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| They asked me to smile in this picture. I didn't |
It’s hard to do the Boston Marathon.
After 123 years, the race itself now seems inextricably
bound up in an aura of athletic excellence, reaching near mythic status. Just
to say “Boston Marathon” (or even just “Boston”) is to invoke a goal or an
accomplishment of seemingly impossible caliber. But if you have your sights set
on Boston, as I did, then this is exactly what you are trying to do: become
part of the one of the most famous and grueling athletic pursuits accessible to
non-elites and non-Olympians.
But, again, the Boston Athletic Association, which runs the race, doesn’t make it easy. It’s hard to qualify; hard to get to; and, of course, hard to race. (As I’ve said elsewhere: Marathons are hard.) In the lead-up to and on April 15, 2019, the day of my first Boston Marathon, I experienced all three dimensions of the race’s difficulty.
But, again, the Boston Athletic Association, which runs the race, doesn’t make it easy. It’s hard to qualify; hard to get to; and, of course, hard to race. (As I’ve said elsewhere: Marathons are hard.) In the lead-up to and on April 15, 2019, the day of my first Boston Marathon, I experienced all three dimensions of the race’s difficulty.
Qualifying for Boston
I could put the starting line of my road to Boston in many
places. My father’s 1983 attempt to do the race, a story in itself that I
shan’t tell here. My lifelong commitment to distance running, the only sport I
ended up any good at, and the seeming inevitability that such a life should at
some point bring me to Boston, or at least to try to. My graduation from
college and departure from my college team, and all the resources and
companionship running on a college team provided, and my decision to try to try
train myself at the same level without any of that. All of these things, and
more, could be, in a sense, the “beginning” of my road to Boston.
To keep this account from being even longer than it needs to
be, however, I have to mark my 2017 completion of Washington, D.C.’s Marine
Corps Marathon as the start. For the way most people get to Boston is to
qualify for it. So, in other words, to earn the privilege of running one
marathon, you first have to run a different one, an oddity that must seem
utterly nonsensical, perhaps even perverse, to non-runners. This qualifying
marathon must, moreover, be completed under a time that varies by age and
gender. For 18-33
year-old males, the magic number was 3:05, but really 3:00. That’s
about 7-minute miles…26.2 in a row, the distance that famously killed the first
man who completed it. And yet, if you do the whole Boston process “right,”
you’ll have done it twice by the time it’s all over, ideally without dying.
I did not die en route to finishing my first marathon, as
I have written elsewhere. I finished it in 2:34:29, despite going
into it having no definite idea of what I would be capable of. I was 15th
overall in that race, and, despite spending large stretches of it running by
myself, enjoyed it a great deal…until I got to the last mile and a half or so,
but by that point I was close enough to the finish that I was content to suffer
through. This time was well under my qualifying standard, so my road to Boston
was, I thought, direct and assured.
Alas, one wrinkle prevented that: My 2017 marathon was
outside the qualifying window to enable me to run Boston the following year.
Only marathons from May to September of one year can get one to Boston the
next, and the MCM was in October. I had signed up for it without fully
understanding that, and was a bit miffed once I did. Fortunately, I would not
have to run another marathon; my 2017 qualifier would still get me to the 2019
Boston marathon. I would just have to wait, and follow the multi-step
qualification process.
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| En route to finishing my first marathon, in October 2017 |
So wait I did, until, by September 2018, nearly a year later
(though one I did not waste, running-wise, winning
a high-profile race in May), it was finally time for me to attempt
to register. My qualifying time gave me no trouble with that, and I was set for
the 123rd Boston Marathon on April 15, 2019.
But that meant more waiting. So I kept running—again, not
exactly wasting that time (winning
another high-profile race and setting a lifetime 10k best). And I
kept hoping that, as I filled the time before Boston, nothing would happen to
me that would keep me from the race I had waited for.
You might detect foreshadowing there. And you’re right.
Here’s what happened: A few weeks after I finished my last pre-Boston Marathon
training cycle, as I began a very early phase of my training for Boston, I fell
in the shower (it was actually a bit more complicated than that, but this works
as shorthand) and severely injured myself. This freak accident, not even
running-related, is the worst kind of injury possible for me (one that I have
experienced before). Because at least running-caused injuries are
understandable, if frustrating: I just overtrained, or trained badly. Yet
things like this I have no control over, seem wholly undeserved, and make me
wonder what I have done to offend the running gods.
