Writing on the Road - 45,000 Stories

Writing on the Road—45,000 Stories
By Chris McNamara

45,000. That’s the capacity for the 2008 Bank of America Chicago Marathon. 45,000 runners. It is also the number of stories that will be gathered—as if in a massive book—at the starting line on the morning of October 12. 45,000. But once the gun blasts into the city sky, prompting those 45,000 athletes to run, more stories will begin being written.

Kevin Burton tells his story at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which he’s attended since getting sober in 2005, thanks in great part to running. “You need to find healthy things to do, as opposed to going to the bar,” says the 36-year-old Atlantan, who during his drinking days was the last person anyone would imagine running 26.2 miles. “Knowing you’re running 18 miles on Saturday morning will keep you out of the bar on Friday night.” This will be Burton’s eighth marathon, his first in Chicago where he is trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. “The training is kicking my butt,” he admits, before adding that when he recently took a break from training he fell into a bit of a depression. So, the running resumed and his inner peace soon returned. “For me, running is imperative to staying sober.”

“Every runner has a story,” says Carey Pinkowski, executive director of the Bank of America Chicago Marathon. “Every human being has a story, and they bring that to this event. The stories are what motivate them, and those all contribute to this race.”

What’s most impressive is not that Kenneth Hart is running his 50th marathon in his 50th state just before his 50th birthday. It’s that he began this numerical challenge just four years ago. In 2005, the Baltimore, Md. single father recognized that he had more free time with his kids in high school, so he trained for a local half-marathon. At the finish line he felt good, so pushed on through the back 13 miles and completed a full marathon. No sweat. Then he did another. And another. And another. He ran one marathon in New Hampshire, drove to Maine that afternoon and ran another the next morning. “Marathons put things in perspective,” says the architect. “Running is at my core at this point.” Once he crosses the finish line in Chicago his quest will be complete—50 in 50 before 50. Then, of course, he’ll begin training for the Baton Rouge Marathon in December.

Running is an independent endeavor. Even surrounded by 44,999 other athletes, each entrant at the Chicago Marathon is competing by him or herself. “At its core, a marathon is all about individual effort,” explains Pinkowski. “Each runner can control the process. And it’s simple, from Point A (deciding to run) to Point B (the finish line). People are drawn to the individual expression of it. The chance to look inside yourself.”

When you run the track at Camp Phoenix in Kabul, Afghanistan

you have to keep your mouth closed, lest sand gets into your mouth. You have to keep watch for helicopters, too, since the track doubles as a landing pad. As such, Josh Bacigalupi of the National Guard 27th Brigade Combat Team prefers to jog in the military base’s gym. Of course, he’d rather be at home in Cortland, N.Y., running alongside wife Darci, who while training for the Chicago Marathon would “talk” to her husband between breaths. “I constantly remind myself of the things that he would tell me as we trained for the last one,” she says, referencing the Marine Corps Marathon the couple completed in 2006. The 29-year-old will be running the Chicago course, which Josh completed in 2002 and 2003, by herself. But she’ll be talking to her husband throughout the race.

Of course, much of the allure of any marathon is the communal nature, the camaraderie strengthened between old friends and family or forged with strangers along the way. Many run as part of teams—formal squads from faraway lands or casual allegiances, families, lovers, friends or running-club members who lean on each other (sometimes literally) throughout the race and celebrate together at its completion.

They jokingly call themselves the Navarro Racing Team—NRT for short—since the squad is made up of the five Navarro brothers and some friends. “The Chicago Marathon is our tradition, whatever shape we’re in,” explains brother Carlos, 55, who fondly recalls twenty years back when members of the NRT could “wing it” and run the course with very little training. “Now we realize that running it trained is much more enjoyable.” Enjoyable, too, is the training itself. Carlos and his siblings sprint through the trail at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago’s southwest suburbs, where atoms are propelled at supersonic speeds below ground, and above ground the NRT prepares for another chapter in a fun, family history.

