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Ed's Sk8toronto Website
LONG BEACH MARATHON (CALIFORNIA) -OCT 2004 The Long Beach Marathon was one of my best races ever although my time would not really indicate that fact. The story of the trip itself appears in my weblog. This is the tale of the race. As I went through my “race package”, back at the hotel I discovered that things would not quite be as expected. I had signed up as a Pro Veteran (45+) but expected to be skating with both the Pro Masters (35+) and the Pro Veterans. This would mean a faster pace than the Vets alone would accomplish but I was still hoping to hang with the lead pack. Instead, all of the pro skaters were lumped together. This meant that, with all the young guys in the mix, the start was going to be blazingly fast. My problem now was to find the right pack to skate with. If I went out too slowly I would “miss my ride”. If I chased the fast guys too hard I would “blow up” and probably do even worse. I knew I was in trouble as soon as the gun went off because I found the concrete road surface to be very bumpy and I was not at all comfortable with the pace I needed to maintain. I lost contact with the really fast guys within a few hundred meters when a big gap opened up in the pelaton ahead of me. I knew that I could not bridge the gap at this pace. I saw team mates Herb Gayle and Dennis Lo disappear into the distance. I was disappointed. I skated with the chase pack for a few hundred meters and then a guy passed me on the right –going at a good clip. I had recovered from my initial oxygen debt and decided to latch onto him. I drafted the poor guy for quite a distance –perhaps almost a mile and then we came to an uphill (a bridge over some water). I quickly realized he was not a climber and I went around him and up the hill. I never saw him again. I chased down a couple of guys up ahead and the 3 of us reeled in another straggler. After a little while I caught a glimpse of Herb and 3 other skaters about 50 meters ahead. We were closing anyway but I took a good pull and the two groups merged. Now we had a pack of eight and I was feeling much better about my chances for a good race. Herb was very helpful. He encouraged me and others to take some pulls and he wouldn’t let me go the back of the pack where I feel most comfortable. During the race he let me in several times and I came to realize that I always had a place to get in if I needed one. Herb also shared some water with me and this saved me the trouble of trying to get a “handoff” at 20mph. We started onto the bicycle path that runs along the back edge of Long Beach and were disappointed to discover bike riders all over the path. Cycling is one of the marathon events but this year they had only given the riders a 45 minute head start.The cyclists turned the race into an obstacle course –to borrow a phrase from Herb. We persisted in making our way through the maze and finally managed to chase down a pack of roughly 10 skaters near the end of the bike path at around the 10 mile mark. Now we were about 20 strong and this group stayed together for the rest of the race. I felt lucky to be skating in this company. These guys were clearly all good skaters. It seemed that most were Masters but there were a few young guys as well. I figured that I was the very last skater who had managed to catch this pack (I had come from the furthest back). I knew that there were other accomplished skaters behind us because Herb called out to some of them a couple of time when the course turned 180 degrees and we got a look at who was following. The quality of the skating surface left a lot to be desired. As well, some parts of the road were wet (or at least had that appearance). There were lots of places where sprinkler systems had created puddles of water for the skaters to deal with. And it was pretty windy. These things together with the cyclists kept the pace far below what it could have been it other circumstances. I am told that last year's times were about 5 minutes faster. I didn’t have much hope of beating many of these guys to the finish line and I wasn’t too worried about it. I came in near the back of my pack -two positions behind Herb but only 5 second back of the leader. It turned out that our pack darned near overtook Dennis Lo and Barry Publow who had fallen off the back of the first pack. My time was 1:18:36. That is my second best non-Northshore time for a marathon and a fine time under the circumstances. I came 13th in the Masters. I must have been about the 5th Veteran. After looking at the results I discovered that that I was the second placed veteran skater. As well, I managed to beat at least 5 skaters who beat me in Duluth. It seems that the veterans had trouble catching the fast pack. I only made it by the skin of my teeth.
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