My misfortune struck right at the end of 2018; because of
it, I spent the first three weeks of 2019 unable to run at all (despite a few
painful, hobbling attempts), and wondering throughout that time whether it
would even make sense to run Boston on so little training. Despite all the
waiting and preparation I had already done for Boston, I thus began to
investigate other marathon options, and to back out of whatever tentative plans
I had begun to make for the weekend before the race. My dreams of Boston were
fading before my eyes.
This is where I was exactly three months before the day of the race, when I decided to try one last run. Before I started, I told myself that, if I could run just one mile with a manageable amount of pain, then I would still try to run Boston, but if I couldn’t, then I would give up. I delayed the start of that run for quite some time. For only two things could happen during it, and one of them would be nigh-unbearable. Thus, I chose instead to exist in the comfort of uncertainty, to be Schrödinger’s runner for as long as I could. But ambiguity’s comfort only lasts so long, and so I finally forced myself to take a few steps.
Upon doing so, I found that they were painful, yes…but not in the way I had been experiencing pain. Far more pressing on me was the pain that comes from being out of shape—which three weeks off will do to you—but this was pain I knew well, and knew well how to conquer. I managed to get through just one mile in this fashion, but it was all I needed. I had my proof of concept, and I had 12 weeks to get myself back into shape. It was nowhere near as much time as I wanted, but it would have to be enough. My last doubts were vanquished by a friend, one Jonathan Finer, who ran an excellent Boston Marathon in 2018 despite a nearly identical set of setbacks. This is not the last time Finer, as he prefers to be called, will make an appearance in this account of my Boston experience.
This is where I was exactly three months before the day of the race, when I decided to try one last run. Before I started, I told myself that, if I could run just one mile with a manageable amount of pain, then I would still try to run Boston, but if I couldn’t, then I would give up. I delayed the start of that run for quite some time. For only two things could happen during it, and one of them would be nigh-unbearable. Thus, I chose instead to exist in the comfort of uncertainty, to be Schrödinger’s runner for as long as I could. But ambiguity’s comfort only lasts so long, and so I finally forced myself to take a few steps.
Upon doing so, I found that they were painful, yes…but not in the way I had been experiencing pain. Far more pressing on me was the pain that comes from being out of shape—which three weeks off will do to you—but this was pain I knew well, and knew well how to conquer. I managed to get through just one mile in this fashion, but it was all I needed. I had my proof of concept, and I had 12 weeks to get myself back into shape. It was nowhere near as much time as I wanted, but it would have to be enough. My last doubts were vanquished by a friend, one Jonathan Finer, who ran an excellent Boston Marathon in 2018 despite a nearly identical set of setbacks. This is not the last time Finer, as he prefers to be called, will make an appearance in this account of my Boston experience.
I spent the next several weeks trying to strike a delicate
balance: running enough to get back into shape more quickly than I am used to
doing, while also not training so hard that I injure myself. It was tricky, and
I had a few scares, and a few bad workouts, along the way. But by mid-March, a
fantastic omen presented itself after I raced a half-marathon (that Finer
helped convince me to do) in a time identical to that in which I had raced a
half-marathon before the 2017 Marine Corps Marathon, my qualifier (1:12:40).
Even better: I notched several solid weeks of training between then and the two
weeks leading up to Boston (at which point I would begin to dial things down).
Starting from the least fit I had been in quite some time, I had managed to get
myself pretty much right back to the fitness level I wanted to be. So I would be
fit for Boston after all.
Getting to Boston
But getting fit for Boston is only one part of the Boston
experience. You also have to get there, have a place to stay while there, get
your stuff for the race, and get to the starting line. As I began to
investigate all of these logistics, I found them very intimidating; until I got
to the starting line of the race itself, I was probably more worried about
doing something wrong along the way than I was about finishing the marathon.
After all, I’d already run a marathon, but I had never done all the Boston
rigmarole before.
Lucky for me, I had an incredible resource at my disposal: a goodly number of friends who had already run Boston, including, again, Mr. Finer. I turned to him and to others to help figure out how to “do” just the logistical aspects of Boston (the race itself was a different matter, which I’ll explain later). With their help, I eventually figured out what made the most sense for me to do; Finer even graciously made me a part of some of his own plans for after the race, greatly simplifying my life.
