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Boston 2019 All in – my  21st Boston Marathon (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Boston2019.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - … I didn't sleep great the night before.  Part of it was the driving rain and the thunder and lightning that shook the house.  Part of it was my ruminating brain.  You might think that having such a great training cycle would allow me to rest easy. But, no, it somehow raised the stakes.  My trusty subconscious was chattering away.  What if after all this work I managed to screw up the race? What if the weather was bad?  Of course I tied to let my big brain take over and talk myself down from the window ledge.  I am grateful to be here. Yeah.  I am happy to still be doing this 20+ years in?  Yeah.  I am blessed?  Yeah.  Blah, blah, blah… After 20 years you'd think I'd be able to rationalize.  Repetition doesn't lower the stakes.  This is the Boston Marathon.  It matters to me.  I put in the work.  I qualify.  It matters.  It matters to me. … I rolled out of bed reasonably refreshed and put on my throw-away clothes.  With the lingering rain I didn't want to wear my race stuff, especially my shoes.  Stay dry as long as possible.  I had time to take a nice shower and have a bit of breakfast.  A normal day at the Russell house.  My wife dropped me off at the local Starbucks where I caught a ride with some of the folks from my running club out to Hopkinton.  Without incident I hopped the spectator bus to downtown Hopkinton and made my way over to the senior center to join Eric and the St. Louis runners.  My second year of avoiding Athletes' Village. Call me soft, but warm and dry with a bathroom beats ankle deep mud and a 45 minute porta-john line.  I stretched and rubbed and pre-gamed.  Got my race gear on and lubed up really well.  With the humidity and warmer temps I figured chaffing might be an issue.  I ran in my old Hoka Cliftons, split shorts and a race singlet.  Nothing fancy.  I wore the Boston Strong hat I had bought at the expo.  I felt like that was an appropriate message for my training cycle and my race plan.  Like Coach said in his pep talk to me;  it didn't matter if it was 100 degrees or if there were 80 mile an hour winds.  I was not going to waste this training cycle.  No matter what happened I was committed.  I wasn't giving myself any option to give up or to ease off.  No matter what I was all in.  I would control the only thing any of us really controls; my commitment to fight – to be strong.  We watched the early waves start on TV.  We saw the wheelchair finish, which seemed a bit strange to see people finish a race you are an hour away from starting.  In the room were several faster, red-bib, wave 2 runners.  That seemed to be the demographic in general.  Lots of fit, young, fast runners in Nike Vapor Fly's and a handful of us old war horses.  Eric and I were in the same wave and corral.  3/3, which put us up the hill not far from the start line. Without hurry we made our way over when the time was right. … It's an electric time.  Walking to the start of the Boston marathon.  If you could somehow drop an emotional energy meter into the center of Hopkinton Massachusetts it would be bouncing off the rails and maxing out.  Thousands of qualified athletes stepping into the culmination of their training cycles.  Each one a story of dedication and perseverance and, right now, in this very moment, at their emotional peak.  This is it.  The big test.  The qualification effort is well in the past.  The months of training and sacrifice all leading in an inevitable emotional march to this day and this moment.  The atmosphere buzzes like an electric field.  Eric and I made our way out of the senior center in the misty, post-rain, cool, overcast morning.  The sun was struggling to break through the remnants of the storms that had passed.  We walked the short trek to Main Street and the bottom of the hill where the first half of the corrals take a turn back towards athletes' village. As we cleared security to access the melee of runners trying to find corrals I ran straight into Alett.  This is one of the alternate universe characteristics of Boston.  If you are trying to meet people on purpose, you can't find them.  But, you randomly run into people you know, for no predictable or probable reason in the crowd of 30,000 athletes.  I gave her a hug.  We had a few words.  Eric and I continued our hike up the hill towards the start line to find our apportioned 3rd corral.  Corral 3 is close to the actual start line.  We got to the opening just before our wave start time and ended up in the back of the corral just as they pulled the ropes and the corral 4 runners flooded in to fill the gap.  And like that we were off again, bounding down the steep hill out of Hopkinton, heading towards another date with destiny.  … I went into my training cycle angry.  It was mid-October and I had just jogged off the course at Baystate after one lap.  I thought I would have the legs after that big training cycle volume over the summer training for the Burning River 100 mile ultra.  But, I could not hold the pace at Baystate and gave up.  There wasn't a lot of urgency in that race.  I was already qualified.  I could run another if I wanted to.  I let my big brain rationalize me off the course.  Ultra-training was all about multi-hour runs in the trails.  Great for fitness, great for peace of mind, but not great for racing marathons.  While putting in those 90+ mile long training weeks I didn't pay much attention to nutrition or flexibility.  I paid no attention to speed and tempo work.  Coming into the late summer I was tipping the scales in the mid-180's.  That's not obese for me, but it is some extra weight.  I have discovered that as I age, I'm losing body mass in general so my old race weights aren't something I can compare against.  Instead I look at body fat % as a decent proxy for excess.  Late summer I was up in the 12-13% body fat.  The extra weight doesn't matter when you're ambling around in the woods, in fact it's probably an advantage, but it sucks to carry when you're trying to run fast circles on a track or hard charges up a hill.  Trying to tune up for that race in the fall I noticed that I really struggled with speed and tempo.  My legs weren't cooperating.  My turnover was pathetic, and I had no pop.  That's when I got a bit angry.  I knew I had work to do.  Talking with Coach, after the race, he convinced me to not try to race again and to focus on Boston, still 5 months in the future.  I committed, to get lean, to get healthy and to go into my 2019 Boston training cycle with a higher level of commitment.  To see what I could do.  Running a qualifying time has never been easy for me. I'm not that naturally talented athlete who glides by the standards.  I struggle and work to barely scrape by.  The BAA has helpfully lowered the standard by 10 minutes over the last few years and that struggle to scrape by is even more scrapier.  I need to meet the same standard today as I did two age groups ago.  And so it began…I worked my diet and worked my plan through the holidays.  Dropping those first 10 pounds and working daily on my tight hamstrings and quads.  I came into this training cycle lean and fit.  By the end of this cycle I was hovering around 170 pounds and 9% body fat.  I was getting good sleep and I was healthy.  Bringing this health into my training cycle enabled me to hit paces I haven't seen in 10 years. It enabled me to attack workouts that I would have walked away from in previous cycles.  I had the quality, if not the volume, I needed to do well.  Like I said.  I'm quite proud of this training cycle.  I feel like it was a major lifestyle change for me.  I'm also cognizant of the fact that I'm not a 20-year-old (or a 30-year-old…or a 40-year-old) anymore and this kind of intensity may not be the best choice for longevity in this sport.  … I was dead set on sticking to my plan.  I was not going to go out too fast.  I was going to stick to 8 minute miles or slower.  My strategy was to make it through the hills with enough juice left to close the race. Maybe it was because we started at the back of the corral, but it seemed very crowded in the beginning.  We crossed the first mile mark at somewhere around an 8:24 pace, successfully resisting the pull of the hills.  Again, from the random encounter files, Frank, one of my training partners tapped me on the shoulder and congratulated me for not going out too fast.  I was glad to see him, but I turned around and he was gone, running his own race.  I say ‘somewhere around an 8:24 pace' because my Garmin was off the mile marks from the start and got worse as the race progressed.  I ended up off my 3 tenths of a mile.  Which is a lot.  It's close to 3 minutes discrepancy at the finish.  The next few miles brought our average down to right around 8:03 official at the first 5Kmark.  Which was right where I wanted to be.  We were running smart.  According to the official BAA timers we were right on our target splits. At 5K and at 10K. My legs didn't feel great.  There have been times at Boston that early in the race I can feel that ‘pop' in my legs.  This wasn't one of those.  I knew it was going to be a work day, but I was committed to the work.  I wasn't going to waste this training.  No matter what I was going to work my plan – all the way.  The race felt very crowded this year, especially in the water stops.  People were bumping and pushing and getting knocked off pace in those early tables.   Eric started grumbling about it ‘not being his day' but I pushed back and said all we have to do is hold this pace and get to the top of that hill.  Hold this pace and make it to the top of Heartbreak.  That's the plan and I was working my plan – come hell or high water – all in.  We were taking water at every aid station because it was a bit warmer than it should have been and we wanted to stay ahead of it.  I got a couple endurolytes down at around the 10K point.  It was still overcast and wasn't uncomfortable.  I had a couple gels with me that I had tried to pin to the waistline of my shorts.  I had no ither way to carry them, except in my hands.  I was going to tuck them inside my shorts but that didn't feel right so I let them hang outside and flop around.  At one point I had a guy say “You're going to lose those gels” and one did break free, but I got the other one through the first hour and choked it down.  With the warmer weather I was a bit concerned about my gut.  I knew I had to stay on top of the water and fuel but by doing so also risked nausea from too much.  Again, when you're racing at your threshold pace your body doesn't like to digest stuff too.  Some where before the 10-mile mark I turned around and Eric was gone.  Off to run his own race.  Now I had to pace myself and execute my plan.  Through the half I was right on pace, with even a couple faster miles.  According to my watch I was a bit faster than the race splits and that difference would end up being significant.  My watch splits were probably 5 seconds a mile off my race clock splits.  We pulled through Wellesley and the scream tunnel.  I stayed to the middle of the road to not get tangled up.  I remember seeing some young men mixed in with the Coeds and hoping this wasn't a trend.  I was pacing a couple guys around my age who looked like they were on the same mission.  But, one of them had this annoying habit of going much faster on the downhills and I moved on.  Somewhere around Wellesley the clouds cleared and the full sun came out.  Not terribly warm, but full sun, calm and around 70.  … The weather was a big story this year at Boston as it usually is.  It wasn't a major issue, but it was a big story.  A week out it was forecast to be raging thunderstorms, rain and wind like we had last year.  The race officials moved up the wave 4 start to get people out of athletes' village and onto the course a bit sooner.  As the race got closer the forecast changed to 60's, rain and significant tailwind.  This forecast held right up to the race.  