Miles apart
Small marathon qualifier in Washington differs from Boston
BIRCH BAY, Wash. -- Few places hold a chill like a coastal summer resort in winter, and Birch Bay does just that on a mid-February day. The sky is big and slate-gray, and the wind yanks the car door from your hand, slamming it shut like the end of an argument. It's 47 degrees, and with a steady 20-knot wind, bundled-up residents dress their dogs before walking them.
A bracing headwind sends whitecaps toward shore, where runners in the 39th Birch Bay Marathon push toward the last aid station, 3 miles from the finish.
Lone runners in the small field -- there are 56 entrants this year -- approach the table to fuel up on replenishing drinks and snacks before shuffling on. They have a while to enjoy the setting. The two-loop course runs mostly along the coastline, with spectacular views of Canadian mountains and the coastal islands. Bald eagles nest and soar here.
But today, runners pay a price for the scenery. Through some nasty trick of nature, they're feeling that headwind nearly the entire route. But this is nothing. Past races have seen a blizzard, freezing rain, and temperatures in the teens.
Birch Bay (pop. 6,000) is among the most remote of Boston qualifiers. Tucked in America's northwest corner, just 6 miles south of the Canadian border and about 100 miles north of Seattle, the resort town is a continent removed from Hopkinton, where the 111th Boston Marathon starts Monday.
But the separation is more than geographic. About the only things this race shares with the world's most famous marathon are the distance, 26.2 miles, and the resolute nature of those who complete it.
If Boston is marathoning's Super Bowl, Birch Bay is a game of touch football in the park.
It's no-frills. Birch Bay's slogan: No bands, no T-shirts, no glory, no wimps. There also are no Port-a-Johns, but no one seems to mind. They make do.
"There's a couple of construction sites," says Ron Fowler, 59, of Seattle, who figures Birch Bay is his 170th marathon. He and running buddy David Jones, 61, also of Seattle, ran a marathon the previous week, too. This was Jones's 149th, he said. When you've run that many, you have a nose for rest stops, even if they're not race-sanctioned.
Runners pay a $15 entry fee. They don't get mile markers or split times, or even as much as a commemorative hat. No Wellesley students cheering from windows; not many spectators at all. What they do get is the occasional friend or relative driving a few miles ahead to yell encouragement. Their finish-line reward is a picnic table with a do-it-yourself spread of bread, peanut butter, and jelly.
Boston's winners get a laurel wreath, prize money, worldwide fame. At Birch Bay, male and female winners get a trophy made of driftwood, personalized at the finish line with a black marker.
The race's Feb. 18 date appeals to those making a last-ditch effort to run their age-group's time for Boston. But getting into Boston, which for many recreational runners is the Holy Grail, isn't really the point here.
"You have to do it because you like to run," says Charles Compton, 59, who ran Birch Bay in a time of 3 hours 18 minutes 8 seconds and qualified for Boston with nearly a sitcom to spare. "With my age, all I needed was a 3:40."
But that's not why he ran this year, or why he keeps coming back to Birch Bay. He runs here precisely because it isn't Boston.
"Boston, even Seattle, you have the fanfare, the exposition, the postrace meals, a lot of people cheering you on," he says. "Out here, you have to encourage yourself. You have to be pretty much self-motivated to be out there. Last year it was 19 degrees. You either have to have a lot of self-motivation or self-abuse.
"It's more of a runner's experience. You're not experiencing a lot of people. The scenery is great."
Darren Marino, 22, is manning the last aid station, anchoring paper cups with Gatorade and Coke.
"I'm freezing," he said.
His hands are stuffed in his pockets, knit hat pulled low, shoulders hunched. He is, like most of the runners that approach, a solitary figure. Marino, who jumped up and down to keep warm, at first thought he made a mistake volunteering at this spot instead of a sheltered one inland. Then, like the race itself, it grew on him.
"They just stumble in, kind of mumbling," he says of the runners. "I say, 'OK. Sure.' I tell them it's 3 miles. Then they'll perk up. People see the hope of finishing."
Though there were 56 runners this year (54 finished), entries have dwindled to few more than two dozen in recent years.
Race directors have differing opinions on the event's future. Joel Pearson, 21, wants to return the event to its heyday of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when his father, Jim, an ultra-marathon standout and two-time Olympic marathon trials qualifier, regularly topped a hearty field that once reached 150 finishers, and elite runners pushed winning times in the sub-2:30s. Jim Pearson founded the Birch Bay race and won it 16 times; race organizers say he owns the record for wins in the same event.
