Reflections on 10 years since a near-victory for St. Xavier Cross Country

A distant triumph. (You'll find me humbly placed at the lower left.)

It's a weird thing to live your life by a TV commercial. But I try to. I'm thinking of the DirectTV Rob Lowe ads. In the commercials, the suave, normal Rob Lowe we know and love is a DirectTV customer. The ads contrast him with an unsavory counterpart, always a cable customer. One of these is "peaked in high school Rob Lowe," a washed out loser obsessed with his old trophies and clinging to distant memories of long-vanished greatness. (He, of course, is a cable customer.) Uncle Rico, from the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite, is also on my mind in this regard. A temporary caretaker for Napoleon and his brother Kip, Rico claims to have been able to throw the pigskin a quarter mile as a high schooler. He ruminates wistfully about his past greatness, wondering what would have happened if coach had put him in in the fourth quarter. "I could have gone pro," he sadly intones. To live this way--thinking incessantly about what was and might have been--is very tempting, very human. I'd be lying if I said I never did it myself. But, as I said, I try not to.

For a couple of reasons, that's been a little hard of late. I write this on November 1, near the peak of fall, my favorite season. Washington, D.C., where I currently live, just had its first truly chilly day. I reveled in it, feeling the cool winds and watching as they continued to tear the remaining leaves off of warm-colored trees. It's not just the weather, though, that makes me love this season. It's the thing I associate perhaps most with fall: cross country, the sport that dominated eight years of my life. It has deeply imprinted itself on my identity, and given me powerful positive associations with not just something as obvious as fall, but even little, obscure things. The smell and feel of cold sweat. The scent of wet leaves. Even the odor of a portable toilet, either clean or...not. These things, and many others, have marked my experience of cross country since its very beginning, and mingle in my memory.

And they were present in full form exactly ten years ago, in the fall of 2009, the year that I helped Cincinnati St. Xavier Cross Country to...a 2nd place finish at the OHSAA cross country meet. That tomorrow a very strong St.X team looks to add another 1st place finish to our program's collection has also made it difficult for me not to think of this part of my past. Along with the still hard to believe fact that a full decade has passed since that fall, a time of ups and downs, friendships and memories, triumphs and near-misses. At the risk of indulging in my inner Peaked In High School Rob Lowe/Uncle Rico, I shall now recall that fall, trying to think more of what was, and not what might have been, and to try to make sense of it from my vantage point in the precarious present. 

The regular season itself went well, helping our team to figure out which members would constitute its all-important top 7. They would represent it in further competition. I ended up a member of that top 7, though this was not at all guaranteed. In fact, the summer before, I had nearly quit the team, frustrated by my lack of progress. I ultimately did not (with some prodding by a perceptive coach), and what a stroke of luck that turned out to be. Over the course of that season, I established myself as one of four runners who would always lead the team in races, though I never did so during the course of the regular competition. Regardless, it was a satisfactory process, vanquishing long-held doubts that had begun to take root about my potential.

But the real fun began at the Greater Catholic League conference meet. Then held at Rapid Run Park, it had for decades hosted a furious and often unpredictable competition between St.X and its rival all-male Catholics schools in the GCL South: Lasalle, Elder, and Moeller. The hilly, uneven course was known to be tough, ending on a famous uphill. Yet, curiously, personal bests often occurred there, perhaps because claiming it was a 5k was a noble lie passed around the GCL. On that cool, sunny morning in October, St.X came to the line the slight favorites. But other schools were good enough that we certainly could not assume victory.

Near race end, my teammate Chris Hanson and I vie with an Elder runner for GCL South victory.

Not long after the race began, St.X formed into its by then customary four-pack, with Eric Gruenbacher, Chris Hanson, Gus Walter, and I running together near the very front of the race. As I began to sense that Hanson was having a good day, and that I still felt like I was too, I stuck with him as he and Elder's Josh Makin began to separate from the lead pack in the race's last mile. Up the race's final hill, I kept contact with them, losing it slightly in its final straightaway as Chris and Josh kicked furiously for GCL South bragging rights (overall rights having already been secured by Carroll's Chadd Kiggins). When I finished the race, I discovered that Josh had only just outkicked Chris, finishing 3rd overall, with me 4th in 15:59. When the race finished, St.X ended up the clear winner.

Post-finish euphoria as I approach Chris Hanson. 

The next week, at the Southwest Ohio District championships, a target was on St.X's back. Our coach told us as much a few days before, when we learned how the race, always split in two, shook out. It turned out that our race would involve a rematch with Lasalle, always a worthy competitor, and a first competition against Lakota West, quite strong that year. He told us, as though it were inside information, that these teams would be trying to upset us. And he told us that we couldn't let that happen.