The only thing that changed as the days clicked by was that the temperatures were predicted to creep up to close to 70.  Still, drizzly with a stiff tail wind sounded pretty good to me.  The dynamic was, as it usually is, that Boston is the last stop for any storm train that rolls across the country.  Typically, these come through in waves, or fronts.  When you look at a weather forecast for New England it really depends on where these storm fronts are, how fast they are moving and what's on either side.  That's why this year was so squirrely.  We had two energetic systems sweeping across the country and as good as our weather technology is it's a guess as to when the fronts show up and when they leave.  The first traveler was a warm front with tropical downpours.  Then on the heels of that one was a cold front with another line of rain and high winds.  This is all in the same 24 hour period.  Depending on a couple hours or a shift in the storm path you could get rain, wind, warm, cold or sunny skies and/or calm.  That's why you'll hear people say they got all 4 seasons during the race this year.  That's why, even the night before, we didn't know what we were getting.  What we ended up getting was the tropical storm early with lots of rain, warm temps and wind.  That's what woke me up the night before.  As the out of town runners made their way out on the buses to Athetes' village they had to deal with these tropical downpours, thunder and lightning.  As the waves started to go off this weather calmed and it was overcast, wet and calm.  Still this early rain turned the Hopkinton Highschool fields in athletes' village into a medieval mud bath again for the waiting athletes.  By the time my wave, wave 3 went off it was overcast, warmish and humid with very little wind.  As I started the race in corral 3 wave 3 it was mid-60's, calm, overcast and humid – not bad racing weather.  But, as we got into Wellesely and the hills in Newton the sun came out.  It was 70, full sun and no wind.  A bit warm for us but not horrible.  Ironically, after all the storms and dire forecasts, all the New Englanders got a touch of sunburn on their virgin skin.  Those poor people from out of town who packed their winter gear in anticipation of Armageddon got a nice, warm and sunny New England day.  Then that second front, the one with the rain and tailwinds, came through right after we finished. By the time I finished the clouds were coming in again.  It started raining and gusting walking to the hotel.  When I left for the train a couple hours later (after a shower and rehydrating) the temperature had dropped and there was a biting wind in the city.  All four seasons in one day.  The net result was, at least for we wave 2-3 runners, we hit the gap exactly between storm fronts and ran on a clear, windless, slightly too warm, spring day.  Did it impact my race?  I don't know.  It was a bit warmer than I like and there was no tail wind.  It certainly didn't help, and I've heard a lot of people blaming it, for poor performances, but it wasn't awful.  Probably more of a convenient excuse than a causative factor. That's Boston.  After the sun came out and we passed through the scream tunnel the next major landmark is the drop down into Newton Lower Falls and the start of the hills, with ‘hill zero' climbing up over 128.  It was in this section where I started to feel a bit funky.  I had a classic power loss moment and it freaked me out.  This is too early in the race to be having power loss.  All those negative thoughts started swirling.  I shut them off and recommitted to fighting it all the way.  I took another gel and that did the trick.  I felt human again.  Just in time for the hills.  I worked my downhill form down the steep hill into Newton Lower Falls and refocused on getting to the top of Heartbreak.  I did great job of reeling my mind in.  Each time my head started to go sideways I would refocus on what I was doing right now.  My mantra became “Run the mile you're in”.  And I kept working.  I lost 10 seconds or so on that slow mile but according to my watch I had a couple minutes in the bank for the hills so I wasn't going to let up.  And that's the trick at Boston.  How do you go fast enough in the beginning that you don't fall behind your pace and have a bit of buffer for the hills, while at the same time not burning out your legs in the process?  I was right on my plan.  It was a work day but I was on my plan.  According to my watch I could give a couple minutes back and still make my time.  Maybe not my A goal but certainly my B goal. Hill zero was hard but manageable.  After you get over the highway they are handing our gels again so I grabbed on of those for later.  I was keeping my water intake up, but not really drinking much of the F2C I was carrying in my bottle.  Mostly because it was warm by now and my stomach was a bit nasty.  I couldn't summon the energy to dig my Endurolytes out but figured I was getting enough from the gels and occasional sip from my bottle.  We turned by the Fire House and I was grinding away, staying on pace.  The uphills didn't feel great but my downhill pace was nice a strong.  It was still work and I wasn't having a great day but I thought I was managing it well.  I was running the mile I was in and focused on getting to the top of Heartbreak. Hill one wasn't bad and I ran really well off the back of it to recover.  This was very positive for me because many years this is the spot where the race completely unravels.  Around 18 miles in before you even get to Heartbreak.  Hill 2 was a bit harder, but again I recovered well and ran smoothly on the back side.  Then we were into Heartbreak  I wasn't looking at my watch anymore.  I was all in, working as well as I could and staying as close to pace as I could, looking to get to the top of that hill and reap the benefits of the downhills and flats into the finish.  I took a quick walk of the water table before entering the hill to get my head right and started to climb.  I raised my head and looked up that ½ mile climb and I got back to work. … My training and preparation were excellent.  The only blip was that I had a business conference in Chicago the final week of my taper going into the race.  I ate too much and drank too much beer, got bad sleep and spent way too much time on my feet.  That shouldn't have been enough to unravel the total quality of my training, but it may have been one of the small factors influencing my race. My legs were a bit tight and I was a bit jetlagged and heavy as I rested out the weekend before the race.  Since I was flying back from Chicago Friday morning anyhow, I figured I'd swing by the expo and pick up my bib.  I usually go in Saturday, but this seemed convenient and I really wanted to get off my feet and rest for the remainder of the time I had left.  I dragged my travel bags onto the train and made my way over to the Hynes at the Pru for the expo.  There was no line at the bib pickup.  I cruised right through without breaking stride.  When I turned into the shirt pickup room there was a long line. Luckily, instead of just joining the line I asked someone what the line was for.  Apparently, it was for people to take a photo of themselves in front of a particular wall banner.  I skipped that line and cruised through shirt pickup without breaking stride.  There were people and family groups taking pictures all around with their bibs and shirts. There were people immediately taking the shirts out and trying them on for fit so they could exchange if necessary.  All these people were just so excited to be there.  They were clutching and fawning in the symbols and idolatry of the moment.  So many stories, all different, but all the same too.  They worked so hard to get here and now they were celebrating and in awe of the moment I made my way over to the expo.  This is where the crowds were. There was a veritable feeding frenzy at the Adidas official gear booth.  Crowds of runners pawing through the over-priced merch and a line to check out that would make Disney proud.  I didn't see anything I liked.  I usually buy a hat, but all the racing hats had the logo as a stuck-on chunk of plastic, not stitched in, so I passed.  None of the shorts looked like anything I'd want to wear either, so I skipped that line too and moved on.  The Expo seemed smaller than usual.  A bit underwhelming and disappointing. There were the usual big shoe companies and such.  There was the theater showing the race course run through video which is always popular.   On the negative side there seemed to be a lot of ancillary, what I might call, “late night TV products”.  Various potions and devices guaranteed by someone to do something.  On the good side there were two beer booths.  The Sam Adams guys had a large presence and runners were happily consuming the 26.2 brew specially made for the race.  And Zelus, the beer for runners out of western Mass had a booth. I might suggest that they consider the expo at Boston as part of the character of the race and find a way to do better.  Maybe get people and products in that fit our lifestyle.  I'm sure it's just a financial thing, they fill the space with whoever is willing to pay.  How about setting aside booth space for something more intrinsic to our demographic? How about authors?  Important charities? Or maybe to good races? Or maybe some science-based products?  Maybe I'm over thinking it. … My legs were pretty shitty at as I went into the ascent of Heartbreak.  Even after all those awesome sets of hill repeats I had donei n training I couldn't find that gear, that energy and strength, so instead of slowing to a shuffle I switched to a fast-hike, run cadence, an ultra-running trick, to save my legs and not lose too much time.  My legs were really heavy and refused to climb well but I worked through to the top of the hill.  I figured that was my time buffer.  Now I had to hang on to close to race pace to have any chance of making my time.  Coming off the hill I relaxed and again had good downhill form and effort.  I felt comfortable.  I figured I was really close to my goal pace and just had to keep hitting it. I kept running the mile I was in.  I thought I carried a couple minute buffer at least into the hills, so even if I lost a minute or two, I would still be close.  The course started to take its toll on the runners.  The pack was looser here but runners would be stopping or weaving or sitting on the side of the road and you had to watch out or bump your way through.  I saw two runners being packed onto stretchers by EMTs.  I pushed on. In my head I thought I could just stay close.  All in.  keep fighting.  It was work.  I wasn't terribly uncomfortable.  I was able to maintain close to goal pace on the downs and flats in the that last 10K.  I felt strong rolling down that hill with the train tracks into Cleveland Circle.  Then, I looked up to see the 24 mile sign, and, out of habit, looked at my watch.  My Garmin said almost exactly 3:20.  Even with my addled brain I could do the math.  I would have to run the last 2.21 miles in 15 minutes to get my time.  I had been battling to hold on to 8:10's in these last miles, thinking I had some buffer.  But, battling as I was, there was no way I was going to lay down a couple sub-7:30's at that point.  The wind came out of my sails.  I let my foot off the gas.  I reminded myself to lift my head up and look around.  The screaming crowds, the Citgo sign, the mile to go, the right on Herford, the left on Boylston.  The crowd on Boylston like a living, screaming animal pulling you in to the finish.  I let myself be in that moment.  I finished easy in 3:40:19 according to the BAA timer.  A full five minutes off my B goal time.  As near as I can figure, with my watch being so far off the race splits I did not have that 2-3 minute buffer going into the hills.  I probably only had 45 seconds to a minute.  When I lost those 2-3 minutes in the hills, combined with a couple slower miles where I was 5 or 10 seconds off pace at the end I was in the hole coming off Heartbreak.  I didn't have the juice to negative split it in.  In those final miles where I was working to stay close to race pace I really needed to be negative splitting.  