We pulled into pitch-dark White Lake State Park in Tamworth, New Hampshire, around 9 p.m. and began desperately searching for Paul Hyman ’98. He was
here
somewhere—we’d spoken to him on the phone less than an hour
earlier. But the skies had opened up just minutes before, and the people
scurrying around the parking lot all had jackets pulled over their heads.
“Paul! Paul? Paul!”
Nobody so much as looked up. Finally I wandered down to the exchange zone, where our 11th runner, Garth Terry ’01, would be arriving shortly, expecting to hand off the baton to Paul. Tucked in a dark corner of the parking lot, the zone was barely visible from a distance. Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, though, I could just make out the figure of a man standing a couple of paces into the forest, huddled under a tree. He’d made it.
Minutes later the flicker of a bobbing headlamp came into view as Garth came sprinting into the exchange zone. Greeting the rest of the team would have to wait, as Paul grabbed the baton and went charging down the road and into the woods.
10 a.m., Friday, September 16
This being my first RTB I didn’t know what to expect. Quite frankly, I was expecting the worst—I had heard how one year it was raining with temperatures in the lower 40s—but stepping outside the Manchester (N.H.) Airport, I was pleasantly surprised. Climbing into the van felt like climbing into a time machine. It was just like the mid-’90s again when I was running for Haverford and we would take the team van to races. There were familiar faces and some new faces, but the conversation was still the same.
—Mark Gyandoh ’96
Back in 2000, when 12 of us decided on a whim to run Reach the Beach (RTB), we had no idea what to expect. Heck, we were barely able to pull together a dozen people to fill the roster. Six years, and six RTBs, later, we’ve added a coed team to the mix, and still have to turn some people away. Why all this fuss over a 200-mile race from the mountains of New Hampshire down to the Atlantic coast, run primarily in the middle of the night? That’s a fair question.
The faces on the team change every year, but the common bond of having run track and cross country at Haverford remains. Even though we span several generations, that experience affected us in much the same way—we’d run on the same courses and tracks, shared friends who spanned the generations, and passed along the same pieces of lore, probably adding our own bits of flavor and color in the process. Most importantly, though, we had all learned from our coach, Tom Donnelly, and from each other, to respect hard work, to compete, and to have fun. To one degree or another, most of us continued running after graduation, but the camaraderie of the team was hard to replace. RTB gave us a chance to go back in time and reclaim those days, if just for a weekend.
Months of planning go into the race, which takes just short of a full day to complete. The team is registered and recruited in the spring and early summer. Flights are booked and vans are rented. By early September it’s time to stock up on supplies: 10 gallons of water, dozens of PowerBars, cookies, crackers, bagels, and, finally, 15 pounds of bananas. Early on race morning, we stuffed everything into our van
and headed to the start. As we pulled onto Route 93 and drove out of Boston, the first teams were beginning their race over 200 miles to the north. With nearly 300 teams now in the RTB field, race organizers start them in small groups throughout the day.
By noon we were at the start, watching the last few waves of runners begin their race. Then, finally, at 3 p.m. it was our turn, with Adam Chase ’88 leading off. The opening leg of Reach the Beach is the cruelest. Five kilometers, running straight up one of Bretton Woods’s ski slopes, then charging back down. By the time Adam handed the baton to Anthony Belber ’95, all of the nervousness and excitement of the preceding days had burned off. As we pulled the van onto Route 302 and swung south, those of us who had run RTB in the past knew that the next 20 hours would fly by, and it was time to focus on the task at hand. Once out on the road, we settled into our carefully choreographed rhythm of sending one van ahead to the next exchange so our runner could get loose, leaving the other van to pull off the road wherever possible and offer encouragement to our runner.
3:22 p.m., Friday, September 16
My first reason for running RTB is the sensation of running silently through the New Hampshire countryside with only cows and a sense of purpose. My second reason is the chatter of the van and the chance to run again with the Haverford track team.
—Anthony Belber ’95
While we’ve always taken the racing part of RTB seriously, that’s not to say the event is all business. Even into the night, the van is lively as old jokes are revisited, stories recalled, and past races relived. This year, there were also national events on some peoples’ minds.
