April 16, 2004

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Publication Date: Friday, April 16, 2004

Boston or bust

Dave Lowry gets a gleam in his eye just talking about the starting gun of the Boston Marathon, where thousands of spectators line up along the course to cheer.

"It's always exciting waiting for the gun and a relief once it goes off," said Lowry, who will be competing Monday for the sixth time. "It feels good to get started."

Lowry, one of the three Pleasanton residents who are running in the Boston race this year, has been assigned No. 5573. This means he'll be starting in the first quarter of the 20,000 runners accepted.

"I'll start maybe two to four minutes after the gun goes off at noon," he predicted.

Lowry, 48, is a veteran of 26.2-mile marathons - and half-marathons - but especially the Boston Marathon. He grew up in Framingham, Mass., and as a boy went out to cheer for the runners as they passed through the town on their way from Hopkinton to Boston.

"Every year we'd go as a group, my mom, dad, sister and I," he recalled. "My dad used to think they were all crazy." Now when he returns for the Boston Marathon, it's a family reunion.

Lowry ran cross-country at Framingham State College and has only stopped running when life - and small children - became time-consuming.

"My first Boston Marathon was in 1978," he recalled. "My dad's place of work was on the course, and he stepped out and waved as I went by."

The Boston Marathon is the granddaddy of them all, noted Bill Radulovich, 55, another Pleasanton resident and principal at Walnut Grove Elementary. He has run more than 40 marathons during the last 28 years but is tackling Boston for the first time this year. "It's 108 years old," he said. "For years it was heralded as the ultimate throughout the world."

The race began in 1897 when members of the Boston Athletic Association were still pumped up after their participation in the first modern Olympics, held in 1896 in Athens. The BAA Running Club had begun 10 years before and its members formed most of the first U.S. Olympics team. The Boston Marathon has taken place every year since except in 1919 when, due to World War I, it was replaced by a 10-man relay race between military units stationed in the area. It continued during World War II although with far fewer runners.

Boston is the only marathon that requires runners to qualify. Radulovich noted that it had stricter qualifications in the 1980s, but now they vary according to age and gender, and for wheelchair participants.

He said he was a sprinter at Oregon State and played football. "Then I took a 10-year hiatus," he recalled. "I got heavy and out of shape."

Two things inspired him to change his lifestyle: Elvis died. And his cousin died. His cousin seemed fit, said Radulovich, and after her death he discovered a family history of heart problems. He was also coaching middle school track and thought he should be a better role model, so he began to run.

"I got into it big," he said. "Initially it was to lose pounds, then the competitive spirit crept up on me." Besides the 40 marathons, Radulovich has run four races of 50 miles, and completed 32 triathlons.

He said his buddy from Colorado who had qualified in January for the Boston Marathon convinced him to do it. So Radulovich entered the Las Vegas Marathon on Feb. 1, the last chance to qualify. He ran in a terrible wind and sandstorm and still managed to finish under the qualifying time of 3 hours 45 minutes. Radulovich is No. 13798.

The third Pleasanton man running in Boston is Harris Goodman - No. 6063 - a surgical pathologist who works at Highlands Hospital in Oakland.

"I only started running five or six years ago and didn't expect to qualify," said Goodman, 38. "I spent a lot of my youth studying, not doing athletics."

"When I ran my first 10K, I thought I was going to die," he recalled with a laugh.

A couple of years ago, he ran the Napa Marathon in 3 hours 27 minutes, and he was excited to realize it was close to the 3:15 needed to qualify for the Boston Marathon in his age group. Last year he did it in 3 hours 15 minutes and 1 second.

"I couldn't believe it when I saw my time," he said. "I thought I blew it by one second." But it turned out the one second didn't count. "I thought I'd better go this year while I have the chance," he said.

Goodman said he's running for a healthy heart and lungs, plus he enjoys the quiet time loping down the roads. He runs alone, he said, usually at 5 a.m. "I have four kids - 9, 6, 4, 2 - so it kind of depends when the youngest wakes up," he said. "At my house it's rather loud, so running is rather peaceful. My favorite run is down Foothill Road to Sunol and back."

All three men say they need no special training for Boston's grueling course because they run on hills regularly. But they all respect the stamina required to run 26-plus miles.

"A marathon is really two races - a 20-mile and a 6-mile," said Radulovich. "Typically at mile 23-25, you've burned all your fuel - carbohydrates, fat stores - and everything hurts. But you just keep going."

"For the first 6 to 7 miles, it's social," he explained. "You're chatting. Around mile 10, the conversation drops off a bit. At 20, the field spreads out. It becomes more personal, internal. You do what you must do."

This can include a mantra. Radulovich numbers each footfall - and he counts 1,200 per mile. "When I hit 800, I know I can do that mile," he said. "Then I do one more."

Lowry also runs every morning before work - up at 5, running by 6 - and goes on one long run every Sunday, from 16 to 20 miles, with the local running group, the Huffers and Puffers, around Pleasanton or sometimes at Lake Chabot. "I look forward to Sunday runs all week long," he said. "I have a weekly mileage of 50-60 miles."

Marie McIntee, a 1980 Amador Valley graduate and a member of the Huffers and Puffers, ran the Boston Marathon in 2000 and in 2001, when she was there going to graduate school. For the last two years she has gone to cheer on others in her running group. "Last year my friend and I jumped in and ran the last three miles," she said. "It was the only way to get downtown."

