SEATTLE — On the days Steve Chapman would go for a 20-mile run to prepare for the marathon, his son Jonathan would often accompany him on a bicycle, and when dad reached the 15-mile mark, son invariably asked, “Do you feel like crying or puking?”
Steve wouldn’t do either, though he might have felt like it. He would plod on to the end, feeling good about himself, though his body might have been screaming with pain.
Training for a 26.2-mile race was something new for Chapman. Though an avid long-distance hiker, he had never run competitively or even recreationally. But after turning 40 in February, he began running to lose weight. As a goal, he wanted to run a half-marathon (13.1 miles). And one day he did it, circling Lake Tye in Monroe eight times. One of his daughters, Leah, was on the bike that day. She was kind enough not to ask him the crying/heaving question.
If he could do a half marathon, why not a whole one, Chapman thought? So he sat down at his computer one day and began searching for marathon training programs. A Christian, Chapman said he felt the Lord wanted him to run a marathon. He found a program that encompassed 16 weeks. He also found a marathon that was 17 weeks away. It was approximately 40 miles from his home near Lake Rossiger. It was the Seattle Marathon on Nov. 28.
The program called for him to train four days a week. He would have to do it in three. Time constraints, you see. He is a general contractor and he has seven children at home, with an eighth due in June.
His wife, Lisa, home schools the kids. There is Leah, 14; Jonathan, 12; Hannah, 9; Josiah, 7; Emma, 5; Levi, 3, and Mabel, 1. Notice the symmetry? Girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl.
She also home-schooled the two oldest children, Nathaniel, 23, and Larissa, 20.
Chapman is diligent in his craft. He was also thorough in his training. He would get up early in the morning to do his shorter runs and then go to work. Sometimes, one of the older kids, either Leah or Jonathan, would come along to be with their dad to learn the carpentry trade.
On weekends, he would go for 20-mile runs on the Centennial Trail. Sometimes his wife went with him.
So the running thing became kind of a family affair.
And on Sunday, the family was there in full force at Memorial Stadium in the Seattle Center to greet Steve at the finish line.
Think about it. It was the first race of his life: 26.2 excrutiating miles.
“Nobody does a marathon for their first race,” said an awe-struck runner who had just won the Masters Division for women.
Steve Chapman did. He didn’t catch his exact time — five and a quarter hours, he guessed (he found out later it was 5 hours, 15 minutes, 6 seconds) — when he crossed the finish line. That didn’t really matter to him. That he finished was the important thing.
But in his mind there was no question that he would finish. “I’ll get there if I have to crawl,” he vowed a few days before the race.
“Man makes the plans,” he said. “God directs his steps.”
The steps sometimes came hard on a chilly but sunny day. He figured there would be times when he would slow to a walk. And he did.
But he kept moving. And drinking. At each water stop, he grabbed two bottles. By the end, the “Rocky” t-shirt he wore underneath a long-sleeved garment was soaked with sweat.
He was the Rocky of the Chapman family on this day. As tired as he was, if challenged, he could probably have run to the top of the stadium stairs and done his little Sylvester Stallone shuffle.
Or not.
He looked beat. As most anyone does who has just run 26 miles.
Once you do a marathon, everything hurts. Even your hair.
Chapman had some cramping problems during the race. A fellow runner offered him some Aleve. Chapman declined. He solved his problem the old-fashioned way. He stretched.
“There’s a lot of camaraderie out there on the race course, even though you don’t know anyone,” he said. “You feel pretty supported that way.”
As with any runner, and especially a novice attempting this long a race in his debut, Chapman had some anxiety leading up to his big day. Two nights before the race, he dreamed that he left some of his gear at home. “All day I was making sure I had all of my stuff,” he said.
The snow early in the week had him — and undoubtedly everyone else entered in the race — worried. The snow also kept him from running. But, he had a good, strong foundation from a half-dozen 20-milers. A couple of inactive days might even have helped him.
A special little moment happened late in the week when he picked up his race number: 530. “It felt kind of good to have a number,” he said.
As to what kind of time he would need to finish the race, he thought five hours might be a reasonable guess. As anyone who has run a marathon will tell you, the last six miles are the hardest. They call it hitting “the wall.”
Sometimes the wall can hit you even earlier. When he got halfway through the race Sunday, Chapman remembered thinking, “Wow, this is hard.”
He kicked through the wall and kept on going.
Inside the stadium, Lisa and the kids eagerly awaited his entrance. Hannah held a big sign that read, “We love you Dad. #530.”
To pass some of the time between the start of the race and the finish, the family had gone ice skating in the Seattle Center. “First time,” Lisa said. “I want to do it again.”
And now, entering the stadium, here came No. 530. Running, not walking as some did as they neared the finish line. Running, a champion in the eyes of the most important people in Steve Chapman’s life.
As he neared the finish line, his family started to run to where they could greet him, Lisa leading the way. One of the children pushed the stroller with 1-year-old Mabel in it.
Once they gathered at the other end of the field, Lisa did a quick check. “Got everybody?” she asked. “One, two, three, four, five, six …”
Some people, in the agonizing moments after their first marathon, swear they will never run another one. Steve Chapman was already looking to the future. “The little races don’t interest me,” he said. “God gave me the heart to run long distances.”
He did promise to run some short races with Jonathan.
And maybe, halfway through the first one, Dad can turn to his son and ask, “Do you feel like crying or puking?”
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