Of those 5 minutes I missed by, ½ of that is real and half of that is me taking my time to enjoy the last 2miles of the race. .. In these last few days since the race I struggle with how to write and talk about it.  I suppose that's the defining characteristic of this race – that it refuses to play along and be categorized.  On the one hand I feel blessed and awed to be able to be part of this great thing.  On the other I have mixed feelings about how I haven't had a great race there in almost a decade.  That's why I like to let these things sit a bit before I try to write it up.  Let something that makes sense congeal into narrative and form.  Come to some sort of conclusion.  Some sort of tidy summary to stamp a smiley face on the report before turning it in for grading.  This week, since the race, I've been waking up early.  I don't know why.  Maybe it's the early rising sun of late spring.  Maybe it's the damage in my legs.  Maybe it's my unsettled mind.  I'm typically blessed with clarity in mornings so why not work on this report for you?  Let's see if we can't benefit from an early release of green, fresh thoughts still weeping sap from the fresh cuts. … The summary statement, if one can ever summarize a Boston Marathon race, is I'm happy with my training effort, I'm happy with my racing effort, I think I executed my plan well, but I'm a bit disappointed with my results.  Here are the two sides of that coin; I missed my A goal by 10 minutes, and I missed my B goal by 5 minutes.  Now I'm out of qualification.  Flip that over and you find that I trained well, executed my plan, worked hard and didn't give up.  Relatively I did very well.  But, relatively doesn't get you entry into next year's race.  How can I say that relatively I did well?  That's quite simple.  Since Boston is a seeded race all you need to do is to look at how you performed vis-à-vis your bib number.  For every finishing spot you beat your bib number by you finished better than someone who qualified with a better time than you did.  I beat my bib number by 6,595 places.  Even if you throw out the outliers it's obvious I had a much better day than many of my cohort.  It was my training, my execution and my pure stubbornness that enabled me to do so.  Part of me wonders just what I have to do to have a break out race at Boston.  Part of me wonders if I have anything left I can do.  Part of me wonders if maybe I just don't have the ability to pull it off anymore.  And, of course, part of me wonders why I care so much?  Really? What is it about this race that turns me into a neurotic mess once a year? Don't get me wrong, I didn't have a terrible race. I'm not jumping out the window with remorse.  I'm just stressed out, because I controlled everything I could, I did everything I could, and it still wasn't enough for Boston.  … Based on my training paces I should have hit my A goal of breaking 3:30 and should have easily hit my B goal of 3:35.  But that didn't happen.  I crossed that line with a hard fought 3:40:19.  I am beat up and sore.  I executed my plan but those training paces and that training fitness weren't enough for Boston. I worked hard.  I worked my plan.  And I never gave up.  I'm proud of the effort. There were times in this race where I was struggling and I was able to pull myself together, focus on the mile I was in, and keep racing.  It was probably the depth and quality of my training that allowed me to fight back.  A positive spin on it might be that without that training and execution it would have been a real train wreck.  … So here we are, Dear Reader, out of qualification.  As my training buddies and I joke there is not way to gracefully disengage from Boston. If you have a good race, you're qualified and might as well run.  If you don't you're pissed off and don't want to end on a down note.  Either way you're back on the neurotic Boston horse for another round. I signed up for the Vermont Cities Marathon at the end of May.  I'm going to take this training and go up there and get my qualification on a reasonable course that doesn't feel the need to demonstrate its dominance and extract its pound of flesh.  And, I'll see you out there.

Boston 2019 All in – my  21st Boston Marathon (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Boston2019.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - … I didn’t sleep great the night before.  Part of it was the driving rain and the thunder and lightning that shook the house.  Part of it was my ruminating brain.  You might think that having such a great training cycle would allow me to rest easy. But, no, it somehow raised the stakes.  My trusty subconscious was chattering away.  What if after all this work I managed to screw up the race? What if the weather was bad?  Of course I tied to let my big brain take over and talk myself down from the window ledge.  I am grateful to be here. Yeah.  I am happy to still be doing this 20+ years in?  Yeah.  I am blessed?  Yeah.  Blah, blah, blah… After 20 years you’d think I’d be able to rationalize.  Repetition doesn’t lower the stakes.  This is the Boston Marathon.  It matters to me.  I put in the work.  I qualify.  It matters.  It matters to me. … I rolled out of bed reasonably refreshed and put on my throw-away clothes.  With the lingering rain I didn’t want to wear my race stuff, especially my shoes.  Stay dry as long as possible.  I had time to take a nice shower and have a bit of breakfast.  A normal day at the Russell house.  My wife dropped me off at the local Starbucks where I caught a ride with some of the folks from my running club out to Hopkinton.  Without incident I hopped the spectator bus to downtown Hopkinton and made my way over to the senior center to join Eric and the St. Louis runners.  My second year of avoiding Athletes’ Village. Call me soft, but warm and dry with a bathroom beats ankle deep mud and a 45 minute porta-john line.  I stretched and rubbed and pre-gamed.  Got my race gear on and lubed up really well.  With the humidity and warmer temps I figured chaffing might be an issue.  I ran in my old Hoka Cliftons, split shorts and a race singlet.  Nothing fancy.  I wore the Boston Strong hat I had bought at the expo.  I felt like that was an appropriate message for my training cycle and my race plan.  Like Coach said in his pep talk to me;  it didn’t matter if it was 100 degrees or if there were 80 mile an hour winds.  I was not going to waste this training cycle.  No matter what happened I was committed.  I wasn’t giving myself any option to give up or to ease off.  No matter what I was all in.  I would control the only thing any of us really controls; my commitment to fight – to be strong.  We watched the early waves start on TV.  We saw the wheelchair finish, which seemed a bit strange to see people finish a race you are an hour away from starting.  In the room were several faster, red-bib, wave 2 runners.  That seemed to be the demographic in general.  Lots of fit, young, fast runners in Nike Vapor Fly’s and a handful of us old war horses.  Eric and I were in the same wave and corral.  3/3, which put us up the hill not far from the start line. Without hurry we made our way over when the time was right. … It’s an electric time.  Walking to the start of the Boston marathon.  If you could somehow drop an emotional energy meter into the center of Hopkinton Massachusetts it would be bouncing off the rails and maxing out.  Thousands of qualified athletes stepping into the culmination of their training cycles.  Each one a story of dedication and perseverance and, right now, in this very moment, at their emotional peak.  This is it.  The big test.  The qualification effort is well in the past.  The months of training and sacrifice all leading in an inevitable emotional march to this day and this moment.  The atmosphere buzzes like an electric field.  Eric and I made our way out of the senior center in the misty, post-rain, cool, overcast morning.  The sun was struggling to break through the remnants of the storms that had passed.  We walked the short trek to Main Street and the bottom of the hill where the first half of the corrals take a turn back towards athletes’ village. As we cleared security to access the melee of runners trying to find corrals I ran straight into Alett.  This is one of the alternate universe characteristics of Boston.  If you are trying to meet people on purpose, you can’t find them.  But, you randomly run into people you know, for no predictable or probable reason in the crowd of 30,000 athletes.  I gave her a hug.  We had a few words.  Eric and I continued our hike up the hill towards the start line to find our apportioned 3rd corral.  Corral 3 is close to the actual start line.  We got to the opening just before our wave start time and ended up in the back of the corral just as they pulled the ropes and the corral 4 runners flooded in to fill the gap.  And like that we were off again, bounding down the steep hill out of Hopkinton, heading towards another date with destiny.  … I went into my training cycle angry.  It was mid-October and I had just jogged off the course at Baystate after one lap.  I thought I would have the legs after that big training cycle volume over the summer training for the Burning River 100 mile ultra.  But, I could not hold the pace at Baystate and gave up.  There wasn’t a lot of urgency in that race.  I was already qualified.  I could run another if I wanted to.  I let my big brain rationalize me off the course.  Ultra-training was all about multi-hour runs in the trails.  Great for fitness, great for peace of mind, but not great for racing marathons.  While putting in those 90+ mile long training weeks I didn’t pay much attention to nutrition or flexibility.  I paid no attention to speed and tempo work.  Coming into the late summer I was tipping the scales in the mid-180’s.  That’s not obese for me, but it is some extra weight.  I have discovered that as I age, I’m losing body mass in general so my old race weights aren’t something I can compare against.  Instead I look at body fat % as a decent proxy for excess.  Late summer I was up in the 12-13% body fat.  The extra weight doesn’t matter when you’re ambling around in the woods, in fact it’s probably an advantage, but it sucks to carry when you’re trying to run fast circles on a track or hard charges up a hill.  Trying to tune up for that race in the fall I noticed that I really struggled with speed and tempo.  My legs weren’t cooperating.  My turnover was pathetic, and I had no pop.  That’s when I got a bit angry.  I knew I had work to do.  Talking with Coach, after the race, he convinced me to not try to race again and to focus on Boston, still 5 months in the future.  I committed, to get lean, to get healthy and to go into my 2019 Boston training cycle with a higher level of commitment.  To see what I could do.  Running a qualifying time has never been easy for me. I’m not that naturally talented athlete who glides by the standards.  I struggle and work to barely scrape by.  The BAA has helpfully lowered the standard by 10 minutes over the last few years and that struggle to scrape by is even more scrapier.  I need to meet the same standard today as I did two age groups ago.  And so it began…I worked my diet and worked my plan through the holidays.  Dropping those first 10 pounds and working daily on my tight hamstrings and quads.  I came into this training cycle lean and fit.  By the end of this cycle I was hovering around 170 pounds and 9% body fat.  I was getting good sleep and I was healthy.  Bringing this health into my training cycle enabled me to hit paces I haven’t seen in 10 years. It enabled me to attack workouts that I would have walked away from in previous cycles.  I had the quality, if not the volume, I needed to do well.  Like I said.  I’m quite proud of this training cycle.  I feel like it was a major lifestyle change for me.  I’m also cognizant of the fact that I’m not a 20-year-old (or a 30-year-old…or a 40-year-old) anymore and this kind of intensity may not be the best choice for longevity in this sport.  … I was dead set on sticking to my plan.  I was not going to go out too fast.  