Boston 2016 – Broken Promises

An honest Bonk!

People who have never raced a marathon cannot comprehend.  People who haven’t run Boston just can’t know.  “How could someone as well trained and experienced as you”, they ask, “totally lose it for the last few miles of the race?  Did you give up?  Couldn’t you just grit your teeth and run through it?”

They will never know until they have been there.  When the hills at Boston eat your legs there is nothing you can do.  There is no mind over matter willpower that you can call on.  Your legs cease to work.  There is a constant slow glow of pain that permeates your body like some sort of incapacitating drug.

There is no holding your pace.  If you’re lucky you find a point where it doesn’t hurt more and you just keep shuffling forward.  You know that finish line is up there and it’s just a matter of moving forward.  You put the pain to the back of your mind and you keep moving forward at whatever pace is possible.

…

I had high hopes going into Boston this year.  I was well trained.  I hit all my workouts.  I beat my goal time comfortably at a hilly 30K and a 20 Mile race.  I hit all my long workouts comfortably.  It was my 18^th running of that prestigious race.  The stars all seemed to be aligning for me.

It’s been a long time since I have felt this comfortable with my machine.  It should have gone better.  Based on the numbers going in it should have gone better.  I’m older but I had the best training cycle in 5 years.  I did everything right. But that’s Boston.  That’s one of the reasons this race is hard.  You never know.  Training does not equal performance.

I should be upset at hitting the wall so hard but I’m not.  I trained well. I respected the race.  I went for it.  And Boston ate me up like it has eaten me up many times and like it has roughed up so many other well trained athletes over the years.  If it was easy it wouldn’t be Boston.

That’s why we are drawn to it, that’s why we fear it, that’s why we love it.

…

I trained well but I carried a lot of baggage with me into the race.  It was the 18^th time I’ve run the race.  We have a history.  Not just a history of trading punches on Patriot’s Day.  A history that spans two decades of qualification struggle.

To understand this personal context perhaps a history lesson is in order.  In 2008 I ran my tenth Boston marathon and was quite ready to be done with it.  But through my 40’s qualification became easier as I aged into a3:30 qualification requirement without the corresponding loss in performance.  I had worked very hard to qualify at 3:10 and 3:15 and 3:20.

Then 7 years ago I turned 45 and all of a sudden qualifying for Boston became easy.  I still had to train honestly and commit to a good cycle, but I went from needing a 3:20 to needing a 3:30.  10 whole minutes!  That’s a giant chunk of time.  That’s an 8 minute mile.  At the time my ‘easy run pace’ was around an 8 minute mile, and my race paces were in the 6:40’s for shorter events.  Piece of cake!

I was in great shape and knocking out races of all shapes and sizes with ease.  Since I kept requalifying I just kept running the race. Why not?

In 2010 I qualified easily at Boston without even specifically training for the race.  In 2011 I repeated that qualification effort again.  Things were looking pretty good for me running Boston indefinitely because I was going to get another 5 minutes for 2012!

…

When the gun went off for the fourth wave I walked to line in Hopkinton.  No need to run or jog.  The race starts when I cross that mat, not before.  As we accelerated down out of the center it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.  I was able to make my way to the left shoulder, an old trick of mine, and find some running room.

Mile one was a peppy 8:15 with the traffic and by mile two I was running 7:50’s.  There was a bit of chaos.  There always is back in the charity corrals.  People running all different paces but nothing I couldn’t manage.  One great thing about pacing faster than the pack is that the race is always in front of you.

I carried my bike bottle of Ucan in my left hand and was able to take fluid and fuel as I needed it.  Right to plan.  I was able to avoid the melee of the early water stops.

I had my Hokas on with my old Brooks baggie shorts with the bike liner and my Team Hoyt singlet.  I like those shorts because they have a longer liner that prevents chub rub on hot days.  They also have a couple small pockets where I can squirrel away a small tube of lube, a handful of Endurolytes and even a gel if I need one.

I thought it was going to be hot, but once we got on course we had a dry headwind of 5-10 mph.  I think this ended up fooling a lot of runners because it didn’t feel hot, but it was.  That dry head wind was dehydrating people.  Over the years as development has crept in there aren’t as many trees on the course and even if there were it is early April and the deciduous trees haven’t leafed out yet.

