Twin Cities Marathon 2014 – 02:50:53
I never raced in high school. I wasn’t in track or cross country (my running form left/leaves much to be desired). With the sports I did enjoy, the teams I was on were not exactly stellar. I honestly don’t even know what having a winning record feels like. It’s far from ideal for anyone who hates to lose. And, like most people, I really fucking do hate lose. Perhaps that’s why I got into this sport (more on that in a couple weeks – promise!). Distance running is an outlet that, more or less, circumnavigates that challenge altogether. Sure, you still compete against others. You can try to PR (personal record). Hell, if you’re that good you can actually try to win some races. But for me, and just about everyone else, that’s really not the point. When there is a race as large as, say the Twin Cities Marathon, there isn’t 1 winner and 12,000 losers. There are people who are just having fun. There are people running for charity. People running to check it off the bucket list. Folks running because it a tradition, or to motivate a friend, or running a destination race for its scenic beauty, etc. There are exponentially more reasons why people are running a race then there are people actually running it (or jogging, or walking, or sprinting – you get the picture). Take me for example. I had run this race a couple times. I was obviously not trying to win, but I do love the course. And I love the atmosphere, with the thousands of spectators and camaraderie built between all race participants. I had many disparate prerogatives influencing me to enter this ordeal again. Alas, there was one big, BIG reason I wanted to run that day. Why put in all of this training? All these thousands of miles?
Well, to try to go faster. Seems appropriate. And try I did. A competitive spirit that can’t find success as part of a team beating an opponent can certainly manifest itself by finding an opponent with itself. Or, better yet, a clock. I don’t remember when I first learned about this whole ‘Boston Qualifying Time[1]’ ordeal. What I do remember is that, once I did hear about it, that I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to try to make it happen.
It was just within reach to some plausible, yet challenging enough that I would never have considered it ‘low hanging fruit.’ It did initially seem elusive however. I needed to average 7:00min/mi pace for the entirety of the race to make it happen. When I first started training seriously for it I don’t think I even knew what a split was, let alone marathon pace workouts, lactate threshold, VO2 max workouts, strides, etc. were. I avoided the track like the fucking plague (although that hasn’t really changed much). Half the time I only made guesses at how fast I was even running. Suffice to say, I was going to need some help. I found a plan by Pete Pfitzinger, a former two-time Olympian, who has written a book that has helped many runners succeed in shaving off time to achieve PRs called Advanced Marathoning. It topped out at about 70 miles per week and included all sorts of workouts and terms I had never heard of before. And because I found this plan as a stand-alone pdf online, I had to do some googling to figure what the fuck a tempo run was. I was basically starting from scratch
What I lacked in knowledge, I made up for in grit. I live in a place that, for about 2 months during the fall, provides the most pristine climate for mindlessly exercising on the roads and trails while you cyclically breathe in and out the crisp, calm of the gently changing season. Everything in between that is a humid, hot sticky mess, or worse, a frozen wasteland of torturously low temperature that it becomes commonplace to hear on your television that you will die if you spend too long outside. That winter before this marathon was undoubtedly the most brutal I’d ever experienced as a Minnesotan. Actually, it was the most brutal that most people had ever experienced in Minnesota. We didn’t see the sun, or the will to open our front fucking doors, for months. But as any running addict can tell you, it did not stop me. If I had time and energy, I was putting one foot in front of the other for whatever mileage I had scheduled. And this was before I started a focused training plan. I was unknowingly sowing the seeds for a successful summer of training. Strengthening my mental fortitude for when workouts would be hard not because God had it out for the northern hemisphere, but because I was going to move my body for stretches of time at a pace that showed I had it out for myself. Sunday long runs that January were a real treat. You betcha. Fuck you mother nature and your negative 65 degree wind chill.
My training started in early June. It also happened to be the first full summer I would spend in Minneapolis. In the past I was either at home or filling up my time volunteering overseas in the most beautiful country on the planet, Italy. But needing to study for and take the MCAT, as well as work and make money and ‘adult’ and all that nonsense, I was stuck around my home city for the summer. I fell in love with it even more.
If winter was unbearably cold, summer in Minnesota is equally unbearably hot and muggy. I would take subzero temps with a low wind-chill over 100% humidity before sunrise any day of the week. Especially when you’re finding out what a marathon pace run is and you have one scheduled at the end of a 60 mile week. But goddamn if it didn’t feel great when I got done. Drenched in sweat, exhausted, legs feeling like jello, those training sessions are when I really began to experience training. Not just mindless miles at the same pace day in and day out. Real, ovary-busting workouts. Not just little fartleks (Swedish for speed play – I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use the word in a post) that started and stopped as I pleased. Nah. I put in workouts that I could. Not. WAIT. To be over.
But lo and behold, they paid off! I remember running one of those MP runs about 4 weeks before this race with a brand new Garmin (never had owned a GPS watch before, and will never not own one since). I was clicking off 6:45 min/mi and I was really surprising the living shit out of myself. Read more about it here It’s not that fast by any means, but I didn’t think it was too bad coming from a former 195 lb. high school linebacker just a few years ago. And really not bad considering I was just beginning to be indefinitely harassed by a persistent little eating disorder.
If there is one thing I am good at it, it’s finishing strong. Always making sure I have enough in the tank to pull some wicked speed (for me anyway) out at the end. My splits, even in my first marathon, went down from beginning to end. This day was no exception. It’s a special feeling when you know you got your goal in the bag and you let loose whatever you got left as a sort of gift to yourself. It served me well enough to Boston Qualify (BQ) by a solid 14 minutes. I didn’t win the race that day, but I sure as hell didn’t lose. I won some pride, and a ticket (that I’ve yet to punch!) to a historic event. I’ll take it.
[1] As an aside: For those of you who don’t know, the Boston Marathon has a qualifying time standard that limits entry of participants based on a recent marathon time and their age. It’s a world-renowned event, and many of the most elite marathon runners from across the globe compete at this race every spring. Someday I’ll go there!