In the 19th century, Boston-based landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead wanted to build a necklace of parks that would stretch from Boston Common out to the suburbs. Remnants of the attempt remain in Brookline but the plan was never completed. Today, instead of a network of green pathways bringing the country into the city, there is a web of urban corridors in which the city seeps out into the country. Rt. 135 is a good example of this strip development. A block or two away you find secluded one-acre plots, but along this two-lane highway you can measure your progress by counting the arcaded shopping malls.
A visitor from abroad running the Marathon sees a case study of American landscape built for the automobile society. You meet sidewalks only occasionally, in the town centers. To get from the garden store to the Big D Wonder Mart to the HeadQuarters hair salon, you need a car. Without the automobile, this strip development would not make sense.
While the runners fight through forty-thousand yards, most of the spectators do not stray more than ten yards from their car. There is a crowd at each parking lot along the way, at gas stations, barrooms, train stations. Even when there is a much better vantage point a short walk down the street, most families set up camp right next to the four-door. This is partly because people bring with them so much stuff to watch the race. They have the lawn chairs, the Coleman cooler, the barbeque grill, the portable television, the radio, and most troublesome of all, the kids.
For the first two hours I walked alone, and then, at 12:11, the race caught up to me. At the seven mile mark in Framingham the wheelchair leader passed me going about thirteen miles per hour. The rest of the day I fell further and further behind while I covered ground. At Fisk Pond in Natick, the elite runners tracked by. Fisk Pond is at the 15K point, where the elite runners have their private water bottles, each marked up in some distinctive manner. The squeeze bottles are full of brown, blue, red, green fluids and masked in different colors of tape. One with a sponge rose poling out, suggesting a kindergartner's vision of a chemistry lab.
If you walk the Marathon, you don't fit into any standard category. You aren't a spectator, but you don't quite count as participant either. At several watering stations, when I reached for a Gatorade, the woman told me, "I'm sorry, the drinks are for runners only," and I would patiently explain that I had walked from Hopkinton. Suspicious, she would relent grudgingly. Take one if you must, but move on, she seemed to say. We don't want anything to do with hiking boots and blue jeans.
On television, you can see the sweat, but in real life the Marathon is a truly messy business. Out of respect, the television does not show the Red Cross "Disaster Services" medical tents, each of which fill with a platoon of heat exhaustion victims. A man wearing a doctor's glove stands at each aid station with a handful of vaseline. Runners grab a blob and smear it around their groin and between the legs to prevent chafing.
There are no portable toilets, and I wondered where the runners can relieve themselves. The answer is: wherever they feel like it. On telephone poles, stone walls, even the lawn of Wellesley College.
By the time I reached the Wellesley mile, I had a good idea of when I would finish. I was doing a little over three miles an hour, and I wasn't getting as much thinking done as I had hoped. I tried to make mental notes of the spectators, or of the houses and the landscape, but it wasn't much use. I had passed the point where a walk is a useful thinking tool and just wanted to get back to Boston and take a shower. a waited for the mile markers. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. I stopped at a Star Market and bought an apple and a candy bar for lunch. Sixteen. Seventeen. I passed the spot where I photographed the race two years ago. Eighteen. Nineteen. The hills started.
People watching the race yell strange words of encouragement. "Don't worry, you'll make it!" "You don't look that bad!" "Only one more hill!"
At mile twenty I met Jake Brederson. Fifty-four years old, this was his twentieth marathon. He ran it once and finished sixty-ninth with a tome of 3:38. That was thirty years ago when there were only two-hundred participants. The rest of his twenty he has walked. One time, his ride did not show up at the finish line, and he did not have any money to get home, so he started walking again.
"I got to Jamaica Plain and tried to thumb a ride, but no one would pick me up, so I just kept on walking down Route 1. Finally someone picked me up at 1-95 and gave me a ride to Attleboro, where I called my wife, and she said, 'why didn't you call me sooner?' I didn't want to bother her, you know."
Jake picked up a penny. "If it was heads up, that would mean luck, and I would have given it to you, and you would have gotton luck too. I have a gallon jar at home full of coins I've picked up while out walking."
Jake told me about his father, his two wives, his race-walking days, his charity work, former marathons, the three he didn't finish, the bad year he had in 1974 when he got divorced and worked at a camp-ground, his days as a police officer, the boxing team he coaches, his walking trips to New York and back. He didn't need much encouragement, and I didn't offer much resistance. By this point, I was happy to have someone to keep my mind off my feet.
After four hours, race officials took down the mile markers so we weren't sure where we were. With some undefined distance left, some officials in marathon jackets told us we had two miles to go.
Then, a half mile later, we were told we had two miles to go.
Again, ten minutes later, a fellow told us we had two miles to go. Jake almost throttled this man.
The signs on the street lamps said, "Tow Zone. No Stopping Any Time." So RTLÃept walking. The two miles turned into one and a half and then into one. We turned off Beacon Street onto Kenmore, Hereford, and finally, Bolyston. The crowds were still in the stands, cheering, almost four hours after the race had been won. I stepped across the finish line with an unofficial time of seven hours, fifty-nine minutes, thirty seconds.
The Copley T-stop was closed on Monday and a race official was giving directions. "You can get home on the Green Line from the Arlington T-stop. It's straight down Bolyston Street. You can't miss it. It's only about half a mile."