The Clydesdales Come to Chicago….

Buck Hales

The excitement on the lake front running path is palpable. As training groups assemble and embark on their long runs, you can feel the anticipation in the air. The sunny cool mornings of late summer set the stage for the annual running of the LaSalle Banks Chicago Marathon. The marathon is an important late race in the CARA Clydesdale Circuit and even though the marathon doesn’t have weight division competition, Clydesdale athletes from all over the country come to Chicago to participate in the marathon. Clydesdale competition is burgeoning, and the acceptance of weight division competition in is increasing in many sports.

The concept of weight division competition and the moniker “Clydesdale”, can be traced back to a Baltimore area statistician name Joe Law who founded the Clydesdale Runners Association in the mid-1980s. Joe Law convinced the race director of the Marine Corps Marathon and several other local races to include a field on race applications for competitors to record their weight. This data provided the basis for Joe’s statistical analysis of running performance vs. weight, and he determined with mathematical precision, that a runner’s weight and speed in road races are inversely proportional. Above 160 or 170 pounds there is a sharp drop off in times. This observation provided the basis for concept of weight division competition, so that big runners could compete amongst their peers, on a more level playing field. The concept is analogous to offering age-division competition in road races and has gained grudging support through the years. Joe coined the term “Clydesdale” to identify big athletes. Clydesdales are big and strong horses—perhaps not the fastest, but certainly amongst the most determined of the workhorses. Weight division competitors relish being compared to their equine anima. Sadly, Joe Law passed away in 1991 and the national Clydesdale movement stalled.

Grass roots efforts, like the CARA Clydesdale circuit in Chicago, the New England Clydesdale & Filly Running Federation and the South Florida Runners have carried the work of Joe Law forward into the 21^st century. The Indianapolis based Team Clydesdale has worked tirelessly to promote Clydesdale competition in triathlons nationally and has meet with great success. Clearly there is tremendous interest and enthusiasm for weight division competition. One of the most important venues for the promotion of Clydesdale competition has been on the Internet.

One virtual community of like-minded, similarly motivated individuals is the Clydesdale Virtual Racing Team (CVRT). The CVRT is a spin off of the Dead Runners Society. The CVRT was founded in January 1995 and many of the charter subscribers are still active on the list. The central theme of CVRT is about running. CVRT is a very supportive and interactive environment. We post our race results and swap war stories about our triumphs and failings in races. We report our track workouts and give details about our training routines, discuss shoes, running clothing and accessories, our diets and our success and frustration with weight loss, and swap links to useful web sites. But what makes CVRT more than an Internet running and fitness forum, are the real-life “encounters” when you get to interact in person with your virtual training partners. Encounters are organized gatherings at races or informal meetings when business or vacation travel brings Cyber Clydes together. Having “virtual” running partners become real life friends makes CVRT a very special corner of the Internet.

The CVRT web site is at www.cvrt.org where details about subscribing can be found. You can also find links to other Clydesdale sites, running resources on the Internet and advice for big runners. There are a host of other Clydesdale oriented Internet sites. On October 1, 2000 a new Clydesdale oriented health and fitness site will be launched—Built2XL.com. With significant financial backing this site promises to take advocacy of weight division competition to new heights.

The major venue for weight division competition in Chicago is the CARA Clydesdale circuit, which does not depend on individual races having divisions to allow us to compete in races as Clydesdales. This is important because most race directors and road races in general do not openly endorse or even support weight division competition. While age division competition is absolutely well accepted in all races, getting a race to add weight divisions requires lobbying and persistent contact with only occasional success. Some races in Chicagoland, notably The Race That’s Good For Life, and LaSalle Bank’s Shamrock Shuffle have established long standing reputations as venues for weight division competition, with different weight and age classes for men and women.

Acceptance of weight division competition in certain major marathons has become a tradition. This year the Marine Corps Marathon will host more than 2000 Clydesdale athletes who will be competing in weight divisions for awards. The Portland Marathon has featured weight division competition for over a decade. With the popularization of the marathon, certainly there is an ever-increasing interest and enthusiasm for including weight division competition in the most revered of all races—the marathon.

The city of big shoulders, home of the preeminent Clydesdale circuit, and site of the Clydesdale National Triathlon Championships at Mrs T’s, Chicago has the highest concentration of Clydesdale competitors of any other state in the USA, let alone city. The 1998 Chicago marathon is my favorite of the 15 marathons I’ve run. What made 1998 so special for me was because it was the year that the Clydesdales came to Run Big in Chicago.

The journey of the Chicago Marathon began on New Year’s Day when I decided I would only do one marathon in 1998 and it would be my hometown race. I had never focused an entire season of training on one event like this and by the time October 11 arrived I was ready. I knew if it was a cool day I had a good chance of setting a new a PR and I was anxious to journey on.

