30 Years Running – Philly Marathon 2024

“I didn’t do enough!” Oskar Schindler

“Every grouch has a story to tell.” Oscar the Grouch

History

30 years ago, I was younger, fitter, faster, and less tempted to stop for a beer along the way during the first Philly marathon, my first foray into 26.2 mile territory.  With the supposed wisdom of age, the experience of 16 marathons completed, approximately an extra pound for every year since, knees aching like a breaky heart, and a family who’d rather be anywhere but on the sidelines of the worst parade (still my favorite supporter sign to date), you’d think I’d know better.  But the 30^th anniversary of my best marathon beckoned me to revisit the City of Brotherly Love, where I would battle my brother to see who could better fake their way through the full distance without proper training.

Back in 1994, approximately 1,500 people lined up for the low-key race, including five of us from the high school cross country team.  Three of us ran together for the early miles, before I ran off ahead at a pace that I had no business running, reeling off six-minute miles for most of the race, before hitting the Wall with a mile to go but hanging on for a top twenty finish. 

When I reran the race in the 1996, thinking my college self in better shape than my high school days, I utilized the lonely stretch along the Schuylkill to throw up three times between miles 18 and 19, before slogging the rest of the way to the finish.  But I had run a smoking fast first 18 miles that day!  Had they not moved The Wall up seven miles from my first marathon, I might have set a new personal best.  [Note that The Wall is the metaphorical marathon barrier, and not the dreaded hill in Manayunk that is fortunately not part of the course.]

Alas, further attempts at Pheidippides’ false distance in 1997, 99, 01, 02, 03, 06, 13, 14, 15 (3x that year!), 16, 18, and 22 all fell short of the rookie run.   2024 would be no improvement.  [Pheidippides could brag about how back in his days, marathons were a hell of a lot longer than 26.2 miles, like your grandfather would tell you, except that Pheidi supposedly died after his one run, and has been deceased for approximately 2500 years.  FWIW, the first rule of marathoning should be survival.]

In 2024, the Philly Marathon is a much bigger race, with over 17,000 runners signed up for the Sunday morning run, plus another 15,000 for the half marathon and 5,000 for the 8k on Saturday.  The course is nearly continuously lined with spectators, leaving nowhere for me to subtly lose my lunch like I last did in 1996 (barf my breakfast is more accurate, but doesn’t sound as smooth). 

There are some hardy Philly runners who have never skipped a race in its 30-year history, and they could pinpoint when things changed from low-key to crazy.  I assume the intense security started in 2013 after the Boston bombing, but you’re on your own to find one of those better qualified veterans to offer further insight.  I’ll stick to my own unqualified, anecdotal BS for my report.

Skip to “Let’s Run” below for the straight race scoop.  Everything before then is… what happened before then.

Trip Details

Robert Burns said that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.  Or was it that the best made plans of lice and men?  Or something about lousy men making plans?  Sai deferred to me to plan the details for the Philly marathon.  I booked a room for Friday and Saturday nights, with the intent of leaving early in the day on Friday so I could hit up the expo on its first day, enjoy an early evening to bed, chill on Saturday, run / walk / crawl on Sunday, and take a nice shower before the late checkout from the hotel and the long drive home. 

We checked into the hotel at around midnight on Friday / Saturday, only around eight hours behind the schedule in my head.  Running late and missing goals would be a recurring theme for the weekend.  Instead of beating the afternoon traffic by taking a half day at work, we waited out rush hour and then went to a late dinner before starting the drive. 

GFY HGI

One of the recommended hotels through the marathon website, the Hilton Garden Inn informed me that late checkout meant out by noon on Sunday, else I’d have to pay an extra $75.  And parking was not included.  Nor was breakfast.  Nor were the complementary bottles of water in the room (free if you’re a gold member, $2 each if you’re not).  HGI was conveniently located right next to the expo and approximately a mile from the race start, but otherwise it sucked like a hungry baby. 

So we checked in late and would have to check out early.  At least the hotel was reasonably priced at only $300 per night. [That was sarcasm, which is hard to convey in writing.]  Parking was a mere $40 per day. 

Inside HGI, there were dueling TVs in the small space, somehow programmed so that when you turned one off, it turned the other one on, until we ended up unplugging one so we did not have to sleep with the screen shining.  There was a queen bed and a pullout couch.  I opted for the couch to avoid the flailing arms and legs of my children, letting the wife and wee ones duke it out in comfort while I lumped it out alone.  Despite the three of them sleeping on the drive, we all quickly passed out in the room and no one stirred until after 8 a.m. Saturday morning. 