I was going to stick to 8 minute miles or slower.  My strategy was to make it through the hills with enough juice left to close the race. Maybe it was because we started at the back of the corral, but it seemed very crowded in the beginning.  We crossed the first mile mark at somewhere around an 8:24 pace, successfully resisting the pull of the hills.  Again, from the random encounter files, Frank, one of my training partners tapped me on the shoulder and congratulated me for not going out too fast.  I was glad to see him, but I turned around and he was gone, running his own race.  I say ‘somewhere around an 8:24 pace’ because my Garmin was off the mile marks from the start and got worse as the race progressed.  I ended up off my 3 tenths of a mile.  Which is a lot.  It’s close to 3 minutes discrepancy at the finish.  The next few miles brought our average down to right around 8:03 official at the first 5Kmark.  Which was right where I wanted to be.  We were running smart.  According to the official BAA timers we were right on our target splits. At 5K and at 10K. My legs didn’t feel great.  There have been times at Boston that early in the race I can feel that ‘pop’ in my legs.  This wasn’t one of those.  I knew it was going to be a work day, but I was committed to the work.  I wasn’t going to waste this training.  No matter what I was going to work my plan – all the way.  The race felt very crowded this year, especially in the water stops.  People were bumping and pushing and getting knocked off pace in those early tables.   Eric started grumbling about it ‘not being his day’ but I pushed back and said all we have to do is hold this pace and get to the top of that hill.  Hold this pace and make it to the top of Heartbreak.  That’s the plan and I was working my plan – come hell or high water – all in.  We were taking water at every aid station because it was a bit warmer than it should have been and we wanted to stay ahead of it.  I got a couple endurolytes down at around the 10K point.  It was still overcast and wasn’t uncomfortable.  I had a couple gels with me that I had tried to pin to the waistline of my shorts.  I had no ither way to carry them, except in my hands.  I was going to tuck them inside my shorts but that didn’t feel right so I let them hang outside and flop around.  At one point I had a guy say “You’re going to lose those gels” and one did break free, but I got the other one through the first hour and choked it down.  With the warmer weather I was a bit concerned about my gut.  I knew I had to stay on top of the water and fuel but by doing so also risked nausea from too much.  Again, when you’re racing at your threshold pace your body doesn’t like to digest stuff too.  Some where before the 10-mile mark I turned around and Eric was gone.  Off to run his own race.  Now I had to pace myself and execute my plan.  Through the half I was right on pace, with even a couple faster miles.  According to my watch I was a bit faster than the race splits and that difference would end up being significant.  My watch splits were probably 5 seconds a mile off my race clock splits.  We pulled through Wellesley and the scream tunnel.  I stayed to the middle of the road to not get tangled up.  I remember seeing some young men mixed in with the Coeds and hoping this wasn’t a trend.  I was pacing a couple guys around my age who looked like they were on the same mission.  But, one of them had this annoying habit of going much faster on the downhills and I moved on.  Somewhere around Wellesley the clouds cleared and the full sun came out.  Not terribly warm, but full sun, calm and around 70.  … The weather was a big story this year at Boston as it usually is.  It wasn’t a major issue, but it was a big story.  A week out it was forecast to be raging thunderstorms, rain and wind like we had last year.  The race officials moved up the wave 4 start to get people out of athletes’ village and onto the course a bit sooner.  As the race got closer the forecast changed to 60’s, rain and significant tailwind.  This forecast held right up to the race.  The only thing that changed as the days clicked by was that the temperatures were predicted to creep up to close to 70.  Still, drizzly with a stiff tail wind sounded pretty good to me.  The dynamic was, as it usually is, that Boston is the last stop for any storm train that rolls across the country.  Typically, these come through in waves, or fronts.  When you look at a weather forecast for New England it really depends on where these storm fronts are, how fast they are moving and what’s on either side.  That’s why this year was so squirrely.  We had two energetic systems sweeping across the country and as good as our weather technology is it’s a guess as to when the fronts show up and when they leave.  The first traveler was a warm front with tropical downpours.  Then on the heels of that one was a cold front with another line of rain and high winds.  This is all in the same 24 hour period.  Depending on a couple hours or a shift in the storm path you could get rain, wind, warm, cold or sunny skies and/or calm.  That’s why you’ll hear people say they got all 4 seasons during the race this year.  That’s why, even the night before, we didn’t know what we were getting.  What we ended up getting was the tropical storm early with lots of rain, warm temps and wind.  That’s what woke me up the night before.  As the out of town runners made their way out on the buses to Athetes’ village they had to deal with these tropical downpours, thunder and lightning.  As the waves started to go off this weather calmed and it was overcast, wet and calm.  Still this early rain turned the Hopkinton Highschool fields in athletes’ village into a medieval mud bath again for the waiting athletes.  By the time my wave, wave 3 went off it was overcast, warmish and humid with very little wind.  As I started the race in corral 3 wave 3 it was mid-60’s, calm, overcast and humid – not bad racing weather.  But, as we got into Wellesely and the hills in Newton the sun came out.  It was 70, full sun and no wind.  A bit warm for us but not horrible.  Ironically, after all the storms and dire forecasts, all the New Englanders got a touch of sunburn on their virgin skin.  Those poor people from out of town who packed their winter gear in anticipation of Armageddon got a nice, warm and sunny New England day.  Then that second front, the one with the rain and tailwinds, came through right after we finished. By the time I finished the clouds were coming in again.  It started raining and gusting walking to the hotel.  When I left for the train a couple hours later (after a shower and rehydrating) the temperature had dropped and there was a biting wind in the city.  All four seasons in one day.  The net result was, at least for we wave 2-3 runners, we hit the gap exactly between storm fronts and ran on a clear, windless, slightly too warm, spring day.  Did it impact my race?  I don’t know.  It was a bit warmer than I like and there was no tail wind.  It certainly didn’t help, and I’ve heard a lot of people blaming it, for poor performances, but it wasn’t awful.  Probably more of a convenient excuse than a causative factor. That’s Boston.  After the sun came out and we passed through the scream tunnel the next major landmark is the drop down into Newton Lower Falls and the start of the hills, with ‘hill zero’ climbing up over 128.  It was in this section where I started to feel a bit funky.  I had a classic power loss moment and it freaked me out.  This is too early in the race to be having power loss.  All those negative thoughts started swirling.  I shut them off and recommitted to fighting it all the way.  I took another gel and that did the trick.  I felt human again.  Just in time for the hills.  I worked my downhill form down the steep hill into Newton Lower Falls and refocused on getting to the top of Heartbreak.  I did great job of reeling my mind in.  Each time my head started to go sideways I would refocus on what I was doing right now.  My mantra became “Run the mile you’re in”.  And I kept working.  I lost 10 seconds or so on that slow mile but according to my watch I had a couple minutes in the bank for the hills so I wasn’t going to let up.  And that’s the trick at Boston.  How do you go fast enough in the beginning that you don’t fall behind your pace and have a bit of buffer for the hills, while at the same time not burning out your legs in the process?  I was right on my plan.  It was a work day but I was on my plan.  According to my watch I could give a couple minutes back and still make my time.  Maybe not my A goal but certainly my B goal. Hill zero was hard but manageable.  After you get over the highway they are handing our gels again so I grabbed on of those for later.  I was keeping my water intake up, but not really drinking much of the F2C I was carrying in my bottle.  Mostly because it was warm by now and my stomach was a bit nasty.  I couldn’t summon the energy to dig my Endurolytes out but figured I was getting enough from the gels and occasional sip from my bottle.  We turned by the Fire House and I was grinding away, staying on pace.  The uphills didn’t feel great but my downhill pace was nice a strong.  It was still work and I wasn’t having a great day but I thought I was managing it well.  I was running the mile I was in and focused on getting to the top of Heartbreak. Hill one wasn’t bad and I ran really well off the back of it to recover.  This was very positive for me because many years this is the spot where the race completely unravels.  Around 18 miles in before you even get to Heartbreak.  Hill 2 was a bit harder, but again I recovered well and ran smoothly on the back side.  Then we were into Heartbreak  I wasn’t looking at my watch anymore.  I was all in, working as well as I could and staying as close to pace as I could, looking to get to the top of that hill and reap the benefits of the downhills and flats into the finish.  I took a quick walk of the water table before entering the hill to get my head right and started to climb.  I raised my head and looked up that ½ mile climb and I got back to work. … My training and preparation were excellent.  The only blip was that I had a business conference in Chicago the final week of my taper going into the race.  I ate too much and drank too much beer, got bad sleep and spent way too much time on my feet.  That shouldn’t have been enough to unravel the total quality of my training, but it may have been one of the small factors influencing my race. My legs were a bit tight and I was a bit jetlagged and heavy as I rested out the weekend before the race.  Since I was flying back from Chicago Friday morning anyhow, I figured I’d swing by the expo and pick up my bib.  I usually go in Saturday, but this seemed convenient and I really wanted to get off my feet and rest for the remainder of the time I had left.  I dragged my travel bags onto the train and made my way over to the Hynes at the Pru for the expo.  There was no line at the bib pickup.  I cruised right through without breaking stride.  When I turned into the shirt pickup room there was a long line. Luckily, instead of just joining the line I asked someone what the line was for.  Apparently, it was for people to take a photo of themselves in front of a particular wall banner.  I skipped that line and cruised through shirt pickup without breaking stride.  There were people and family groups taking pictures all around with their bibs and shirts. There were people immediately taking the shirts out and trying them on for fit so they could exchange if necessary.  All these people were just so excited to be there.  They were clutching and fawning in the symbols and idolatry of the moment.  So many stories, all different, but all the same too.  They worked so hard to get here and now they were celebrating and in awe of the moment I made my way over to the expo.  This is where the crowds were. There was a veritable feeding frenzy at the Adidas official gear booth.  Crowds of runners pawing through the over-priced merch and a line to check out that would make Disney proud.  I didn’t see anything I liked.  