Tired but determined runners keep eyes on the prize

A lot of people talk about the heart of a marathon runner, both literally and figuratively. But the first thing I notice are the eyes.

I think about the great Frank Shorter’s eyes in Munich in 1972 when that imposter ran into the Olympic Stadium before Frank, and people started whistling in derision. They still were whistling when Shorter ran into the stadium, and Frank thought it was for him.

You could see the confusion in his eyes.

I think about Michael Andropolis in Montreal in 1976. OK, so Michael Andropolis wasn’t a real runner, but one played by Michael Douglas in an obscure movie called “Running.” In the movie, Andropolis is leading when he slips on wet pavement and injures himself. But driven by the will to finish — “Running” came out three years after “Rocky”— Andropolis scrapes himself up and manages to finish the marathon long after everybody else had replenished bodily fluids.

You could see the anguish in his eyes. Even if it was just cinematic anguish.

There would be confusion and anguish in the eyes at Sunday’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon, too.

Maybe not in the eyes of Ben Bruce or Cathy Cullen, who were first across the line in the men’s and women’s divisions, but it in a lot of other eyes. Unless, of course, you were from Boulder, Colo., or train there, because people from Boulder can run all day and all night with the same expression on their face.

Before the marathon, when you still could talk to the runners — when they could still comprehend questions — there was mostly optimism in the eyes, a sort of joy even. The poor fools. It reminded me of the way people who go to UNLV football games look before the coin toss.

In marathon running, as in NASCAR, they have this thing called “hitting the wall.” They are similar in that both can occur a few miles from the finish, and parts sometimes break or fly off. Only in marathon running, the parts usually are attached to one’s liver or some other vital organ, and afterward one is much too exhausted to blame hitting the wall on Brad Keselowski.

When your glycogen tank hits empty, you’ve hit the wall.

There is confusion in the eyes, or anguish. Or there is a vacant faraway look, as if you have just become a Stepford Wife.

“If the eyes are the window to a marathon runner’s soul,” I asked those wearing the lightweight Nikes and something with sleeves to ward off the brisk breeze, “then, in a word, describe what your eyes will be saying about your soul around the 20-mile marker.”

“Determination,” said Zach Knebel, 32, of Highland, Ill., near St. Louis.

I was going for something more like “disheartened” or “thunderstruck” or “double secret trepidation” but this was Knebel’s 35th marathon, and he was wearing an official Michelob Ultra running shirt. So he wasn’t that concerned about hitting the wall.

“Tired,” said a bald runner from Houston named Chris Warren, who was carb-loading on a bagel and posing for jovial photos with other people from Texas.

“Almost done,” said Jaime Chisholm of Phoenix, looking spiffy in her short running hairstyle and red running shoes.

Two words, but the judges accept.

“Resilient,” said the marathon man she had just met. At least that’s what Leo Alexander of Denver said. If Howard Cosell still were alive and calling the marathon, he would have said “disquietude” seemed more like it, or “perturbation”; and then he would have said “Right there!”

Unlike his new pal Jaime Chisholm, who was running 26.2 miles for the seventh time, this was Leo Alexander’s first marathon session.

Similar responses ranging from “anxious” to “worried” were culled from people with single-digit body-fat percentages. One said “spooked.” I reminded him not to run too close to those wearing tutus. That will only make it worse, I said.

I spotted a bearded guy wearing a blue bandana, orange faux tuxedo T-shirt and fluorescent green and gold knee-high socks with beer pint appliques. How could you not spot him?

This was Ray May of Indianapolis. He was running only the half-marathon, but dressed like that, I had to ask. He was standing next to a long-legged woman who, unlike himself, appeared normal. This was Ray’s wife, Jennifer.

The two had met on an airplane flying from Las Vegas to Chicago. They have been married 10 years; they have five kids. They thought it would be cool to come back to where it all started, and to renew their vows three miles into the marathon, at a run-in wedding parlor at the Monte Carlo.

The look in Ray and Jennifer May’s eyes said “contentment.”

By then, most of the 38,000 plus a few stragglers who had made a wrong turn at Sunset Road were heading to the starting corrals out on Las Vegas Boulevard. In a few minutes, the race would be on.

By then, many of the runners did not look as content as Ray and Jennifer May of Indianapolis.

Many already were starting to look as the great Frank Shorter had looked when he ran into the Olympic Stadium after the imposter. Where there had been optimism and joy, now there was apprehension, for 26.2 miles is a long way to run all at once.

You could see it in their eyes.

Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.