After savoring my first Boston in April, the sweet reward for my first hard marathon cycle leading up to Vermont City Marathon last year, I found myself unable to resist signing up for my hometown marathon three weeks before the race. I'm shooting to run under three hours and place in a local fall marathon as my A-1 goal, but how can I not get out there and participate when a marathon runs by my door? Little did I know what a memorable and inspiring day my casual marathon would turn out to be. This was my day as a pacer.

While registering, I noticed that my aunt, who lives elsewhere in the state, was on the list of registered runners. I hadn?t seen her in a year or so, and because I had been living out of state, had only had a few contacts with her in the last few years. I called to offer a place to stay and shower post-race, which she gladly accepted as she was having no luck finding a hotel room. She is 49 and a new marathoner, but a force to be reckoned with to say the least. She ran her first marathon last year at Cape Cod, an impressive 3:41, having picked up competitive running only a couple of years ago. She was a lifelong athlete in various disciplines, originally a gymnast and champion equestrian jumper, and still has the intensely muscled, unbelievably lean frame of an elite athlete. She is maybe 5 foot 4, 100 pounds, and not an ounce of fat on her. Not an ounce. As a measure of her athletic ability, consider her kids. Her daughter is a world-champion skier and a member of the Olympic team; her son a forward on the ice hockey team at one of the nation?s finest universities. All she needed was an outlet for her drive and ability, and a few years ago, she found it in half-marathons. Running twenty minutes under her Boston qualifying time in her full marathon debut was par for the course.

Knowing her intensity and athleticism, I knew she probably trained long and hard for this run. I figured that with a PR of 3:40, she was probably looking to run 3:30 or so. 3:30 is exactly what I intended to run, a relaxed but solid effort for me. I wanted to complete the race but not take myself out of training for too long. So I offered her my services as a pacer. What better way to have a memorable race and to help a friend? I figured it would also keep me from getting caught up in the air of competition and tearing a hamstring impulsively trying to run a Boston-qualifier 3:10, which I haven't properly trained for after a low-milage winter. She accepted. She was anxious about her preparation and the route, and was glad to have some first-hand advice about the course. Having run it the year before and it being run on my hometown streets, I had lots to offer. I met her in town on Saturday and after hitting the expo we wandered over to a park in the center of Burlington where my girlfriend was working, helping to staff a youth-advocacy event. Later that day, she said to me in private that after the introduction, when we had left, she turned to the friend she had been standing with and they both said simultaneously to each other, ?That woman was intense!? My aunt?s firm handshake and cut arms make an impression. It's clear she is a bundle of barely-contained energy. Later, we carbo-loaded with the traditional box-o-pasta and decided over dinner to shoot for 3:35, a respectable 5-minute PR. I made myself a pace-band with splits for 3:40 and 3:35.

RACE DAY:

It was overcast and a bit on the cool side, which was a great relief after the sweltering heat of the previous week, not to mention the scorching day we had last year. My aunt was awakened by a car alarm at about 2:30am and had the remarkable foresight to eat her breakfast then, so as to be done digesting by the 8:05 start time, before going back to sleep. When we headed to the start it was warming up such that I didn't feel the need to wear anything over my running kit for the inevitable anxious leg-shaking, porto-line milling-around period.

The race got underway and my aunt, in all the eagerness I expected from her, began immediately and relentlessly picking her way through the crowd. I could tell that from minute one, this was more than just an over-hyped long run for her; this was definitely a race, a competitive event. She cruised through the first miles with a fierce look in her eye, her lean arms held low, cranking out her stride with impressive rhythm and intensity.

But, as is to be expected, we were fast. Way fast. Something like 30 second fast at the mile, three minutes by the three-mile mark. I started in on my pacer?s early-race banter- stay smooth and relaxed, don't push the pace even though you want to- but she was locked into her own tempo. On the downhills, she went into this focused up-tempo shuffle stride, picking up the pace by at least a minute a mile. I asked her about this and she said that she discovered that she has an advantage on the downhills, so she always pushes the pace down and finds that she passes dozens of people. I presume that because she?s so light, she doesn?t suffer the pounding the rest of us when pushing the pace down a slope. I am a pretty solid guy, so I just tried to keep her in view in these sections and then afterwards, encouraged her to keep her pace sensible.