Another surprise awaited us on the day of the race itself: the weather. I have never raced in worse weather than I did that day. It was mid-30s, windy, and raining. And it had been that way for days beforehand, leaving the course a muddy wreck, pockmarked by puddles. I got to the race's startline nervous...and cold. The moment the gun went off, my teammate Chris, lined up in front of me, slipped on a patch of mud. He recovered quickly, but it wasn't a great omen. It turned out to mean nothing, however. For on that day, something was different, indescribably different, for me. Less than a mile in, I was already at the front of the pack. I felt no pain. I giddily tromped through puddles like a child. I whistled, sang, and laughed as the race progressed, despite--or, as I have long concluded, because of--the adverse conditions. It was simply a blast. Only once since that day have I felt anything like it: In the last few miles of my 1st place finish in the 2018 Flying Pig Half-Marathon. 

Early on, you can already see the smile on my face. 

I spent the bulk of the race at the head of the pack, running alongside Eric and Sycamore's Nick Fry. But as the race neared its end, I left Eric, who had performed valiantly, behind, and Nick and I decided to see who had the most guts. In the final straightaway, I distinctly remember someone yelling at Nick something like, "Come on, you can do it! He's fading!" To which I audibly responded, "Like Hell I am!" and engaged my finishing kick. I wish I could tell you that it was enough, and that I rode to a triumphant 1st place finish. But I did not. I had to settle for 2nd (foreshadowing, perhaps). But St.X itself did not settle at all, securing 1st place once more, thanks to great performances from the rest of the team. We came in knowing others wanted to upset us, but we upset them by winning instead.

Having a blast. 

In hindsight, it is easy to say that the team was now due for a setback. Or at least that I myself was. Fortunately for the team, only the latter ended up true. At the windy plains of Troy (,Ohio), St.X came a victorious envoy, looking to conquer further. The competition would be fierce once more, and we were once again the target of many, even more so than the previous meet. Added to this was the historical curiosity that, at the time, St.X had won more State championships than Regional championships. All of this combined to make me, if not the team at large, somewhat nervous. And for reasons still not entirely clear to me, all these years later, I underperformed that day, ending up only the team's fourth man, 17th overall in 16:43. But the team was there for me in this, in more ways than one. Eric, Chris, and Gus seamlessly shuffled the team order, picking up the slack that I had left, and securing for us a first place victory once more.

Victorious once more. 

This was not the only way the team was there for me, however. Experiencing my first disappointment of the post-season, just after what was then the best race of my life (and still is one of the best), I was disappointed in myself. I felt I had failed the team, failed to meet the high expectations I now set for myself. Whether that was true or not, my teammates were there for me, supporting me when I was down, remembering that I had done the same for them, and might soon again. There is a special bond that comes from being on a team, especially--in my view--a cross country team, and I felt it more powerfully that day when I most needed it than I had on those easy days when I had perhaps undervalued it.

Eric giving me support. 

With another victory notched in our belt, we moved on to the state meet. At that now-distant time, it was still held at the legendary course of Scioto Downs, a proving ground of champions, a venue full of history, intensity, and unpredictability. Here, for the first time since the post-season had begun, we were not the favorites coming in, though we were considered one of several contenders. I got to leave school mid-day the day before the meet, to wear my post-season jacket to school, and to run the Columbus-area course the day before. I had no idea what was going to happen the next day. But nobody else did either. As our coach liked to say each week a new poll ranking the teams came out, the only poll that mattered was the one they took after the state meet.

I came to the line with an intense, nervous energy that defied my usual attempt at pre-race calm. But I think it was needed, for this, the last race of the season. I started out moderately, hanging behind my teammates, not wanting to burn out as a first-time competitor at this race. Somewhere around the halfway point, though, my deliberate momentum carried me up to my teammate Eric, who had up to that point been our leader in this race. We talked briefly as we ran next to each other. He told me to go ahead. So I did. I did not see any of my teammates for the rest of the race, though I discovered after we had finished that Chris and Eric had finished just behind my 16:28, 24th overall finish. Gus and my fellow then-junior Greg Sanders followed in the high-16s.

There was a time, after the race, when we did not know if we had won or not. Our coaches, counting during it, had reason to believe we may well have. For a few minutes, we waited in our team camp, living in a twilight realm of ambiguity. Soon, though, the announcement came. We had finished...2nd, to Cleveland St. Ignatius, our brother Jesuit school (members of whose winning team I have come to befriend over the years). 2nd place. We did not win. But we would get a trophy, and a chance to hoist it atop that vaunted podium. It wasn't what we wanted, or what we hoped for. But it wasn't nothing, either. We were all euphoric as we walked back over to the team that had been there for us today no less than it had been all season long, that team we were honored to represent.