Lucky for me, I had an incredible resource at my disposal: a goodly number of friends who had already run Boston, including, again, Mr. Finer. I turned to him and to others to help figure out how to “do” just the logistical aspects of Boston (the race itself was a different matter, which I’ll explain later). With their help, I eventually figured out what made the most sense for me to do; Finer even graciously made me a part of some of his own plans for after the race, greatly simplifying my life.
Thus, on the Friday before the race, I flew from D.C. to
Boston and set myself up in my lodgings for the weekend. I first stayed with a
college friend who lived in a suburb of Boston, one that happened to be just
off part of the marathon route (of which more later), allowing me to run a few
miles of the route at that point in both directions. From this base, I went
into the city itself the Saturday before the race to the expo, to pick up my
bib at the Hynes Convention Center.
Having to navigate a city I had never been to on the fly was
a bit of a challenge in itself. But I figured it out…only to confront a line
leading into the building itself, and a few more here and there as I carefully
made my way through the expo. At one point, probably just overwhelmed by
information, I nearly forgot the bib I had just picked up, the only thing that
was truly necessary for me to race, at one of the tables where I had gotten
something else. But one of the race workers was kind enough to alert me of this
and hand it back to me.
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| Bib pick-up for the 2019 Boston Marathon |
Equipped with what I needed for race day, I made my way back
to where I was staying through the afternoon before the day of the race, trying
to minimize the amount of physical activity I would be doing, and also the
amount of stress I would experience (something my unfamiliarity with Boston’s
public transit did not help with much). The day before the race, I ran a
little, ate a lot, and then waited for my sister Katie, who was coming into
town on a conveniently-timed business trip with a rental car and a hotel room
in Needham, to come get me. When she did, we drove to our hotel, then
accomplished a few pre-race errands: a trip to the grocery store, Palm Sunday
Mass (thanks
MassTimes.org!), and my own Last Supper of a pretty good pizza at a
decent restaurant. Following which we returned to our hotel room.
All this time, the specter of the race the next morning
loomed over me. It loomed over Katie as well, for she would not only be part of
getting me to the race the morning of; she would also try to spectate as
aggressively as possible, an experience that would be as new for her as racing
Boston would be for me. In the hour or two that remained before we went to bed,
we formulated our plan for the morning, both the parts that we would do
together, and what we would do separately. When it was all done, and I had set up
everything I needed for the next day (and set a paranoid amount of alarms for
4:30 am), we went to bed around 10:15.
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| The only things I truly needed for race day, minus my shoes, laid out the night before the race |
But "in bed" and "asleep" ended up two different
things for me when I was running the Boston Marathon the next day. I had set
various alarms for 4:30, but by about 3:45, I was just lying there waiting for
them to go off, eyes wide open. Eventually, they did, and I got my day started.
By about 5:20, my sister, with whom I was staying at a hotel in Needham, and I
were ready to drive out to Brookline Hills, a subway Station about 15 minutes
out of downtown. When we got there, I took everything I needed with me and went
on my way.
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| The last time my sister saw me before the race started |
It was very warm and humid out, way more in either regard than I
desired, and that made me worried, although I had plenty more to think about
this morning than that. When I got onto the train, I sat in it silently; at
this time and on this day, it was occupied only by other marathoners.
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| The morning marathon train |
When I got to Arlington, the closest subway stop to the
first part of the race, I then found my way toward the gear check. After that,
walked across the Boston Common to where the buses were loading. As I was
waiting for the buses to load, it started to rain, at which point I removed
some of the plastic bags I had brought with me and put them over my feet and
head; my cheap but effective rain gear did the rest. We got onto the buses by
the time it started to rain truly hard (though lightning had struck at least
twice as we waited, a fact of which the race workers made much light). I sat next
to someone unknown to me, and we did not say a single word to each other as our
school bus—it was literally a school bus, the first time I'd been on one of
those things in years—drove slowly from Boston to the race starting area in
Hopkinton. At one point, my bus and many around it stopped to wait for the rain
to let up, but continued once it did.