In the weeks leading up to this year’s race, we had all been shocked by events in the Gulf Coast region. Many of us had friends in the region, or had enjoyed visiting the area in the past, and felt helpless as we watched the destruction on television. When Sam McFerran ’98 suggested that we try to raise some money for the relief fund, we began sending e-mails out to friends and family, and that effort carried on through the race.
As the overcast sky began darkening Friday evening, and Ian Fraser ’98 was cruising through the first mile of his 6.5-mile leg, Adam fielded a call from a family member, eager to make a donation. Thanks to the generosity of dozens of people, we were able to contribute over $5,800 to the American Friends Service Committee’s hurricane relief fund—nearly $30 per mile covered in the race. With cell phone reception currently available, we also checked in with Paul, who assured us he’d be at the transition area before Garth.
By the time Ian had handed off to Kirk Mangels ’05, we’d caught up to our coed team’s van in the transition area. Their runner was just minutes ahead on the road, and Kirk would catch him in the middle of their long 8.8-mile leg. Last year the coed squad finished 26th out of over 200 teams—and they were running even better this year, ultimately finishing 15th overall, and fourth out of 120 coed teams.
8:35 p.m., Friday, September 16
As I reported to my starting post, I heard someone in the background say, “You mean they’re going up Eagle Hill? Man, I’m glad it’s not me.” As [Ian] Fraser approached up the road, I prepared to take off. I grabbed the baton and took off down the road—I knew my adrenaline would be more than enough to keep me going at a good clip for the first couple of miles. I made a switchback turn and went up the hill. And kept going up the hill. Didn’t this hill have a name? That’s not a good sign. Any hill that has a name also has a reputation, and it’s never a good one. Then it rained. As I approached the end of my leg, I hoped that Paul was prepared and ready to go. I was blinded by my own headlamp reflecting off the heavy rain. As long as I felt pavement underfoot, I figured I was still on the road. In the distance I saw a small light and a runner jogging in place. I yelled out to him, handed him the baton, and he was off.
—Garth Terry ’01
Paul was a last-second replacement, joining the team after our previous anchor had suffered an injury days before the race. Unable to miss a day at Harvard Med School, though, Paul was forced to drive up from Boston while we were already racing in the other direction from Bretton Woods. Hardly ideal, but not without precedent: One quarter of our team in 2000 was speeding up from New Jersey after work on race day. The three of them were pulling onto the Garden State Parkway around the time that our first runner was beginning the race 380 miles away.
Chris Hood ’97 was the first man out of the New Jersey car that year and, like Paul, he was almost immediately racing down the road. Four miles later, having just handed off to the next runner, Chris was still gasping for breath when he saw Nate Brown ’96, and his face lit up. Nate had just returned from Ecuador where he’d been in the Peace Corps, so the two hadn’t seen each other in years. There have been a number of moments like this over the last six years, as old friends have reunited. Just as common has been the pleasure of meeting new people, guys who shared the same Haverford experience but during a different generation. The 2005 squad had the largest generational gap thus far, with Adam and Kirk having graduated 17 years apart. One is now a partner in a law firm, the other just beginning law school.
9:40 p.m., Friday, September 16
Arriving at the end of my leg, it was good to see Anthony Belber. He’d been the first person to greet me on our first day of practice freshman year, and he convinced me to give the team a shot, so it was amazing to see him 11 years later.
—Paul Hyman ’98
Despite the team nature of the event, actually running each leg is largely a solitary effort—the teams are strung out for miles on the road. You might finish a leg without having seen another soul, or you might luck out and take the baton with a string of teams lined up within striking distance. Running hard, even in the dead of night, is never an issue though. The team van stops every couple miles to wait by the side of the road to cheer you on. Even when you’re left alone with the sounds of your breathing and feat slapping the pavement, there’s no way you’re going to let those guys down by easing up; not when the last guy ran his heart out and the next one is ready to do the same.
