Back on the Bus to Boston

“Sometimes it’s hard to see – or accept – the runner that you’ve become,” my coach said last week. It was our weekly touch base and I opened up that, well, the race was getting awfully close, and therefore very real, and some self-doubt had begun to creep in. For the past 16 weeks, we’d been fashioning the sword, holding it to the fire, shaping it with a hammer, and finally putting the finishing edge on it. “Even though your body can and has hit the times, it’s difficult to wrap your head around the fact that you can indeed run that fast. For that long,” he encouraged, and I nodded along. “Go look at your log for this Boston cycle and then look at last year’s.”

And so, I returned to my neat rows of boxes, meticulously filled with miles and times. Each cell told a small part of the larger story of this year’s Boston buildup. The casual observer would see a steady increase in mileage with an equally steady drop in pace.

They would read four weeks that ended with 90 and that those 75 mile “down” weeks were, just one year ago, nearly peak mileage.

They would see six weeks that ended with a 20+ mile run. And that when strung together, the month of March totaled 384.2 miles.

But they wouldn’t know that for most of those runs, I would slip into the still early morning darkness and slice through the cold or flow with (or against) a bitter wind. That some mornings I would return to the warm embrace of our house, unzip my jacket, and find that my sweat had frozen and fallen to the floor.

That when I needed it most, I found encouragement in the rarest of places, like when I was the only asshole out in a snowstorm, the sleet stabbing at my cheeks 4.5 miles into a 9 miler and a cab pulled up next to me, the driver rolled down the window and shouted, “You’re killin’ it, man!”

That instead of running an easy five the day after a 22-miler, I would get to pace my dad through an 8K and cross the finish line with him. Or that my mom would simply ask each week, "How's the running going?"

That my running partner, Rohan, and I would forge a deeper connection clicking off long run miles together, often times saying not a word to one another but finding motivation and comfort by just having another person to suffer with, as we discovered the darkest shades of exhaustion.

That my wife would be my biggest supporter, and that her simple words of, “I’m proud of you,” would carry me through my blackest moments.

And in the background of all this, the ghosts of last year’s Boston still haunted my subconscious and peeked out when I least expected them to, but were there all the same, a reminder of the people we were back then and how we chose to soldier on.

I reached the top row of my calendar, brimming with these memories, and I started to believe again.

Because the promise that “we will run again…[and]…finish the race” is nearly upon us. The memories I swore I would hold onto after last year’s race inevitably drifted off in the current that carries our life. But with just days to go and the world’s focus turning rightly back to Boston again, those memories, and even those tears, have come flowing back. Seeing the TV specials, the articles, the videos, the social media posts, my emotions stir and I just want to hop on the plane and get to Boston to soak it all in and be part of it again.

Rohan and I texted one another this past week, and he correctly summed up Monday’s race: “We’re about to learn something new about ourselves. I can’t wait.”

Each race is a new opportunity to reach into the depths of ourselves and discover what we can endure. Running’s philosopher George Sheehan wrote, “[The runner] accepts his body, perfects it and then seeks out suffering, and finds beyond suffering the whole man.”

After Boston last year, we had to find out what we could endure beyond the finish line. And it turns out, quite a lot.

And so, I will run to honor those who lost their lives and limbs. And the selfish runner in me runs to honor the many hours and miles that have gone into prying myself open to prepare for this special event.

I may not recognize the runner I’ve become yet, but am I ready to discover him?

I can’t wait.

A Lot of Hay

I can tell you exactly when it happened. It was January 22 and I rode down the backside of a hill on Cabell’s Mill road somewhere around 4.5 miles into an easy 12 miler. The sun wouldn’t rise for another hour and the temperature wouldn’t make it into double digits all day. My breath plumed in front of me, a soft halo of white steam in my headlamp, and I had to keep covering my left eye with a glove to keep my contact from hardening in the cold. That’s when I knew I had entered new territory.

Not because of the conditions, but simply because of a realization, a rededication to myself, to the process, to life really. I had looked back at the past few weeks of my training log and saw a day or two that had a goose egg where an 8 or 10 should have been with the explanation that I had to work late. I took a look back at RunDanRun’s post about Dathan Rizenheim’s “Whatever it takes” article as well as a similar post on dedication from my Ironman friend, Caroline.

I had hooked up with my coach with the idea of breaking out of a training rut and elevating my workouts. The status quo wouldn’t work anymore and it was time to both demonstrate and commit to that.