I usually buy a hat, but all the racing hats had the logo as a stuck-on chunk of plastic, not stitched in, so I passed.  None of the shorts looked like anything I’d want to wear either, so I skipped that line too and moved on.  The Expo seemed smaller than usual.  A bit underwhelming and disappointing. There were the usual big shoe companies and such.  There was the theater showing the race course run through video which is always popular.   On the negative side there seemed to be a lot of ancillary, what I might call, “late night TV products”.  Various potions and devices guaranteed by someone to do something.  On the good side there were two beer booths.  The Sam Adams guys had a large presence and runners were happily consuming the 26.2 brew specially made for the race.  And Zelus, the beer for runners out of western Mass had a booth. I might suggest that they consider the expo at Boston as part of the character of the race and find a way to do better.  Maybe get people and products in that fit our lifestyle.  I’m sure it’s just a financial thing, they fill the space with whoever is willing to pay.  How about setting aside booth space for something more intrinsic to our demographic? How about authors?  Important charities? Or maybe to good races? Or maybe some science-based products?  Maybe I’m over thinking it. … My legs were pretty shitty at as I went into the ascent of Heartbreak.  Even after all those awesome sets of hill repeats I had donei n training I couldn’t find that gear, that energy and strength, so instead of slowing to a shuffle I switched to a fast-hike, run cadence, an ultra-running trick, to save my legs and not lose too much time.  My legs were really heavy and refused to climb well but I worked through to the top of the hill.  I figured that was my time buffer.  Now I had to hang on to close to race pace to have any chance of making my time.  Coming off the hill I relaxed and again had good downhill form and effort.  I felt comfortable.  I figured I was really close to my goal pace and just had to keep hitting it. I kept running the mile I was in.  I thought I carried a couple minute buffer at least into the hills, so even if I lost a minute or two, I would still be close.  The course started to take its toll on the runners.  The pack was looser here but runners would be stopping or weaving or sitting on the side of the road and you had to watch out or bump your way through.  I saw two runners being packed onto stretchers by EMTs.  I pushed on. In my head I thought I could just stay close.  All in.  keep fighting.  It was work.  I wasn’t terribly uncomfortable.  I was able to maintain close to goal pace on the downs and flats in the that last 10K.  I felt strong rolling down that hill with the train tracks into Cleveland Circle.  Then, I looked up to see the 24 mile sign, and, out of habit, looked at my watch.  My Garmin said almost exactly 3:20.  Even with my addled brain I could do the math.  I would have to run the last 2.21 miles in 15 minutes to get my time.  I had been battling to hold on to 8:10’s in these last miles, thinking I had some buffer.  But, battling as I was, there was no way I was going to lay down a couple sub-7:30’s at that point.  The wind came out of my sails.  I let my foot off the gas.  I reminded myself to lift my head up and look around.  The screaming crowds, the Citgo sign, the mile to go, the right on Herford, the left on Boylston.  The crowd on Boylston like a living, screaming animal pulling you in to the finish.  I let myself be in that moment.  I finished easy in 3:40:19 according to the BAA timer.  A full five minutes off my B goal time.  As near as I can figure, with my watch being so far off the race splits I did not have that 2-3 minute buffer going into the hills.  I probably only had 45 seconds to a minute.  When I lost those 2-3 minutes in the hills, combined with a couple slower miles where I was 5 or 10 seconds off pace at the end I was in the hole coming off Heartbreak.  I didn’t have the juice to negative split it in.  In those final miles where I was working to stay close to race pace I really needed to be negative splitting.  Of those 5 minutes I missed by, ½ of that is real and half of that is me taking my time to enjoy the last 2miles of the race. .. In these last few days since the race I struggle with how to write and talk about it.  I suppose that’s the defining characteristic of this race – that it refuses to play along and be categorized.  On the one hand I feel blessed and awed to be able to be part of this great thing.  On the other I have mixed feelings about how I haven’t had a great race there in almost a decade.  That’s why I like to let these things sit a bit before I try to write it up.  Let something that makes sense congeal into narrative and form.  Come to some sort of conclusion.  Some sort of tidy summary to stamp a smiley face on the report before turning it in for grading.  This week, since the race, I’ve been waking up early.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s the early rising sun of late spring.  Maybe it’s the damage in my legs.  Maybe it’s my unsettled mind.  I’m typically blessed with clarity in mornings so why not work on this report for you?  Let’s see if we can’t benefit from an early release of green, fresh thoughts still weeping sap from the fresh cuts. … The summary statement, if one can ever summarize a Boston Marathon race, is I’m happy with my training effort, I’m happy with my racing effort, I think I executed my plan well, but I’m a bit disappointed with my results.  Here are the two sides of that coin; I missed my A goal by 10 minutes, and I missed my B goal by 5 minutes.  Now I’m out of qualification.  Flip that over and you find that I trained well, executed my plan, worked hard and didn’t give up.  Relatively I did very well.  But, relatively doesn’t get you entry into next year’s race.  How can I say that relatively I did well?  That’s quite simple.  Since Boston is a seeded race all you need to do is to look at how you performed vis-à-vis your bib number.  For every finishing spot you beat your bib number by you finished better than someone who qualified with a better time than you did.  I beat my bib number by 6,595 places.  Even if you throw out the outliers it’s obvious I had a much better day than many of my cohort.  It was my training, my execution and my pure stubbornness that enabled me to do so.  Part of me wonders just what I have to do to have a break out race at Boston.  Part of me wonders if I have anything left I can do.  Part of me wonders if maybe I just don’t have the ability to pull it off anymore.  And, of course, part of me wonders why I care so much?  Really? What is it about this race that turns me into a neurotic mess once a year? Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have a terrible race. I’m not jumping out the window with remorse.  I’m just stressed out, because I controlled everything I could, I did everything I could, and it still wasn’t enough for Boston.  … Based on my training paces I should have hit my A goal of breaking 3:30 and should have easily hit my B goal of 3:35.  But that didn’t happen.  I crossed that line with a hard fought 3:40:19.  I am beat up and sore.  I executed my plan but those training paces and that training fitness weren’t enough for Boston. I worked hard.  I worked my plan.  And I never gave up.  I’m proud of the effort. There were times in this race where I was struggling and I was able to pull myself together, focus on the mile I was in, and keep racing.  It was probably the depth and quality of my training that allowed me to fight back.  A positive spin on it might be that without that training and execution it would have been a real train wreck.  … So here we are, Dear Reader, out of qualification.  As my training buddies and I joke there is not way to gracefully disengage from Boston. If you have a good race, you’re qualified and might as well run.  If you don’t you’re pissed off and don’t want to end on a down note.  Either way you’re back on the neurotic Boston horse for another round. I signed up for the Vermont Cities Marathon at the end of May.  I’m going to take this training and go up there and get my qualification on a reasonable course that doesn’t feel the need to demonstrate its dominance and extract its pound of flesh.  And, I’ll see you out there.

The 2018 Boston Marathon The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast– Boston 2018  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Boston2018.mp3] Link   We are near the ‘one-mile-to-go' marker.  Eric says something about one more hill.  The crowds are thicker and more enthusiastic than they should be, but this is Boston.  The spectators take it as seriously as the runners.  A multi-colored sea of umbrellas lines the road and the encouragement is loud enough to rise above the storm.  Because it is the Boston Marathon, and this is our race.  I am slowed but not walking.  Eric has those ultra-marathon legs and is pulling me.  If he wasn't there I might, I just might, take a walk break.  But I don't.  And we grind on.  … This race has ground me down but has not beaten me.  The rain continues to come in sheets and stand-you-up blasts of cold wind.  It is a din of squishing footfalls and the wet-plastic scrunching of ponchos, trash bags and rain coats.  All cadenced by the constant buffet and roar of wind-driven rain smashing into humans.  That one more hill Eric is talking about is not really a hill.  But I know what he means.  It's Eric's 10th Boston and he has decided to run it in with me even though my pace has deteriorated in these last 2 miles as my legs lose the battle to this Boston course.  I will not stop.  It's my 20th Boston so I remember when they added this underpass to avoid a road crossing many years ago.  I remember the old days of looking ahead and wishing with all my heart to see the runners disappearing to the right onto Hereford Street.  Now we looked ahead to see the moving tide of storm shattered humans jog left and dip under and out the other side.  We don't walk or slow our grimly purposed grind through the storm.  We rise out of the underpass.  Shifting to avoid the walkers or stumblers, or just having to jostle through yet another weaving, wet, exhausted, human-trash-bag blasted into our personal space by the gusty rain.  There is not much antipathy left for these wayward castaways.  An elbow, a shoulder, a tired shove and we all keep moving. It's like being inside a washing machine filled with ponchos and rain gear with a cold firehose turned on you at the same time.  We all just want to finish.   Ironically I feel a tail wind slap me on the back as we grind up Hereford.  The only tail wind on the course.  Maybe a bit insulting. Too little, too late. Eric says his family is in the crowd somewhere up by the turn onto Bolyston and I grudgingly grind a wide tangent as he searches the crowd.  Nothing against his family but I don't think I'd stop here to see God if he were behind the barrier.  The pull of that finish line is too strong, and I'm exhausted from 3-plus hours of pummeling rain and wind and cold.  Typically, in a rainy race people will strip out of their protective clothing in the first few miles as they warm up.  Not today.  They never warmed up.  But now, as they approach the finish line and the anticipated succor of hotel rooms and hot showers they begin to shed their rain carapaces en masse.  For the last 10 miles I have been looking out the 6-inch circle of my found poncho's hood.  Now as I pull it back and look down Bolyston it is an apocalyptic scene.  Usually in high wind situations the discarded rain ponchos and trash bags will blow across the course like dangerous plastic tumbleweeds to tangle the runners' legs or lodge in the fencing.  Not today.  The cold rain is so heavy that it plasters the detritus to the pavement like so many giant spit balls.  Through this apocalyptic landscape we grind out the last ¼ mile of this storied course.  There is not much of a sprint in my stride as we push through the timing mats.  I pull up the found poncho so the timers can see my number.  I'm still clutching my bottle in one cold-cramped claw.  