Friend of Fansmanship, Matt Jones, gets ready to kick into the last two miles of the half-marathon on Sunday. By Owen Main

Sometimes, your best isn’t really your best.

Last night, I had my alarm set for 5:15 AM. I had it all planned-out. First, I’d get downtown and take photos of the two huge groups of runners as they streamed through downtown. In front of the Fremont Theater. Under the railroad bridge on Johnson Ave. and back over the pedestrian bridge by the train station.

I had the saddle bags on my bicycle packed, camera batteries charged. It was going to be a great morning. I went to sleep about 9:30.

“Wasn’t your alarm supposed to go off at 5:15?” my wife asked. It was 6:30, and my plans were out the window.

If I had been a runner, it’d have been Seinfeld-esque

I know the issue wasn’t “snooze” or “AM/PM.” Pending a few tests, my bet is also on “volume.”

Anyway, when it came to the marathon, I didn’t go to the finish line, and I didn’t try to get downtown during the day, which helped me avoid a disaster like the great Fosters Freeze blockade of 2013. There were a few frustrated drivers I saw downtown, but none of them were me.

I set-up shop on the west side of the pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks. I got some decent shots of the first few guys that came through, some shots of people I knew who were running, and watched in awe as an increasingly large mass of humanity jogged past me with varying levels of suffering evident in their eyes.

In a lot of ways, it was inspiring to watch people who had absolutely put in time and painstaking training to get to the point they were at. For a minute, I talked to a friend about what it would be like to train and do it next year.

I brushed that thought out of my head pretty quickly, got on my bike, and headed home.

Photos by Owen Main

[See image gallery at www.fansmanship.com]

Last weekend marked the second annual SLO Marathon. As someone who doesn’t exactly get excited about running, it seemed like just the thing to go spectate on a Sunday morning.

So I trudged out of bed at about 7:30 and walked the 3/4 mile or so to go watch the finishers of the races that had started in the wee hours of the morning.

The event was a big one – about 3,000 participants on Sunday all battling their inner monologue, willing themselves to suffer a little more than they thought possible. At least that’s what I thought. More on why that may not have been true later.

This Giants fan might have been my nemesis. Respect goes to him for finishing the half-marathon in a respectable time and (presumably) running the whole way. By Owen Main

As most of the half-marathon runners were pushing toward the finish, the winner of the Marathon itself came through, looking like a spring chicken. This guy was like one of the crazies described in Born to Run (a great book, by the way). Just by watching him run the half-mile I saw down the stretch, it was clear that this guy really loved what he was doing. It’s one of the things, I’m sure, that helped him go wire-to-wire and win the race by a wide margin.

There were others that passed, and my people-watching intensified. Many people had a team shirt/jersey they were running with. Some of the runners had people’s names inscribed across their chests. Others showed off their professional, college, or high school sports colors.

My favorite accessory, other than the variety of iPhones, was the water-bottle hip holsters. As if they would somehow get overheated or dehydrated in the 2 miles between available water-stations, people loved to wear the hip water.

Here’s a great account of how it was to RUN the Marathon by J.J. Jenkins of The Mustang Daily.

More interesting than the hip water or the boob-sweat soaked gel that Jenkins described, were the looks on people’s faces as they finished. Some were smiling. Others grimaced. Some had what I’m sure was tunnel vision, just trying to get across that finish line. Their respective gait was as interesting as the looks on their faces. People of every shape, size, disposition, iPhone case color, ear-bud type, and running-shoe type and color passed by. So many people who set a goal and finished with a resounding sprint were inspiring to a big lug like me. They made me want to get on my bike… to get out and about… to get moving.

Still trying to figure out whose team he’s on. By Owen Main

Smash-cut to me, four hours later,

An angry, bitter look on my face. It is now 1:15 in the afternoon. The Marathon started at 6:00 AM, so seven hours and fifteen minutes later, I figured even those people who had to walk some of the way must have finished the marathon by now. Downtown, which had its street closed in the early-morning hours must be bustling by now, I thought. My friend, who ran all the way (albeit super slowly) finished in 5:30. So give someone almost two additional hours, and we should be good to go, right?