Lowry has to coordinate his running with his job as a software engineer in Sunnyvale and attending his children's track meets. His daughter Liz, a senior at Amador Valley is captain of the cross country and track team. Caroline, an eighth-grader at Harvest Park Middle School, runs for CYO track and cross-country, which Dave coaches.

Radulovich does his daily runs as a transition between his busy day as a school principal and home. "I go home fresh and rejuvenated," he said. On weekends, he runs with a ClubSport Pleasanton group called the Ridge Runners.

"I've been running with them for 18 years," he said. "Every Sunday we run on the Ridge, 10 to 25 miles, starting at 8 a.m."

Lowry said the hills make Boston the most demanding, and downhill is worst. Radulovich admitted downhill running is a strain on the quadriceps but prefers it to uphill, saying, "I'll take gravity."

Much has been written about the torture aspect of running marathons. "I've seen a lot of people getting sick, but I never have," Lowery said. "I'm more afraid of getting sick before the race, getting the flu." He was also afraid that a leg injury from last weekend might cause him to cancel.

The weather makes a big difference, Lowry noted. "Last year it was real hot - 72 degrees at the start - and a lot of people had trouble with it. Sometimes it's raining and windy. The best would be in the 60s with no rain. Rain gets your feet wet and they're more likely to get blisters."

Lowry said the crowds also make the Boston run special.

"You end up meeting two groups," he said. "Young adults, drinking and partying, barbecuing. And the families. The little kids want to slap your hand." They also offer water and orange slices to the runners. "It doesn't make a lot of sense to take something from a stranger, but sometimes I take it from a little kid and toss it later," he admitted.

"Wellesley College is a huge high - a couple of thousand 18- to 22-year-old women screaming for you," he said. "My right ear actually was in some pain. It's a letdown when you're past, you mentally go down." Wellesley, at the halfway mark, is known as "The Screech Tunnel," and the 2,300 women cheer even louder for women runners.

Heartbreak Hill, which peaks at mile 21, is famous for knocking out even the toughest athletes as their hamstrings rebel against the change in muscle use. "It starts at mile 16-17," said Lowry. "It's like stair steps. You go up, then it's flat, then up, then flat."

Once a runner enters the city of Boston, the running gets tougher, Lowry said. "It tends to be colder, with the ocean breeze and muscles tightening up," he said. "But you can see the finish line with 1/2 mile to go - there's a big scaffolding - and that's enough to keep you going."

At the finish line, there are tens of thousands of people cheering. "You can't hear anything," Lowry said. "They put a Mylar blanket on you to keep you warm."

Most of all you want to find your friends with your warm clothes, he said, although the organizers will transport runners' clothes from start to finish. They also provide water, Gatorade, and food such as bananas, oranges and yogurt. "Your stomach is very dicey by this time," said Lowry. Every mile there is a station offering drinks and first aid.

Runners' times are recorded using chips tied into their shoelaces that register them passing along the route as well as their start and finish times.

Lowry's record time for a marathon is 2 hours 48 minutes but he said he'd be happy Monday to run 3 hours 15 minutes. "I feel I've won just to finish," he said. "It always feels good and I can't wait to do it again. It's a real rush." -The Boston Marathon is being televised starting at 8:30 a.m. on ESPN2. Check out Pleasanton runners' results at www.bostonmarathon.org.

The original marathon

Fast forward to the 1908 Olympic Games in England. King Edward VII and Queen Alexandria wanted the marathon to begin at Windsor Castle in view of the Royal family and conclude at Olympic Stadium in London, a distance of 26 miles. But organizers tagged on an extra 385 yards to put the finish line in front of the royal box. Since then, the Olympics marathon has been 26 miles 385 yards. The Boston Marathon conformed to this length in 1927.

About the Boston Marathon

Celebrity runner

by Kathy Cordova

Roberta Gonzales has run 11 marathons, from San Diego to New York, but Boston holds a special place in her heart and memories. "Running the Boston Marathon was the most incredible experience of my life," she said. "It's the Super Bowl of marathons."

Gonzales, who began running the 26-mile courses in 1996, ran five marathons until she qualified for Boston in 2000. It was her first trip to the city, and she enjoyed the sites and the history, but the people made the most impact on her.

"I never expected so much support from the community," she said. "People line the streets and they're about five deep, and if you are wearing anything with your name on it, people will scream your name and cheer you on, and it really helps. I got this euphoria that I've never had running before. After the race, my right side and my right arm were extremely sore, and at first I couldn't figure out why. Later I realized that as you're running, people put our their hands for you to high-five them, and I was sore from doing that for so many miles."

The Boston Red Sox always play on marathon day, and the 40,000 spectators exit the stadium when the racers are running by. "You always know when you're getting close to the stadium," said Gonzales, "because you notice the people on the sidelines are getting a little bit more intoxicated."

The course is difficult, with lots of rolling hills, but the most intimidating part of the run for Gonzales was the bus ride to the starting line. "You're with serious runners, and you overhear people talking about the time they expect to finish in and it's under three hours," she said. "Then you realize, 'I'm going to be the last person to cross the finish line!' But you have to erase that thought and remember you've accomplished a great deal just by being there. You have to relax and have a good time and you'll do well." -Roberta Gonzales, weather anchor at KPIX Channel 5 and a Pleasanton resident, is a three-time veteran of the Boston Marathon. She is currently in London where she will run her 12th marathon Sunday.

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