Our pace continued to stay high as the miles passed by, and by the ten-mile mark we were ten minutes ahead of schedule, on pace to run 3:25, when 3:35 was the goal. I crashed hard in my first marathon, having gone out way too fast, so I was wary of this, and kept trying to subtely discourage speed, telling her to run only so fast as she could stay perfectly smooth, absolutely relaxed. I told her to settle into a pace that felt like she wasn't exerting any extra effort in her hip-flexers to stretch out her stride- what I do when my taper has left me with so much energy my legs want to run the whole marathon at super-sonic speed despite what my brain tells them. Drop those shoulders, I would say, relaxed and smooth, relaxed and smooth.

I encouraged her to keep grabbing water at the aid stations, and to eat her sport-beans, two things she said she rarely did, even in her long runs. We talked a bit about her training. She had followed an intermediate plan and had added her own spice to it. She had done hills. Many, long and brutally steep hills. Somehow this did not surprise me. As we ran, I gave her a running play-by-play of the neighborhoods and slopes that were to come, trying to keep her relaxed and patient during the first twenty miles. She seemed anxious about uphills because she said she struggled on them (which I found hard to believe), but was eager for downhills where she could use her signature shuffle-crank to scoot her way past other runners.

By the half-way point, I laid it out there. I explained that we were ten minutes up on our goal pace, and that if she downshifted back to 8:15's (3:35 pace), our original plan, she would still finish in 3:25 because of the "banked" time, but if she stayed on this pace, things would likely go sour in the next five miles or so. (Not really "banked," I suppose, because she wasn't planning on slowing towards the end. Oh no...) She seemed to see the logic in this, and I could practically hear her relaxing as we approached Battery Street, the race's main hill, which appears a mile or so past the half-way point. We climbed the hill to the pounding, thunderous rhythms of the Taiko drumming club and the screams of the marathon's biggest and rowdiest crowds. As the noise receded behind us, I encouraged her to catch her breath and settle back into the tempo that felt natural. Five miles left in which to stay as relaxed as possible, I said, and then five more in which to spend anything that's left. Patience, for now, was the most important thing.

We wound our way through the neighborhoods of North Burlington. The raucous crowds of downtown were long gone and now the spectators were mostly small family gatherings at which kids offered orange slices and high-fives. A grandmother handed me a wet paper towel to wipe my face, a welcomed relief from the salt and sunscreen that were stinging my eyes. Kids offered to soak us with a garden hose, gleeful at the prospect we might accept. A friendly woman clanged pot lids together in a perfect climbing rhythm, coaxing us up the short hill where she had stationed herself. It sprinkled on and off, just enough that you noticed now and then, but no real rain. My aunt choked down a coffee-flavored gel, which she hadn't tried previously, but was convinced would give her non-coffee drinking self a kick with its promised ?2x? caffeine. It did. She seemed just raring to attack the last miles, and it was an eternity before we slid down the left-hand sweeping turn to the south-bound bike path, our final miles and a straight shot, slightly downhill, to the finish.

This is when her athletic drive showed its stuff. All that energy and killer instinct that she had tried faintly to suppress for twenty-two miles bubbled up and exploded everywhere. She started picking off women left and right. The pace was creeping back up from what was only a temporary respite at 8 minute miles. Her breathing audibly increased, but her strong frame kept cranking smoothly and powerfully through the miles. The pace-band times I had written down, and the ones she had Sharpied onto her arm, were now totally irrelevant. We ignored the clocks from this point. Now it was about effort, energy, and digging deep. Unlike the start, by the final miles of a marathon you can fit the remaining distance in your head in a way that lets you expend all you've got, without crashing too fast. No need to be patient now. The task had changed. The mood had changed completely. It was time to light up the competition. She kept her form, despite the redoubled effort, arms low and torso stable, posture solid and unshakable. I could tell she was ready to let it all hang out. "Are you ready," I asked, knowing the answer, "It's go time."

