Why is it so difficult for fast runners to run slowly? Plaatjes says it involves rhythm and biomechanics. Jones says it’s about breakdown of muscle tissue and pounding on joints. Such discussions only increased after the New York City Marathon last November.
Nine-time winner Grete Waitz decided to accompany race director Fred Lebow in the race, two years after Lebow had been treated for brain cancer.
“When I heard she was going to run with Fred, I remember talking to my massage therapist about how in the world Grete was going to be able to run that slow,” Jones said.
The pair ran agonizingly slowly, walking for two minutes every three miles and on all the uphill sections. The drama of their race proved as gripping as any portion of the televised event. Lebow’s difficulty with the pace--they finished in 5:32--was because it was too fast. Waitz’s pain stemmed from running three hours longer than she had trained for.
“It was really difficult for us, but for different reasons,” Lebow said. “I was pushing myself and she was holding back. It was much harder for her than for me. I was running as slowly as I could. But Grete would have rather been running five minutes faster each mile.”
For Waitz, running slowly meant shortening her stride, causing pain in her hamstrings. Her respiratory system was used to operating at a certain level and, because of the slow pace, Waitz’s finely tuned body was inefficient. Running slowly also means that increased number of steps produce more weight and stress to bear. As Jones points out, Waitz usually lands on the ball of the foot when she runs, but landed heel first, pounding her knee and hip joints, when running with Lebow.
“The average person has no idea how difficult that was,” Sevane said. “Basically, it hurts. I have no idea how she ran at that pace.”
Viewed in this context, Sunday’s winners should be the race’s losers, and its losers should be viewed as winners. The race will have been easier for those who ran faster and more difficult for those who ran slowly.
“I know it all sounds like it doesn’t make sense,” Plaatjes said. “But it really does.”
Front of the Pack
A look at the past winners of the L.A. Marathon:
YEAR RUNNER TIME 1986 Rick Sayre (Men) 2:12:59 Nancy Ditz (Women) 2:36:27 1987 Art Boileau (M) 2:13:08 Nancy Ditz (W) 2:35:24 1988 Martin Mondragon (M) 2:10:19 Blanca Jaime (W) 2:36:11 1989 Art Boileau (M) 2:13:01 Zoya Ivanova (W) 2:34:42 1990 Pedro Ortiz (M) 2:11:54 Julie Isphording (W) 2:32:25 1991 Mark Plaatjes (M) 2:10:29 Cathy O’Brien (W) 2:29:38 1992 John Treacy (M) 2:12:29 Madina Biktagirova (W) 2:26:23