The bottom line is that runners were running into a dry headwind with full sun exposure on their backs until we made the turn at the fire station.

I stayed focused on my pace. I stayed away from the little kids with their high fives.  No wasted effort.  This wasn’t a fun run, this was a race.

I wasn’t struggling.  The effort level was quite comfortable.  I was challenged settling in and ‘feeling’ my pace.  My Garmin was all over the place and I was having a hard time finding that 8 minute mile I needed.  To add to the confusion, right from the start the mile marks were off on my watch and they just got worse as the race progressed. My watch would go off and I’d see the mile mark 50-100 meters ahead.

I felt fine.  As far as I could tell from my watch, I seemed to be knocking off splits in the 7:45-7:55 range.  I was worried that that pace was a little bit fast but it was not out of the ballpark historically for me and I felt fine.  I cruised the first 4 mile downhill bit focused and ahead of pace.  8:17, 7:50, 7:50, 7:42.  Not too outrageously fast but in hindsight probably a suicide pace.

I was overconfident from my training.  I always do better when I go into Boston scared.  Boston has a habit of humbling the overconfident.

I do remember being a bit worried about the hot weather and that may have contributed to my rabbiting. I was racing a bit hard but I was glad to be building time into my bank if the heat got to me.

…

In the spring of 2011, in the weeks following Boston, my heel started to really hurt.  Of course I ignored it and it got worse.  By the time I finally stopped running in the mid-summer I had full-blown Plantar Fasciitis.  The rest of 2011 I spent not running and going through treatment.  I did manage to squeeze in the Chicago Marathon with Eddie and Adam running for the diabetes team in memory of Eddie’s mom.  And that was a gift.

When spring rolled around in 2012 I was already qualified for Boston so I did as much training as I could which wasn’t much and run-walked the race.  As it turns out 2012 was a -hot year.  Run-walking the race was an excellent choice.  But, now I was out of qualification, and worse, I still couldn’t shake the plantar fasciitis.

By the fall of 2012 I was trying to come to grips with never running again, at least at the level I was used to.  I was considering new, more invasive procedures, for the plantar fasciitis.  From this bottom point I figured I had nothing really to lose, and one day decided to go for a jog in the woods with my dog.

An amazing thing happened.  Once I had let it go, running came back to me.  The heel didn’t get worse.  I was able to start running 3 times a week, slowly in the woods and it didn’t get worse.  Tentatively, slowly I began to climb back to a regular cadence and fitness level.

I got the bug to run Boston again.  Since I was out of qualification I looked around my network and found a charity bib.  This was the first time I’d had to do this.  It never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that I wouldn’t be able to qualify.  My reasoning in the fall of 2012 was that I’d take a charity bib and requalify for the next year.  Of course I would.

As 2013 dawned and spring progressed I began training as well as I could, having essentially taken 18 months off from marathon training.  I began my relationship with Team Hoyt, the first time I had run for these legends and this great charity.

At the same time as slowly trying to get back into training for Boston in 2013 we found out that my father had bile duct cancer and another parallel journey began.

I managed to get a short training cycle in but I did not have the fitness on race day and had the worst race of all my Bostons with stabbing back pain that forced me to walk.  Then the day got worse. I was turned around just short of the finish line and we all know the story of 2013.

The events at Boston took their toll on me and my community that year.  A toll that we are still coming to grips with.

…

April 18^th 2016, standing in the corral in Hopkinton in my Team Hoyt singlet I was sweating.  Probably not a good sign.  There was an Elvis in front of me.  I joked to the guy behind me that heat was energy, right?

I had a lovely morning.  I had planned to meet Brian for the ride up to Hopkinton but we got mixed up and my wife ended up dropping me at the shuttle buses in Hopkinton.  She’s a good sport with all this marathon stuff.

It’s hard to coordinate in the morning now because I don’t have my phone.  I had sent it ahead in my bag with our club support crew to the hotel.  That’s a drawback to not having bag check in Hopkinton anymore.