She was focusing on women and particularly women who she thought were in her 45-49 age group. 3:20 won it last year, and she could practically taste an age-group top ten. She said at one point that if she found out someone finished just seconds ahead of her, she would be ******. I started prompting her with mild encouragement, and she was listening, feeding off of it. I could tell she was going to lay out everything she had left and was mentally evaluating the remaining distance, trying to push as hard as she could without running out of gas too soon.

The closing miles were a lactate blur, each one faster than the last. She was cranking now, clearly working hard, but responding to my constant motivational banter and asking for more. Each time we would catch a glimpse of another woman I would point her out and tell my aunt to imagine a giant elastic band pulling her forward to the target. She reeled them in, one by one, striding powerfully, passing confidently so as to leave no doubt they couldn't follow her pace. I was a few strides ahead, now, looking back at her, prompting her to follow me, commanding with a tactful silent hand, "Pass this one now. Make it happen." Come on, I said, I know you?ve got it, now give it to me. Run this mile hard for your son, I said, off to play college hockey after all those early morning practices. Run this one for your daughter, fighting hard to come back from a knee injury. Run this last one for you, I said, for all those hills and Sunday mornings. One after another they were picked off and finally, somehow we were down in the flat, flying all out now, into the waterfront and onto the boardwalk, passing runners left and right like they were standing still. Despite being so close to the end, again and again someone new would come into view. But she wasn?t about to coast in. Again and again she would surge, blowing by them. After each surge, she would relax slightly to the ambient pace of the runners around us, and then surge again, unbelievably, to the next person she wanted to pick off, never losing ground to anyone, man or woman, and passing indiscriminately. Finally we were into the last left-hand turns, a final few women coming into view, my aunt sprinting more and more urgently past each one.

Then, abruptly, almost before she was aware of it, the race suddenly ran out of miles and we were crashing across the line, gasping. I grabbed her under her arm, expecting her to give out completely from such an effort, but she stayed up, chest heaving and eyes wide with disbelief at the clock. 3:22. A PR by almost twenty minutes. A pace of under 7:45 per mile. Almost forty minutes faster than needed to quailfy for Boston! She had gone out fast, hung on, and finished faster. Unheard of. No way, she said through a smile, I can?t run that fast.

She laughed off a request for her timing chip as unmanageable at the moment and took her time, walking small circles inside the snow fence corral until she got her breath. Finally she was able to sit and unlace her shoe to remove the chip. I grabbed her a space blanket just as a clap of thunder announced the arrival of genuine pouring rain. Behind us, Bill Rogers floated over the finish line, graceful as ever, the anchor on one of the relay teams. We had a laugh about beating Boston Billy, who I had been thrilled to be able to chat with at the expo the day before. We made our way through the food tent and after a bit, over to the results tent where thirty-somethings were enjoying free low-carb beer from one of the sponsors. They should go up to Flatbreads for some of the real stuff, I thought. They earned it. We worked our way over to the finishing times that were being posted and there, we discovered that my aunt had placed third in her age-group, finishing better than fortieth for all women out of the one thousand I knew had entered! She was presented with a shoulder bag, a scaled-down version of a messenger bag, with the Vermont City Marathon logo embroidered on the flap and a beautiful engraved tag on a leather strap proclaiming her age-group podium finish. We had our picture taken with her prize and shuffled off happily in the rain to meet our ride home.

I cannot explain how rewarding this run was. To pass on some of what I have learned running marathons about pace and patience, to help someone along a course I know well, and to stand by and assist as she extracted every ounce of effort her body could muster, was just incomparable. I will never forget the intensity and the triumph experienced in those last few miles. I encourage everyone to pace a friend at some point in their running career, or many times for that matter. Pace a first-timer, or an old-timer. Pace a group or a friend who you haven?t seen in years. Maybe someone will do the same for you someday, sweeping you along to a performance you didn?t think you had in you. If you think you bare your own soul and learn about yourself in a marathon, try doing it alongside someone else. The shared experience adds so many levels of meaning and memories to the marathon. It is a part of this human drama of the marathon that should not be missed.

As Bill Rogers signed on that poster for me, Run Forever, friends!