Boston Marathon--A Project Completed

Joe Verdone offered cooling relief with his garden hose for
runners, including Thomas Schnitzer of Cambridge, as they tackled
Heartbreak Hill. John Blanding/Globe Staff www.bostonglobe.com

My overwhelming question to my wife on Wednesday morning, 48 hours after completing the 2012 Boston Marathon, was this: how do I take all that fitness and hard work the last three months and completely change the game plan, turn off the adrenaline and denial that got me through the hard work of training and almost here to the start line, and come up with some other goal like run easy, or just finish, or break 2:50 or break 2:59?  I said, simply, I don’t know how to do that.

I hate the marathon.  Hate, hate, hate, hate the marathon.  No one ever believes me, but it really is true.  Why do it? The best answer I can muster is because my father ran the marathon.  I do many things based on such strange rationales and such choices make me who I am.

In the months leading up to April 16, 2012 I set eight personal running bests (PR’s) in a row.  It has been the most blessed and favored season in a 30 year career of competitive running.  I’ve enjoyed virtually every moment of it, including the camaraderie of the team, the gut wrenching races, the training, the discipline of diet and sleep.  My professional endeavors as a pastor, member of the running, fitness, and nutrition community have all taken a positive turn.  My family of five is thriving as never before.   In the words of my people, God is Good, All the Time, and All The Time, God is Good

But I knew God being good would at some point look like an end to a streak of PR’s.  And yet, even with a predicted race day temperature of 87 degrees Fahrenheit between Hopkinton and Boston, Massachusetts, I was unable to come to grips with God’s word that the end of this little streak would come on April 16, 2012.  Oh, the arrogance.  I still figured, and conservatively, I thought, well, I’ll still break my soft PR of 2:50 in the marathon.  I’m so much more fit than 10 months ago.  Then why not set up for that?  I could have gone out for the first half in 1:25, and still I went out in 1:22:30.  IDIOT.

I tried to enjoy every moment of this historic event, but I was HOT.  I was hotter than I have ever been in all my life and the work, the put your head down and work that ought to begin at mile 15 or 18 or 21, began before the 5K mark.  Hydration belt and all, I put ice, water, Gatorade, Fluid, CarbBoom, oranges, icy pops, freezing cold towels, sponges, and salt tablets into and onto my body for 26 miles.  I stopped around mile 17 for five minutes to go to the bathroom.  I’m usually pretty good to go in the GI and bladder department and yet, Monday gave the sense that intestinal and/or renal failure were lurking around the next bend and thousands of people may see me lose control and even though this most loving of loving crowds will probably cheer for me even in a pool of my own filth, I don’t really want to ask them to cheer for such a god-awful spectacle.

I lingered in fire hydrants and under hoses.

I took off my hydration belt and told a man to put it to good use.

I stopped, took off my shoes and socks, and ran in the last seven miles in only my shoes.  Why?  Delirium, I guess.  The sense that if I changed something, maybe my life would improve.

At mile 25, and at a standstill, my left quad fluttered around as I looked down and thought, that’s not good.  After I ran backwards, sideways, stretched, and finally stopped for a good long while to stretch and a beloved fan yelled from across a divided highway, Hey, 1142, you can fix your fuckin’ knee later, now run.  The crowd cheered in what to me sounded like a standing ovation and I did, try, to run.  If given the opportunity I would kiss that Masshole as he helped me move to completion more than all the rest.   There’s nothing like a well-placed and well-timed cuss word, especially when offered with love.

I wanted to drop out of this race like no other race.  And I have dropped before and I believe there are good reasons to drop.  2005 at Chicago.  My second baby was three months old and I was so tired, oh, so tired.  I dropped at mile 19 in what was then the best shape of my life and lived to fight another day.

But Monday, as I looked ahead at the Boston skyline, I thought of several things.  First, I don’t know how to get on the “T” and wandering around off the course and away from the safety of this sea of spectators, runners, and medical personnel seems somehow like a bad idea.  Second, I bet you, I just bet you, the fastest way to my hotel room and a shower and air-conditioning is to keep moving of my own volition to the finish line on Boylston Street.

Third, I’m not a medal guy.  I don’t run for the medal.  It’s just not my thing.  But I do have one of them that I have kept over the years that I am looking at right now between my hands and arms in my Durham office.  It reads, 21^st Annual / Kiawah Island Marathon / pretty pelican picture / 1998.  Fourteen years ago I thought I would cruise through my first marathon to a Boston qualifier.  Oh, the arrogance.  In the spirit of my father’s running, I did have imposed upon myself the old-school barrier that I would have to break three hours to run Boston, but no worries, I wasn’t even close that first time.  Thirty-six minutes shy.  I didn’t break three hours in the marathon until June, 2011.  So this fourteen year project did need completing on April 16, 2012.  I did not and I do not want to have to go back to Boston.  I might go back someday, but I might not.  For now, it is finished.

My suspicion is that people will respond to my race in a complimentary style.  You did a great job gutting it out.  3:06 is a time you should really be proud of… and such.  And everyone is entitled to their own feelings, feedback, just as I was given free reign with my reflections.  But, and I’m really being honest, which is what I hope we always seek, I am extremely disappointed.  I can go out right now and rock a 3:06 in the middle of the night.  Seriously, I can.  This was for me, while I had to finish as I have laid out above, an epic failure.  I was not disciplined, not enough to either defer or run faster.  I was not very tough out there. Read about hero’s like Patrick Reaves, look at the pictures, you’ll know a really tough guy.  I was distracted by my bowels, and the heat, by my own weakness and internal safety mechanisms like keeping myself alive or at least moderately comfortable.  I wish I’d either had the courage to defer to next year or simply f*%#in’ run harder as my mile 25 friend said.  But I didn’t. 

And all of that, while it may seem overwhelmingly harsh, is okay.  I’ve learned a lot.  Disappointment and suffering is where most of the good stuff in this life happens or at least where the good stuff is cultivated, at least that’s been my experience.  Joy comes in the morning, but we have to work and suffer to get to the morning.

I will run again, probably pretty soon.  I really do love to run.  That’s all this was ever about anyway.