I never finished my drink. I'm not sure I could let go of it if I wanted to.  My hands ceased to function as hands more than an hour ago.  Grimacing we finish.  Around us runners throw their arms up in celebration.  The look on their faces is a combination of triumph, relief and disbelief.  They have survived the worst weather that Boston has ever offered up.  They got it done on a day that was at once horrible and at the same time the most epic journey in a marathon most will ever experience. And not just any marathon.  The Boston Marathon.  They lived to tell the tales, and this one will be talked about for decades. … I was wrong.  I thought I had seen everything and raced in every type of weather.  I have never seen anything like this.  The closest I have come was the last leg of the Hood to Coast Relay in 2016.  I had the same 30 mph head wind with the same driving rain.  But the difference that day in Oregon was that the rain was a few degrees warmer and I wasn't going 26.2 miles on one of the hardest marathon courses. I have experience.  I ran my Boston PR in '98 in a cold drizzle.  I rather enjoyed the Nor'easter of '07. I had a fine day in the rain of 2015.  Friday , as the race was approaching, when we knew what the weather was shaping up to be I wrote a blog post to calm people down.  In that post I said not to worry too much, it's never as bad on the course as the hype makes it out to be.  I said that the cooler temps were good for racing if you could stay out of the wind.  I mollified the nervous by noting that in the mid-pack there are thousands of people to draft with.  I cautioned against wearing too much rain gear as it would catch the wind and slow you down.  Instead, I recommended, wear a few layers to trap the heat. I was wrong.  I have never seen anything like this. … Most races would have canceled or delayed in the face of this type of weather.  Not Boston.  This type of weather at Chicago would have resulted in a humanitarian crises on the scale of an ill-timed tsunami rising out of Lake Michigan.  This weather at New York would have driven the runners and spectators into emergency shelters. Not the Boston Marathon.  This old dame of a foot race has been continuously pitting the best runners in the world against each other for  122 years.  This race is part of our cultural fabric.  It's special.  We don't stop for weather.  It's too important to us to stop for anything.  I remember emailing Dave McGillivray from a business trip in the days before the 2007 race as the Nor'easter bore down on New England.  I asked him if the reports were true, that they were considering canceling the race?  He responded matter of factly that he didn't know about anybody else but he was going to be there.  It's not bravado or false courage.  It's a mindset that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.  The organization, the athletes, the cities and towns and the spectators are all in it together.  Together, on Monday, we all screwed up our grit and ran our race despite what wrath nature decided to unpack for us. The athletes who run Boston are not the type to give up.  They have earned the right to be there.  Either by qualifying or working to raise thousands of dollars.  This is not the one-and-done bucket list crowd.  This is a cohort of seasoned endurance athletes who have trained hard and long over many years to get here.  If they skipped runs for bad weather they would never have made it to the start in Hopkinton.  … For the first time ever I decided to skip the Athlete's village in Hopkinton.  From past experience I knew it was going to be a mess.  Based on the reports I have from other runners it was like a medieval battlefield scene.  The athletic fields turned into ankle deep mud under the marching of 30,000 runners.  Athletes struggled to find shelter under the tents.  Some crawled under vehicles in the parking lot in an attempt to get out of the elements.  It was already raining and blowing hard as the day broke in Hopkinton.  The temperatures struggled to find 40 degrees.  There was no good place to be.  It was a mess.  There was no way to stay dry.  Waiting around to be called to the corrals runners started to accumulate a core temperature loss that would haunt them throughout the race.  The organization did the best they could but it was miserable and chaotic.  I avoided it.  My youngest daughter offered to drop me off in Hopkinton and I took the spectator bus downtown (instead of the athlete bus to the Village).  Seeing what the conditions would be, I took Eric's offer of safe harbor at Betty's place.  It's a long story, a Boston story, and it goes like this…  A long time ago, a family from St. Louis owned a home in Hopkinton.  They started a tradition of hosting the visiting Missouri runners in that home.  Eventually that family from St. Louis sold the home to Betty's Family.  They continued the tradition and this is where Eric, one of my running buddies, who is from St. Louis, has been sheltering before his Boston Marathons.  This year, Betty has sold the house and moved into a senior center, right next to the start.  She arranged to have the center's hall open to the Missouri runners.  I joined a dozen or so gathered there in the warmth, replete with food and drink and good nature to wait for the start.  We didn't know how lucky we were to have this safe harbor.  Around 10:30 Eric, another runner and I made our goodbyes and started walking to the corrals.  We walked out into the storm.  We were ostensibly in wave 3 corral 3 but were soon to find out that much of the rigorous Boston starting procedure had been blown out the window.  I made them stop at the big porta-potty farm on Main Street.  I took my dry race shoes, socks and hat out of their bag and wiggled into them in the cramped plastic box.  Ready to race.  I tossed the sweat pants, old shoes and ski hat to the volunteer who was stuffing soggy cast offs frantically into a rattling plastic bag. I have raced and run in all kinds of weather.  I generally know what to do and how to dress.  Monday I dressed for racing in a 35-40 degree rainy day.  I had trained in much colder weather.  I wasn't expecting this day to be too cold, especially once we started racing and warmed up.  The only real risk was at the end of the race.  If we were forced to walk or slow down we might get chilled.  I dressed based on my experience from 19 previous Boston Marathons and 60+ marathons over the last 25 years.  And I was wrong. I wore a new pair of high-cut race shorts that I bought at the expo.  I have a rule of thumb, especially after a winter training campaign, 35 and above is shorts weather.  We were close to but above that line.  I slipped on a thin pair of calf sleeves in deference to possible wind chill and rain.  Calf sleeves are good compromise between shorts and tights if the weather is on the line and add additional protection against cramping on cold days.  For the top I added a layer to what I would usually wear.  I had a thin tech tee shirt that I had made into a tank by cutting off the sleeves as my base layer.  On top of that I wore a high-quality long sleeve tech tee I got from Asics for the 2014 NYC race and on top of that my Squannacook singlet with the bib number.  People forget that the bib number is waterproof and wind proof and helps keep your core warm.  Three layers plus the oversized bib should keep the core warm.  I wore a pair of tech gloves that were designed for this in-between type weather.  You wouldn't want to wear these when the temps got below freezing but they usually work well in the in-between temps.  I topped it off with a simple Boston race hat from 2017.  That's the same scheme I've used in countless 35-40 degree rainy runs. I was wrong. Mentally I was prepared.  I've been doing this too long to worry about things I can't change.  I was happy to not have another hot year.  I had had a decent training cycle and my fitness was good.  I had avoided injury except for a minor niggle in my high left hamstring.  I was ready to race.  I slept well.  I was ready to respect Boston. I was wrong.  This was a different thing.  This was different than anything I had ever raced in.  … 65 seconds.  That's how long Eric said it took me to poop at mile 9.  I knew those porta-potties were there in the parking lot across from the reservoir.  I have used them in previous years.  I told Eric I wanted to stop.  We had come to the conclusion that today wasn't the best racing weather by that point.  We had been holding race pace fairly consistently up to that point down out of Hopkinton and into the flats of Ashland and Natick.  I didn't feel horrible, but I didn't feel great either.  I was worried about spending too much and getting caught at the end.  My effort level was good, but a little high.  My heart rate was good.  But I weirdly felt like I was burning energy faster than normal.  I could feel the energy I was expending fighting the storm.  Our ability to draft had been minimalized.  With the gusting wind and driving rain runners were having trouble staying in their lanes.  Even if you could get on someone's shoulder that just meant you were in the wettest part of the road.  The runners you were trying to draft stuck to the dry crown of the road and in order to get into their shadow you had to run in the water filled wheel paths.  Even a veteran like me, who knows the course, couldn't make good tangent decisions as runners weaved and wobbled in the storm.  My watch says I ran an extra ¼ mile.  People were running in all kinds of rain gear in an attempt to stay the effect of the tempest.  Shoes wrapped in bags tied at the ankles, runners clutching space blanket fragments, trash bags, ponchos and even shower caps that they had stolen from their hotels.  All bets were off. I wanted to slow down and drop off of race pace to conserve energy I knew a forced break was a good psychological way of doing this.  Anyone who has raced with me knows that I will keep repeating things like “we have to back it off” but for some reason struggle to put this sentiment into execution.  A potty break would be a good reset. Once we had the race monkey off our backs Eric and I settled into a reasonable pace and looked up ahead to anticipate the girls and the hills.  I wasn't feeling great but it wasn't critical.  I didn't really know if I needed to be drinking more or how nutrition should work in this weather.  I told Eric it was now a fun run and he said “Anything under four hours is good”. We ran on through Natick and Framingham.  Eric turned to me and asked, was that the ½?  I said I think it was.  They hadn't put up the arch that has been there in recent years due to the wind and we almost missed it.  Eric kept marveling at the spectators.  He kept repeating ‘these people are the real story'.  He was amazed that they were still out in force lining the course and cheering.  The spectators at Boston take it as seriously as the runners.  If I could turn my head in the final miles I would see the incongruent, multi-colored sea of umbrellas lining the. route  The spectators at Boston are not spectators, they are partners, or rather part owners, with the athletes.  Coming down the hill out of Hopkinton there were a couple of kids in bathing suits frolicking in a front yard.  One guy was wearing a mask and snorkel.  There are countless stories of spectators tying shoes and helping runners with food and nutrition when the athletes hands were too cold to work anymore.  One out of town runner, in a fit of hypothermia went to the crowd looking for a spare rain poncho and got the nice LL Bean rain coat freely off a mans back so he could finish the race.  In some ways it reminded me of 2013 when the people of Boston came together to help each other overcome adversity.  It's been five years but our spirit is still Boston Strong.  We ran on through to Wellesley staying on a good pace but trying to recover enough for the hills.  Other years you can hear the girls at Wellesley College screaming from a mile away.  This year the hard rain damped the sound until we were almost on top pf them.  They were out there.  