Slide Show:
A complete tour of the Whiskey Row Marathon course, and
also events at the finish line.
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images, average size about 6.6K.
Runners' World has labeled Whiskey Row Marathon, run mostly through the Prescott National Forest southwest of Prescott, Arizona, as one of the five toughest marathons in the country. Some ultrarunners I know readily proclaim that it isn't so, but the alternate candidates they propose are usually self-supported romps up cliffsides where a dozen or so mountain goats show up and they supply you only a map and a prayer.
Regardless of precisely where it may rank, the fact remains that among the usual strain of marathons, Whiskey Row is indeed very, very tough because of the hills. The course starts at 5354 feet in elevation, ascends to nearly 7000 feet just before mile eight, then descends to 5700 feet at the midway point. Then you turn around and run it all again in reverse.
A winning time at Whiskey Row is often over three hours. Yesterday Bill Cuculic, the male winner, finished in 2:58:35. The tenth place time was 3:34:55, and the next person came in nine minutes later, after which the herds started to cross. Female winner Dawn Stone finished in 3:43:38, and the second place time was 3:55:52.
Get the picture? A rule of thumb is that the average runner can expect to add a good half hour to his current flatland expectations at Whiskey Row -- maybe less if he is a good hill runner (I really don't know how they do it), and more if he's like me.
The point is that no matter who you are, when you tell people what your time is at Whiskey Row, it's always a time with an asterisk next to it that needs explanation and qualification: ``Well yeah, I ran it in blah blah blah, but that really wasn't as bad as you might think, because of blah blah blah.''
Whiskey Row is Arizona's oldest marathon. At $20 it's also about the cheapest. (The price went up $3 this year.) For your money you get mature organization, good support on the trail (water, Powerade, and fruit every two miles or so), consistently one of the greatest T-shirts of any race (always long-sleeve), and a chance to run what really is an awesomely beautiful course, if you can handle the first and last three miles, which run from and to the courthouse in the very center of town to and from the forest access road at the edge of the woods. The goomies at the end are usually less than wonderful, and they give you a useless little stickpin sort of like a tie tack instead of a finisher's medal, but who cares about those anyhow?
I ran the full marathon at Whiskey Row once before (1999), and have also done the 10K (1996) and the half marathon (1997). Yesterday the weather was utterly perfect. According to the gauge on a nearby bank, the temperature was 44 at 5:00 AM, when about 30 people gathered for the early start. The high temperature later in the day was about 72, but it remained in the fifties in the early morning in the higher elevations.
This was my tenth marathon. (I've also run five ultras.) I've written reports on all of them. After that many it has become challenging to think of new things to say. Yesterday my suffering added no great philosophical revelations about the meaning of life to those I already possess, nor did it inspire me to wax poetic.
Here is a thumbnail account of my race: I showed up, I ran when I could, walked when I had to (because of the steepness of the hills), felt good the whole time, had a great time on a beautiful day, and finished the race. As with every marathon I've run in the past, I was real tired by the end, but I made it. That's my story.
An advantage to taking the early start in an out and back course is greater opportunity to see and chat with people. Now that I've been running in Arizona for a few years, I can finally say I know a few people, which reduces the sense of loneliness out on the course.
For me the best part of the race is the five-mile stretch from the highest elevation to the turnaround, a screaming downhill outbound, which must be mostly walked by guys like me on the return. The panoramic views from the high point are the best on the course. It was at that point that many of the regular starting time people passed by, in both directions. Most people were still feeling good and in great spirits, with many friendly greetings freely exchanged. The morning was fresh and beautiful, and the collective energy of the runners on the course was palpable.
A total of 141 people finished the race: 95 men and 46 women. I didn't get numbers for the half-marathon, 10K, or walk events. Several people noted that the numbers were down a bit from previous years. I'm wondering if the current economic crunch is keeping some people away from races.
At the front end of the pack, the most interesting finish was that of James Bonnett-Castillo, age 14, who finished ninth, after doing well just one week ago in the challenging Zane Grey trail 50-miler on the Mogollon Rim, not to mention several other races he's completed recently. In doing so, he clinched victory in the Arizona East Valley Runners Ultra Series, an array of 14 ultra races in Arizona, for which participants accumulate points. James continues to amaze us all.
When I ran in 1999, I felt like I was in about 4:40 flatland shape, and finished in 5:16. It felt just about right for the day.
Yesterday I finished in 5:35:46. That felt just about right, too. My last marathon (in December, on a mostly downhill course) was 4:55, and two months before I ran 5:00 flat. Yeah, even with all the excuses I'm slow. Sorry.
Only 5 of 95 men took longer, but I also ran faster than 7
women, for whatever that statistic is worth. I have huge respect
and admiration for all women marathoners, and have long believed
that from the middle to the back of the pack gender differences
tend to disappear, so to me the statistic is meaningful. Just as I
admire and cheer for any woman who finishes ahead of me, I have no
qualms about counting those I come in ahead of. (Notice how I
carefully avoided use of the term beat? I'm not the sort
of guy who takes pleasure in beating women.
My biggest concern in running this race was that I've recently had some physical problems that have had me sufficiently worried that I honestly didn't know what might happen. I've had some pain in my right foot, and my left knee has been throbbing on short runs, after only two or three miles. However, the pain stops whenever I walk.
I'm not presently even trying to work on speed or any aspect of high performance, just endurance, as I'm gradually building up for my target big race of the year, the 24-hour race at Olander Park in Sylvania, Ohio. Therefore, I made a point of not pushing myself, since I want to be back into full-bore training within a week, and didn't want to do anything to aggravate any latent injuries lurking around.
In this respect I had my greatest success yesterday. I had utterly no foot problems of any kind, not with the ball of my right foot, not with my right ankle, and not with my right Achilles, all of which have kept me on guard recently, and there wasn't the slightest sign of a blister anywhere on either foot.
In the first three miles I felt a minor throbbing in my left knee, but it seems that with the interspersed walking I did, I just warmed up and ran through it. Even through the sections where I was running as fast and hard as I'm capable of down some spine-crushing quad-killing steep hills, I had no further hint of any knee problems. What a relief!
To me a most significant factor was how quickly I bounced back afterward. We hung around the race for only about fifteen minutes after I finished, then headed back to the hotel, where I had time to shower before checking out. We had a delicious late breakfast with friends, and afterward drove the entire course (a bit of a challenge in some places with a Buick), during which I stopped and took 47 digital photographs, hopping repeatedly in and out of the car with no undue signs of ill effects.
The trip back to Phoenix was no problem either -- no signs of sleepiness, which was remarkable considering that I slept almost none at all the previous night, and arose at 3:30 AM. We even went grocery shopping at CostCo before heading home. It was 10:45 PM before the tiredness descended upon me, and I finally decided to call it a day.
Lynn Newton
Phoenix, AZ
May 6, 2001