Wrong.

I should tell you why my fat, non-running self was in the car — it was to get a milkshake. Foster’s Freeze has wonderful milkshakes. And after the mile or so walk to and from Madonna Inn from my house, I was feeling like some sugar was a good thing. So, in the spirit of the Marathon, I got in my car and tried to drive the 1.5 miles to Foster’s Freeze in downtown SLO.

I started down South Higuera. The blinking signs told me the roads would be closed until 3:00, but I thought they couldn’t possibly be closed still at 1:00 PM, five hours after the race winner had crossed the finish line, right? Wrong again. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Traffic was a nightmare, cars with nowhere to go on Higuera, turning around or spilling onto streets adjacent to High Street.

After getting turned around and realizing I was on the “wrong side” of the closed-off route, I decided to park and walk once again. About 3/4 of a mile from Foster’s Freeze, I left my car at the curb and started my second walk of the day. That’s when I noticed some other walkers, walking slower than me.

They had numbers on their chests and smiles on their faces. They walked in groups and alone, but they walked nonetheless. They were participants in the Marathon, and they didn’t look like they’d been running at all. Could you take over 7 hours to go 24 miles if you had been running?

Is 8:30 too early to have a beer? Apparently not. By Owen Main

I got to Foster’s Freeze. It was dead. I walked straight across Marsh St since there was no traffic. Hardly any cars graced that part of downtown. While they said they were busy the night before, the employees also said it had been really slow on Sunday because of the Marathon. I procured my shake in no time and headed back to the car.

As I crossed back over the race route back to my car I saw more walkers. No more runners. Just walkers.

So allow me to be the grumpy guy here:

Marathons are for running. To have streets closed-off through an afternoon to allow some walkers to finish doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. I know we’re talking a few hours to allow for a few more people to enter the “race,” but is it really the same if they are walking? It seems to me they could be walking on the sidewalk just as easily.

I know, I’m the bad guy here. I assume that part of their entry fee went toward closing the streets down. Lots of people who finished the Marathon-walk probably felt great. They surely burned a ton of calories and should feel accomplished to have got themselves that far. Being active is a really great thing. I rode my bicycle 2,000 miles last year. It was good times.

That being said, there are walks — the Avon Walk or the Susan Komen 3-day  — that allow people who won’t be running to walk. They walk similar distances to Marathons over a few days. People who sign up know they’re walking, so they join a walk. And they don’t prevent me from getting to Foster’s Freeze.

In the end, the Marathon and the city gave everyone notice that the roads would be closed. I should have picked a different route and it would have been easier to get where I wanted to go. The organizers probably ran a pretty great event and it seemed like everyone, even the walkers, were succeeding in their goal of moving through 26.2 miles in a day.

Just don’t get between me and my chocolate shake.

Find more pictures from the race at www.facebook.com/fansmanship or click here.

The “regulars” at the game were warm and welcoming.

The tiniest yellow 4-door car in the world pulled up to my hotel. I walked quickly out of the lobby, doing my best to act like I was not carrying $50 worth of cash (about 1,000 Lempiras). After we had crammed in the two gringo stadium “regulars,” the Amarillo Lightning sped down the street to toward the stadium.

We were headed to Estadio Yankel Rosenthal — the newest, smallest and least equipped in the city, located in the middle of a neighborhood in San Pedro Sula, which holds the prestigious title of most violent city in the world. Yards of rebar protrude from the top of existing concrete pillars like a box of foam noodle pool toys, baking in the 95 degree weather augmented by the 90 percent humidity. There are no lights yet at the stadium, which I’m told is still a work in progress. The yards of protruding rebar coming out of the top support that theory, though fans are skeptical about exactly what the timeline is for any further renovations.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVVmLB_BVw

I bought a green and red jersey of the home team, Marathón, both because I like being a fan and also to blend-in. Being a fan of the home team is probably a wise decision here when it comes to my personal security as well.