We hung out in athlete’s village and watched the waves get called.  We had sunscreen and lube and Ucan and towels and blankets – it was a regular Woodstock.  I watched all my teammates get peeled away.  I was in the last wave.  I got to use the porta potties as many times as I wanted.  It was all very relaxed and casual.

It was a beautiful warm spring day with brilliant blue skies.  There were helicopters flying around; the state police, the news and other agencies.  There were random small airplanes circling, dragging banners that had ads for things like Liquor stores and plumbing supplies.  We thought that an odd offering to a bunch of people from around the world about to run a marathon.

“Damn Brian, I forgot to pick up that Boiler Valve on my way to the race, good thing that plane was here.”

Finally my corral got called and athlete’s village emptied out as we queued up by wave for the walk to the start.  I handed all my stuff over to the donation pile and we queued up by corral for the march down to the start.

I chatted with a guy who was running his 24^th Boston and a young lady who was running her first.  Ironically I gave her the same advice we give all the first timers, ‘don’t go out too fast’.  I said “You won’t listen, because no one does, but I’ll tell you anyway…Don’t go out too fast!”

I was able to get yet another Porta Pottie stop before the corals.  I would certainly not have to worry about pulling over on the course!  I guess that’s one of the benefits to being the last to leave Athlete’s Village!

There were snipers standing prominently on the rooftops and throughout the town.  They weren’t trying to conceal themselves, which I think is what serious snipers are supposed to do, so all for show but a bit of a creepy prison-camp feel.

I was standing behind two very attractive young women in the corral.  They were in in great shape, like cross-fitters.  They were wearing matching outfits of tight black shorts and singlets.  The epitome of youth and fitness.

As I scanned up I realized that one of them had an enormous crop of armpit hair – like she was smuggling a cat.  I don’t know why I’m sharing that with you, because it makes me sound creepy but these are the moments you remember standing in the corral.  Race day is like that when you look back on it.  A series of weird little disconnected snapshots and vignettes that roll around in your head.

…

My life doesn’t have much room in it for sitting around and feeling sorry for myself.  After 2013 I carried on, but I was deeply, emotionally effected by the events.  This was my home, my race and my people.  I did the only thing I knew to do that would help me clear my emotions.  I ran.  I ran a marathon a month through the course of 2013 to the next Boston in 2014.  I ran my daemons into the ground.

In two instances I ran on back to back weekends.  Somewhere in the mix I ran the Marine Corps Marathon with my coach who had been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer.  I was invited all expenses paid to the New York City Marathon as a featured blogger by ASICS.  I got to meet many cool folks in the big city and be treated like a rock star and rubbed elbows with the elites.

Somewhere amidst all this chaos and movement the BAA tightened the standards and changed the qualification window.  They took 5, actually 6, minutes off the time I needed to qualify.  They brought the registration window back to September.  I fantasized that I could run a marathon a month and still requalify.  Since, ‘of course that makes total sense.’  I had always been able to train my way into success, why wouldn’t it work now?

I came close on at least two of my marathons that summer.  I ran a 3:34 in Vermont in May and 3:32 in Idaho in August that would both be good enough for the old standard.  But all those miles wore me down and I wasn’t quite able to get over the hump.  I was older now and my body didn’t bounce back and rise to the challenge like it had 10 years earlier.

A smart man would have targeted a race and put 2-3 months of focused training into qualifying.  But once I got into the cadence of a marathon a month it took on a life of its own.  It became like a medicine I needed every month to keep my mind and body in balance.  It was the agenda and the compass for that year.  The rest of that year was not pretty as the miles took their toll and I stopped worrying about training for the races and just ran to finish.

I knew that I would automatically get a bib for 2014 because of my participation in 2013.  I WAS NOT going to miss the 2014 race, but I still kept trying to qualify because I owed it to Boston, to the community and to myself and to respect the race.

In 2014 I took that 2013 Mulligan bib and decided to run for the Liver Foundation to honor my Father.  He would live to see me finish the 2014 race.

The Boston Marathon in 2014 was an amazing celebration. I thoroughly enjoyed it as we took back our city and our race.  It was like a ceremonial release for all of us in the community.  It set us free.  I finished a purgative year of 13 marathons in a row.  I was exhausted, but glad to be getting off the marathon a month hamster-wheel.