For some, the 26.2 miles is a great obstacle. How can I run that far? For others gathered at the starting line, the marathon is a piece of cake compared to what they’ve overcome and what they continue to battle. For these brave athletes, the marathon becomes a healing exercise, a symbol of hope, one mountain to climb en route to another.

With gallows humor, Tim Gray refers to it as a “cancer sandwich,” the awful stretch in which his father and mother-in-law died of the condition and he battled thyroid cancer. That cancer sandwich came at a time when Gray was changing his life—slimming down, shaping up, running 5Ks with his wife, Lisa. Radiation treatment in June 2008 was a drag; three days spent in an isolated room waiting for his radioactive body to cool. And it interrupted his training regimen. But a week after the doctors released him he was back sprinting through the streets of Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. “I was just happy to be outside,” says the 32-year-old land surveyor. And through it all, he’s kept his eye on the starting line in Chicago. “As crappy as I may feel while running, I know that there are people feeling even crappier, people who would love to trade spaces with me at the 16-mile mark.”

Still others look forward to the marathon as a way to remember the past. A way to honor lost loves. Running in memoriam. For these athletes, sweat mixes with tears.

In 2005, while celebrating their wedding anniversary, Caroline Parisi watched the Chicago Marathon with her husband, Lenny. In 2006, she ran the race with Lenny serving as her unofficial trainer/coach. In 2007, she ran in Lenny’s memory; he’d died of a sudden heart attack three months prior. And yet, the 36-year-old resident of suburban Addison, Ill. feels that this year will be the hardest. “Last year I ran on pure willpower,” she says. “This year I’ve had to prove that I can train on my own.” Lenny wasn’t there to coach his wife this year. And he won’t be waiting at Mile 13 hoisting a sign reading “Go Carole Go.” But she’ll rely on fellow members of the Elmhurst Running Club. And she’ll remember the message she wore on her shirt at last year’s race—My Biggest Fan is in Heaven.

As Pinkowski puts it, “Many people are running to or running from something.”

Brad Gaunt became a runner via cycling. Or more accurately, he became a runner after abandoning the bike when a motorist killed his cycling father and niece in August 2007. “I have too much anxiety about it to ride on the street anymore,” says the 40-year-old Missourian. After a month of inactivity he decided he had to do something physical, so he laced up the track shoes. He found running more demanding, more difficult than cycling, where you can take a stroke or two off to rest sore muscles. On a bike you can coast downhill. But running sated his need to move and soon after lacing up he completed a half marathon, which whet his appetite for something more. “When I cycled I did five centuries [100-mile races] a year. I’m an endurance guy. So if I’m going to run, I’m going to run a marathon.”

Running, after all, is exercise. A sport for some, but fitness for many more. A way to keep the heart and head healthy, keep the waistline in check, keep the joints moving and the muscles strong. For these everyday athletes, the marathon is both goal and jumping point, a target to which to strive and—once achieved—to move past in a perpetual push to health and happiness.

The plan is 220. Show up in Chicago at 220 pounds and finish the Marathon. As his 30th birthday loomed, Jeff Finney realized that his lifestyle was catching up to him. The busier he became with his cabinet-making business, the more he ate. The more he ate, the less he exercised, the worse he felt. “My life was out of control,” the Oklahoman admits. He found control when a high school buddy convinced him—kicking and screaming—to begin running. 20 pounds fell off his 325-pound frame quickly. Then 40 more vanished. In August he weighed 243. “This is a total life change. An awareness of how I should be living my life. Dealing with stress rather than eating it. Running provides the release that used to be eating. Now I can run and think about issues that bug me. After six or eight miles I lose myself.” He’ll find himself—at 220 pounds—at the starting line in Chicago.

The reasons for competing in a marathon are as disparate as the runners themselves. Just as the stories carried into and away from the race vary from heart warming to heart breaking. Sure, the Bank of America Chicago Marathon inspires runners. But it’s the runners who inspire the Chicago Marathon. It’s the participants who pen the book. 45,000 stories at the starting line. Countless more at the finish. 26.2 miles of open road on which to write a new chapter. And it’s not just the winners who get a storybook ending.