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| The last picture I took of myself before depositing my phone in the gear check |
The rest of the drive I spent entirely inside my head, as by
this point I had nothing else to divert myself with (I left my phone in the
gear check). It was still raining when we got to Hopkinton, though not as hard,
and the rain had cooled things down a bit, which was nice. We still had a bit
to walk through from where the buses had parked to the race starting area, and
I spent most of that time trying to avoid puddles. When I got to the race
starting area, my first priority was to go the bathroom. But to do that, I had
to navigate gingerly through the already sodden, muddy field that they were
located in (a process that reminded me so strongly of the ice cave in Pokémon
Gold/Silver/Crystal that I began singing that level’s background
music to myself). Fortunately, the grocery bags I brought to keep my
feet dry proved excellent insulators against the wet mud, allowing me to make
my journey over with dry feet.
After that, I looked around for a bit to find out where I
would sit while I waited for the race to start. At one point, as I saw people
walking into the high school gym, I thought this was allowable and tried to go
in, but was rebuffed for not being an elite; "next year!" I said
while turning away, to bemused replies. I thus wandered into one tent and was
looking around aimlessly when I heard someone call my name. It was none other Finer
himself. I found a spot in the tent next to him and Oscar Holmström, a Finnish
fellow Finer befriended in his typical way, and I put a trash bag on the ground
to keep myself dry. We spent the next 40 or so minutes just chatting with each
other, waiting for our wave—we were all Wave 1—to be called over.
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| Looking like a paparazzi-captured celebrity as I show my bib to get Wave 1 admission |
Just before it was time, I decided to part ways from Finer,
the first of a few bad decisions I would make this morning. I wanted to try to
go the bathroom before I went to the start line, but the lines were incredibly
long everywhere I went, so after a fruitless search I just ended up leaving
with Wave 1 at the same time as him but further back. On my way over, I thought
it was warm enough that I didn't need my pre-race clothes anymore, so I donated
them, and also threw away all of my pre-race stuff but a water bottle and what
I would carry on my utility belt (essentially a glorified “fanny pack” I run
marathons with; I sometimes feel silly with it, but it is genuinely helpful).
Also on the way over, as we were just walking, I split off into a parking lot
that seemed open to do a one-mile warm-up, as I had not done that yet (and
should have before I left with Wave 1). So I ran exactly one mile running in
circles in a parking lot for 7 minutes, feeling like an idiot doing so, but I
just did not know if I would have an opportunity to warm up again before the
race itself. This is also why I did drills there.
I finished my parking lot warm-up and drills with about
25-30 minutes to go before my race would start, which, again, I realize now was
not ideal. What was even less ideal was finding out, when I moved back into the
line progressing to the start, that I was about a half mile away from the
starting line. Not wanting to risk a walk, I thus began to jog again, dodging
more artfully than perhaps I ever have before to get there. I wanted to go the
bathroom one more time before I went to the start, so I went to the area that I
thought would have enough portos.
But there are never enough portos. They all had lines, and I
got to the point where I had only ten minutes left before my race and was
starting to get nervous that I would miss the start, so I asked the people in
front of me, who were in starting waves way after mine, if they would let me go
in front of them, which they did. Thanks, guys. The bathroom trip I took then
didn't really seem to be worth it, though, and only seemed to make me feel
worse. And what also made me feel worse is that I had only a few minutes to get
from the bathrooms to the Wave 1 corral, necessitating a sprint—parts of which
were uphill—that I really did not feel like making at that time. I did not
measure how long that took, but it was probably at least 400 or so meters. When I actually got to the starting line, I had a few minutes to wait before the gun went off, which I filled by saying a Hail Mary and reciting the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, because that's the kind of person I am. Already, physically and mentally, I felt a bit off, and the race hadn't even
started, and I thought these things could help. But at least I was at the starting line when I was supposed to be. Now
all I had to do was…uh…run a marathon.
Racing Boston
There are a couple of things about the Boston Marathon that
make racing it very tricky. First, unlike most marathons, it is a
point-to-point: It starts in Hopkinton, a town far outside of Boston, and runs
straight into the city, with barely any turns between the start and the finish.
Second, it is mostly downhill, for the first 16 or so miles of the race. This
sounds like a good thing, and in some senses it is. But it is also a kind of
trap, especially for first-time Boston runners. The history of Boston is full
of excited novices who raced out the gate, feeling great, on pace for
incredible personal records by halfway…who then must confront the rolling hills
of miles 16-20, the rigor of the infamous Heartbreak Hill, and, of course,
finish the race. Few who start the race that foolishly end up having the kind
of Boston they want (my father among them). The combination of downhill and
uphill quad strain is excruciating under any circumstances, but particularly so
for those who fall for this devious snare. Finally, there is the weather, which
is unpredictable and uncontrollable; you can only control how you dress for it,
and how you deal with it mentally. These are the main obstacles of the Boston
course.