…

As I ran through Ashland and Framingham in the middle miles I held my focus and my pace.  For the next 11 miles I stayed to myself.  I didn’t hug the girls at Wellesley.  I did pick up a fresh second bike bottle of Ucan right before the scream tunnel from a club mate who, by a prearrangement, was stationed there.  You know I’m serious about a race when I position my own fuel on the course.  It took a lot of stress off to know I had a fresh bottle waiting.

I was consistently running in the 7:50’s and 7:40’s and by the time I hit Newton Lower Falls I had over 3 minutes in the bank.  For those 10 miles I averaged 7:46 according to the Garmin.  I felt fine.  I was working reasonably hard, but I felt ok.

The head wind picked up through these middle miles and I was looking for opportunities to draft.  Typically at a race you’ll fall in with a group of similar paced accomplices, but it was hard to find someone running a consistent pace back in the pack.  At one point I found a big, young guy named Mike and was able to hang on his shoulder for a bit.

In retrospect, I probably left my race out in those first 16 miles by running the downhills too hard, just like I tell people not to do.  Classic Boston mistake.  I went out too fast.

As I pulled down the hill into Newton Lower Falls and looked up at ‘hill zero’ over rte. 128 I felt the power starting to drain from my legs.

…

After the 2014 race I finally had some breathing room to focus on requalifying.  Over the next 4 months I trained harder than ever.  I didn’t race and I singularly focused on going back out to Idaho and knocking out my qualifier in August.

But something was wrong.  The workouts were hard.  I couldn’t finish the tempo runs.  I couldn’t hold the paces.  There was something wrong with my ability to respond to the training.  I ignored it and pulled out all the stops.  I lost the extra weight. I went into the target race with as much fitness as I could fathom.

And I failed.  By the half marathon mark I knew I was done.  I couldn’t hold the pace.  I chalked it up to a bad day.  But now I was starting to doubt myself.  Maybe my qualification days were done?  Maybe that 18 months of Plantar Fasciitis had knocked me down so far I could not climb back up.  I was over 50 now.  Maybe I was done.

What seemed so childishly easy 3 years earlier was now slipping beyond my reach and it bothered me.

Never one to waste too much time with profitless worry I rolled the fitness forward two weeks and tried again at a race in Michigan.  I had to walk off the course at the half.  My heart rate would not come down. I could not hold the pace.  I started to suspect something else was wrong.

As I trained that autumn into fall I began to watch my heart rate more closely.  I noticed that whenever I pushed past Zone 2 my heart rate would spike and red line into zone 6 and I’d lose power.  It was like having a faulty transmission where you push the gas and the gears just spin.  I thought maybe my watch was broken.  Eventually I knew something was wrong and went, evidence in hand to my doctor.

He said that if I thought there was something going on, then there probably was because I knew my machine better than most people.  He sent me to the electro-cardio specialist.

In the fall of 2014 I was diagnosed with exercise induced AFIB.  Basically what this means is that as soon as I started pushing the pace my heart would generate random electrical signals and start doing the funky chicken.  A result of all those races in 2013?  Who knows?  I’m off warranty.

At yet another specialist I was told I had two options.  First I could change my lifestyle so that it didn’t include strenuous endurance sports.  Second, I could have a procedure to create scar tissue around the bits that were causing the errant signals; essentially dam them up so they wouldn’t affect the heart’s normal movement.

You can guess what I chose.

…

Coming up out of Newton Lower Falls I knew I was in trouble.  But I had 3 minutes in the bank and 10 miles left.  I thought, “If I can just back off and recover and get to the top of Heartbreak I might be able to use the downhills to close it”.

At mile 17 the second volunteer from my club dashed out of the crowd with a fresh bottle of Ucan for me.  I was frankly surprised she was able to pick me out of the crowd at that point in the race.  I waved her off because I still had a ½ bottle left and my race was failing fast.  With the heat I was a bit nauseous and had started taking water at the aid stations.  Stomaching the warm UCan was a bit of a challenge as well.

Overall I never felt dehydrated.  At least not to the point of it effecting my performance.  I felt like I had plenty of energy too.  I got my nutrition right.  Unfortunately I outran my legs.