They were hanging over their fence imploring the shivering runners with kisses and high-fives.  Eric and I ran through smiling as always.  Even though my energy was low I drifted over and slapped as many wet hands as I could.  … Coming into mile 15 some combination of our slower pace and the increasing ferocity of the storm started to get the better of me.  I could feel my core temperature dropping.  I was working but I couldn't keep up.  How did this happen?  How could someone with my experience get it wrong?  Why was this different from any other cold rain run?  It was, in a sense, the perfect storm.  The perfect combination of physics, fluid dynamics and temperature conspired to create a near perfect heat sink for the runners.  The wind, on its own, was just a strong wind.  The rain on its own was just a hard rain.  The temperature on its own was just another spring day.  But the combination pulled heat out of your body faster than you could make more. The volume of rain driven by the winds penetrated through my hat and washed the heat from my head.  The same cold rain drove through the three layers of my shirts and washed the heat from my core.  My gloves filled with cold water and my hands went numb.  When I made a fist water would pour out like squeezing a wet sponge.  The rain and wind was constant but would also come in big waves.  We'd be running along and a surge in the storm would knock us sideways or backwards like being surprised by a maniac with a water cannon.  I would stumble and lean into it and mutter “Holy shit storm!” or “Holy Cow Bells!” Really just to recognize and put words on the abuse.  The wind was directly in our faces.  The rain was directly in our faces.  The whole time.  We never got out of it.  There would be lulls but then it would return with one of those smack-you-in-the-face hose downs.  My shoulder and back muscles were sore from leaning into it.  I was having difficulty drinking from my bottle because I couldn't squeeze my hand hard enough.  I resorted to holding it between two hands and pushing together between them.  People reported not having the hand strength to take their nutrition or even pull their shorts up after a potty stop.  I was starting to go hypothermic and my mind searched for a plan.  Eric knew I was struggling.  I started scanning the road for discarded gear I could use.  The entire length of the course was strewn with gear.  I saw expensive gloves and hats and coats of all descriptions.  We passed by an expensive fuel belt at one point that someone had given up on.  Eric knew I was suffering and I told him I was going to grab a discarded poncho if I could find one.  As if on cue a crumpled orange poncho came into view on the sidewalk to our left and I stopped to retrieve it.  Eric helped me wriggle into it.  It was rather tight, and that was a good thing.  It was probably a woman's.  It clung tightly to my torso and had a small hood that captured my head and hat without much luffing in the wind.  It's at this point that Eric says I was a new man.  I may not have been a new man but the poncho trapped enough heat to reverse the hypothermia and we got back to work.  By now we were running down into Newton Lower Falls and looking up, over the highway at the Hills.  Eric said, “We're not walking the hills.” I said, “OK” and we were all business.  We slowed down but we kept moving through the first hill.  I focused not on running but on falling. Falling forward and catching myself with my feet.  Hips forward.  Lift and place the foot.  Not running just falling. The hood of the poncho was narrow.  I had an enforced tunnel vision, but it was somehow comforting, like a blinders on a race horse.  I could see Eric's blue shoes appear now and then on my right, or on my left.  I settled into my own, little, six-inch oval of reality and worked through the hills.  Other runners would cross my field of vision and I'd bump through them.  I was in the groove.  I don't know why but people's pacing was all over the place during the race.  It might have been the wind or the hypothermia addled brains but they were weaving all over the road.  I had to slam on my brakes for random stoppages the entire race.  Eventually I just ran through them as best I could.  I didn't have the energy to stop.  This kind of behavior is unusual at Boston in the seeded corrals, but the whole day was unusual. I think the relative chaos of the start may have had something to do with it. When we got to the corrals they had ceased worrying about protocol and were just waving runners through.  If you wanted to bandit Boston this year or cheat, Monday would have been the day to do it.  But you also might have died in the process, so there's that.  We got through the chutes and over the start mats without any formal starting ceremony.  The flood gates were open, so to speak.  Because of this I think the pacing was a bit strange at the start and we passed a lot of people.  I was racing and Eric was doing his best to hold me back.  We chewed through the downhill section of the course with gusto.  Given the conditions we were probably too fast, but not suicidal.  Both of us have run Boston enough times to be smart every once in a while.  We were holding a qualifying pace fairly well and trying to draft where we could.  Eric had to pull off and have someone tie his shoe but I stayed in my lane and he caught up.  We rolled through the storm this way until I realized this was not a day to race and we had to conserve our energy if we wanted to finish.  We metered our efforts and this budgeting process culminated in the voluntary pit stop at mile 9. … In Newton between the hills we'd focus on pulling back and recovering enough for the next one.  Eric had a friend volunteering at mile 19 who we stopped to say ‘hi' to.  We were slow but we were moving forward.  We reached a point of stasis.  Every now and then Eric would pull out his video camera and try to capture the moment.  I was thinking sarcastically to myself how wonderful it would be to have video of my tired, wet self hunched inside the poncho like a soggy Quasimodo. I had brought a bottle of a new electrolyte drink called F2C with me.  It was ok but because of the cold I wasn't drinking much.  I knew my hands couldn't get to the Endurolytes in my shorts pocket.  I had enough sense to worry about keeping the cramps away.  I managed to choke down a few of the Cliff Gels they had on the course just to get some calories, and hopefully some electrolytes.  Eric and I continued to drive through the hills.  I miss-counted and thought we'd missed HeartBreak in the Bedlam.  With the thinner crowds I could see the contours of the course and knew we had one more big one before the ride down into Boston.  We successfully navigated through the rain up Heartbreak and Eric made a joke about there being no inspirational chalk drawings on the road this year.  Eric was happy.  He had wrecked himself on the hills in previous races and my slow, steady progress had helped him meter himself.  With those ultra-marathon trained legs he was now ready to celebrate and took off down the hill.  I tried my best to stay with him but the hamstring pull in my left leg constrained my leg extension and it hurt a bit.  I was happy to jog it in but he still had juice.  I told him to run his race, I'd be ok, secretly wishing he'd go so I could take some walk breaks without a witness, but he refused.  He said “We started this together and we're going to finish together.”  OK Buddy, but I'm not running any faster.  I watched his tall yellow frame pull ahead a few meters though the last 10K, but he would always pull up and wait for me to grind on through. And so we ground out against the storm and into the rain and wind blasts through the final miles.  In my mind I never once thought, “This is terrible!” or “This bad weather is ruining my race!”  All I was thinking is how great it was to get to be a part of something so epic that we would be talking about for years to come.  The glory points we notched for running this one, for surviving it and for doing decently well considering – that far outweighed any whining about the weather. This type of thing brings out the best in people.  It brought out the grit in me and the other finishers.  It brought out the challenges for those 2700 or so people who were forced to seek medical treatment.  That's about 10% of those who started.  It brought out the best in Desi Linden who gutted out a 2:39 to be the first American winner 33 years.  In fact it brought out the best in the next 5 female finishers, all of whom were relative unkowns.  The top 7 women were 6 Americans and one 41 year old Canadian who came in 3rd.  No East Africans to be seen.  The day brought out the best in Yuki Kawauchi from Japan who ground past Kenyan champ Geoffrey Kirui in the final miles.  It was an epic day for epic athletes and I am glad to have been a part of it.  I am grateful that this sport continues to surprise me and teach me and humble me.  I am full of gratitude to be part of this race that pushes us so hard to be better athletes, to earn the right to join our heroes on this course.  I am humbled to have friends in this community, like Eric, who can be my wing men (and wing-ladies) when the storms come. I am thankful for that day in 1997 when a high school buddy said, “Hey, why don't we run the marathon?”  Those 524 miles of Boston over the last 20 years hold a lot of memories.  This race has changed me for the better and I'm thankful for the opportunity.

The 2018 Boston Marathon The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast– Boston 2018  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Boston2018.mp3] Link   We are near the ‘one-mile-to-go’ marker.  Eric says something about one more hill.  The crowds are thicker and more enthusiastic than they should be, but this is Boston.  The spectators take it as seriously as the runners.  A multi-colored sea of umbrellas lines the road and the encouragement is loud enough to rise above the storm.  Because it is the Boston Marathon, and this is our race.  I am slowed but not walking.  Eric has those ultra-marathon legs and is pulling me.  If he wasn’t there I might, I just might, take a walk break.  But I don’t.  And we grind on.  … This race has ground me down but has not beaten me.  The rain continues to come in sheets and stand-you-up blasts of cold wind.  It is a din of squishing footfalls and the wet-plastic scrunching of ponchos, trash bags and rain coats.  All cadenced by the constant buffet and roar of wind-driven rain smashing into humans.  That one more hill Eric is talking about is not really a hill.  But I know what he means.  It’s Eric’s 10th Boston and he has decided to run it in with me even though my pace has deteriorated in these last 2 miles as my legs lose the battle to this Boston course.  I will not stop.  It’s my 20th Boston so I remember when they added this underpass to avoid a road crossing many years ago.  I remember the old days of looking ahead and wishing with all my heart to see the runners disappearing to the right onto Hereford Street.  Now we looked ahead to see the moving tide of storm shattered humans jog left and dip under and out the other side.  We don’t walk or slow our grimly purposed grind through the storm.  We rise out of the underpass.  Shifting to avoid the walkers or stumblers, or just having to jostle through yet another weaving, wet, exhausted, human-trash-bag blasted into our personal space by the gusty rain.  There is not much antipathy left for these wayward castaways.  An elbow, a shoulder, a tired shove and we all keep moving. It’s like being inside a washing machine filled with ponchos and rain gear with a cold firehose turned on you at the same time.  We all just want to finish.   Ironically I feel a tail wind slap me on the back as we grind up Hereford.  The only tail wind on the course.  Maybe a bit insulting. Too little, too late. Eric says his family is in the crowd somewhere up by the turn onto Bolyston and I grudgingly grind a wide tangent as he searches the crowd.  Nothing against his family but I don’t think I’d stop here to see God if he were behind the barrier.  