Walking back euphoric to the team camp. I'm in the middle. 

Even though standing atop that podium remains one of my most cherished memories, I remember it only as something of a blissful blur. With a huge smile on my face, I said little. I accepted a place on the podium perhaps lower than I had earned, content to let the seniors have their day, and to let my deeds speak for themselves. It didn't really seem to matter anyway. When we stood there, we were one. Eric, who had led us for most of the season, without whom we wouldn't have made it anywhere this far, got to hold the trophy aloft with his own hands. But we were all holding it, really. Every member of that team. Myself very much among them.

A distant triumph. (You'll find me humbly placed at the lower left.)

I did get to hold the trophy myself eventually. I got plenty of pictures with it, in fact; my teammates were happy to let me hold it. But it wasn't really about the trophy, to me. It was about all we had done together, all those miles, all those memories, all those now distant and half-remembered things we couldn't even begin to explain to someone who wasn't there, and which we might now even have trouble explaining to ourselves, if we remember them at all. And it was about the team, whose greatness we had our chance to represent and embody, like those before us--many of whom were also in attendance--before we ourselves would have to step back and let others embody it on our behalf. We were but the temporary manifestation of something that had existed long before us and would go on long after us. The moment belonged to us, to be sure. But really it belonged to all of St.Xavier Cross Country.

They let me hold the trophy. But I didn't get to keep it. It wasn't really mine anyway.

I think often about that day, that season, that fall. My nostalgic recollection of it began before it even ended. When I had returned home, luxuriating in my post-race bliss, I caught Braveheart on TV, the very end, when the wistful Scottish theme plays as Robert the Bruce leads an army to avenge William Wallace. For some reason, it fit the moment perfectly, encapsulating all the happiness for what we had done, and the sadness for its all being over.

For it is, indeed, over. It has been for a long time, and will only keep receding further into the past, and into memory. Even most of the courses on which I ran these races have changed, leaving my own recollections one of the few ways to experience them viscerally still. At times, I will confess to an Uncle Rico-level bitterness about what might have been, or what has happened since. Failure to win overall, or to get myself on the podium as a top individual finisher, meant that neither our team performance that year nor mine as an individual have come to be regarded, as I had hoped, as a resounding highlight in the annals of St. Xavier Cross Country. Respectable, admirable, sure. But not as impressive as some of what came before and after. Now, our second place trophy sits collecting dust somewhere in a St.X trophy case behind some more impressive gold ones the team secured since. And I had no direct role in those gold trophies, something that had been my hope in getting 2nd as a junior, one of the reasons I was at the time content to let the seniors have their moment; I felt assured of my own the following year. Yet no such gold trophies awaited my senior year, nor any truly legacy-securing performance individually. In my darkest moments, I cast this second place finish, and what followed immediately after it, in a long line of personal shortcomings, accepting as my lot in life a seeming inability to achieve true greatness, to come close enough to it only to know what true greatness might be like.

But these are my darkest moments. And they do not represent the totality. Outside of them, I fondly recall the friendships and memories formed over that incredible season. I still consider my teammates from that year close friends; I still recall fondly that which we did together, from the serious and triumphant to the mundane and even to the silly. Those days represent maybe the best example I'll ever get of what John L. Parker Jr. in Once A Runner called "...the easy fond intimacy that sports give to young men in groups and that they would consciously or subconsciously miss for the rest of their lives."

While fondly recalling the past, I also do my best to live in the present, and for the future. When it comes to running, I did not end up as Peaked In High School Rob Lowe. I continued running seriously in college, and still do now after graduating; you can get a sense of what I have done here. In a strange way, not getting exactly what I wanted on that November day in 2009 has kept me out there, pounding pavement, continuing to search for it. I may never find it. But I resolved long ago to keep looking for it as long as I could.

So best of luck to St.Xavier Cross Country tomorrow, as it attempts to secure for our illustrious program another 1st place trophy. A whole season culminates in this race, and its chosen representatives are surely ready for it. But whatever happens, they and the team they represent should know that what they do today will not come to an end at the finish line. The miles, the races, the friendships, the memories, and the team will be with them always.

If they're lucky, they may even feel inspired to blog about it, 10 years later.

You might call it a...Life Between Runs. 

Reflections on my first Boston Marathon

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.

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 15^th 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.

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 123^rd 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.  

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”

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 226^th, 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 

My Triple 10k Autumn

Trophy from winning the MCM 10k, which began my triple 10k autumn. Yes, I probably could kill someone with it

One of the strangest things about trying to be a serious runner solo is making my own "season." For every year of my life between 2006 and 2014, fall was a schedule of races I had nothing to do with; I just had to show up at them (and often I was driven there!).

