Big Man Run IX
Race
Report
-Jeff Durso-Finley-
Lawrenceville, New Jersey
Brian Smith &
Post Race Author Jeff Durso-Finley
'friends for life"
July 24, 2004
“Wow, this is perfect
running weather,” Pat says before we drove up, noting the cool temps and cloudy
skies.
I’m thinking, “Damn, where’s the
heat!? Where’s the humidity!? This kind of weather
favors
real runners. I’m screwed.”
Then the proper frame of mind
returned, which can be summarized as the following:
Who Cares? It’s Big Man!
This year I came up with a buddy of
mine from NJ, a BMR virgin, who had seen the BMR Movie and wanted to get in on
the event. Smart man. We chatted casually about strategy on the way up and
though I wasn’t supposed to do so, I gave him some course hints, such as, “You
see, Brian, the first two miles are steeply downhill. You gotta go out like an
crazed antelope,” as well as “When you hit the first bar, drink three beers
there just to get your body in tune.” Someone later set him straight,
unfortunately….
The Weigh-In was the fastest I’d ever
seen. We’d gotten up there early so as to not get caught up in the line, but we
registered and cruised through in a heartbeat. I quickly figured out that the
reason it flew was that the “Official” was simply making up the weights as he
went along. The scale, which was clearly picked up from a pile of discarded
household goods on the side of the road, had long since popped it’s springs, so
you could manipulate your weight by 10’s of pounds by leaning, flexing your
toes, winking, inhaling, etc. I wanted to get the Pachyderm Award, so I rolled
around on the scale and got it up over 300 lbs. A brief but heartfelt chastising
from the, ahem, ‘Official” followed such blatant cheating on my part: guilty as
charged. He then had me look straight ahead so he could fabricate whatever
number he wanted, in my case ‘282.’ I laughed, as that was 15-17 lbs over. Who
Cares? It’s Big Man!
Accordingly, it then became grand fun
watching people come off the scale and laughingly mouth the number attached to
their weight. I thought it was hysterical until I found out that that Ron Cavage,
a.k.a. King Clydesdale, had an ‘overage’ that put him into the 250+ category
with me. Oy. So much for busting it this year…..
In the end, however, I had *NO*
chance of getting the Pachyderm Award, as a new record was set this year, 366
svelte, sexy pounds of Big Man. A new hero is born….
The usual pre-race banter followed,
marked by a noticeable increase in the number of jogging strollers. During the
awards ceremony later on Paulie remarked on this turn of events by citing the
number of children present, the tenure of BMR, and how the friendly atmosphere
was conducive to one and all, which had me lean forward to Freddie and Patricia
and say, “Did I just hear right? Is he promoting the Big Man Run as a “family
event”?
If so, I’ll be sure to forward this
race report to “Parents” magazine then, along with a proposal for my upcoming
article, “Atkins? A Wuss! How to Properly Feed Your Growing Clydesdale.”
We continued to mill around after the
National Anthem and meet new folks, and as a veteran of all 9 BMR’s, one of my
favorite parts leading up to the race is the classic set of questions from a BMR
virgin:
“Where’s the start?
“In the middle of the road. Right
there.”
“Which way do we go?
“ See the top of that huge hill
there? The one mile mark is up there”
(Pause)
“You mean we’re running into traffic?
(Pause)………They stop traffic, right?”
……then I get to shake my head, laugh
manically and walk away.
The start of the race was delayed a
bit by the absence of a lead police cruiser (Hmm, I can’t understand why the
police would be hesitant to sanction such an event), so we did what any good
clyde would do: we went anyway.
I felt good going up the hill, stayed
smooth and strong, without busting it too much and losing my wind, and cruised
into the Powderhouse Pub exactly as I had planned. Bar transition? 49 seconds,
which included the ceremonial ripping off and depositing of my tip.
Usually I have my first clearing burp
at the same exact place on the course and for some reason this one took an extra
500 yards or so, but I knew the loss of the Burren meant that I had plenty of
time to recover anyway, as the course had changed – yet again - and now Bar #2
was in Swampscott somewhere and the final stop was back at Khoury’s. Nothing to
do but settle in, find a pace, and wait it out.
