Squish, squish, squish, squish. The streets of downtown Detroit reverberated with the sound of 2358 runners on the morning of Sunday, October 18th. Squish on the wet macadam, squish on the wet bricks, squish on the wet paving stones, the wet concrete and the wet potholes. Luckily the rain didn't start while we were at the unsheltered staging site in Windsor, Canada. We had been bussed there from Detroit across the international border in plenty of time to mill around the parking lot and to watch the racewalkers start at 7:30 and the wheelchairs begin at 7:45. But it was clear from both the forecast and from the cloud cover that sunscreen and sunglasses would not be necessary. We laced our ChampionChips to our shoes and crossed the timing mat, beginning the 6 Canadian miles of this truly international marathon. By mile 3 it had started to rain.The course gave us a good view of the Detroit river. That is, until the road descended into the Canadian side of the Windsor Tunnel for the famous underwater mile. Here we were out of the rain, nice and warm, and on a slight downward slope. But it soon turned upward and you noticed from the sweat dripping down your forehead that it really was warmer in there. It was a slap in the face to emerge into a cool blast of rain on the American side of the tunnel. But, hey, it could have been worse -- it could have been the 44 degrees predicted rather than the actual 62 degrees.
Miles passed, and we passed over the MacArthur Bridge and onto Belle Isle. There were whitecaps on the river. Leaves, hats, cups and assorted debris blew across the raceway. A traffic barrier succumbed to the wind as runners turned a corner and were nearly stopped in their tracks by gusts clocked at 35 mph. Gulls were hunkering down on the grass, lying low in the face of the wind. But the honks of a few hardy Canadian geese could be heard as they headed South in search of better weather. Volunteers manning the aid stations were in full wet-weather gear. Ultima was the race drink, and in my opinion both its taste and composition left much to be desired. I ended up drinking water, supplementing it with GU. There were several volunteers dispensing GU packets along the race course, and I loaded up, until I found that my RaceReady shorts were bouncing and sagging from the weight. This led to a need to lighten the load, discarding the flavors that weren't my favorites. This is the only marathon that I have run in which I crossed the finish line carrying more packets of GU than when I started.
There was an unusual incident that I hope to never see repeated, that could have severely shortened the running careers of several marathon participants. Approaching an intersection just before the mile 23 marker, I heard the car before I saw it fishtailing down a side street. It proceeded to plow through a traffic barrier not more than 20 feet ahead of me, bounce across the race course and through another traffic barrier on the other side. Luckily, at this late stage of the marathon, the runners were quite spread out on the course and none were in the intersection at the time that the car barged through it. Otherwise, traffic control appeared to have been effective. I did note that many of the cars in that particular part of downtown Detroit looked a bit worse for wear, sporting dented doors and flapping fenders.
The marathon finished in a downtown park just a short walk from my waiting shower in the race headquarters Westin Hotel, Renaissance Center. The winners had long departed: Zithulele Singue (2:18:52) from South Africa, and Tatiana Maslova (2:46:06) from Russia. But the last runner was yet to cross the timing mat: Jim Ramsey (7:52:46) from Detroit, who was just a few days shy of his 91st birthday. He received his finishers medal from his great granddaughter. Jim Ramsey should be an inspiration to all of us.