But as a now 25-year-old post-collegiate in denial, I get to make up my own schedule. And after spending winter-spring 2017 training for a half-marathon, summer-fall 2017 training for a marathon, and winter-spring 2018 training for a half-marathon, I decided I wanted to drop down to lower distances again, especially with another marathon--Boston 2019--looming. Ideally, I might even PR in some of them. So this fall, I signed up first for a 5-miler and a 5k in September.

Looking at my October-November, though, I made a bold, potentially risky decision: I would run 3 10ks, that old collegiate staple, culminating in the Cincinnati Thanksgiving Day Race, which I have run every year since 2014. Yet describing the races as being in the October-November corridor is a bit misleading, as they were actually even more proximate: October 28, November 11, and November 22. This is a level of race proximity rigor I arguably never even reached in college. How did it go for me? Pretty well, I'd say. Herewith a summary of each race.

1) October 28: Marine Corps 10k (results)

Why do race winners instinctively raise their arms as they win?

Followers of my running career may recall that I ran the Marine Corps Marathon last fall, coming in 15th with a 2:34:29 in my marathon debut (full summary here). But since I dedicated this fall to shorter races, I signed up for the Marine Corps 10k on the same day as the marathon instead. The Marine Corps 10k consists of the last 10k of the Marine Corps Marathon--i.e., the worst part of the race. But I had looked up past winning times of the race and discovered that winning it was very realistic for me. I started the race with someone running alongside me, leading me to think I might have some competition. This eventual 2nd place finisher faded by about 5k, however, and I ran all the way to a 1st place finish of 32:16 by myself. While this was not my fastest 10k time (far from it, in fact), I did run the race entirely alone after 5k, on a fairly rough course, a few days after recovering from some kind of illness. It also resulted in this post-race interview. And I later learned that I ran the second-fastest ever time for the race. So I was happy with it.

2) November 11: Veterans' Day 10k (results)

Finishing the Veterans' Day 10k alongside Kyle Wagener, who would beat me by about 9 seconds with actual speed

I chose this race instead of the Fidelity Run for the Parks 10k, held on the same course a week earlier, because I had run that race before, and because 2017's results for it and this race suggested this one would be more competitive. I had modest hopes for this race: to go sub-32, and to get in the top 5. For while I could qualify away my result for the first 10k I did this fall all I wanted, I could not deny the time itself. When this race began, I put myself in the lead pack, and was surprised to find us going sub-5 to start. And then even more surprised to find us go sub-5 again. And again. 4 miles of this race at the lead pack were sub-5, and the last two were only barely over. I faded slightly after 4 miles that fast, but chose about halfway through the next mile not to die. I ended up in 3rd place, less than 10 seconds from 1st, and 2 seconds from 2nd, both of whom outkicked me. My time of 31:03, however, was more than enough consolation. This was a lifetime 10k PR for me by more than 20 seconds, and more than 30 seconds faster than the time I ran at this course in 2016, my previous post-collegiate PR. My only regret about this race is that I lacked a stronger kick that could have gotten me sub-31, but I guess I need something to keep me motivated.

3) Cincinnati Thanksgiving Day Race (results) 

One of the few pictures from the race in which I don't look to be in pain (wearing the St.X singlet since I'm racing local)

I have run this race every year since 2014, in various states of shape: In 2014, at or near peak college shape, I was 4th in a 31:46; in 2016, having been forced by injury to take two of the three days preceding the race off of running, I was 2nd in 32:16; in 2017, less than a month after my first marathon, I was 4th in a 33:07.* This time around, though, I was in arguably better shape than I ever had been, tapered well, and managed to avoid any last-minute mishaps that had marred previous seasons. So I thought I would be capable of challenging this race's 2-time consecutive champion. Alas, it was not meant to be; he is just too good. But I still managed 2nd place in 31:44, 2 seconds faster than my collegiate peak time at this same course. I didn't feel quite at 100 percent at this race, for some reasons beyond my control and some that were, and that makes the result ever-so-slightly disappointing, as I thought I was faster than this. I am still content with it, however, especially as a way to end a pretty rigorous "season" of 10ks.

So, there you have it: My Triple 10k Autumn. As I said, I don't think I ever did something this rigorous in college. And I managed to beat my college 10k PR, something I wasn't sure I would ever do. I also proved to myself and to anyone who doubted me that I can be "fast" if I want to be; despite more than a year-and-a-half of running half-marathons and a marathon, I can still drop down for a quick and dirty 10k if I so desire. Now that I have done this, though, it's time to abandon speed for endurance once more, as I gear up for my Boston Marathon debut in spring 2019. I will most certainly write about that here when it happens, so please stay tuned for future updates on my life between runs.