The Tall Tale Heart

Catherine and I checked out the expo while Sai sat with Teddy and worked on his French lessons.  We regrouped and went to lunch in nearby Chinatown because Chinese food is highly recommended pre-race or because being married means saying Yes Dear when you can.  Race day poops would empty the tank of anything eaten the day before anyway, and it’s not like I’ve been dieting healthily during training (or over the intervening 30 years since I first ran the race).    

We then made our way over to the Franklin Institute for kid fun.  (Food for Sai, F.I. for Teddy and Catherine, and 26.2 miles for me).  Aunt Rachel (still a Philly suburbanite) met us there to help chase the children.  Uncle Keith and Aunt Jade made their way over after Jade’s PR half marathon that morning.  It was a tearful reunion of half the siblings, except that Keith and Rachel do not speak to each other over a fight from years before.  Brotherly love does not extend to sisters. 

The Franklin Institute was otherwise a lot of fun!  Teddy obsessively played some silly gravitational pull game, where he came to near fisticuffs with another kid who had snagged some of his asteroids.  Catherine dragged Aunt Rachel all over the place, allowing me to rest on a bench while holding everyone’s coats and bags as it was cold and windy on this day. 

I had been to F.I. some forty years prior (plus or minus) and recalled it being a fun place, but the only concrete memory I carried of the experience was the traumatic claustrophobia of climbing through the dark, beating heart.  I was excited to see the heart still there, but horrified not to hear the deep beeps and to see that it was not nearly as dark as the stuff of my childhood nightmares.  I can only assume that the original organ became clogged from the (delicious) greasy food of Philly, another victim of too many cheesesteaks with, provolone or whiz.  This transplant heart was much airier, eerily quiet, and not at all scary.  Keith concurred with me that the tamer version was not the same, proving either truth in this account or a shared traumatic upbringing, or both.

The planetarium offered a chance for an afternoon nap, and the kids ran around the maze room with amazing energy.  Aunt Rachel then said goodbye to everyone except for Keith and Jade (the week around Thanksgiving is all about seeing family you don’t like), while we walked over to the Christmas Village outside City Hall.       

Dance, Dance

The quaint little shops offered ornaments, puzzles, knitwear, knickknacks, tchotchkes, German-themed foodstuffs, mead, wine, beer, and other distractions that kept me from resting.  Catherine felt no such need for rest, opting to hop up on the center stage, beside the crowded tables, where she danced like a child possessed by some evil holiday spirit to the Christmas music.  If Regan MacNeil had this stage for an outlet, The Exorcist might have been a much happier movie.  Other kids came and went, dancing for a few minutes, bopping along before moving along to other entertainments.  My little girl did not want to stop. 

She was like a cross between Elaine Benes and Raygun, with some of the weirdest dance moves you’ve never seen.  There was one other committed little girl, though Catherine pointed out that she wasn’t little (probably 8 years old, which is double my daughter), who seemed to have a choreographed preteen routine.  She could cartwheel and split like a coordinated kid.  Catherine copied her moves, without the same set of skills, often rolling across the dirty stage like a broken breakdancer.  Endless energy, which I envied.  After, the older girl complimented Catherine on her efforts.  Catherine told me that the girl was good, but that she was better.  Humility is not in her vocabulary. 

No Rest for the Wicked

I had a devious plan to sabotage Keith’s sleep by sneaking over to his hotel and pulling a fire alarm in the middle of the night.  However, he was not staying at a hotel, but at a friend’s house.  And her house lacked the same centralized alarm system.  Plan B was to set off a smoke detector to wake him up, but I forgot my matches.  Besides, Jen seemed like a nice enough person that burning her house down just to disrupt the brother’s pre-race slumber felt a bit too much.  I’m getting soft in my old age, and not just around the midsection.  Instead, I focused on my own rest.

Back at the POS HGI hotel, the kids fought over who would sleep in which bed.  Ultimately, I was not allowed to enjoy the uncomfortable pull-out couch; instead, I had to share the big bed with Teddy, who decided during the night that he had to lie orthogonally, with his feet firmly planted in my back.  No matter how many times I tried to push him away, he always came back to drill me in the back during the night.  He also thought it was funny to set his watch alarm to go off at midnight, which only woke me up. 

At 2:30 a.m., Catherine finally felt the effects of the long day of walking and dancing and decided that it was time to start crying about how her legs hurt.  Her pre-sympathetic or preemptively empathetic suffering for what I’d be feeling a few hours later might have been sweet if it wasn’t so ill-timed. 

4:00 a.m. a neighbor’s alarm woke me. 

