My Big Sur
Experience
Author: Naren
Gathoo
My dream of running the Big Sur Marathon
began about two and half years ago. I visited the
Silicon Valley Marathon Expo before my first marathon
for Ekal Marathon Team in 2006. When I stopped at the
Big Sur Marathon booth, I was taken by its scenic &
beautiful course. Well, in January 2009, after putting
off the plans for the past 2 years & after a couple
of months of slacking after the SVM2008, I was feeling
the usual tingling to run again. In the 1st week of
January, I finally registered for Big Sur Marathon.
We (Jay, Srinivas, Lalitha & me) kicked
off the campaign with 8 mile run on
Campbell trail and we
met Coach Raman while running on the same day. Coach
Raman Rajpal is a charismatic and “60 year old teenager”
as he likes to call himself. He has a mixed running
group with people training for various marathons and
ultra marathons in the off-season for Team-Asha. He
happily agreed to take us under his wings and train us
for Big
Sur. The last
4 months of training were strictly by his book and we
did all the right things. We met Sudarsan from Coach
Raman's group who was also training for Big
Sur. We
trained hard, with lots of hills and cross training,
intervals and tempos. We did a nice 3 week taper
down after hitting almost 48 miles/week. Finally, we
were ready to roll the dice. When everything was looking
good, I picked up a viral infection just a week before
the
Marathon. I spent
four days off work, resting and recovering. My wife
Suchita & I had decided on Wednesday that I would
dropout if fever comes back or if my cough gets worse.
The disappointment was simply overwhelming. Fortunately
fever didn’t come back and my sore throat and cough also
got better, though I had some weakness. To gain
confidence, I did a bit of running on Thursday and again
on Friday and I reassured myself that I could at least
finish it. With a PR aim on the back burner, I decided
to take it easy and enjoy this marathon as much as
possible.
We reached
Monterey at around
2.30PM on Saturday and went directly to the Marathon
EXPO to collect the race packet. It is the Expo where
you feel the excitement in the air,get to see a lot of
veteran or first time Marathoners. The guy who was
giving out shuttle bus tickets had ran all 23 of the
previous Big Sur Marathons and he casually mentioned the
wind. What was that? Wow! I didn’t
train for it. I hoped that it is no big deal. The Big
Sur marathon is a one way course and you need to reach
the Start point some 26.2 miles away J from
Carmel
City at Big
Sur. The
shuttle buses take over an hour from
Monterey to reach the
start point due to treacherous road conditions. No
wonder they tell you not to over hydrate before you
board the bus as the potty queues are agonizingly long
at the start line and there are no better places around
to improviseJ. For 6.45AM start
we had to board the bus no later than 4.00AM. I had to
drag Suchita & kids out of bed at 3:45AM to drop me
off at the shuttle pick-up point about 1 mile away from
the Hotel. I half-heartedly offered to walk that 1 mile
J but was
strongly overruled by Suchita and kids. All of them
agreed that they will happily wake up to see me off at
3.45AM.
I reached the start point at 5.30AM and
made every effort while on the bus not to look outside
the window in order to get a feel for the course. I
tried to catch some sleep, but thanks to a chatter box
sitting behind me on the bus and I had to hear through
experiences of her past marathons and 10Ks and 5Ks. A
dude sitting next was adjusting his cool miniature
Flip-video camera. He told me that he planned to record
a clips of his experience on and off throughout the race
so that he could live through it again. With excitement
of a marathon, the emotions are high and everyone has a
way of expressing it. Some people constantly talk and
some act cool like dozing off or pretend to be calm.
At the start point, thanks to cell phones
(Bless ’em!), I managed to track down Sudarsan and Jay
(Jitendra) Mehta in the crowd of some 9,000
runners. Sudarsan, Jay and I took some cheesy
pictures at the start line after long waits at
porta-potty, coffee and the sweats queues. We then
decided to hang around the 5:00 hour flag group. The
flag holder was a veteran runner named Danny. First 5
miles of the
Big Sur
marathon are most gentle though there is about 250ft
climb. Around mile 3-4 Sudarsan and I drifted ahead of
Jay and the flag group.
