No Heavy Lifting

by Rob Simpson

  Meanwhile, Roger was thinking, I-hope-we-don’t-crash-during-take-off and will-we-make-it-high-enough? Okay, good, we were on the same page.

  Me first. I said goodbye to Roger and KGMB-TV’s Filipino camera dude Sisto Domingo. Great guy. What does it matter if he’s Filipino? Because in Hawaii, that’s all you need to say about someone to describe them. Men and women of each nationality or ethnic mix have a personality trait that is automatically assigned to that nationality or mix. Call it acceptable, traditional stereotyping with an island twist. One word can dramatically change the charming connotation. Haole (white person), local haole, mainland haole, and fucking haole all determine the respective odds of you eventually getting punched.

  Sisto was a pretty big dude for a Filipino, had wavy hair, and, like almost all photographers, smoked da kine, also known as pakalolo. Outside of the weed reference, “da kine” is like “fair dinkum” in the Australian state of Victoria and other places that aren’t New South Wales. It’s true dat, it’s the real deal, it’s something genuine.

  ~

  Up you go. It’s noisy as hell on the plane and you’re scared shitless.

  I don’t recall exactly how long it took us to climb

  13,000 feet. All I remember is the dude with the ’70s moustache who would be riding tandem on my back and hopefully making sure the rip cord got pulled loudly stating, “Here we go.”

  I scooched over to him by making baby steps on my knees and then turned around very slowly in the cramped space of what was essentially a Honda Civic with wings. Before he leaned against me and clipped the buckles together on the harnesses that would keep us attached while falling, another guy yelled, “DOOR,” to alert the pilot, unlatched the handle where the door met the floor, and let it release. It swung up into its new position and the plane lurched slightly. The opening was big enough to allow a human being to fall out.

  That is a moment first-time skydivers never forget. Suddenly, the only thing between you and terra firma two and a half miles below is nothing. The powerful sound of the air rushing by the gap provided the perfect audio accompaniment as my heart and stomach drag raced to my throat.

  “Whoa, God.”

  REO Speedwagon on my back started shouting instructions.

  The expression on my face could have meant only one of two things: “I’m emceeing a large hockey banquet, and I just pooped my pants,” or “I’m just about to jump out of this airplane.”

  We crept out under the wing as a single human unit. I could finally stretch my legs a little bit, which felt good, but we were just outside the aircraft, hanging on to part of the fuselage.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  Before I knew it, “ONE, TWO, THREE.” And we fell into a summersault. When we first let go, we nose-dived and did a slow forward flip. At one point, our backs were to the ground, dude was below me and I was looking up at the bottom of the airplane as it flew away and we fell away. Then we continued the flip and ended up face down. At that point, I remembered the instructions and threw my arms and hands forward and my legs straight back, slightly flared. We gained a neutral position and dude threw out a stabilizer chute by hand. We were 350 pounds, free-falling. For the next thirty-five seconds, I was just freaking out. Good freaking out. The video shows the skin on our faces flapping. I was making shaka signs with both hands at the camera guy who was four feet away, falling at the same speed as he stared straight back at us. I looked down and looked around. You know you’re falling, but you don’t really feel like you’re falling.

  As expected, dude waved his hand in front of my face briskly three times to warn me that he was pulling the rip cord.

  “Please open.”

  It opened. I was bummed at first. The free fall had been spectacular. We watched the second camera guy plummeting in the distance when suddenly his chute opened.

  Then we were birds.

  At this point, probably about 10,000 feet above the North Shore of Oahu.

  ~

  Skydiving had never been on my bucket list. In fact, by the time I made a random long-term goal list, it was a couple of years after I had already jumped out of that plane. As we entered this newest millennium, I wrote down six main items that mixed career, personal, and athletic goals. Among the half-dozen: run a marathon. My wife and I had since moved from Hawaii to Idaho, but it was covering the Honolulu Marathon that first gave me the idea.