By my own 5:00 a.m. alarm, I was already over the idea of sleeping and ready to get out of the hotel of horrors.  Someday I will find out how Keith conspired with my kids to keep me up.  So far they all deny the collusion. 

Let’s Run!

I warmed up with a shower since I didn’t know if I’d have time to take another one after the run, even though I didn’t expect the non-stink to stick through the marathon.  I left the overpriced, underservicing hotel at 6:18 to arrive at the security checkpoint around 6:30, reaching the corrals around fifteen minutes later.  Keith and I met in the C Corral, where we waited another half hour for our chance to cross the starting line.  We both had targets of running around 4 hours in mind, which meant that starting 20 minutes after 7 would leave even less time to beat the critical cutoff of the hotel checkout. 

The brother and I ran together for a few miles, pounding the early morning streets of Philadelphia with an easy pace, like a slow Springsteen song from a depressing Tom Hanks movie.  We passed two miles in just under 18 minutes, and were steadily picking up the tempo when Keith said it was tracking faster than he wanted.  Somewhere between 4 and 5 miles, I pulled off to use a portapotty, with Keith commenting that he’d see me soon or see me in hell, I’m not sure which.  While I waited in line, losing precious seconds, Keith sped off like a brother possessed by Catherine’s energies.  My quick pee break lost me a minute and a half of running time, but the lighter bladder would surely help later. 

My mental math said that seven miles an hour for the first few hours would position me well for four hours of total time (4:01:30 with the aforementioned bathroom break).  The first 7 miles were done in just over 59 minutes, so I was in a decent position.  When I ran the race previously, I recalled it being a relatively flat course.  This time around, I found the slight elevation changes to be more mountains than the molehills of my youth, but still I enjoyed the rolling terrain. 

I was continuing to steadily pass more than be passed as I passed the midpoint at 1:52 and change, which works out to a fifteen-minute buffer for the back half, the theoretical downhill side of the race. 

My longest training run peaked at around 15 miles, and it was months earlier, as I am a lazy slacker.  During the rare long runs, I often hit a wall in the second hour, but those were without the crowd support and race adrenaline, so it doesn’t really compare. 

I was still just under pace through two hours, more than 14 miles down.  Still chasing the ghost of Keith, who totally lied when he said the early (slower) pace was too fast for him.  I felt like Quentin Cassidy in Again to Carthage, except not as fit or with as much to prove, so I gave in a few miles later and took my first walk break at the 2:30 mark.  This was around the same point in time when I hit the Wall in the first Philly, except in that race I was approaching mile 25 and this time I was some eight miles behind my younger self. 

Where Were We?

The Philly Marathon course does a great job of covering the old city.  Starting at the Art Museum, it runs down Ben Franklin Parkway (past the Franklin Institute), past City Hall, down Arch (right past my hotel, only a mile into the run, down to the Delaware Riverfront, under the Ben Franklin Bridge, along Columbus Blvd, before turning back in and heading up through South Street, Chestnut, Walnut (amazing crowds on these Nutty streets), passing UPenn and Drexel, before leaving the heavy urban setting around 10 miles in. 

Then it transitions into a greener scene, around Memorial Hall, along Lansdowne Drive, touring the large urban parks.  Here’s where the crowd thins, though the line of people enduring with you are plenty of motivation.  (When the race was an order of magnitude smaller and I was several orders faster in 1996, I was mostly alone along this part of the course before my blowup and throw up, when plenty of people caught up to pass me.  Being more of a mid-packer, with the thousands of runners now participating, there was no such solitude this time). 

Just after the 25k mark you embark on the Kelly Drive out and back, seeing the much faster people on their return journey as you head to the Manayunk turn at 20 miles.  It is a long, long stretch on the same road, even if it is a nice road, running beside the Schuylkill River.

It’s really a nice course.  I enjoyed the scenery so much more than my younger, brasher self ever did.  Adding the extra time gives you that much more time to look around and appreciate the scenery. 

Walk This Way

I told myself that I earned a two-and-a-half-minute walk after my two and a half hours of running, not counting the pee break.  I took this time to ingest half my pack of Sport Beans for some added sustenance, hoping it would sustain me through the next ninety minutes.  They had plenty of aid stations, offering Nuun sports drink and water regularly, and two stations where they handed out some sugary fruit chews.  The Nuun was a nice reminder of my time to beat as it’s pronounced the same as the checkout time of HGI. 

