I'm not too inclined to write much about Boston the bombing. I understand the shock and the general thirst for information. We all want answers, we all have questions, we are all horrified by the events we've now seen on tv approximately a million times over. But we all also deal with these kinds of tragedies in our own unique ways, and my ways lean private. I have no startling revelations to offer, no new insights, no inspirational speeches to make, just my own shock and anger to sift through with close friends and family.
Which leaves Boston the race. I'll give it a try.
Boston the race wasn't good for me. It wasn't good for me from the get-go. I struggle even now to put it into words, but the closest I've come so far was on our return flight when I said to Lou Karl: at no point in the race was I having fun. Not on the start line, not in the opening miles, not in Wellesley, not cresting Heartbreak Hill, not seeing the Citgo sign, not making those final turns onto Boylston, and not crossing that giant blue finish line. There was no joy in my heart that day, no pleasure in running.
As many of you runners can imagine, that's a pretty hard thing to wrap your head around. That's different than a bad race, different than an off day. How could I be at one of the coolest races in the world, at the end of arguably the best training cycle of my life (save for the last few weeks), and not be able to experience it? Which screw has to be loose for that to be possible?
You know, immediately after the race, I couldn't have answered that.
But you see, despite my love of training plans, spreadsheets and chasing of clocks, the real reason I keep running is the way it feels. The way it feels to run when you're really fit. If you've been there (and I'm sure a lot of you have), you know what I mean. So while I may get a kick out of chasing prs, the real thrill is flying down the street at high velocity while barely breathing, knowing that you could keep going at that speed for miles, feeling your body fire on all cylinders like a finely tuned machine, your legs running along effortlessly beneath you... it's addicting, that feeling. It's what makes me keep coming back after injury, after iron deficiency, after plain old disappointment.
The last few weeks I watched helplessly as my body went from that most highly functioning running state to a collection of disparate and ill-functioning body parts. There was the biomechanical glitch on my right side and the subsequent desperate attempts to beat it into submission, there was the emotionally exhausting gradual demise and subsequent death of my cat Jack, and finally there was my inability to sleep through the night without bolting awake around midnight in an unsubstantiated panic.
You're supposed to arrive at the starting line of a marathon strong, calm, and rested. I stood in Hopkinton on Monday strung together with hope and rainbows.
So maybe when things didn't go well, the causes should have been obvious. Or maybe not.
Here, look at my splits:
5k: 21:22 (6:54)
10k: 21:09 (6:49)
15k: 21:08 (6:49)
20k: 21:11 (6:50)
25k: 21:12 (6:50)
30k: 21:47 (7:02)
35k: 22:53 (7:23)
40k: 24:15 (7:49)
42.2k: 10:18 (7:35)
If I didn't know any better, I'd say those were the splits of someone who was shooting to break 3 hours, went out at goal pace, couldn't quite hang, and crashed and burned at the end.
And that's not what happened.
I was shooting for 2:55, aiming for a slightly conservative first half, and planning to run the last 5 miles at 6:25-6:30 pace. I'd been doing it that way on my hilly long runs, so I knew I had it in me. The ease with which I found myself dropping into sub-6:30 pace at the end of my long hard training runs was my secret weapon. I was going to get to 21 miles with my legs completely intact and with gas in the tank, and then I was going KILL IT. I was going to hit the jets and fly into Boston like the rest of the race was standing still. Downhill finish? Bring it. I was so ready.
Only it didn't quite work out that way either.
Because, despite the Herculean efforts of both me and my physical therapist in those last couple of weeks, we never really got the glitch to go away. We minimized it for sure, and I seemed to be getting closer and closer to my natural running form every day, and who knows, perhaps another week would have been enough to get rid of it completely, but close is just not good enough for a real race effort. You can't use all of your fitness when your body is tied up. You can't let yourself fly when you have a kink. You can run just well enough to make yourself wonder what the heck is going on, why your legs can't quite get comfortable at an effort where you're not even breathing hard, why everything is just a little bit harder than it should be.
I was of two minds about this on race day (when am I ever NOT of two minds?). Part of me knew that everything was not going to be ok. But another part said, give it a chance, you never know, don't be so negative.. etc.
For the first half of the race, it was deny, deny, deny. Who cares that at the same time my aerobic system was so at ease I could have been napping, my limbs were like rusty old gears trying to find a groove? Who cares that I was running this big beautiful event with a permanent crease in my forehead as I waited for my body to loosen up? Who cares that while trying to run as calmly as possible, just under the surface I was extremely ANGRY?
I did what I could do. I ran the most conservative first half I could muster without putting myself totally out of reach of a decent time.
So when I hit the halfway point (in just over 89 minutes) and still felt not-tired-but-not-good, my positive outlook began to waver. This wasn't working. I stepped lightly on the gas, thinking maybe I was just uncomfortable because I needed to open it up a little, get out of the rut. The increased speed felt better for a few minutes, but I think it was mostly a mental boost. It felt so good to finally be doing something instead of just coasting and waiting, you know?
By 14 miles, I couldn't maintain the denial any longer. Things were not improving. Not only would I not be running a pr that day, I wasn't even going to be in a position to try for one. That realization really sucked, and I had a dark couple of miles there. With denial out the window, I was free to sink into self-pity and despair. In fact, I sunk in there so deep and wallowed around for so long that the next thing I knew we were at 16 miles.
16 miles... ? And that woke me up. The Newton hills!! The stupid Newton hills that everyone's always talking about. Four consecutive hills ending at mile 21. And then self pity returned to anger. Fuck the Newton hills! If I was going down, it was not going to be on those ridiculous hills. I hate nothing more than being a cliche.
Now properly motivated with a suitable enemy, I started to picture a heroic finish in which I snuck in under 3 hours to salvage a miserable race. Stop being such a baby, I thought to myself, remember how Bill Aronson ran in LA a few weeks ago. He didn't give up when he knew he wasn't going to pr.
Up those hills I charged, and that was the closest to good I felt the whole race. Unfortunately, while it felt great in the short term to blast up the hills, it was also the final straw for my nascent glitch issues. By mile 21, glutes and high hammies were in full effect, pain radiating down my right side. I was quickly reduced to a shuffle in the very spot I'd been planning to launch my closing assault. That hurt. Thoughts of squeaking in under 3 hours were replaced by deep consideration on the least painful way to keep putting one foot in front of the other. The last 5 miles passed in the painful slowness specific to falling apart in a marathon. I stopped caring and just kept going.
When I finally crossed the finish line, the clock read 3:05. I wasn't particularly tired, but definitely in pain. I limped on ahead as fast as I could, just wanting to get out of there. All the nice volunteers with big smiles, saying, congratulations! You finished the Boston marathon! They were so genuine, so well meaning, I plastered a smile on my face and did my best to return their good cheer. I didn't come to Boston to finish, I came to race, but that's my problem, not theirs.
And hey, there's always 2014.