  A marathon was the one thing on the list I thought I had the least chance of accomplishing, and more than once along the way I completely wrote off the possibility. In 2010, I really thought there was no chance in hell. It’s four 10Ks plus some. Running 26.2 miles is basically freaking stupid. It’s why only 0.5 percent of the American population has run one.

  At almost six-foot-seven, 220 to 230 pounds, I’m built for team sports, not running. I played hockey, basketball, soccer, baseball, whatever, but I didn’t run for distance. Soccer involved running a lot, but the few times we went long distances in early season school practices, I ran slowly and/or puked.

  As an adult, running gradually went from being a simple, tolerable exercise option to something rather enjoyable. It became even more enjoyable when some competition was introduced. My brother Tom had run for years, including in multiple marathons, and we made a habit of getting together once a year for a 10K event. In fact, we annually hand out the Simpson Family Foot Race trophy to the winner of this challenge wherever we are in North America. Unfortunately, or maybe it’s fortunately, the kids have taken over, and unless we hold the event and don’t tell anyone else, us old guys will never win it again.

  Through this gradual acclimation, by 2012, I somehow decided I was ready to run a marathon. I gained entry to New York via a random lottery drawing early in the year. Utterly undecided, I waited until the last day before the invitation acceptance deadline. At that point, it was sign up or lose the chance.

  What the hell am I doing? I thought, after pulling the trigger and paying the online entry fee.

  Apparently, I had lost my sanity. I began training and ran various distances every other day, minimum of four miles, from May thru October.

  Hurricane Sandy then forced the cancellation of the 2012 marathon that had been scheduled for Sunday, November 4. The storm caused seventy-one deaths in the state of New York alone and was the second most expensive hurricane in American history.

  I would have been a complete donkey to be upset by the run cancellation. Everyone with any history at all on the East Coast had friends or family whose homes were trashed or destroyed. My pals’ houses in New Jersey were under water. I had hung out, worked, and/or lived in the City for more than two decades. It was shocking how long it took NYC Mayor Bloomberg to cancel the race, just two days beforehand. He waited until runners from Europe and the rest of the world had flown in to New York. While I was only ninety minutes away by car or train, true out-of-towners came in and were essentially trapped with very little to do. I found out my hotel was one of hundreds of buildings in Manhattan that didn’t even have power until well after the weekend.

  In reality, I was somewhat relieved the marathon was cancelled. Had there been a race, I’m not sure I would have survived it. Striving for an unlikely finish, I would have pushed and pushed and pushed, and without the proper salt and nutrient intake, I may have killed myself trying.

  Many weeks later, I used my automatic re-entry to sign up again. It was a rebirth, a second chance to get it right. It also meant redoing six months of training.

  This time I did my homework. I established a more efficient and effective run calendar, I researched the medical and nutritional side of getting through it, I studied and dreamed of the crazy cool course, and I established a prerun routine. This is what I needed for marathon day:

  The same model of Asics shoes that I had been running in, but a new pair with somewhere between sixty and one hundred miles on them. It would be my third
pair of new runners since May.

  Three or four little salt packets from McDonald’s to restore sodium to my body about every six or seven miles. On long runs, one develops a salt film on their skin, hair, and sometimes on their clothing as the sweat drains everything from the body. It’s dangerous not to replenish it.

  My lucky running sunglasses. It could be foggy or dumping rain, and I’d still wear those “dreamies.” I liked the complete anonymity of wearing them, somehow running with privacy.

  Gu packets. Manufactured in multiple flavours, I’d squeeze these prepackaged little nutritional globs into my mouth probably four to five times intermittently during the marathon.

  To know how to routinely drink water from a cup and swallow it while running exhausted. It’s not easy. Some people have to actually stop. I wasn’t stopping.

  To not take a Gatorade-type drink. Anything but water during strenuous exercise, for whatever reason, eventually makes me puke, and, for whatever other reasons, the Gu packets don’t.

