20 Years of the Boston Marathon
I honestly don’t know how I got here. Each training season rolled into the next. Each busy day bolstered by a workout. The past 20 seasons of life wrapped around April and Patriots Day. It all has gone by so quickly I almost forget the importance. This thing that I will be doing for the 20th time in 4 weeks. It all seems quite surreal.
I could tell you a story about how I got here. About a chubby kid with little physical talent. I could blame it on my Dad for setting the example back in the 70’s. I could blame it on cross country practices in the fading leaf covered New England prep school afternoons. I’ve always been a runner in some form or fashion. It is one of the threads of my life’s tapestry.
I never dreamed of being a marathoner. I never set a goal to qualify for Boston. I liked the activity but was not comparatively good at the sport. You can be a better runner than 99% of the world and still find yourself 5th man on a 5-man cross country team and solidly in the back of the midpack at Boston.
It’s a simple sport. It’s something that grew to fit my lifestyle and my personality. It’s a competition every day against myself and my inner demons. It is a challenge that creates the scaffolding on which to hang a life well lived. Each run in the New England woods or rolling roads is an adventure into undiscovered country.
All you need is a door. You walk through that door and you run. You run until it feels worthy. You run into your own thoughts until your brain is bubbling in a cauldron of happy chemicals. Sometimes you drop into that perfect transcendental state we call the ‘runner’s high’. The world’s problems fade away and you are in synch with the breathing and footfalls. It’s a simple sport.
I came to the marathon later in life. I ran my first official Boston marathon in 1998 at the age of 35. I qualified at the Baystate marathon in the fall of 1997. I spent that summer running 7 days a week, 50 -60 miles a week, with heavy tempo and speed workouts twice a week at the track. I ran two long runs in excess of 26 miles.
Why? Because deep down in my soul I knew I could do it. I knew I was a runner. That’s the secret to qualifying for the Boston marathon. It has little to do with talent. It all hinges on believing you can do it. Once you believe, the rest is details. The rest is work. Pure, unadulterated, honest work. And we love the work.
That first training cycle and qualification changed my world view. It taught me that I am capable of so much more than I think. As it does to thousands each year. Thousands of epiphanies of worth popping around the world as they crash through the finish line of that qualifying race and gasp for breath in the sheer joy of exhaustion.
The Boston Marathon has brought so much bounty into my life. People mistakenly see what we do as sacrifice. It is not. It is an investment in a life and community. It is a celebration of the good animal that we all should be.
The work is something esthetic and meaningful for those of us who train to qualify. The work is purifying. Especially in the deep, cold, dark of an New England winter. To commit and do the work is a holy act that purifies one’s soul and sets one free. Boring and ‘normal’ rat race life is a pale reflection when compared to the work.
It’s that benediction of the holy work that blesses us with a spot in the corrals in Hopkinton. We stand there shoulder to shoulder as one. A breed of men and women burned and shaped by the fire of our work. Unified by the work. This is one of those few meritocracies for the common athlete in our world. A communion not of achievement and medals but of worthy work.
The people I’ve come to know are another thing that casts shadows of memory on the walls of these 20 years. Each training cycle shared with someone new or someone old or someone unique. The work is easier if you have friends or acquaintances to come with you. All and sundry questions of the ages have been answered on philosophic long runs. I have been blessed with soulmates from across the globe in these years for shared work and shared experience. People from all walks of life and all abilities. And I’m a better human for it.
The relationships built around the work are strong and deep. The work is a bond strong in shared suffering, shared achievements and shared goals. There becomes a deep affinity and attachment, dare I say a form of fraternal love, that we hold for our trusted training partners.
I have been given, accrued and been blessed with so much opportunity through this race and the work. So many things I have seen that I would otherwise never have seen. So many places I have explored that I would not have been able to experience in these ways if not for the work and the community of it. From the giant machine that is New York to the everyman fueled parades of Marine Corp and Chicago. It’s all part of the ride you get to take when you buy this ticket by doing the work.
I never set out with the intention to run 20 Boston Marathons. I was going to stop at 2, but then the year 2000 seemed like a nice round number. I was going to stop at 5, but then I got injured and had something to prove. I was going to stop at 10 but I moved up an age group and qualifying was easier for a while. Maybe I’ll stop at 20, but I’ve already got a number for 21.
I’ve run through the hot years, the rain years and the catastrophic event year. I have run well at times but mostly have fought the course with mixed results. I have trudged that last 10K with legs wobbly more than once wishing it could just be over. The death march more times than I’d like to admit.
I’ve always trained well for the Boston Marathon. I’ve always done the work in those cold winter months to respect the race. There is a certain pride that drives us in a positive way to do the work. This race for us is a holy place filled with the ghosts of our ancestors. They are watching. You don’t show up at Boston to run easy and have fun. You show up to race. That’s what the ghosts and our pride require from us.
I’ve high fived a thousand kids and refused the smacking lips of a few hundred coeds. I’ve beaten a few dozen well-known celebrities. I know the course like the back of my own hand. I know where that course turns on the runner like a hidden beast and brings them to their knees. I know the turns and the dips and the hills. Oh those devilish, glorious hills.
In a sense I’m spoiled. I grew up with the race. I knew it before it became internationally famous. Before it was on every Tom, Dick and Mary’s bucket list. Before there was the Boston Marathon. Here, in Massachusetts you ran ‘The Marathon’ because there was only one that mattered.
Now I’m looking down the road to my 20th trip into the Pru from Hopkinton. I’m in decent shape. I’ve lost a good minute or more of my pace to the years but I still do the work. I still get excited to go to the expo and see the haunted and gaunt faces of my tribe.
How do I feel to be running my 20th Boston Marathon?
Mostly, I am grateful.
I am grateful to have been given just enough of a physical gift to qualify for this race.
I am grateful to have met so many interesting and driven humans.
I am grateful for all the true and deep friendships I have made and all the miles we have run together.
I am ultimately grateful to have had the privilege of this race in my life.
I don’t lose sleep race weekend like I used to. I sleep fine. The race holds few unknowns for me but always manages to teach me something. Something about the world and something about myself.
I’m grateful to have run in the footsteps of the greatest in our sport.
I’m grateful to be able to push my small boat into the stream of runners at the top of the hill in Hopkinton. To free-fall like a spring freshet in the White Mountains down the streets to Framingham. Then to get out and push through the hills to the final manic chase down Boylston.
Boston is part of me. I am grateful for that.
Welcome to my city. Welcome to my race. Welcome to meet my people and be welcomed by my tribe.
Congratulations on doing the work.
Let’s make the ghosts proud.
Let’s go out and race like we earned it.