Just as impressive is the survival of the race itself. Three runners started the 1984 race (weather: 6 inches of snow, 10 degrees, midrace blizzard), 11 the next three years. Somehow the race, like its competitors, found a way to keep going. Now, says Pearson, it needs to grow.
"It's hard to see something Dad put so much into and has so much passion for, and now it just seems like it was thrown away," says Pearson, the 2005 winner.
For next year's 40th race, Pearson wants to see awards, prize money -- and even T-shirts. He wants to find a way to maintain the race's charm while making it matter.
"It's an honest race. It's not flat and it's not super-hilly," he says. "It's important to me because it was Dad's creation.
"It's a marathon now that has no recognition. They don't advertise the Birch Bay Marathon. There are no pamphlets. Boston advertises everywhere."
Tjalling Ypma, who co-directed the 2007 race with Joel Pearson, disagrees. He wants to keep it small and inexpensive.
"It's always going to be, as long as I'm in charge," says Ypma, race director for the past three years after four years as a competitor. "When I took over, I wanted to maintain a simple tradition."
Ypma acknowledges the race will have a few more aid stations and convenient bathrooms. He remembers the appeal of his first Birch Bay Marathon ("kind of a goofy event") in 2000.
"I went out there, there were maybe a dozen people standing around in the rain," he said. His wife operated the lone rolling aid station, driving ahead of the field and setting up Coke, muffins, and Gatorade on the trunk of the car.
Runners have to be self-sufficient, Ypma said. "That appeals to me much more than the big crowds, the T-shirts, the bands every mile that goes with all those summer marathons," he says.
This year, Ypma is at the finish line with the two driftwood trophies he collected a week earlier from a nearby beach. They've been drying all week in front of Ypma's fireplace.
"They could be a little wormy, you know," he said.
Mary Latta didn't meet her goal of qualifying for her first Boston. Her heartbreak wasn't a hill at all. It was the second loop. Before it, she was on pace to qualify. The clock-crashing wind, she admits cheerfully, did her in.
"Oh my gosh, that was too much," she says. "I almost fell. A couple times I went, 'Whoa.' I thought if I walked I could get down lower."
She had a baby a little more than a year ago and has only begun to run marathons; she has run about a dozen. Birch Bay is a favorite. She stops to do a cartwheel at the finish.
"The glory is finishing, even though I had to walk a lot the last bit," Latta said. "The glory's just coming out here and seeing all my friends and meeting new people. T-shirts are fun, and medals are fun. For me it's just coming out and seeing people I don't have enough time to see and talking."
She'll leave Boston for another time.
"I'll try to qualify here next year," she says.
Young Chae already has qualified for Boston. But he and his wife, Min, flew here from Los Angeles anyway. Young enjoys the solitude of the small race.
Min drives ahead and parks at an aid station to wait for her husband. After a while, a lone figure appears along the shoreline. It's him. Min gets out of her rental car and watches as he pours a Coke and chats with Marino. Young is smiling. She takes a picture, then gets back in and watches him become a dot against the shoreline. It's almost over.
"He looks OK," she says.
What separates Birch Bay from a long Sunday run? Not much.
"It's got pretty lonely stretches," says Jones, who finished with a time of 3:48:50. The long shoreline allows you to spot competitors in the distance, where a brief conversation is the reward for picking up the pace.
"Finally you catch 'em and visit a little bit," says Jones.
Fowler wouldn't have it any other way. Like Young, he enjoys the solitude. It can be both therapeutic and constructive. Fowler is writing a book on antique soda bottles, and "I worked out a couple chapters while I ran," he says. "It's great mental time to get away from the TV, radio, the cat, and think.
"Boston's a big party. Give me Birch Bay anytime."
"It's somewhere you'd not normally go," she says. "It's gorgeous. It just feels like a community event. I like that."
Still, something is missing. Her dad, Guy, is still out on the course.
To qualify for Boston, she says, "He needs to get a 3:35. He's not going to do it today."
Yogi sounds wistful. She has no trouble getting into Boston -- her career-best marathon is a 3:03 -- but she has never run it.
"I definitely want to," she says. "I feel like it's something we need to do together."
In an event where entrants relish the solitude and the scenery, Birch Bay runners like Yogi still can feel Boston's pull, even from this far away, in a setting that's happily small-time. But Yogi will keep running Birch Bay, and so will her dad. For now, Boston will have to wait.