I had all of this in mind as the gun went off for Wave 1 of
the Boston Marathon, two minutes after the elites began. A marathon is…well, a
marathon, not a sprint. So my first priority, for at least the first half of
the race, if not more, was restraint.
Despite the incredible progress I had made from almost literally zero fitness a
mere 12 weeks before, I still wasn’t sure if I was quite the same shape I was
for my qualifier. So, consulting with my high school coach, who had been so
helpful in the lead-up to my first marathon, I committed to running around 5:55
until roughly mile 16. There I would assess and decide either to speed up or
wait until mile 20-21, another point of assessment to speed up or hold on. If I
could do 5:55s the whole race, it would almost exactly match my qualifier,
which I had decided to make my standard of “acceptability” for this race
(whether it would have been higher if my training had gone better, I shall say
more about later). And so this is what I tried to do for the first few miles of
the race, in a fashion that felt deceptively easy for one of hardest races a
person can do. Indeed, at one point, I found myself next to Finer once again,
and we exchanged a few words. We ran together for 400-500 meters, but then he
told me to keep going, as my goal pace was a bit faster than his. Quoting Gladiator, I told him that “I will
see you again. But not yet, not yet…” And I continued on my way.
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| Doing my best to run my own race, early on |
Although the race was full of people running at about the
same pace as I was, and the course was amply spectated, I spent most of its
first part very much doing my own thing. Restraint and conservation were the
order of the day, at least at first, and I tried my best not to get sucked into
a pace any faster than I wanted to go this early in the race. This was harder
than I expected at first; according to my Garmin, my first three miles were
5:52, 5:49, and 5:50. But after that, I went 5:53, 5:54, and 5:54, as I began
to get a better sense of what my desired pace actually felt like. My dominant
sensation during this first part of the race was feeling that I wasn’t going
fast enough, but being surprised upon the completion of every mile that I was
actually doing fine, while also having a nagging concern about how far I had to
go (which first flared up at 7k in, when I realized I was only a sixth of the
way through). Though I started the race with a weird feeling in my stomach and
something I couldn’t decide was soreness or freshness in my quads, just
notching mile after mile at this consistent pace helped me to relax and get my
bearings under me after a somewhat stressful lead-up to the race itself.
I have very similar things to say about the next six miles
of the race. Here, though, a few distinguishing factors emerged. I was on the
part of the course that I had actually run before. Indeed, the friend with whom
I had stayed was at the end of his street, and cheered me on when I saluted him
as I went by (I was still feeling more than good enough to do this). This was
also the stretch of the race when I took my first packet of Cliff Gels, which I
washed down at a water station around mile 8. Perhaps aided by familiarity, and
by the first spectator I recognized, I kept my pace right around where it had
been: 5:54, 5:56, 5:52, 5:53, 5:53. As the race began to stretch out a little
bit, the people around me started to get more familiar; natural race attrition
had begun to self-select groups for people who had roughly similar goals for
the day. One such person that I spent much of this part of the race next to
asked me what I was going for time-wise; I told him about 2:34, which he said
was “perfect. I would see him on and off for these next few relaxed miles.
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| Still relaxing |
Approaching the middle of the race, I encountered one of its
most famous features before the city itself: Wellesley. Just before the
midpoint, the girls of Wellesley College, and other equally enthusiastic
spectators, line each side of the road, cheering furiously, waving all manner
of signage. Some of these signs ask for kisses in various fashion and for
various reasons. I will admit to blowing a couple of kisses here, and to
getting a bit excited in my pace. The three miles I ran around here were 5:54,
5:52, 5:52, a bit faster than I was willing to go quite yet; I had once more to
tell myself to hold back. This became easier when I reached the actual halfway
point of the marathon (1:17:25, almost identical to the half split of my first
marathon), and realized how much I still had left. And yet here, as the race
began some of its rolling hills, my pace did not suffer; quite the opposite at
first, as I ran a 5:50 and then a 5:47.
Shortly, though, two things intervened to hold me back.
First, I began to feel some liquid pooling in one of my shoes. Because I run
without socks, I feel all of this stuff quite intimately, and my immediate
thought was that it was blood from a nasty blister. But there was nothing I
could do about it, so I decided to ignore it (“I ain’t got time to bleed”).