The
Big
Sur course starts with gentle hills for
first 5 miles and then gets to the fun part :).
The crown jewel is of course the "hurricane point". The
hurricane point starts at Mile 10 with a long 2 mile
hill climb of ~560ft with about 5% grade & gusty
winds. The name hurricane point is derived from gusty
winds at that point. The weather was very windy from the
beginning and the head winds were relentless till almost
mile 25. With an objective to enjoy the race, we
maintained about 10:15 pace from the beginning until
about 14 miles. The remarkable things about this race
are the volunteers and lots of live bands. From country
music to classical played on a grand piano to Chinese
drumming and exotic American-Indian/Haitian/Mexican
dancers. There are bands/food/fruits and aid stations on
almost every mile marker after Mile 10. The course is
spectacular and I felt blessed and lucky to have had the
opportunity to participate and run on such a course. The
mid way point or 13.1 miles is exactly at the center of
the
Bixby
Bridge. At the end
of the
Bixby
Bridge, there was
the much anticipated and well-known Yamaha Grand Piano
being played live by Michael Martinez. The view, the
wind & the music was just an amazing experience. We
paused for a few minutes and listened to the music.
Anyone who has driven to Big Sur will surely remember
the beautiful
Bixby
Bridge. A high
curved bridge at perfect scenic bend overlooking the
deep sea on one side and green valley on the other. The
Bixby
Bridge is often
put up as a symbol of
Big
Sur races.
By mile 14, the hills and strong head winds
were taking their toll. To cheer us up, there was a band
of about 30-40 Chinese drummers performing terrific
drumming at mile 14. We paused for photos, resisting the
temptation to join the drummers or to dance. We switched
to 10-1 routine where you run for 10 minutes and walk
for 1 minute. This slowed us to about 11 minutes a mile,
but kept us going. The tough part of marathons is always
between Mile 14 to Mile 20 when you are a bit tired and
you still have 12 miles to run with the finish line a
distant reality. We chipped along with 10-1 routine,
occasionally stopping to take pictures and battling with
the wind. The course is brutal with rolling hills, curvy
and banked roads with relentless wind. At Mile 18 we
switched to 9-1 routine. The walk breaks of 1 minute
kept us going. By mile 21, I was feeling that my knees
were squished and pain was building up everywhere. I
started hating the banked roads on bends and tried to
run on the shoulder or in the middle of the road.
At mile 23, we were greeted with wonderful
strawberries and probably the most delicious
strawberries I have ever eaten. So far we had clocked
4:24 hours and had another 36 minutes to reach the
finish line, if we were to finish under 5 hours. We
switched to 8-2 routine to give ourselves a longer
relief and avoid walking at the end. On an average, all
runners had at least two layers and people had not taken
off the garbage bags till almost mile 24 when the sun
finally broke the cloud cover. In to mile 25, we were
staring at yet another hill climb almost a mile long
& about ~200 ft. We still wanted to finish under 5
hours but the target was looking like a remote
possibility.
Suddenly, Sudarsan noticed the 5-hour flag
group running past us and we chased & started
running with them. That gave us the momentum and with
the pain momentarily forgotten, we managed to cross the
finish line just in time. This includes a last usual 100
yd dash :) with hands up like a champion once you see
your family and their proud faces. Crossing the finish
line is always an emotional experience to me and I thank
god for giving me the opportunity and my wife Suchita
and daughters Asmita & Urja for their enthusiasm and
support through out the training and on the race day.
Our post race ritual is generally fun, lots of pictures,
a good massage and some of my favorites such as Masala
Puris washed down with a Vanila
shake.
Every time I think that this is my last one
at mile 23 and once I cross the finish line & see
many happy and proud faces around, it makes me more
determined to do it again.
About
the author
Naren Gathoo is an Ekal
volunteer who ran more than 10 marathons.
He lives in Cupertino with his wife
Suchitha and their 2 kids. He works in the networking
industry. He can be reached at
gathoo(at)yahoo.com