11:09 p.m., Friday, September 16
There’s something great about running in the pitch dark at night along the rural roads of New Hampshire, with your headlamp, reflective vest, flashing lights, and sufficient adrenaline to put your body through a lot of pain just so you can help your team by getting to the next transition area as quickly as possible. When I finally finished, exhausted and hungry, I wondered how and if my legs would have anything left for my final leg of 8.8 miles.
—Sam McFerran ’98
In 2000 we rode a wave of adrenaline through the night, barely sleeping at all. We had no clue how we’d feel after the race, and didn’t care: We were in first place, on course-record pace, and didn’t want to miss a minute of the experience. One of my favorite images from that race is of our anchor, Aaron Cooper ’98, breaking the tape at Hampton Beach, arms raised in victory, a huge grin spread across his face. Other members of the team are in the background, hobbling toward the finish from the parking lot, trying to jump up and down. The picture is a stark contrast to the scene of a couple hours later, when all of us were passed out on the chairs, couches, and floors of Aaron’s family’s nearby home.
We had hoped to recapture some of that glory this year. On paper, we had a stronger team than ever, and Bucknell, the three-time champs, had appeared vulnerable in 2004. Yet in the early going, we found ourselves in third place. Even through the night, we were resigned to again finishing in that spot. Everyone continued to run hard, but the sense of urgency that had fueled these late-night legs in the past wasn’t there.
4:25 a.m., Saturday, September 17
When I came upon a stretch of about a mile or so with nobody around me, I started to tire. But I thought about all my teammates relying on me, the fundraising we did, and the classmates and friends who had donated on my behalf. I used those thoughts to drive me along. Before I knew it, I was coming up on someone else who was moving pretty quick. “Who do you run for?” he asked.
“Haverford.”
“Beat Bucknell,” he replied.
Awesome.
—Garth Terry ’01
Bucknell and the University of New Hampshire had pulled ahead on Friday evening, so beating them wasn’t in the cards this year. But by Saturday morning we had learned that we had another team to worry about—a squad of Providence College and Brown University alums who had been matching our pace through the night. They had started the race half an hour before us, and as near as we could tell that was still the gap between our runners. Learning that we could be bumped back to fourth place gave us a new sense of purpose.
Spurred on by the specter of the Providence/Brown squad, we raced toward the finish, knowing that there was little, if any, margin for error. At this stage in the race, everyone’s legs are shot, calves and quads cramping from the cycle of running hard/resting/repeating. At every transition area, we piled out of the van and gingerly walked around, hoping to get a little blood flowing to our failing muscles. Much of the joking and banter of the previous night had now been replaced by fatigue and a business-like approach to getting to the finish line as quickly as possible.
Unlike the giddy early legs of the race, there’s no fear of starting out too fast at this point. Instead, once you take the handoff, you quickly realize that there are only a couple of speeds that you’ll be able to run at, so you doggedly try to maintain the faster of the two options.
Once Paul took the final handoff, the rest of us drove ahead to the finish where we saw Providence/Brown cross the finish line. Their initial 30-minute head start still seemed to be the difference—it would be very close. So for the first time in six years, we found ourselves desperately urging our anchor into an all-out sprint as he turned into the Hampton Beach parking lot, about 200 meters from the line. We screamed ourselves hoarse as Paul crossed the line. After 22 hours of racing, we had 32 seconds to spare; we’d finished third again . . . and it felt great.
Post-race, Saturday, September 17
I told my girlfriend the experience sucked and I would never do it again, but about 24 hours later, I was wondering if I could delay residency and train for next year.
—Paul Hyman ’98
While it felt like just moments earlier we had been watching Adam scamper up the mountain, then searching for Paul in White Lake State Park, suddenly it was over. There were flights to catch, families to return to, and jobs to resume. We slowly limped back to the vans to begin the trip home, to Washington, Colorado, Michigan, Indiana, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Seeing everyone scatter like that is always sad, a reminder that we can only recapture those ocllege days for the briefest moments. We hadn't even had a chance to relive the race we'd just run. But I guess that's what next year is for - I know that's why I'll be back to do it all over again.