This morning, two-plus months since that day, I trotted to a walk and pulled up at the bottom of our stairs to unlace the house key from my shoes. I took a pull on my water bottle, still filled near to the brim, and gave a little shrug. Six miles felt so unsatisfying. But such is the dilemma of the tapering runner.

I sat down to a too-big breakfast and logged my measly miles for the day both in the Google Doc I share with my coach and the online running log I also keep. To reassure myself that it was in fact ok to turn in less than double digits, I scrolled back through the neat rows and blocks of miles that represented the proverbial “hay in the barn” that would mark my build up to next week’s Boston Marathon.

Beyond that January 22 run, I zeroed in on the week of March 4, the first full week of the month. If ever there was a monster month in my marathon training, this was it. I had just come off of being sick for four days and wasted little time getting back into the swing of things. That week kicked off what would be the first of three consecutive 80+ mile weeks.

I drifted through days, only feeling truly energized for the 70-90 minutes I ran in the morning, collecting sunsets, split knuckles from the wind, and clearing the remnants of illness from my lungs at stoplights. Each week I reported in to my coach and he buoyed my spirits as I lamented about how hard it was to peel myself off the couch just to go up to bed on Thursday nights. “You sound like a marathoner in training,” he said as we shared a laugh.

And so it went. The days and weeks turned over and I wore the rubber off the soles of my shoes and the excess fat from my bones. When finally, the last 80 mile week (318.5 miles for the month) was behind me and I strode confidently into a down week and now into this taper.

Readers of my blog know that the training image I like to use is one my Uncle passed along a few years back, and it’s that of fashioning a sword in your training. The idea being that the base miles are the sword itself and the speed work delivers the slippery, sharp edge. I still have the race to run, and fully recognize that there are no guarantees on race day, particularly in the marathon. But when I look back at the last four months and where I stand today, I know that when I toe the line next Monday, I’ve got a big god damn sword and I’m ready to unsheathe it.

Finding Uncommon Motivation

In the middle of an easy five miler last Friday on a route my wife and I refer to as “the Lake Loop,” I spotted it. I had crested the hill I call “Sweet Leaf” if for no other reason than the cross street at the top is called “Sweet Leaf Ter.” I took a pull on my water bottle as I made my way down the backside. Several of my scheduled runs during the week had become casualties of work that demanded late nights and early mornings. If nothing else, I dubbed this a “clear your head, detox run” to clean out the trash bags piled in my head from a week of toil.

Detox runs are rarely fun, and this one was no exception. The humid air clung to me while I labored, when I caught the lime green VW beetle out of the corner of my eye. The license plate read “VRRMONT.” I smiled as the memories came roaring back and let them carry me the final 1.5 miles home.

You see, back in 2009, thanks to the McMillan Running Calculator, I plugged in a recent 5K PR and was astonished to see that my predicted marathon finish time was indeed a Boston Qualifier. It truly became a turning point in my running. From there, I set about the task of making that predicted time a reality.

And I planned for it to happen at the 2010 Vermont City Marathon.

While I trained, the Lake Loop and variations on the Lake Loop made frequent appearances in my training log. And each time I climbed Sweet Leaf, I kept my eye out for that green VW, and for some reason, pulled motivation from it. It seemed like a good sign that the very marathon I trained for was imprinted on my near daily training route, and the “VRR” implied some level of speed. Whatever the case, I adopted it.

Looking back, I suppose this isn’t completely uncommon for me. I often find my thoughts drifting away to relive races past, or visualizing races to come. Every time, I ran by “VRRMONT,” I felt a surge of energy and branded the image of powerfully cresting the race’s most major climb at mile 15 into my head, immediately followed by the waterfront finish with the clock numbers burning 3:09:59.

During those long months of grinding out training, when the excitement of beginning a program fades and the start (and finish line) is still a season or two away, it’s hard not to look for ways to stay motivated. For me, I think it’s the reason I pick a “finishing” song. It’s a song I put on in the car or iPod as soon as a particularly hard workout, good workout, or strong race finishes. I start to yearn for that song to play to reinforce that job well done…the same way I fantasize about pancakes during the last few miles of a weekend long run. For Vermont, it was Sly and the Family Stone’s “Dance to the Music.” For Boston, it was Boston’s “Don’t Look Back," and for New York, it was Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind.” Right now, my car thumps to Flo Rida’s “Good Feeling.”

