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Nepalese Children's Education Fund | |||||||
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At the beginning of 2003, NCEF board member Owen Ozier began training for what would be his third running of the Boston Marathon. As a "bandit," he wasn't officially qualified to run, but thousands of people run that way every year. This is his story.
Having run as a bandit twice before, once in 1998 and once in 2002, I knew how the marathon worked. The photo on the right is from the 1998 marathon, which I ran (in the black vest) with my friend Tosh Demsey (in the red jacket). I had finished in just over four hours both in 1998 and 2002, and I hadn't really trained enough either time. In 1998, I had muscle spasms towards the end of the marathon; in 2002, I trained more and avoided those cramps, but didn't improve my time very much. In fact, in 2002 I had only planned to run the first half of the marathon, but I couldn't convince myself to stop running, and I finished in a respectable time. So in 2003, I planned to do things differently: training better, and setting out to run the entire race.
I also wanted to make this race different in another way: I wanted to raise money for NCEF. I'd been involved with NCEF for about six months, and a fundraising effort seemed important for the relatively young organization. Most other people who don't qualify for the Boston Marathon are still able to run because of the money they raise for charities; and though it made my run no more official, I set out to raise money for NCEF.
Winter training is difficult, as any runner in Boston can tell you. I certainly didn't do enough, but by April, I had done two 20-mile-plus runs in training, which was far more than I had ever done in previous years. My goal on race day was to break four hours.
On April 12, I held a Marathon Fundraiser party at my apartment in Cambridge, raffling off prizes in exchange for contributions to NCEF. The prizes even included bottles of fruit wine that some friends and I had made the previous year; some from apple and some from peach. One of my wine-making cohorts was unable to attend the party, but she promised me a donation, as well as a bonus donation after the marathon if I ran "negative splits," which is to say, running the second half faster than the first half. She even specified that the fourth quarter would also have to be run faster than the third quarter for me to qualify for the bonus. Basically, to do so requires good pacing and planning, saving enough energy to accelerate at the end - something I definitely hadn't done in the previous years.
The week before the race, I started to get occasional pain in the outside of my right knee. Quick web research revealed ITBS - iliotibial band syndrome. It looked like it wouldn't be a permanent injury if I ran the marathon with it, but I hoped it wouldn't hurt too much along the way.
The day before the race I asked my friend Jon to give me a ride out to Hopkinton in the morning, and he agreed. Just moments later, I got a call from another friend who knew of two runners that needed a ride, and could the hitch a ride with me? I checked with Jon, and we had room.
April 21 - game day. Jon picked me up, then we picked up the two other runners, and made it out to Hopkinton by 10am. Jon dropped us on the side of the highway, and we hiked to the start line. The other runners introduced me to some friends of theirs who were also running the marathon, and one of them happened to be a former student of mine from my days teaching probability at MIT. He and I started the race together, running the first ten miles side by side. At mile 7, I jumped on a trampoline someone had set up, and my knee began to complain. But it wore off quickly, and I began to dig in for the long haul. At mile 10, Jon and his girlfriend Kathy were cheering for me in Natick, and I handed off some excess equipment (the $20 bill that I would have used to take a cab home, had I needed to quit early) and began to accelerate. I crossed the halfway point (13.1 miles) two hours and forty seconds after starting.
I got gatorade from a friend of mine at mile 13, got a cheer from a cheering section at mile 20 (they had written "GO OWEN !" on their stomachs), Saw my parents at mile 23 (where the photos below were taken), high-fived a friend at mile 24, and flew into the finish. The first half I ran at a 9:13 minute/mile pace; the next 8.9 miles I ran at a 9:02 pace; between miles 22 and 25.2 I ran at an 8:11 pace, and the last mile I did in 7:35.
My time was 3:54:45, meeting my sub-four-hour goal; I had negative splits in both the ways my wine-making friend had required. I got the bonus, and raised over $1000 for NCEF. I hope to do it again some day, but I'll probably be in Kenya during the next Boston Marathon.
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