The driver of the yellow minicar, who wears a Mets hat and must be one of the few baseball fans in Honduras, drops us a few blocks from the stadium. Since it’s in a neighborhood, there are no parking lots and people are filing down nearly every street toward the stadium.

“See that crossed out tag over there,” said one of the American nationals I went to the game with, pointing to some graffiti on a bridge. He has lived in Honduras for about a year and a half and is a regular at the stadium. He knows just about every other person in our section of the stadium, including members of La Furiaverde, the fan group that supports Marathon. “That’s the tag of the fan club for España [the other professional soccer club in San Pedro Sula]. You’ll see more of them X’d out as we get closer to the stadium.”

La Furia is milling about outside the stadium as we approach. The Americans I am with greet them warmly. One of my fellow gringos even gets a belated happy birthday. Since the other team’s fans don’t really travel, there are no fan riots or violence to worry about on this day. Tickets to the game in the shade cost about $8. Instead, we get tickets in “El Sol” that cost $2.50 (50 Lempiras). Vida, the team Marathon is playing, is not having a good year. For the bigger games, the El Sol tickets might go for as much as $4 or $5.

On the concrete bleachers inside the stadium, we move to the top, where there is an ever-so-slight breeze. “We don’t really sit down,” says Chad. I quickly learn why. In the direct sunlight, the bleachers themselves are probably 120 degrees, burning any butt that dare sit on them, no matter the thickness of shorts or, for the love of God, pants. To offset the bleacher burn, pieces of cardboard are sold along with refreshments. People use the cardboard both to sit on and to shade their faces and I didn’t blame them one bit.

Even up at the top of the bleachers, we could hear the players yelling at each other and the referee. The stands are close to the action, located right on the edge of the field with a huge fence to separate the players and fans. When La Furia entered, they decorated a corner of the bleachers with streaming, shade-producing green banners and signs proclaiming their love of Marathón. Once the decorations were up, the singing began, a drum beating for pretty much the rest of the game, helping the fans stay together in their rhythmic chants wafting over the sun-torched field.

In extreme heat, shade is good, but water is most-important. Water at the Estadio came in the form of a plastic bag filled with a half liter of water that you can buy for about 40 cents. To drink it, you bite a hole in the corner of the square shaped bag and pour/suck the water out. It’s what the players use on the field too and is popular at all levels of soccer in Honduras. I started my day with a water before the game and was sure I’d sweated it all out by the 10th minute.

Aside from the bags of water, other stadium fare I partook in were two Honduras beers (Port Royal, for the record) at about $1.50 each, and a plate of Honduran beef kebab with beans and veggies for about $2. Finally, I finished it all off with a cold pouch, similar to the on the water came in, but full of ice cream. Yummy. I skipped on the fried plantains, bananas, and hot dogs that many of the other 5,000 or so fans were partaking in. What I did cram in my belly was plenty and I considered it a small miracle that my stomach ache didn’t come on untili well after the game ended.

While the fans battled the heat in the bleachers, so did the players on the field. Marathon went up 1-0 in the second half on a nice cross from the wing. I turned to the Honduran man next to me and we exchanged a solid high-5. I yelled at the officials along with the crowd and cheered on the “Green Monster” (Marathón’s “mascot”) as Marathón looked like they had the game well in-hand.

Despite a penalty kick save by the Marathon keeper, Vida got the equalizer in the final 10 minutes on a blast from the edge of the penalty area into the upper corner that no keeper could have saved. A tie was a disappointing result for the home team that has hopes of winning the league championship, but on a day that I was happy as a fan to get out of there with no major sunburn or heat stroke, a tie somehow seemed fitting.

