by Sara Millhouse
Today, Alvin Irby ’07 is leaving to run the Boston Marathon.
Irby will join thousands of other runners on Monday in the country’s largest and most prestigious long-distance race.
“All of it wouldn’t have been possible without God,” said Irby.
Irby began training for his first marathon, the Little Rock Marathon, after he began observing the Sabbath his senior year of high school, which includes, for him, not competing on Saturdays, when almost all of his high school track meets were scheduled. After running track since his first year of high school, he had to find something else toward which to direct his training.
There’s lot of strategy involved in marathon training, and Irby learned it on his own. He looked for training tips on the internet, and began running about seven miles every day, with a longer run on the weekend.
“I’d only known one person who’d ever run a marathon,” he said. “I’m on a do-what-you-feel program, but when I go out there, I work hard.”
Compared to running with his high school track or cross-country teams, training for the Little Rock marathon was “lonely.” Luckily, he said, he had the opportunity to run with Eric Gross, Arkansas state record-holder for the mile.
“He was one of my motivators in high school,” said Irby. “My goal was not getting lapped by him.”
At the Little Rock Marathon, Irby ran his 26 miles and 385 yards in three hours and eight minutes, just under the 3:10 qualifying time for Boston. “I’m hoping to do it in under three at Boston,” he said.
Running around Little Rock was a little different than training in the Grinnell area.
“It’s been awesome being in nature, and seeing cows and dogs, and having dogs chase you, and jumping over a fence, and cutting your hand, and having the dog chase you for a mile and a half… until the owner comes up and starts yelling, ‘Daisy, get in the truck!’” he said. “The people are nice, having people on tractors wave at you, but it’s so different from the city, where there’s lots of traffic, and people you know going by in cars and waving at you.”
Still, training in Grinnell hasn’t been too lonely. Irby has spent lots of time running the ropes with the Grinnell track and cross country teams.
“They’ve been awesome,” he said. “In the winter, it’s important to run with people. The lowest it ever gets in Little Rock is in the single digits. Here, you come in after a couple-hour run and people look at you crazy. You don’t even realize you have icicles hanging off your face.”
In order to help pay for his trip, Irby fundraised some in Little Rock, and a Grinnell sponsor donated the price of his plane ticket.
After working up to two and a half mile runs, he’s been “tapering” for the last three weeks, running less mileage in order to re-energize his body. “I’ll start drinking lots of fluids, and carbo-loading,” he said. “That’s to get glucose in your muscles, and wire weight. The last time I ran a marathon I lost four pounds.”
In Boston, Irby will visit a friend, who is running on the Naval Academy marathon team, as well as see the town and look for a church to attend for Saturday services. “When I ran at Little Rock, I couldn’t get to bed until after one,” he said. “So I’m going to get lots of sleep the night before.”
Irby will return to campus on Tuesday, after staying with a “friend of a friend” for the weekend. “They tell me that I have to get on the ‘T’ to get to her place, which is some kind of subway,” he said. “I’ve never been on a subway in my life, but I get in at 4:30, and she doesn’t get home ‘til 7:30, so I’ve got three hours to figure it out.”
Irby first got into running in high school as a way of getting into shape for football. “Nobody believes I was an obese little kid,” he said. “Getting into shape was awful. My lungs burned and everywhere was sore.”
But after his first year of high school and a summer running track with the Amateur Athletic Union in Little Rock, he started to enjoy it. “I could run track, or I could get hit by guys twice my size,” he said, moving his hands as a hypothetical scale. Irby chose running.
Irby plans to run in next year’s August Enemy, scheduled for a Friday at Grinnell, as well as possibly running the Chicago Marathon. But before he thinks too much about that, he’s got another 26 miles and 385 yards to go.
Over the weekend, former NCAA Division III National Champion and Grinnell track star Nicole Cueno '02 took first place in the women's division of the St. Louis Marathon. As a junior at Grinnell, she was the outdoor 1500m National Champion. As a senior, she was runner-up at the championships in both the 5000m and 10,000m races.
The marathon marked her third since graduating and her first overall win. She completed the course in 2:55:50, improving upon her previous best finish of 2:57:57.
Cueno joins John Aerni '01 and Noah Lawrence '02 as recent graduates and Pioneer track team members who have been the overall winners in either their first or first of three marathons. Aerni won Cincinnati's Flying Pig Marathon (2:27:42) last May, while Lawrence won Madison's Mad City Marathon (2:37:57) in May, 2002.
On the same Saturday as Cueno's win, Grinnellian Heather May '92 competed in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Team Trials in St. Louis and finished 43rd overall (2:46:37). May did not compete in cross-country or track while a Grinnell student. In fact, she did not begin running until she was 28 years old and with a Masters degree in hand.
—Sports Information
Arts | News | Opinion | Profiles | Sports | Archives | About Us