Two weeks ago I ran in the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon; I thoroughly enjoyed the city and the race.
Of course, when I told people my intention to run Cleveland, they asked "Why Cleveland." The short answer was that some friends of mine invited me to join them, and secondly, I wanted to run a spring marathon. So Cleveland it was.
Cleveland has a bad reputation, perhaps a very bad one, but it's greatly undeserved. And I'm not the only one who possesses these thoughts. On the very day I left for Cleveland, May 20, this article by Michael Gollust appeared in the New York Times travel section:
THE Cleveland of ''American Splendor,'' the 2003 Oscar-nominated movie, is a dreary 1980's town of thrift stores and shambling eccentrics, a place where you'd barely care to spend two hours, let alone a weekend. Today, Cleveland hardly feels like the same place. In the 1990's, public-private enterprise replaced center-city blight with new sports stadiums and the lakefront Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Meanwhile, downtown's revival spurred gentrification into forgotten enclaves along the Cuyahoga River. There's a thriving art scene in Tremont, and the retooled Warehouse District has become a place to be, rather than flee, after dark. Clevelanders remain, by nature, a self-deprecating lot. But before long, calling their town hip, cosmopolitan -- even splendid -- won't sound so ironic.
Cleveland's bad reputation comes from two things. The first is the 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire, which portrayed to the world a city as a living toxic waste dump. The second was the disastrous reign as mayor of Dennis Kucinich, when the city in 1978 became the first municipality to go into default since the Great Depression.
By the late 1970s, Cleveland became the poster-child for failed rust-belt cities. Quipsters called Cleveland "the Mistake on the Lake."
But the Cuyahoga River is pretty clean now, Kucinich is now a minority back-bencher in Congress, and besides, all this occurred over a quarter-century ago.
This posting will be mostly about the race, but since the marathon course winded through much of Cleveland, it will naturally be about the city as well.
Our group stayed at the Hyatt downtown, within walking distance of the race expo, the lake shore, Browns Stadium, and best of all, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We spent most of Saturday at the Hall, great because I'm a huge rock music fan, but best of all, I'm a huge Who fan from way back, and the current special exhibit at the Hall is Tommy, the Amazing Journey.
Only half of the exhibit was about Tommy, the Who's rock opera, the rest was about The Who in general, which was fine with me, especially since I consider The Who's lesser-know concept album, Quadrophenia, to be the superior work.
The bad news about our visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was that we were on our feet for hours. Not a good thing to do when running 26.2 miles the next morning.
No, I'm not making excuses for my performance the next day!
The gun went off at 7:00 am Sunday morning in downtown Cleveland. The course quickly brought us past the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Browns Stadium onto Shoreway Avenue, where runners enjoyed a commanding view of Lake Erie. Shoreway brought us to Edgewater Drive and Edgewater Park, the western portion of Cleveland Lakefront State Park. Late in the race, the course traverses through the eastern portion of the state park.
And this point in the race, mile 5, I already have a tight calf and I'm feeling the humidity. That's not stopping me from enjoying the neighborhood of Lakewood, where there are plenty of large and beautiful homes, reminscent of Chicago's toney Edgebrook neighborhood--so Cleveland is not composed solely of run-down houses. A couple of miles later, I discover that Lakewood is not a Cleveland aberration, as I enter, tight calf and all, Ohio City. I guessed correctly that Ohio City was once a separate municipality, annexed by Cleveland many years ago. It's quaint and charming, yes, this is Cleveland, but quaint and charming Ohio City is. I even spotted a Victorian-era home operating as a bed-and-breakfast. Yes, a bed-and-breakfast in Cleveland!
At mile 12 and we're running past Gund Arena, home of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and "the Jake," properly known as Jacobs Field, ballpark of the Cleveland Indians. Almost halfway done with the race!
That halfway point is within Cleveland Theatre District on Euclid Avenue. It's huge, and just for a moment, I thought I was in New York on Broadway.
In addition to the 10-kilometer run, there's also a half-marathon, and that's where a lot of our participants end their run. At this point the run becomes more solitary, and my writing style sticks to first-person.
Cleveland State University is the next landmark, my recollections of CSU, like most non-Clevelanders, consist of the occasions the men's basketball team plays local (for me) teams such as University of Illinois-Chicago or Loyola.
There's a long straightway after Cleveland State, Chester Avenue, where I encounter the Dunham Tavern Museum. The tavern was built in 1824, and was a stagecoach stop on the old Buffalo-Cleveland-Detroit Post Road. It's the oldest building in Cuyahoga County standing on its original site.
My calf is getting even tighter.
From Chester Avenue, the world famous Cleveland Clinic was within my sight. From there, I encounter my favorite portion of the race, mile 16 thru 19, Wade Park and University Circle and Rockefeller Park. It was a humid and sunny day, so I was enjoying the shade. And the sights.
The University Circle and Wade Park area is home to another world famous institution, the Cleveland Orchestra. Case Western University is also there, as well as a whole bunch of museums, including the Cleveland African American Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Natural History Museum.
So there is plenty to do in Cleveland. But at this point, I'm running a marathon, and the museums don't open until 10am on Sundays.
Rockefeller Park is one of America's greatest urban parks, in my opinion. And outside of the name "Rockefeller," I'm pretty sure not too many people are familiar with it. I ran under several beautiful brick arched bridges, and past many cultural heritge gardens. My wife, a native of Latvia, was pleased to learn that the Latvian section of the gardens was under development, right about at mile 18 of the course. In researching the posting I learned Rockefeller Park went into a period of decline in the 1960s, but now, Cleveland itself, it suffers unfairly from a bad reputation.
Shade gave way to the sun and Lake Erie at mile 20. For the next few miles, tight calf and all, I ran on a bike path along the eastern half of Cleveland Lakefront State Park, and then onto a frontage road along Interstate 90 back to downtown Cleveland.
At mile 24, my tight calf picked up an "evil twin," a suddenly acutely painful left knee. I'm in the Warehouse District, the place Michael Gollust of the New York Times calls, the "place to be, rather than flee, after dark." By this point, I wanted to be at the finish line, two miles away. Since by this point of the race, I'm running noticeably slower, I learned there's a lot going on in the Warehouse District, another area of Cleveland that the rest of the country needs to know more about.
But I did finish, I was in a lot of pain--I tried to hide that in these photos. (I could see the cameras clicking away.) You be the judge if I was successful in restraining my feelings of pain.
As James Thurber wrote, "you could look it up," 3 hours and 50 minutes, 20 minutes slower than I hoped for, and over a half hour slower than my effort in last fall's Chicago Marathon.
But I finished, and with the marathon, that's always the most important thing to accomplish, even after I've done it 26 times. Finishing.
So readers, some advice. If you're a runner, run the next Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon on May 21, 2006. And if you're not a runner, visit Cleveland sometime soon, before it's overrun with tourists. No, I'm not joking. Besides, there is a nice bed-and-breakfast place in Ohio City you may want to consider, but it's probably already booked Marathon Weekend.
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