This being Somerville, there was no
lack of entertainment on the course. This year’s participants were treated with
a version of “Law & Order: Davis Square,” complete with a full police foot
chase, wailing cruisers going the wrong way down one way streets, and money
flying through the air as the perp tried to escape from his recent robbery.
There was a full-on car accident as well (* NOT* caused by the runners, I should
note), which led to at least one runner fending off an approaching ambulance as
he crossed the street. I have to say it seemed like the traffic was more a
factor this year than usual. People got blocked for 10 secs or so at one
intersection, I saw a whole lot of dodging and weaving by the runners near me,
Brian got popped by a car as the driver decided at the last minute to return to
the driveway she had just exited, and I spent 30 glorious seconds running neck
and neck with the #89 bus, praying that the passenger side mirrors of the parked
cars along the way were breakaways in case I got squeezed.
The loss of the Burren hurt me,
there’s no two ways about it. Last year I thought the distance between Bar #2
and Bar #3 was ridiculously too far, making BMR seem akin to an actual road
race, but this was like a 20 K was dropped in between stops of a pub crawl. By
the time I made it there I actually had to recover from the running component of
the race, a foolish notion in BMR, and so ended up with the worst Bar Transition
I think I’ve ever had, uncomprehendingly unable to get the damn hot dog down. It
must have taken me 120 or 150 seconds to get out of there, so the folks I was
inside the bar with – some of them long-standing, legendary Clydies that I can
gauge my own time by where I am in relation to them, e.g Smitty, Richard Carr,
Larry Driscoll, were long gone by the time I was back on the course.
The rest of the race was smooth,
especially considering the anvil that dropped on me at Tir Na Nog, and I cruised
in with a big smile on my face, through the gauntlet of well-wishers and into
the now last stop. (Hmm, perhaps I shouldn’t use the word ‘Gauntlet’ when
talking about BMR. It brings up too many associations of running around in
circles through the Cape Cod National Seashore).
I relaxed and enjoyed the final stop,
though if I had known there was someone in my division still in there, I would
have pushed it. He ended up coming in one second in front of me in the official
timing and I should have expected that though he looked about 195 lbs, the
official BMR IX scale would have put him in over 250.
Who Cares? It’s Big Man! When it’s
all said and done the prize money goes right back into merchandise anyway…..
Of course, Ray Gomez got lost again,
despite bringing an entourage this year to help keep him on the course. (For
those who may be reading this who haven’t done BMR, the race route has, oh, two
turns…), which makes me think that next year we should add another component to
the event. At BMR X let’s give Ray the GPS that Matty uses, project a map of
Somerville on a screen inside Khoury’s and play “Where’s Ray?”, taking bets as a
red dot runs on and off the race route. Given that this is the third straight
year he’s gone astray, however, we may need a map that includes most of eastern
Massachusetts, or at least have a Gomez Division in addition to the weight
categories for those who run their own race course.
Ray took it in stride, as you might
expect, given that he epitomizes the Big Man attitude of “Screw it, I’m having
fun…” so nary a frown crossed his face. He’s a class act, he had a wonderful
time, and he swears that he harmed no police or ambulance personnel in the
making of this year’s event. (See BMR VII).
The post-race party was a riot,
complete with the most Hawaiian ensembles I’d ever seen at Big Man, and Paulie
was so successful at hawking wares during the awards ceremony that I didn’t even
get a mug, as they all had been scooped up by the time he got to my weight
division. If anybody discovers they don’t actually need the 5 mugs they were
cajoled into buying, let me know….
While I resisted the urge to start a
“4 more years, 4 more years!” chant during the prizes, it looks like BMR X will
be it. That is, unless, we get 400 people to sign up and Paulie aka Papa Clyde can’t help but
keep it going.
Tell your friends….
JDFatboy
Larry Phillips, Papa Clyde & Kim Phillips
-Post Race Big Man Run IX inside Khoury's State Spa-