Four Will Face the Marathon

And I could hear the lords and ladies now from the grandstand, and could see them standing up to wave me in: "Run!" they were shouting in their posh voices. "Run!" But I was deaf, daft and blind, and stood where I was, still tasting bark in my mouth and still blubbing like a baby, blubbing now out of gladness that I'd got them beat at last. --From The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe

The first man to run in the marathon, Pheidippides, paid for it with his life. The marathon is that type of race--none of the quick glamour of the sprints, nor the intense excitement of the pole vault or the high jump--instead only 26 miles and 385 yards to cover in a finite amount of time, and it means, inevitably, pain.

When Mike Brittin lines up today in Hopkinton to start his first Boston Marathon he may not remember Philadelphia--but he probably will remember the pain it took to get there. To qualify for the BAA race a contestant must have previously finished a marathon in three hours and 30 minutes.

Brittin made it, but barely. He ran his second marathon ever in 3:27:56 and wound up in an ambulance, after collapsing at the finish line.

World-Famous Marathon

Brittin is one of four students from Washington and Lee University, a small all-male school in Lexington, Va., that have come north to Harvard to run in the hilly, tortuous, world-famous marathon today.

The runners will start in Hopkinton, and move through Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton and then hit "Heartbreak Hill" in the Boston College area, (230 feet above sea level), at around the 20-mile mark. From there it is literally downhill into the center of Boston and the finish at the Prudential Building.

Gut-Busting Course

The record for the gut-busting course is held by Ron Hill of England who ran it in 1970 in 2:10:30. No one should come near that today...least of all the four marathoners from W&L.

Until this year, Brittin had never run long distances. He was a star defensive safety and kick-off returner at W&L until he realized the game of football no longer held any allure for him. Switching to long distance running, he piled up a 4:01:38 in his first marathon, after only a month of training.

Then Brittin decided to qualify for the Boston Marathon, realizing he had to shave a half an hour off his previous time, a herculean feat. So, in pursuit of the lower time, he entered the Virginia Beach Rotary Shamrock Marathon in March.

'Kill Myself'

"The last six miles I just knew it was going to be painful," he said during a weekend interview, munching on a piece of coconut. "I'd have to pretty much kill myself. But I'd never been to that point where I'd met that threshold of pain. After 21 miles at Virginia Beach I met that threshold."

Riding alongside Brittin on a bicycle, keeping the time and providing encouragement, was Mike Burns. Burns, from Martinsville, Va., placed 213th in last year's Boston Marathon and the stocky runner has a best-ever time of 2:43:10. He, Brittin, Bill Kalal and Ferris Mack will be part of the crowd of 1951 participants, the most ever, in today's 78th Boston Marathon.

What about the pain? Kalal, from Cleveland, Ohio, an introspective and articulate senior, said he had done some thinking on the subject. "Contrary to popular belief, I don't think that marathoners are masochists. We don't like pain any more than anybody else likes pain. You do learn to handle pain.

"There's no one reason for running a marathon," Kalal said. "I'm not sure why I'm doing it, but after 20 miles and those last six miles there does seem to be a reason for me being there. I can't say what it is...it's like the pain and the distance will impose a meaning on the run itself."

Running Not Winning

Kalal was co-captain of the W&L track team, but he quit, more for philosophical reasons than for anything else. He said simply that he is involved with running, not winning. Burns, an intense red-headed sophomore, has stayed on the track team, although he says he has had some misgivings. His reasons for running in the Boston Marathon are different from Kala's.

"It's the ultimate test of a distance runner. Any distance runner worth his weight in track shoes will want to try a marathon," Burns said. "And the Boston Marathon is the class marathon in the United States. I wanted to give myself a chance to run against the best."

There has to be some strong motivation for running in the Marathon. "Unlike Mike," Kalal said, "I didn't come up here to rub shoulders with the best marathoners in the country, in the world, for that matter. What attracts me to Boston is the number of runners. It's sort of like the Woodstock of marathons. You have people of all backgrounds and all occupations getting together for a run."

Mack is a freshman from Babylon, N.Y., and he said he tried football in high school and discovered he abhorred the violence. So he started running, and he hasn't stopped yet.

This afternoon the four from W&L should all finish. Burns should end up just before three o'clock with Kalal, who has run a 2:57:17 marathon, just behind him. Mack and Brittin should reach the Prudential Building later in the afternoon, probably around 3:30.

Kalal summed up his views on the marathon by talking about his view of life, and of running. "I don't evaluate my running in terms of time and place. I evaluate it in terms of its experience."

From Pheidippides and his fatal journey to Athens bringing news of the Greek victory at Marathon, to four long distance runners from a small all-male school of 1974, there is not so great a difference, actually.

"Anyone who finishes a marathon wins," Burns said. "The great thing about running is that you can win without finishing first."