As each hill rolled in I knew with more conviction my race was over and now all that was left was to get to the finish line as best I could.  There is no recovery in Newton.

I began to go negative.  “I don’t deserve to be here.  I’m taking a slot from someone else who could honor this race.  I’m done with all this.  What’s the point?”

Deep misery and recrimination.  To have all those over weighted expectations crash down on me.  Never do this again.  I’m taking a bib from someone who deserves it.  My time is gone.  I’m a fake and a fraud.  I don’t deserve to be here.

As I trudged along feeling sorry for myself in the hills I got a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a familiar face.  My friend Maryro from New Brunswick was there.  I have known Maryro online as a friend for many years but we had never met in the flesh.

We commiserated.  She was crashing too.  I said to her, “Well, since your race is done, and my race is done, how about a hug?” And we stopped trudging for a brief embrace.  Two friends who had never met.  Sharing the love of a sport and the love of a race that was gleefully punishing us yet again.

As you get into the hills the crowds start to get larger and louder.  It was a great year for the spectators.  A beautiful, sunny, spring day.  With my Team Hoyt singlet I would get constant encouragement. “Go team Hoyt!, Go Team Hoyt!”  It was like a rolling wave of personal cheering section from Newton to the finish.

…

Looking at the 2015 race I decided to take a charity bib again.  Once I knew my heart was broken I had to train within the bounds of my condition.  This meant all long, slow runs.  No speed, no tempo, no step ups.  I ended up with plenty of base fitness but no racing ability.  It was a sanguine training cycle of long easy runs.

I scheduled the heart procedure for the first week of May, after the Boston Marathon.

Boston 2015 was cool and rainy.  That’s good weather for me.  I ran well but within my ability and the constraints of my training and the AFIB.  There was never any chance for me to requalify with the bad heart but it was a good, respectful race that I was quite proud of.

In May I went into the Hospital for a day and got fixed.  One week later, with my doctor’s permission, I was running again.

…

In the hills of Newton my pace continued to drop as I tried to find a soft landing.  I saw my friend Alette in the crowd at the base of Heartbreak where she usually is.  By the time I was climbing Heartbreak I had given back my 3 minute buffer.  I was struggling.  I was walking the water stops and taking my time to rehydrate well.

I refused to walk on heartbreak hill as people were crashing all around me.  I continued to put one foot in front of the other until I got to the top.  This race can beat me but it can’t make me walk on Heartbreak Hill.

When you crest the hill, this is the point at Boston where you want to be able to race.  I could not. My legs were gone.  It was just going to get worse.  The down hills are no use when you’ve outrun your legs.  They actually hurt like hell as you slam the dead meat of your thighs into the down slopes.

The screaming crowds leaning over the barriers like crazed football fans trying to get at you are just another reminder of how far you have fallen and how much further you have to go.  There is no hiding.  Your misery is on public display.

…

I needed a change after heart surgery in the spring of 2015.  It would be 90 days until the doctors knew how well it worked.  I decided the best course of action would be to train for an Olympic triathlon.  Because, hey that’s what you do when you’re recovering from heart surgery, right?  It was a good decision.  I spent a wonderful summer swimming and riding my bike.  The triathlon went well and I felt strong.

The 90 day follow up on the surgery was good.  The doctors said it looked like I was reasonably fixed and could return to my previously scheduled endurance lifestyle.

Rolling into the fall another grand adventure fell into my lap.  I was invited to run the prestigious Hood to Coast Relay in Oregon.  I kidnapped my wife and flew into South Dakota and drove west for 4 days of travel adventure, topped off with a 30 miles of a crazy 200 mile relay race in a violent storm.  You can’t make this stuff up.

I still wasn’t qualified.

…

The final 5 miles into Boston were awful.  I was wind burned, sun burned and nauseous and my legs were useless.  I tried walking but that didn’t make it hurt any less so I kept up the death shuffle.

There were other people in bad shape on the course.  I passed a huddle of emergency personnel in a huddle in the middle of the road around a fallen runner.

I passed a blind runner with his guide and realized it was my friend Erich and I said ‘hi’.  We exchanged some words.  He was having a tough race too.

