So, this is the beginning. Welcome to my blog as I begin the
journey to the starting line of the 2017 Boston marathon. Appropriately enough
as I write this, I am listening to a podcast with James Hetfield the front-man
of perhaps my favorite band of all time Metallica. I don’t really have a
template for this blog, and since it is my first one it will likely be all over
the place. I am sure the posts will get better as I get a feel for doing this. I
should give you a full disclaimer, I am a hyper competitive a^&hole. I am
definitely addicted to that aspect of running. It will never get old throwing
everything I’ve got into the field of battle against other runners and seeing
who wants it more. I think the majority of competitive athletes regardless of
skill feel similarly.
My first post will look back on my fall Marathon which was
the 2016 Hartford Marathon which was contested Columbus Day weekend.
The journey to Boston was preempted by the 2016 Hartford
Marathon, or as I like to call it the worst race I have ever had. Now when I
say the worst race I have ever had, that is based on how I felt and my ability to execute my
race plan or in this case my lack of ability to execute the racing plan.
A good place to start would be to discuss the day/night
before the race. For whatever reason, I thought it would not be a big deal to
work a mostly full day that Friday and drive down that night with my friend Tanique. Of
course we hit multiple traffic jams on the way down and I got spectacularly
lost trying to find the hotel. Right there off the bat that’s 2 major strikes.
You are under no circumstances supposed to be active and under stress the night
before a marathon. That’s disrespecting the marathon. A marathon isn’t just
another race when you’re trying to crush it, it is a F@#$ING marathon and it deserves
respect.
Anyway we eventually find the hotel, park, and I go to
sleep. Well that’s not really accurate, I attempted to go to sleep. There was
one tiny problem. I was sleeping on a bed the communists wouldn’t sleep on. I
have slept on dozens of beds and this magical bed had the distinction of being
the most uncomfortable I have ever slept on. To make things worse every hour I
would wake up in discomfort toss and turn desperately in an attempt to go back
to sleep, then get upset that I couldn’t sleep. This went on all night until
eventually it hit about 4:30 and I just got up. I knew immediately that I was
fucked. Some people don’t need sleep, but I do, generally at least 8 hours a
night.
I told myself I was still strong enough to overcome the lack
of sleep and had a light breakfast and began my final pre-race preparations
with a sense of pure excitement. I had trained 4 months to get back there, I had
fought off a winter knee injury and made it all the way back to the starting
line after I was denied that opportunity over the winter. In the winter I
signed up to run a marathon president’s day weekend and got injured 3 weeks out
with a bad knee that knocked me out for almost 2 months. I spent many nights during my brief injuring
period wondering if my racing career was over. Regardless, I had made it to the start line.
When the starting horn blared, I was expecting to run the course
in 2 hours and 53 minutes(6:35 pace), with an outside chance of breaking the 2
hour and 50 minute barrier (6:29 pace). Unfortunately for a variety of reasons
some of which I am still searching for that turned into a 3 hour and 5 minute
(7:01 pace) performance on race day. The
time I ran was not a reflection of the effort I put forward. I left everything
I had on that course.
My game plan was to cruise through the first 13.1 miles and
try to rally on the back end. My teammates and I were obsessed with the concept
of negative splitting, which is where you run the 2nd half of a
marathon faster than the first half. I reached 13.1 feeling pretty fatigued,
but able to hold it together at about a 6:40 pace. I found that I was working
very hard to maintain pace which is alarming because generally it should feel
pretty easy until about mile 18. I decided to try to pick up the pace at mile
15, but even though my effort was increasing, my pace remained the same. At
about that time I came to the realization that I was in the fight of my life
just to hit the time of my first marathon of 2 hours 55 minutes and 35 seconds.
I was able to hold it together until mile 17, when my pace slowed down. I
remember my watch clicking off at mile 17 with the figure 7:00 minute mile.
That’s when the panic set in because I could feel my body shutting down.
There is no more deflating feeling that feeling your dreams
slip away from your grasp. I knew immediately that it was over. I was desperately
out of breath putting forth the effort to run a 6:15 pace and all I could do
was 7. At that moment I decided I had to readjust my goals and just try to
fight to get under 3 hours. I was doing the math in my head, and I still had
some wiggle room. I was able to get back to a 6:43 pace for mile 18 running for
my life, but after that things fell apart and they fell apart quickly. By mile 19 I was back at a 7 minute pace and
fading fast. It’s amazing what happens when you slam into the marathon wall.
Your body will just crumble to pieces right before your very eyes and it
becomes more of a fight just to survive. As the miles wore on and my pace
continued to plummet, it became clear that even a 3 hour marathon was not in
the cards that day. Even as I write
these words, tears percolate in my eyes thinking back to the feeling and
remembering the pain and the loss. But I
decided I had come that far, and that I had to finish. I would rather DIE than
be known as someone who would give up when the chips are down. So from miles
21-26 I essentially jogged a slow painful jog of defeat and despair and intense
pain. When I hit mile 26, I knew the suffering would soon be over, so I decided
I would finish this on MY TERMS and no one else’s. Fuck everything at that
point. I threw down a 6:30 last quarter of mile in my own way waving my middle
finger to the forces that had brought me down. I crossed the line in a
desperate finish to get the race over with. I crossed the line with tears in my
eyes and stumbled to the waiting area to begin to deal with the defeat I had
just suffered.
I immediately was overcome by a sense of failure. A failure
to live up to the expectations I had placed on myself. This was supposed to be
my pièce de résistance of an intense summer training program, of countless
nights spent in crushing heat and humidity. Yet I crossed the line at 3:05 and
on this day the marathon won, there was no question about that. I found solace
in the fact that almost everyone who goes after the marathon suffers days
similar to mine. Elite athletes who are capable of running a 2:40 marathon sometimes run a 3:20 marathon. I had the worst racing day of my life and only
was 15 minutes slower. The only way Hartford could have been any worse was for
a race ending injury to have occurred and fortunately that did not happen. With that bitter taste of defeat that I
begin the road to Boston and that’s fine. I will always remember that day and
how awful it truly was as I train for Boston.