  Anti-chafing cream. For efforts of ten miles or more, one needs to apply it to all bodily areas that rub against clothing during a run. The inside of the thighs and the nipples are mandatory spots. Sounds like a sadistic, kinky sideshow, but if untreated, one’s nipples will scream in pain and bleed from the shirt rubbing up and down against them.

  Special socks. Yep, running stores sell short socks with extra cushion for just such an event. Runners love them.

  To decide whether to free ball it or wear boxer briefs. I recall I ended up going commando.

  No injuries. A wonky knee actually knocked me out of training in May for two weeks. It was still five months before the race, but I thought I was done. Shin splints flared up very briefly on rare occasions, but fortunately were never truly a problem.

  To remember to carry three or four Tylenol with me. All forms of over-the-counter painkillers are discouraged during a long run as they could mask an injury that requires immediate treatment, but Tylenol is an acetaminophen and doesn’t affect your kidneys like ibuprofen. Aspirin and anti-inflammatories are on the no-no list during a marathon. I only planned to take the Tylenol during the last six miles or so if I knew I was okay and wanted to be more comfortable.

  Six months of running about every other day. For me it was actually three times a week. Staggered distances over time, eventually with three runs of eighteen miles or longer during the final three months leading up to the race, one of them twenty-two miles. By accomplishing that run a month before the marathon, I knew I could make the twenty-six. Most runs were eight to twelve miles while four or six miles was the default short distance.

  To run the Toronto half marathon two weeks before New York. (I ran it in 1:59:00.) After that thirteen-mile run, I was officially into the “taper-down,” which meant runs of four to six miles max over the final two weeks to rest the body. Toronto was my cleanest, best-ever run, which gave me a great deal of confidence looking a fortnight ahead.

  A ten- to fifteen-minute stretching routine before and after all runs.

  Travel arrangements and all the crap that goes with it. Being in all the right places at all the right times. Reality hit when I picked up my race packet and number bib the evening before. “Holy shit, I’m doing this,” I said as I walked back to my hotel.

  ~

  Nick Kypreos, a former National Hockey League player, Stanley Cup winner with the Rangers in 1994, and now a fellow hockey media-type in Toronto, was the only other person I knew of our ilk who was running the race in 2013.

  “A lot of stars aligned for me to run in the New York Marathon,” Kipper points out. “Rogers Sportsnet was covering the marathon, and they offered a spot for any broadcaster that wanted it, so they brought it to my attention. My first thought was not a chance, and then a week later it kind of sunk in that, probably the most opposite thing I’d ever do, running twenty-six miles. Not quite like getting ready for an NHL training camp, but in a lot of ways it brought back a ton of great memories.”

  Marathon training essentially means vanishing from your family for an extra hour or two or three every couple of days. Add the stretching and the cool down and the shower afterwards, that’s another hour. One has no option but to be fully committed. In a way, it’s therapeutic. I always ran alone, while Kipper did it differently.

  “I trained with some people who had run before; I joined a running group,” he said. “I had some personal training, they had me on a pretty good course leading up to the marathon.”

  Why do it? It’s a conquest: a mental and physical battle for someone fit enough to challenge themselves, like a mountain to climb. Kipper did it for the exact same reason I did. I did it for my son; he did it to set the same example for his kids.

  “It’s an hour, an hour and a half a day where you have to be in the gym doing the various exercises or pounding the pavement or the treadmill. My kids weren’t around when I played (NHL hockey), so this was a good opportunity to show them that if you set a goal, you find ways to achieve that goal,” Kypreos explained.

  I always ran without music and electronics. No watch either. I don’t wear one anyway so why wear one running. No belt or fanny pack with little supplies. For longer runs, I’d carry one or two plastic water bottles with me and discard the empties along the way. Otherwise, it was just the road or the sidewalk and me.