The second thing, however, was harder to ignore. At mile 16, I decided to
ingest the second of 3 sets of Cliff Gels I had on me. When I tried to swallow
them, even with the aid of water, though, I ended up almost choking on them,
and nearly spat one of them up and out of my mouth. This happened, moreover, on
one of the race’s first true uphill portions, leading to my first mile that was
truly below pace: a 5:58. Mile 17, which immediately followed, contained
another brutal uphill, slowing me down once more to a 5:59. The first of these
two slow miles was worse than the second, though, because the rate at which I
went up the hill of my 5:59 mile made me think I had lost far more time. I may
have even laughed a bit at managing to stay sub-6 during it.
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| I think this was taken right around one of the race's first major uphills |
If I had laughed then, though, it was the course that would
laugh at me next. I managed a 5:48 next mile on a mostly downhill portion of
the race, for what would be mile 19. Mile 20, though, was a gradual uphill, and
I shot back up to 5:58, and could tell I was beginning to feel genuinely
exhausted, with still a 10k left in the race. I tried to think of it in terms
of that distance because it was supposed to make me feel better; when you’ve
run 20 miles, what’s 6.22 more? But it had something of the opposite effect, as
I started thinking about how long a 10k takes and can feel. So I did my best to
stop thinking about the cumulative distance that remained, and instead focused
on just taking each mile one at a time, now that so few remained.
Yet one of the few miles that remained contained arguably
the most difficult portion of the entire course: the infamous Heartbreak Hill.
Or at least, that’s where I thought I was; I wasn’t 100 percent sure, though I
strongly suspected, by following the trail of runners in front of me from its
bottom all the way to its distant top, and by observing the packed roadsides
along its breadth, that I was indeed there. I had known of Heartbreak before
the race. I had asked friends who’d done Boston if it was truly as bad as its
reputation suggests (some said yes, others no). I had done hill workouts
specifically to prepare for it. I had restrained myself earlier in the race
largely to make sure I would have something left to get over it. I had done
everything I possibly could…except get up the hill itself.
Heartbreak—or what I assumed was Heartbreak—is a microcosm
of Boston itself, in that you only find it if you can beat it once you have.
And I won’t lie: There was a time, about halfway up what I assumed was
Heartbreak, as my pace slowed embarrassingly, that I wasn’t sure I would make
it. But I reached deep within myself, to a place I’m not positive I knew was
there. I ignored my watch and my speed; this was going to slow me down anyway,
as it would surely everyone else running today. And I doubled down on just
getting to the top. As I did so, I found myself actually passing people, most
of them still running, but some of them defeated by the hill and just walking,
a depressing sight as I could possibly imagine—coming all this way and stopping
this close to the end. I resolved not to join their ranks, though they had my
sympathy. And soon enough, I reached the summit of what I assumed was
Heartbreak. And right at the top, someone confirmed this for me with a sign
that said, “Congratulations! You beat Heartbreak.” Tired and sore though I was,
I could not help but say aloud, within earshot of the runner next to me, “I did
it!”
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| I think--though I'm not 100 percent sure--that this was taken as I ascended Heartbreak Hill |
Ah, but the race was not over yet. Five whole miles still
stood between me and the finish line. In a stroke at once of fortune and
misfortune, the next mile, during which I took the last of my Cliff Gels, was
downhill, a break for some parts of my body, like my lungs, but not for others,
like my poor, battered quads. I made the most of it though, running a 5:46. I
knew in the midst of this mile, however, that I would be able to go no faster
than this for the rest of the race. I began to suspect here that beating my
qualifier might not happen, but as best as I could banished such thoughts from
my head as part of an effort to hold on for dear life. At this point of the
race, most of the runners I was with had right around the same goals and were
running right around the same pace as I was, so I did my best just to hang onto
them and to myself as I came closer and closer to the city. Mile 23 I managed a
5:50, and mile 24, a 5:51, as the increasing height of buildings and density of
spectators suggested more and more that I was coming close to the city. The end
was near.
