by MATTHEW WOODLEY
photos by RACHEL GRANOFSKY

After choking on a half-dozen water bottles finally comes the blissful oasis I've been dreaming of: the sponge station! Just beyond that there's a Kenyan athlete sprawled flat on the asphalt like a starfish. I hear the word "ambulance" as I stride past, sponge-bathing my face.

I'm at the top of the first hill on St-Laurent, northbound and dipping down towards Chinatown: kilometre 18 of the half-marathon event of the Montreal International Marathon (more on the half thing later) last Sunday, Sept. 12.

"Lâche pas!" people keep yelling from the sides. I ditch the sponge and push on to the peep-show stretch, which is still asleep, save for a lone man in Place de la Paix park who's been moved to dance by a giant art installation churning out drones triggered by the moving clouds above. Wooo! I'm feeling your vibe, my man.

There's a thing known to athletes as the runner's high. When the body hits a certain point of exertion, the brain lets out a dose of endorphins, creating a euphoric feeling not unlike an orgasm. Come to think of it, everyone running next to me has contorting, orgasmic expressions on their faces. That's gotta be a big reason people do this to themselves. Along with trying not to end up like Starfish Man, I'm pretty sure that's what I'm here to find out.

Runners by numbers

Before the race began, I approached a man near the starting line on the Jacques Cartier Bridge who was wearing a garbage bag. "Why are you wearing a garbage bag?" I asked. "Because it's cold," he answered cheerfully. "I don't want to throw away a good sweater in the middle of the course - plus I get the added bonus of tearing it off and flinging it aside when I'm ready."

John, a local portfolio accountant and eminently nice guy, had run races before and knew a few tricks. An equally intriguing part of his getup was a calculator doohickey he wore on his forearm to guide his progress over the course. "I'm taking a qualitative approach to a very quantitative endeavour," he explained, going on into pacing strategies - metres per minute, thresholds and other things I couldn't process.

Put simply, a running body is a number-crunching machine with motivation as wild card, and John had his left brain Velcro-strapped to his wrist.

One piece of technology sported by everyone in the race is the ChampionChip, a circular antenna runners attach to their shoelaces that tracks official times, which are posted on a Web site shortly after the race along with a bevy of stats. Everything is numbers. If there were a marathon on Sesame Street, you can bet the Count would be in it. I personally know a small handful of financial types who are hooked on running. They count all day at work, then they leave, lace up their runners and do a quick 10K at a five-minutes-per-K pace, maybe some intervals, go home, put their kids to bed and turn on the TV to check the scores. They eat marathons like chicken wings.

To build up to the 42-kilometre full marathon, conventional training programs suggest seven months of consistent pavement pounding with weekly "long runs" of at least 30 kilometres. Hence my choice of the half marathon. In between the long runs is a formula of other distances that preps the muscles and the mind for the rigour ahead. In the final week, runners are encouraged to taper their activity to conserve energy and eat oodles of spaghetti to stockpile more reserves.

Special programming

In preparation for my event, I've neglected numbers and carbo-loaded on beer. I became inspired to enter this race a month ago during a deluded runner's high on Mount Royal, where I often jog after work for an escapist hour or so, climbing straight up through the dirt paths next to the cemetery, looping around the top a few times and coming back down. I run for the good times, the here and now, see? Tracing liberated circles atop the city grid, in the land of postcard sunsets, elusive red-tail foxes, marijuana cigarettes and sex in the bush. How many Ks that covers is way beyond me.

But I'm dang used to hills, which is how I ditch Puffdaddy, my ugly race nemesis. He's been on my ass for a good hour, his guttural exhalations piercing the tranquillity of the route we weave along the river. I can't stand him, but I refuse to let him ahead of me. Road rage. We leapfrog repeatedly, and ol' Puffy is a snaky bastard, cutting outside pylons, over curbs and even on the wrong side of volunteers who frantically wave him the other way, making him extra hard to ditch. So I give 'er balls on the first big incline. Later, pops.

Hills are key, Michael Musili tells me after the race. The Kenyan athlete finished second in last year's Montreal marathon, third in the Quebec City Marathon two weeks ago, and seventh in the half marathon today, a pleasant Sunday jaunt to keep in shape. Kenyans, both women and men, dominate in distance, followed closely by other Africans: Algerians (numbers one and two in the men's marathon today), Moroccans and Ethiopians, who train in hilly, oxygen-deprived altitudes on a steady diet of a starchy pancakes called injera, then descend to sea level and protein-rich eats to sail through finish lines with seeming effortlessness. Other countries figure in too: Japan, Italy, the U.S. and Brazil standing out among them.

Such an élite international contingent is also at the Montreal Marathon, though it doesn't include the world's best; most of them are recovering from their last race, the Olympics, as it takes a month or two to do. The ones who are here start way at the front of the pack on the Jacques Cartier Bridge. Then the starting rifles fire and the next glimpse of them the rest of us lackies will get is when they're eating dessert in the VIP tent at the finish line.

Juicing up

The Montreal race is also in the process of re-establishing itself as a world-class event, having only been set in motion again last year after coming to a stop in 1990 due to a healthy lack of interest among younger locals - go figure. Part of the larger Festival de Santé Oasis, which includes the half marathon, 10K, 5K, inline skating and cycling events, it's one of the only festivals in this city where drinking and smoking aren't central activities and sponsors. That said, it has drawn 18,000 huffing and puffing souls out on this Sunday morning, something head organizer Bernard Arsenault is incredibly enthusiastic about. "Montreal is an Olympic city," he says. "We want to bring this event back up with the top road races in the world."

Of all the events, Arsenault tells me, the half marathon is the most popular, drawing about 1,500 people. Twenty-one kilometres is almost comforting, with the knowledge that another 1,200 or so are running double the distance. Plus you aren't forced into conditioning your body in a way that chews through your knees and fashions you into an endurance-only machine, taking away jumping and sprinting skills that could come in handy should there ever be a natural disaster or surprise attack of some sort.

The "lâche pas" cries echo thickly on the final stretch along Parc LaFontaine. I'm hauling ass with everything I've got, striding toward the finish line, only to be surprise attacked by a last-minute sprinter who probably ate more spaghetti last night than I did. Oh but I cross the line in a haze of glory, 261st out of 1,311 finishers in a time of 1:45.19.6, 28th among 117 men aged 25–29, at an overall pace of exactly five minutes per kilometre, according to my ChampionChip stats. I like numbers. I'm high on them even! I'm gonna go to the dep and buy six bottles of beer! I'm gonna run me a bath!