A few weeks ago I received confirmation of my acceptance into the 2023 Boston Marathon. It will be my fourth time running the race. I love Boston, and I love running the Boston Marathon.
I first ran the course from Hopkinton to Boylston Street in 2014, the year after the bombing. My best time was in 2015, when conditions were cold and windy. My best place in the field was in 2016, when it was hot. My place in 2016 was in the top 700, which was higher than my place in 2015 despite being 5 minutes slower. The weather has a huge impact on performances across the field.
April weather in Boston is completely unpredictable; however, I want to run my best marathon time yet regardless of the weather. Because the marathon distance has so many uncontrollable variables, runners tend to set ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ goals to manage their own race performance expectations. My ‘A’ goal is to beat my personal best by eight minutes, my ‘B’ goal is to beat it by three minutes, and my ‘C’ goal is to finish uninjured. I have good reason to believe that these goals are well within reach, so long as I remain uninjured through my planned training.
Distance running, at least among serial marathon and ultramarathon-distance runners, attracts people with an insatiable need to push their limits. Attributions of success and failure belong to the runner. We race at these distances so infrequently that we can’t possibly know what’s going to happen on race day. Every time we toe the starting line, we step into the unknown. The people who consistently perform well are incredibly talented at managing both expected and unexpected challenges that arise in both training and racing. I think of every single marathon or ultramarathon race as a leap of faith, even after a decade of running and several dozen events.
Every marathon runner in seek of a new PR is balancing on a knife’s edge. Base fitness makes up the handle, and the goal race gets pierced by the tip. A healthy body, challenging training, and adequate recovery are the elements of balance required to traverse the entire edge. Race-day execution is the final element that forces the sharp tip through the course.
I’ve identified as a runner for my entire adult life, though I never ran competitively in high school or college. The first race I ever signed up for was the 2007 San Diego Rock ’n Roll Marathon, which I ran with a few college friends. Since then, I’ve completed dozens of marathons and ultramarathons. I slowly evolved into a good distance runner. Relatively speaking, I’m a better trail ultramarathon runner than I am a marathon runner. I was fortunate to qualify in “elite” fields for a few ultramarathon races and local road marathons and half-marathons, though I was never able to keep pace with the real elites and professionals.
Running has been my “thing” for a long time. As I moved from state to state in my twenties, I was always able to find my first new friends via local group runs. Much of my personal travel in my 20s and 30s was centered around the events that I had chosen to run that year. The distance-running community, and especially the smaller subset of trail ultramarathoners, starts to feel like a small world after you’ve been in it for a while.
I ran my best races in 2019 and promptly injured myself, as many distance runners do. The frustrations of my own injuries, combined with world events in 2020 and beyond, forced me to reevaluate where I spend my focus and energy. As a result, I don’t plan to run as much in the future. I am consciously focusing more energy on my career and the relationships closest to me, mostly family and friends. This change in life priorities is something that I’m excited about, but it’s also an adjustment compared to the last decade of my life. I no longer see myself traveling across the country, or internationally, to run races on a yearly basis. I no longer see myself running more than 2000 miles in a year, which I’ve done every year for the last 5 years. These circumstances make this training block extra special. I may never run this fast again.
I’m looking at the next six months of training as a last hurrah of sorts. In addition to Boston, I also registered for the “Boston to Big Sur” challenge, which means I’ll race the Big Sur marathon just thirteen days after Boston. You only live once, right? Might as well go big. I’m applying advice that grandfather gave me, which is some of the best advice I’ve ever heard about when to say yes and no to opportunities. Say yes to those opportunities which, when you’re looking back on your life, you’re likely to regret having missed out on. I think of it as optimizing against Schrödinger FOMO.
I’m just getting back into a running routine after taking a month off. It was a good month off - I rode my bikes a lot more, slept a ton, and did a lot of yoga. I’ll try to keep a yoga routine present for most of my training over the coming months because I feel like the flexibility and strength benefits are great for staving off injury. The next few weeks are going to be base-building, with the goal to get back to consistent 50+ mile weeks. If I feel up for it, I’ll hit 1-2 track workouts per week. I’ll start following Jack Daniels’ infamous 2Q marathon training program at the end of December.
This morning, I ran my first track workout in months: 400m repeats in the misty fog at Kezar Stadium. In theory, the pace of 400m repeats today should be my 10km pace in a few months. It was a rust-buster, and I felt slow, but it felt good to run faster than I have in months. I have a long way to go, but I’ve been there before. I know to trust the training process.
I’m ready for this. LFG.