The last five miles of the race, however, dragged on like no
miles before did. Each one was a titanic effort, a ruthless and merciless
extraction of effort from what remained of my energy. Although I had already
come so far, I began to wonder if the race would ever end. And I began to dread
a moment I knew had not yet truly come, but which was surely inevitable, as it
happened in the Marine Corps Marathon when I felt a little better: the infamous
“Wall.” In my about the last mile and a half of that first marathon, my body
truly began to die, after about 20 solid miles of feeling great, and 4 more
miles of feeling okay. I’m not sure if the level of pain I experienced in the
remainder of that race truly qualified as “the Wall,” that dreaded moment for
marathoners when all energy reserves are depleted and whatever remains of the
race is a death march to the finish. But the rest of that race was certainly
markedly worse than what came before. And though I could tell that I had been
decaying over the course of the last few miles, I had not truly reached that
level of exhaustion.
 |
| Checking my watch after finally beating Heartbreak |
Oh, but it came. It came with a vengeance. It struck hard,
making every little rise and fall that remained of the race, now very much
downtown, a world of pain unto itself. I had 24-plus miles of momentum at this
point, and they carried me through a mile 25 of 5:56. But as the last full mile
for me began, I could think of nothing but what I had left. And my exhausted,
perhaps delirious mind, forcing shattered quads and sore feet forward one
excruciating step at a time, kept irrationally slicing and dicing the numbers
that represented my remaining mileage in a way that I think was supposed to
make them more palatable, yet ultimately just confused me. But at least it gave
me something else to think about as the life-and-death struggle of the race’s
final portion came to occupy the totality of my existence, so that was nice.
 |
| "Wait, how much of the race is still left?" |
My perception of the race at this point is a little skewed by
the pain I was experiencing at the time, and thus so is my memory. So I’m not
exactly sure if the last three obstacles I remember facing in this race all
happened in exactly the last mile. But I’ll recount them here nonetheless, in
the order that (I think) they happened. First, the course went on a slight
downhill under a highway bridge, itself punishment enough for my poor quads.
Even worse, though, was the corresponding slight uphill. In isolation, it was
nothing; against what I had already surmounted, it was even less. But after
everything I had already gone through, it was torture, and it wiped me out in such
a way that took a few hundred meters to recover from. Second, not long after
that, the course made what I think was its second turn, this at a point when I
was beginning to wonder when the hell it would finish. It was a fairly sharp
turn, arresting my momentum somewhat. And it led directly into the third and
final obstacle for the race: the finish.
 |
| You know things are getting bad when my head drops |
There comes a point in every race when I can actually see
the finish line before the race ends. In an ideal race, it is right there, and
only a few steps will get me to it. This wasn’t like that. Maybe I was
hallucinating, or delirious. But the finish line for the Boston Marathon seemed
to be about as far away from the rounding of this final turn as it could
possibly be. To the extent that I was able to think at all before getting to
the turn, I was thinking of nothing but the finish line and where it was,
believing that just seeing it would make everything better. But once I could
actually see it, I immediately preferred my prior mental state. This far out,
though, there was no going back. There was only the finish. So I trudged
forward as fast as I could, at some point hitting my last full mile of 6:10, but
no longer caring how slow I was moving. As long as I was moving forward,
nothing else mattered. Sheer momentum alone concerned me. The entirety of my
existence consisted in each step I took, each meter I erased between me and the
finish. I began to lose any sense of who or what was around me, having lost any
care for the other athletes in the race. The Boston finish is lined with
spectating stands, and I assume they were cheering pretty loudly as I came in
to the finish line. But I barely sensed them at all as I forced myself through
to that finish line by sheer willpower. Closer and closer I came, worse and
worse was my pain, my entire body seemed to be shutting down, my legs and arms
were jelly moving through molasses, the more and more I could think of nothing
but an monomaniacal desire just to cross that line, that damn line, that line
that didn’t seem to be getting any closer, and then…
 |
| Approaching Zeno's finish line |
I was done.
 |
| The moment I crossed the finish line at Boston |
After Boston
I felt terrible after the race. I walked through the
finishing chute in a bit of a daze, finding it just as hard merely to walk
forward as it had been moments ago to run forward. I put on one of those weird
blankets you always see marathoners in, the ones that look like pieces of a
crashed satellite or something, and accepted all the post-race goodies thrown
my way, even if I could barely stomach any of them. Even sips of Gatorade were
hard to force down, the way my stomach felt in the immediate aftermath of the
race.