Less than two minutes into the walk break, I picked it up again and plodded on towards Manayunk.  I took a few more breaks before the 180-turn, still feeling generally satisfied with the efforts.  That’s when it happened…

Somewhere around mile 19, as I was slowly making my way up Main Street, surrounded by another energetic group of supporters on the right and the long line of people beating me and heading in the opposite direction on the left, I heard my name and looked over to see a smirking bastard in an ugly yellow Iowa Hawkeyes singlet enjoying his large lead.  Most of me knew it was inevitable that I’d see Keith along this stretch of two-way running, but deep down, part of me somehow hoped that he’d fallen into a ditch somewhere along the way and was hobbling along behind me.  Not that I wanted him to be injured, just hurt enough to let the older sibling win our rivalry.  Deflated like a flattened whoopie cushion, my next walk break was longer than the others.  Speaking of false flatulence, I’m pretty sure I heard Keith blowing raspberries when he saw me. 

At twenty miles I was still under three hours (fell off the 7 MPH pace), which meant four hours was still doable if I could pull off a 10KPH to finish.  In 1994 I had an early race conversation with a guy who was completing something like his 20^th marathon.  He told me that the race didn’t really start until the last 10k.  I laughed and left him in my dust, ignoring his experienced advice because I surely knew better.  With under a mile to go, the same joker happened to be the only person to pass me in the race, ratifying his strategy.  To this day, I still refuse to reserve energy for the end.  It’s like the song says – it’s better to burnout than to enjoy the day (Or something to that effect.  I was never good with lyrics).  I was not racing this last 10k in 2024.  I was just hanging on. 

The crowds were great.  Whenever I abused my allowable walk break, someone would call my name (printed on our bibs), encouraging me to continue to get after it, hang in there, doing great, and other nice platitudes.  Except for one woman, whose vitriolic attack on a poor guy in front of me scared me silly.  “COME ON, DARICK!!” she said with such animalistic rage that I immediately picked up my own pace and dashed across to the other side of the road to escape her wrath.  I read later that Darick’s body was found floating in the Schuylkill, but it could have been a coincidence.

I hit 40K at 3:50 and some change, meaning I only needed 2k (5 laps around the 400M track) in 10 minutes, and I’d be good!  Wait, that meant hanging on for an eight-minute mile, and doing it again for an extra lap, when I hadn’t run that fast all day.  I also recalled the roughly 2k warmup I’d done prerace and recognized that I should have been done running already.  “F#$% 4 hours!” was the result of these thoughts.  I’d love to say that I rallied, kicking it in, beating the arbitrary standard, but I did not. 

I crossed the line in an unofficial chip time of 4:04:34. This was roughly 30 years and 84 minutes later than my first Philly marathon.   It was some 20 minutes behind Keith.  But at least I didn’t drop dead at the end, Pheidippides.  And at least I didn’t fall flat on my face at mile 23 and finish the run with a bloody chin like some blood relative of mine (I won’t name names because I’m classy). 

Aftermath

After crossing the line, the real race began.  I felt surprisingly spry and speed walked through the crowd, collecting my medal and some refreshments before heading back towards the hotel.  It was going to be close…

With every step I heard an annoying jingle, which I was slow to recognize was the cracked Liberty Bell on the medal bouncing with my steps.  It’s a really cool-looking medal, much fancier than what they gave us back in the early days. 

After having to stop at a couple of long traffic lights (they didn’t keep the streets closed for this stretch of my day), I entered the hotel lobby at 12:01 p.m.  I raced up the seven stories to our floor (via elevator), and knocked on the door hoping beyond hope that Sai and the kids heeded my plan and held the room for me to sneak in a shower before housekeeping found me out.  No answer.  I kept my room key and entered to an empty room.  Sai had not only left, but she left me without my change of clothes, phone or wallet. 

I knew she wasn’t anywhere near the finish line because she would not walk that far and doesn’t care to see me succeed at anything (despite otherwise enjoying my suffering), so I figured she took the kids to lunch and I’d have to guess where or wait by the car in the overpriced garage next door.  Regardless, I took a relieving shower, sadly changing back into my race kit with no other options save used towels, which I did not find flattering. 

Exiting the elevator, there in the lobby, arguing with management, was my wife with my stuff (and my kids).  She hadn’t abandoned me after all!  We gathered later that they must have been coming down a different elevator when I went up, like you see in stupid movies. 

After changing into some cleaner clothes and loading the bags back into the car, we walked over to meet Keith and Jade for a beer and lunch.  But brother K picked a busy beer garden that refused to serve losers, so we ended up leaving empty-stomached a short while later (Keith and Jade had already eaten and had multiple delicious looking beers by that time).  With all the humility that Catherine the ugly dancer lacks, I left Philly with my tail between my beat-up legs, heading home to where I can now retire from the stupid sport of running.

(Until next time?)