The excitement was doubled by the anticipation and preparations for the great Clydesdale encounter. The Cyber Clydes from the CVRT were coming to Chicago from Alaska, California, Washington State, Colorado, Utah, Texas, the Midwest, and all up and down the East Coast from Florida to Vermont, Canada, Scotland and Italy. To commemorate the event we ordered a batch of matching yellow and red singlets. The shirts were emblazoned in purple with the image of a team of Clydesdale horses running on Chicago's lakefront and the CVRT insignia bearing the motto: noli consequi (no drafting allowed). We arranged for a banquet at Leona’s and a hospitality suite at the Hilton—race headquarters. The Dead Runners and the Oak Park Runners joined the festivities. It was an incredible luxury to have the suite at the Hilton available to stage our assault on the marathon. Before dawn no race day we gathered in the suite and after making our preparations, the group of us clad in our bright yellow, red and purple singlets proceeded towards the start. There were so many people were staying at the Hilton that the staircase was filled with procession from top to bottom, slowly heading out. The crowd never thinned.

The morning dawned bright and eerily warm. The forecast was for a high in the low 60's, with no wind. But you could tell it was going to be warmer. It did. My goal was to break 3:50. It was so incredible to finally be at the starting line. The crowd was huge. It was so exciting. I had tears in my eyes and my flesh crawled with goose bumps. I was delirious with anticipation. The gun went off and the surge carried us forward. It was crowded, we were jammed shoulder to shoulder for the first several miles, never running completely free until we crossed Chicago Avenue heading north on LaSalle out of the canyons of the loop. Spectators lined the course, crowding the sidewalk and cheering wildly. I was struck over and over again by the beauty of the city. We wound our way south of the Lincoln Park Zoo ran north on Lake Shore Drive. You could feel the heat rising as the course paralleled the lakefront path. As we rounded the corner of Belmont and Broadway the crowd roared. There was a fantastic throng of people. The famous all male cheerleading squad shook their pom poms while the sound system blared a Sousa march. I was feeling strong, feeling good. Unbelievably, as we crossed the bridge on Wells, over the river at mile 9, a woman on a bicycle attempted to cross the road and ran into me! I came to an abrupt stop, threw both my hands out and pushed her off. She ran right over my toes. She scooted away and I continued on my way, unscathed, but amazed. The course took a right turn onto Wacker drive. The crowd was immense. All the way along Wacker and onto Monroe, there were 5 to 10 people deep in the street, a wall of noise and cheering. It was fantastic. Down Halsted past UIC and around the corner on Taylor at mile 15 we came to the water stop manned by the Oak Park Runners Club. It was a huge pick me up to be cheered on by the club.

Through Little Italy I started to think about reeling the runners in front of me, and picking them off one by one. We pushed ahead into Pilsen. Great crowds and the smell of tacos al carbon was thick in the air. At mile 18 I saw the thermometer on the bank: 10:30 AM and 66 degrees. Yikes! I did the math, I knew I could break 3:50. We ran through China Town, passed Comiskey Park and headed back north. The course was very bleak here but there was still a good number of spectators there to urge us on. I was pressing with all I had. One by one I picked people off as we hit King Drive. More and more spectators lined the road and the music was blaring La Macarena. I started to dance the dance, moving my arms to the music. The crowd roared, and I felt giddy. As we headed back north and the sky scrapers of the loop loomed large, I started to struggle. The marathon thing happened. The enormity of the event overwhelmed me. I took some deep breaths, forced myself to swing my arms and keep my head up. I tried to press, push the pace back up and acknowledged that, yes indeed, that THIS is what running a marathon is all about. Time to suck it up, gut it out and push to the finish. At mile 24 the course dived into the tunnel under McCormick place. Instead of running into the pitch black, this year they had big flood lamps lighting the way. This tunnel seems to go on forever. The lamps heated it up. The air was tainted with exhaust fumes. It was HOT. I emerged and was rewarded by a huge blast of fresh air and the mile 25 marker--mile 25, yeah!

The course wound its way along the bike path; it was narrow and crowded with walkers. I had started out running with the 3:40 pace group. By mile 15 was running with the 3:50s. Now I ran past them all. It seemed like everyone was standing still. I pressed on. I skipped water at mile 25 and focused on the end. Picking 'em up and putting 'em down. With the end was in sight I kicked. The crowded roared and there was a wall of people and sound. I put on an all out sprint and threw my arms in the air as I crossed the finish line at 3:55. I pranced in the finish chute, arms raised howling with joy!!! What a triumphant feeling. Who cares if I didn't get that sub 3:50, I felt jubilant, better than I’d ever felt at the end of a marathon.

The Cyber Clydes slowly found our way back to the suite and we began to swap our stories. Someone fired up their lap top and began to send messages to our virtual team mates on the list reporting on our races. The heat had blasted everyone. It was over 70 degrees when I finished. When the last of the Cyber Clydes struggled to the end, it was even warmer. We all knew that those fast skinny runners escaped the heat, finishing so much earlier. Us Clydesdales took it in the withers. The 1998 Chicago marathon, when the Clydesdales came to town, was indeed a memorable journey.