Walking out of the stadium and into the late afternoon heat on the San Pedro Sula streets, we once again found the tiny, yellow car that was our way home. Being a fan for a day allowed me into a part of Honduran life and culture I would have never been able to see. One of the things I like best about sports is the phenomenon of people from different places and backgrounds coming together to support something that is bigger than themselves. All it takes is a jersey and some knowledge of the game to gain some camaraderie with a group of people I otherwise don’t have much in common with. In my mind, a stadium or arena is really one of the only places that this can happen, whether you are in Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, or the most violent city in the world.

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On Sunday, February 13, 2011, I completed the San Dieguito Half-Marathon. I had never run 13 miles straight. I don’t even really like running. People think I’m a runner because I run, but I’m not. Before starting training for the race my longest run was a 15K (9.3 mile) race over a year before that left me unable to run for months. So why was I running this one?

There are a couple of reasons, but I’m still asking myself if any of them were good. After finishing several Olympic-distance triathlons, I have several friends that have been pushing me to run a half or full marathon for quite a while. Peer pressure, right? Eventually I want to compete in an Ironman triathlon. My next step towards that goal is a Half-Ironman, which contains a half-marathon distance run as the last leg. Before I can consider doing that I needed to run that distance by itself. And of course, the entry fee was cheap – about one third the cost of most half-marathons.

So I signed up. I managed to convince my girlfriend and a few other people to do it with me. Beware of stupid people in large groups. In addition to Tina was Jack, my long time running buddy, Katie a multi-marathon veteran and Karun and coworker and aspiring Ironman. It helps to have people signed up to provide encouragement, support and sometimes necessary harassment!

Soon after signing up I told a couple of my other runner friends that I had signed up for San Dieguito as my first half-marathon. Every single one of them replied with some variation of “Really? You’re crazy! That’s one of the hardest courses!”

“Uh, really? No one told me that! It was cheap!”

Apparently the course, while beautiful, is non-stop rolling hills. Well shoot, time for some hill repeats…

Before we could run the race, we had to train for the race. As I mentioned before, the closest I’ve come to 13.1 miles was a 15K, 9.3 miles, race a year before.  Since that race I have been consistently running, including several 5K races, a 10K and 2 Olympic triathlons, but nothing longer than 6 miles. I needed to ramp it up severely.

With everyone talking about how hilly the course was the primary focus of the training was hills. Secondary was distance. Luckily (or not) San Diego is very hilly. During the middle of the week Jack and I would meet up at lunch a few times and did hill repeats. We also had our friend Nick take us on ridiculous hilly routes around the office. On the weekends Tina and I did some long runs. Two weeks before the race we met up with one of her friends and pulled off a 10 miler. That helped my confidence a lot, even though it was fairly flat and at a mostly leisurely pace. Right about then Karun told me that due to sickness he wasn’t able to keep with his training schedule and was dropping out.

The week before the race we drove the course we’d soon be running on.  I think more than the training this served to boost my confidence. Sure the course was hilly, but now I knew exactly what to expect when out there and when to expect it. After running up some long, steep hills in training, like Laurel, Lusk and Pacific Heights, most of the hills weren’t worrisome.

The San Dieguito Half-Marathon

Soon enough, the day of the race came. Being a triathlete, the 5:00 am wake-up call was actually pretty nice.  With the wake-up call was a text from Katie saying her legs were too tired from walking a lot the day before so was not going to show up. And then there were three.

We got everything ready and drove down to the Del Mar Fairgrounds in order to catch the shuttle to the race site. For some reason our shuttle bus had a stripper pole in it. Who knew? Once we got to the site and got our bibs and met up with Jack we had over an hour to kill. We ate some food, hydrated and double-checked our gear. And I went to the bathroom. Then went again. And I think a third time. Races do that to me. I had absolutely nothing riding on the race. It was all for fun. But that doesn’t stop the nerves or my body’s tendency to lose as much weight as possible for the run.