With a couple miles to go I got tapped on the shoulder again and was greeted by Sandra the Organic Runner Mom who I met at the Eastern States 20 miler.  She seemed to be having a great race and ran ahead.

You’re not supposed to meet the people you know at the race.  It’s 30,000 runners and hundreds of thousands of spectators.  People aren’t supposed to ‘find you in the crowd’.  2016 was an odd duck that way.  I must have had some sort of special aura about me.

It’s a bit of a mental challenge.  When you’re in those last miles.  You’re in pain.  You just want to be finished and you still have to drag out another hour or so to get to the end.  It’s not about being brave or any of that bullshit.  It’s just easier to keep moving towards the finish line as best you can.

…

Coming into this year’s race I committed to train well.  I had the best training cycle I have had in 5 years.  My heart was strong, my heel was fine and I managed to stay injury free.  I hit all my workouts and raced at my goal pace successfully.  I was ready.

As the race approached I was stressed out.  It seemed like so much was riding on the results.  I had built it up to a now or never event.  I had no excuses.  If I failed here it would be a direct statement on me, on my ability and strangely on my worth.

To the outside world it looked like just another one of my 50+ marathons but to me I had piled on 4-5 years of injury and failures.  It loomed large.  This wasn’t how the script was supposed to end.  I had written an entirely different ending.  But sometimes we don’t get to write the script we can only play the part.

I came into the race light and strong and healthy.  For the first time in years I had no excuses.  But as the weather forecasts started to normalize it looked to be a hottish day.  Not hot for someone from Arizona or Florida, but a bit hot for us northerners who had yet to don a singlet out of doors.  Not hot enough to give up on the race, but hot enough to mess up the race for many.

Traditional marathon theory says you need to go 5 seconds per mile slower pace for every 5 degrees over 65 degrees, or something like that.  I guess that’s why I was so aggressive.  I was looking to bank those 5 minutes.  In the end the heat was trying but the heat didn’t get me.

…

I saw Maryro again on Boylston Street but lost her in the finish.  I was dehydrated, nauseous and starting to have the shakes as I walked to the hotel.  Nothing out of the usual for finishing Boston on a hot day.  I pushed down two bottles of water and staggered through the crowds.

I was the last person to get into the hotel.  Even though some of them had gone to the med tent when they finished.  Everyone had gotten manhandled that day.  And we all celebrated.  Because there is no reason not to celebrate running the Boston marathon.

Somewhere on that slow stumble to the finish and stagger to the hotel I had talked myself down from the ledge.  I trained well.  I raced hard.  Boston won.  There’s no shame in that.

When I retrieved my phone and turned it on it began buzzing like crazy with all the emails and tweets and text messages and Facebook posts.  I reached out to runners who were from out of town to see if they would still come over for a greet.  They all demurred because they had had a hard day and didn’t have the energy to socialize just yet.

Among all the cheering and congratulations on my phone was a short text from my coach.  “You went out too fast.”  It’s got to be frustrating for him too to see me blow up all the hard work of a 3-4 month cycle.

I caught a shower and a massage and eventually made my way out to the T to meet my wife for our traditional postrace dinner.  I was happy.

…

I should have probably backed off but I’m not confident I would have been able to qualify anyhow.  The conditions were too much for me.  I could have gotten a lot closer with a negative split, but that’s water under the bridge.

This comeback I’m struggling with understanding and feeling my pace.  But, it’s progress.  If it was a ½ marathon I would have crushed it.  If it was a 30K I would have nailed it.

I trained honestly.  I respected the race.  It won.  Maybe next time I’ll win.  We played by the rules and it was a fair fight.  I brought what I had and Boston pulled out its trick bag.  We danced.  I attacked and guessed wrong and Boston was able to spring the trap.

Would I have written the ending differently for 2016?  Of course I would have.  Sometimes I don’t get to write the endings of these chapters as much as it would suit me to.  It’s a chapter.  We turn the page and pick up the narrative of the next chapter and the story itself never ends.

It’s not how many times or how long you get knocked down.   It’s how many times you can get back up and grin at the beast and say “Well played my friend, but is that all you have?”