While I marked off the final meters of Friday’s detox run, I relived the 20 miler I did in the rain, the one where I ran by that license plate four times and finished with a huge smile on my face. I remember walking into the house soggy and declaring, “I’m ready!” And of course, crossing the finish line in 3:08:41 just two weeks later, soaked and raw from the rain that fell for the first 20 miles, but too euphoric to care because I was going to Boston.

What uncommon things motivate you?

Boston Road Trip Redux

Just outside of Gettysburg, PA on Monday evening, the stoplights and strip mall storefronts disappeared in my rear view mirror along route 15. Bucolic fields dotted with cows and budding trees rolled across the dusky landscape and the sky glowed orange just above the mountains. I clicked the cruise control and readjusted in my seat for the final 90 minutes back to Virginia. Of the seven hour drive home from Boston, this is my favorite stretch, so it came as no surprise to me that the euphoria from the weekend hit me here. Truly, I love the Boston Marathon.

Two days earlier, my friend Ebo and I stepped off the T and came above ground. That’s where I spotted the first orange bag. That’s when I felt the first pangs of jealousy. We made our way under gray New England skies to the Boston Marathon Expo to meet up with his girlfriend who’d be running the race for the first time on Monday. The crowd thickened and the air buzzed with anticipation and excitement. We waded into the sea of people going in and out of the Trade Center and Ebo turned to me and said, “This is unlike any expo I’ve ever been to.” And my first thought was, That’s because there is no other race like Boston.

I’ll admit, when Ebo first asked me if I wanted to road trip up to the race with him, I had some reservations. I’d run the last two Bostons and wasn’t sure what it would be like to head to the race and not run it. But, it’s hard to turn down a road trip, and part of me wanted to experience the race from the other side, soak in all the revelry without all the anxiety of actually running (plus I’m qualified for 2013). In short, I was in.

When the weather reports started rolling in for race day – as well as the subsequent warning e-mails – I found some solace in the fact that I wasn’t running. I survived the 2007 Chicago Marathon meltdown, and one 88 degree marathon is enough, thank you.

Ebo’s girlfriend ran as part of the Tufts Marathon Team. Tufts trains its team members to prepare them for the race and provides a sweet setup for not only the runners but also their friends and family. This is the way to spectate at a race. After a team-sponsored pasta dinner Sunday night, Tufts provided buses to take us to mile nine in Natick to cheer on the runners. Once the roads opened back up, the buses took everyone to the finish line, and then back to campus. I, however, drove myself so that I could hit the road back to Virginia once the roads opened back up.

The air felt heavy and warm when we arrived at mile nine. Morning clouds had burned off and the sun beat down on us. We munched on Dunkin Donuts and chatted with his girlfriend’s parents, checking our watches and Twitter to find out when we’d see the first runners.

Ebo and I posted up on the side of the road as the first wheelchair participants zoomed by. It wouldn’t be long now. I likened the experience to running a relay like Ragnar. Time slows when you’re waiting to start, but as soon as your van takes off, it’s suddenly 30 hours later, you’re exhausted, hungry, haven’t showered, and are closer to five other people than you ever thought you could be. Ok, so perhaps it’s not exactly like running a relay, but time does fly.

A car driving Meb came by, which elicited shouts of the only thing I could think of, “Meb!”

Then the elite women gracefully flowed by us, followed not long after by the men. I’ve never been up close when a pack of world class elites have gone by. It is awing and beautiful all at once to watch them cover ground so swift and elegantly.

From there, Ebo and I went into full spectator mode, practically clapping for two hours straight and calling out the names runners had drawn on their shirts. We commiserated over how good it felt to get the thumbs up from a runner passing by, a “thank you,” or simply when someone started running again after walking by you.

Ebo’s girlfriend came by looking strong despite the climbing temperatures. We resupplied her and then she was off again.

The river of runners eventually dried up and we retired to the tent for another Tufts provided meal. The exhaustion began to wash over us as well.

The road opened back up not long after 1:45. I said good bye to my friend and pulled out of the lot aimed south toward Virginia.

I may not have brought home another Boston jacket, but I packed with me another year’s worth of Boston memories. The trip became all the more rewarding to experience the race through a beginner’s eyes. Though, I wasn’t at the finish line, Ebo’s girlfriend raised goosebumps in her race recap abouther final stretch down Boylston Street. It’s a quarter mile you’ll never forget.