 |
| My post-race daze |
Barely physically or mentally present, I still managed to
force myself in the direction of the gear check, where I picked up the stuff
that I had left there a lifetime earlier. Oh wait, it was actually just six
hours, but it sure felt like much longer,
as I felt like a completely different person from the one who had done that in
the morning. After I had my stuff, I went to a bathroom, because I thought I needed
to use it. Instead, I just ended up sitting there, in disbelief that I had just
run the Boston Marathon, but also feeling so much pain that it was obvious I
had done exactly that, could have only done that.
 |
| The face of someone who has just run the Boston Marathon |
When I had come to terms with myself, I asked some of the race volunteers—a few
of whom were concerned about my wobbly walking, but I talked them out of caring
about me—where the family meeting area was, and hobbled over to it. I saw that
it had a bunch of letters, and found myself under the letter “M.” I thought
that I had to go to the letter “B,” and cursed aloud my last name for being so
far up the alphabet. But then I remembered I had my phone, so I turned it on,
called Katie, my sister, and simply told her where I was. I sat down on the
steps of some building as I waited for her; eventually, she found me, and we
reunited. I sat there for a bit, checked to see if the blister I felt in the race was as bad as I feared (it wasn't, thankfully), then started stretching, then we got some
pictures together.
 |
| Katie, wearing my 2019 Boston shirt, as I wear my Dad's 1983 Boston shirt |
And once I was ready, we figured out how to get back to our
hotel, making that long journey together. She told me she saw and cheered for
me three times during the race, for which I was and remain grateful. I was also
grateful to have her with me on the way back to our hotel, especially when I
took a brief nap on a train.
 |
| Tired after the race |
I did very little for the rest of that day. I was eventually
able to eat, and was that night finally able to sleep, and sleep well. The next
day, my stomach had fully recovered, and had become the furnace I knew it to
be. I ate a gigantic hotel breakfast, and then, after leaving my sister behind
to become a part of Finer’s post-race plans, I ate two large meals in his
company before heading with him to Boston-Logan to take a flight back to BWI,
from which he also gave me a ride. Finer was with me for literally every step
of the Boston Marathon, from the day I registered all the way through the day
after the race. My gratitude for his help is second only to that I owe to my
sister Katie, without whom none of what I did at Boston would have been
possible.
Final thoughts
I have written this excessively long account of my first
Boston Marathon exactly a week after running the race. There are some good
reasons for that, one of them being that I left for a weekend in Nashville just
three days after returning from Boston. I would have liked to write this
sooner, but the time I have had for reflection has also been helpful.
I cannot help but to say that my first Boston Marathon did
not go exactly the way I wanted it to. My final time, 2:35:48, was more than a
minute slower than the time I ran in the Marine Corps Marathon. This was partly
for reasons entirely beyond my control, like the injury that ruined the first
few weeks of this year, and the fact that certain aspects of Boston, both its
lead-up and the race itself, one can only truly master after having done them
once. Others, however, I think, were. I changed certain aspects of my training
in the lead-up to Boston versus how I did things in the lead-up to my
qualifier, and I did other things during Boston itself that I did better in my
first marathon. I still have things to learn about marathon running before I
truly master this distance, to the extent this distance can ever be truly
mastered.
 |
| My official results, for those with good vision |
And yet, I should not be too morose. Boston was inarguably a
tougher course than D.C. I had less base to draw from, and, for having made the
lead-up to the race more stressful this time around, I managed the stress
fairly well. My overall place was 226th, out of approximately 26,000
runners. Just in front of me was a runner named Anthony Fagundes; just behind
me, of all people, was Oscar Holmström, the very same random Finn I met before
the race. We are now forever linked together in the results for the 2019 Boston
Marathon, and I am honored to be joined with them.
 |
| As I cross the finish line, Oscar is behind me, and Anthony is in front |
So, yes: Boston is hard. It’s hard to qualify; it’s hard to
get to; and it’s hard to race. And I think I enjoyed the experience of my first
marathon a little better. But even though I didn’t have exactly the race I
wanted, and even though it is hard, I find it hard to believe that I won’t be
back again, especially with the advantage of having done it once before. Next
time, I’ll know exactly what to expect, how hard all the various aspects of it
really are, and—I hope—manage to get a full training cycle in. The tantalizing
possibility of doing better at a future Boston keeps me from dwelling too
excessively on what might have been this year. For as hard as Boston might be,
what’s even harder is staying away once you’ve done it once.
It is, after all, the Boston Marathon.
 |
| But I did smile in this one |