  This type of exercise is great for thinking, either deep thoughts or random streams of consciousness. Frequent topics: 1) places I’d like to travel that I haven’t yet, 2) all the ways the Palestinians are getting screwed over, and 3) a lot of Salma Hayek naked.

  There are times during training that you’re in actual pain and/or simply bored. During a middle month like August, when I had a week with a ten-miler and a four-miler and then a twelve-miler, I wasn’t exactly stoked. But I just kept plugging along and the conditioning results were remarkable. I’d finish a twelve-mile run, even an eighteen-miler later on, and just walk away. No hands on the knees, no drama. The body benefits and adjusts. I was svelte and in great shape. I truly believe anyone with a shitload of determination and without a medical condition can run a marathon.

  I actually failed the first time I went eighteen miles in training; I only made it about seventeen. The salt was thick on my forearms, and I was dizzy and lightheaded. Uh oh. Do I have a heart condition? I briefly thought about quitting altogether. Instead, I read up on the salt thing, regrouped on the distance calendar, and planned to make it the next time I tried that distance two weeks later.

  On October 13, three weeks out, I ran twenty-two miles. Most who train don’t go this far before a marathon, but I needed the distance for reassurance and confidence. I executed the marathon routine as it related to pace and ingesting water and nutrients into my body. When I was done, I knew I could tackle New York. On October 20, I ran the Toronto Half. It remains the best race I ever ran in terms of form and pace. Never deviated, basically ran nine-minute miles.

  After two weeks of a very pleasant taper-down, it was time for New York.

  ~

  Marathon morning, I left my hotel about ten blocks from the finish line and began the most bizarre round trip I’d ever make. Instead of hopping on the subway at Fifty-First Street, I walked eleven blocks to Grand Central, which allowed me to breathe a little and see the streets before the madness, and hopped on the 4 or 6 train downtown. I popped up at the last stop in Manhattan and wandered over to Battery Park and the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. They herded us aboard. The organization of the transportation was remarkable. Some runners took buses from the city, others private transportation. I signed up for the boat because, for me, it was the only way to go; it epitomized New York. You leave the downtown end of Manhattan, pass the Statue of Liberty on the way through the harbour, and end up at the north end of

  Staten Island.

  I was near the back of the herd, but I managed to walk along the port side of the ship
to an open spot on the floor near the front of the boat. I sat on the deck against a wall, with my legs stretched out. There was a quiet, somewhat nervous pall. People who knew what they were getting into, veteran marathoners, carried a certain confidence, but I sensed there were plenty of other first-timers like me. One girl expressed doubt about finishing the race to her friend.

  She won’t be finishing the race, I thought. Positive thinking is at a premium.

  The boat pulled up, a ramp was lowered, and I ended up being the first person leaving the port side. Cool.

  But that brief emotional boost was squashed the second I walked through the busy terminal and stepped outside. A long line of marathoners wound up the terminal driveway to the road, turned right along a fence, and down along a hill to where buses by the dozens were stopping to pick up runners. Thank God I didn’t have to take a leak.

  Twenty-five minutes later and about halfway through the line: “Oh my God. I have to piss.” Don’t think about it; don’t think about it — hop, hop, hop. Warm bus, warm bus, warm bus, please.

  About that same time, the professional runners were starting the marathon at the base of the Verrazano Bridge. After the elite men left at 9:40, the rest of us would depart in waves by the thousands. First we had to get there. I squirmed my way on board a bus. I sat halfway back next to a really cool middle-aged black guy from Detroit who was running his fourth or fifth marathon. We reminisced about Tiger Stadium.

  It seemed like only about a ten-minute trip. I unloaded, walked through and around cops and more cops, hit the Porta-Potty, and then wound my way to my colour-coded corral area. I was in the green corral, the only one on the south side of the bridge, and my start time was 10:40 a.m., also known as the third wave. Each runner had an assigned start time and a corral and shared, with thousands of others, potties, snacks, drinks, and grassy areas for stretching.