When 7:30 rolled around, the sun had come up and it was warm and pleasant up near registration. The perfect time to leave. Hiking a half mile down the hill to the start line we lost the sun and about 10 degrees of temperature, made doubly apparent when we dropped off our warmup gear and only had our race garb. We jogged a little, did some last minute stretching and Jack and Tina used the bathrooms. I thought I had enough already. Once all the pre-race rituals were completed we lined up.

And we were off. Thousands of crazy people with the goal of running 13.1 miles. As per any large race, the first mile was a fairly leisurely pace spent dodging people until things thinned out and you can hit your stride. Also, it is downhill, but more on that later. Tina stayed with us the first mile and then I wished her good luck and Jack and I picked it up some. Soon, both of us realized that a bathroom stop might be in order. You would think with all the stops before the race we would be all right, but I guess not. Jack stopped at a porta-pot but I kept going.

In no time it seemed I hit the 5K turnaround point, staffed by the Queen of England. Don’t ask me to explain, I got nothing. I remember thinking “Man, if I was running the 5K I’d be half way done!” I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be running a 5K more in my life. Only 11.6 miles to go! The Hash House Harriers also had a beer station giving me a small time boost over all the people that stopped.

Jack caught up with me in another mile or so. At that point I was really thanking the training. Most of the uphills weren’t bad at all. Some of the downhills were though. There were a few steep downs where the pounding got to me. And of course, big downs mean big ups, in particular mile 5 and 6. This is about when Jack headed off on his own and left me to slog on by myself. The mile 6 uphill was HUGE. I was expecting it from the drive but turning the corner and seeing it was almost as painful as running up. I put my head down and focused on pushing off a little more and sooner than I’d thought the worst was behind me.

Right about then I was thinking, “Man, a 10K is a great distance! I would be done now!” Only 7 miles left! On top of the hill was the turnaround point. Halfway done! It was mostly downhill from there. Mostly. There was a point where I was glad for the uphill because it used different muscles than my totally burned out downhill muscles.

Mile 10 came around and I was definitely tired but otherwise felt ok. Each step I took from that point was the longest I had ever run. That was kind of a neat feeling. It was a much better feeling than the burning in my glutes and calves! I had one of the energy goo packets in my belt and considered using it around then but decided to keep it in case of emergency. I ended up not using it at all and am kind of proud of that.

So, remember around mile one when I realized that I had to pee but didn’t stop? Well, an hour and a half later around mile 11 I remembered too. At that point it was too late. I couldn’t stop. If I did then it would be game over. Besides, only two miles left! No problem!

Unfortunately, the last mile is one long uphill. It wasn’t particularly steep, but after 12 miles without stopping it was very nearly the straw that broke my back. One straight shot to the finish line. I could see it in the distance through the glare of the sun shining in your eyes. All I needed to do was to keep moving. The act of simply continuing to move was quite possibly one of the toughest physical feats I’ve done, followed closely behind by not peeing myself on that mile. Man I had to go! I’ve wondered if I would have finished faster if I had made a quick stop to go and instead of diverting the energy to not peeing used it to run. I just kept moving me my feet, chanting to myself that “I can do it, I WILL do it, I AM DOING IT!”

But then I was done. 2 hours and 8 minutes after starting I managed to cross the finish line with a semi-decent burst of speed. I donned my finisher’s medal, grabbed some water and stumbled to the bathroom. Victory! Or perhaps just peace. Either way the fight was over and I was still alive.

Jack found me and we made our way back to the finish stretch to watch for Tina where I promptly collapsed to the ground. To stretch! Yes, that is why I wasn’t standing any more. Tina finished shortly after, looking great. She finished with a very respectable 2 hours and 35 minutes. We all met up and relaxed in the grass for a little while before trudging up the hill for a bowl of victory chili.

It was both my and Tina’s first half-marathon race. I felt half-dead afterwards so can only imagine how a full marathon would leave me. I’m not sure I want to find out. I was glad that we had done it and even more glad that it was over.

Click Here for the GPS Track of the Route

– Christopher Manuele