The pull of that finish line is too strong, and I’m exhausted from 3-plus hours of pummeling rain and wind and cold.  Typically, in a rainy race people will strip out of their protective clothing in the first few miles as they warm up.  Not today.  They never warmed up.  But now, as they approach the finish line and the anticipated succor of hotel rooms and hot showers they begin to shed their rain carapaces en masse.  For the last 10 miles I have been looking out the 6-inch circle of my found poncho’s hood.  Now as I pull it back and look down Bolyston it is an apocalyptic scene.  Usually in high wind situations the discarded rain ponchos and trash bags will blow across the course like dangerous plastic tumbleweeds to tangle the runners’ legs or lodge in the fencing.  Not today.  The cold rain is so heavy that it plasters the detritus to the pavement like so many giant spit balls.  Through this apocalyptic landscape we grind out the last ¼ mile of this storied course.  There is not much of a sprint in my stride as we push through the timing mats.  I pull up the found poncho so the timers can see my number.  I’m still clutching my bottle in one cold-cramped claw.  I never finished my drink. I’m not sure I could let go of it if I wanted to.  My hands ceased to function as hands more than an hour ago.  Grimacing we finish.  Around us runners throw their arms up in celebration.  The look on their faces is a combination of triumph, relief and disbelief.  They have survived the worst weather that Boston has ever offered up.  They got it done on a day that was at once horrible and at the same time the most epic journey in a marathon most will ever experience. And not just any marathon.  The Boston Marathon.  They lived to tell the tales, and this one will be talked about for decades. … I was wrong.  I thought I had seen everything and raced in every type of weather.  I have never seen anything like this.  The closest I have come was the last leg of the Hood to Coast Relay in 2016.  I had the same 30 mph head wind with the same driving rain.  But the difference that day in Oregon was that the rain was a few degrees warmer and I wasn’t going 26.2 miles on one of the hardest marathon courses. I have experience.  I ran my Boston PR in ’98 in a cold drizzle.  I rather enjoyed the Nor’easter of ’07. I had a fine day in the rain of 2015.  Friday , as the race was approaching, when we knew what the weather was shaping up to be I wrote a blog post to calm people down.  In that post I said not to worry too much, it’s never as bad on the course as the hype makes it out to be.  I said that the cooler temps were good for racing if you could stay out of the wind.  I mollified the nervous by noting that in the mid-pack there are thousands of people to draft with.  I cautioned against wearing too much rain gear as it would catch the wind and slow you down.  Instead, I recommended, wear a few layers to trap the heat. I was wrong.  I have never seen anything like this. … Most races would have canceled or delayed in the face of this type of weather.  Not Boston.  This type of weather at Chicago would have resulted in a humanitarian crises on the scale of an ill-timed tsunami rising out of Lake Michigan.  This weather at New York would have driven the runners and spectators into emergency shelters. Not the Boston Marathon.  This old dame of a foot race has been continuously pitting the best runners in the world against each other for  122 years.  This race is part of our cultural fabric.  It’s special.  We don’t stop for weather.  It’s too important to us to stop for anything.  I remember emailing Dave McGillivray from a business trip in the days before the 2007 race as the Nor’easter bore down on New England.  I asked him if the reports were true, that they were considering canceling the race?  He responded matter of factly that he didn’t know about anybody else but he was going to be there.  It’s not bravado or false courage.  It’s a mindset that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.  The organization, the athletes, the cities and towns and the spectators are all in it together.  Together, on Monday, we all screwed up our grit and ran our race despite what wrath nature decided to unpack for us. The athletes who run Boston are not the type to give up.  They have earned the right to be there.  Either by qualifying or working to raise thousands of dollars.  This is not the one-and-done bucket list crowd.  This is a cohort of seasoned endurance athletes who have trained hard and long over many years to get here.  If they skipped runs for bad weather they would never have made it to the start in Hopkinton.  … For the first time ever I decided to skip the Athlete’s village in Hopkinton.  From past experience I knew it was going to be a mess.  Based on the reports I have from other runners it was like a medieval battlefield scene.  The athletic fields turned into ankle deep mud under the marching of 30,000 runners.  Athletes struggled to find shelter under the tents.  Some crawled under vehicles in the parking lot in an attempt to get out of the elements.  It was already raining and blowing hard as the day broke in Hopkinton.  The temperatures struggled to find 40 degrees.  There was no good place to be.  It was a mess.  There was no way to stay dry.  Waiting around to be called to the corrals runners started to accumulate a core temperature loss that would haunt them throughout the race.  The organization did the best they could but it was miserable and chaotic.  I avoided it.  My youngest daughter offered to drop me off in Hopkinton and I took the spectator bus downtown (instead of the athlete bus to the Village).  Seeing what the conditions would be, I took Eric’s offer of safe harbor at Betty’s place.  It’s a long story, a Boston story, and it goes like this…  A long time ago, a family from St. Louis owned a home in Hopkinton.  They started a tradition of hosting the visiting Missouri runners in that home.  Eventually that family from St. Louis sold the home to Betty’s Family.  They continued the tradition and this is where Eric, one of my running buddies, who is from St. Louis, has been sheltering before his Boston Marathons.  This year, Betty has sold the house and moved into a senior center, right next to the start.  She arranged to have the center’s hall open to the Missouri runners.  I joined a dozen or so gathered there in the warmth, replete with food and drink and good nature to wait for the start.  We didn’t know how lucky we were to have this safe harbor.  Around 10:30 Eric, another runner and I made our goodbyes and started walking to the corrals.  We walked out into the storm.  We were ostensibly in wave 3 corral 3 but were soon to find out that much of the rigorous Boston starting procedure had been blown out the window.  I made them stop at the big porta-potty farm on Main Street.  I took my dry race shoes, socks and hat out of their bag and wiggled into them in the cramped plastic box.  Ready to race.  I tossed the sweat pants, old shoes and ski hat to the volunteer who was stuffing soggy cast offs frantically into a rattling plastic bag. I have raced and run in all kinds of weather.  I generally know what to do and how to dress.  Monday I dressed for racing in a 35-40 degree rainy day.  I had trained in much colder weather.  I wasn’t expecting this day to be too cold, especially once we started racing and warmed up.  The only real risk was at the end of the race.  If we were forced to walk or slow down we might get chilled.  I dressed based on my experience from 19 previous Boston Marathons and 60+ marathons over the last 25 years.  And I was wrong. I wore a new pair of high-cut race shorts that I bought at the expo.  I have a rule of thumb, especially after a winter training campaign, 35 and above is shorts weather.  We were close to but above that line.  I slipped on a thin pair of calf sleeves in deference to possible wind chill and rain.  Calf sleeves are good compromise between shorts and tights if the weather is on the line and add additional protection against cramping on cold days.  For the top I added a layer to what I would usually wear.  I had a thin tech tee shirt that I had made into a tank by cutting off the sleeves as my base layer.  On top of that I wore a high-quality long sleeve tech tee I got from Asics for the 2014 NYC race and on top of that my Squannacook singlet with the bib number.  People forget that the bib number is waterproof and wind proof and helps keep your core warm.  Three layers plus the oversized bib should keep the core warm.  I wore a pair of tech gloves that were designed for this in-between type weather.  You wouldn’t want to wear these when the temps got below freezing but they usually work well in the in-between temps.  I topped it off with a simple Boston race hat from 2017.  That’s the same scheme I’ve used in countless 35-40 degree rainy runs. I was wrong. Mentally I was prepared.  I’ve been doing this too long to worry about things I can’t change.  I was happy to not have another hot year.  I had had a decent training cycle and my fitness was good.  I had avoided injury except for a minor niggle in my high left hamstring.  I was ready to race.  I slept well.  I was ready to respect Boston. I was wrong.  This was a different thing.  This was different than anything I had ever raced in.  … 65 seconds.  That’s how long Eric said it took me to poop at mile 9.  I knew those porta-potties were there in the parking lot across from the reservoir.  I have used them in previous years.  I told Eric I wanted to stop.  We had come to the conclusion that today wasn’t the best racing weather by that point.  We had been holding race pace fairly consistently up to that point down out of Hopkinton and into the flats of Ashland and Natick.  I didn’t feel horrible, but I didn’t feel great either.  I was worried about spending too much and getting caught at the end.  My effort level was good, but a little high.  My heart rate was good.  But I weirdly felt like I was burning energy faster than normal.  I could feel the energy I was expending fighting the storm.  Our ability to draft had been minimalized.  With the gusting wind and driving rain runners were having trouble staying in their lanes.  Even if you could get on someone’s shoulder that just meant you were in the wettest part of the road.  The runners you were trying to draft stuck to the dry crown of the road and in order to get into their shadow you had to run in the water filled wheel paths.  Even a veteran like me, who knows the course, couldn’t make good tangent decisions as runners weaved and wobbled in the storm.  My watch says I ran an extra ¼ mile.  People were running in all kinds of rain gear in an attempt to stay the effect of the tempest.  Shoes wrapped in bags tied at the ankles, runners clutching space blanket fragments, trash bags, ponchos and even shower caps that they had stolen from their hotels.  All bets were off. I wanted to slow down and drop off of race pace to conserve energy I knew a forced break was a good psychological way of doing this.  Anyone who has raced with me knows that I will keep repeating things like “we have to back it off” but for some reason struggle to put this sentiment into execution.  A potty break would be a good reset. Once we had the race monkey off our backs Eric and I settled into a reasonable pace and looked up ahead to anticipate the girls and the hills.  I wasn’t feeling great but it wasn’t critical.  I didn’t really know if I needed to be drinking more or how nutrition should work in this weather.  I told Eric it was now a fun run and he said “Anything under four hours is good”. We ran on through Natick and Framingham.  Eric turned to me and asked, was that the ½?  I said I think it was.  They hadn’t put up the arch that has been there in recent years due to the wind and we almost missed it.  Eric kept marveling at the spectators.  He kept repeating ‘these people are the real story’.  He was amazed that they were still out in force lining the course and cheering.  The spectators at Boston take it as seriously as the runners.  If I could turn my head in the final miles I would see the incongruent, multi-colored sea of umbrellas lining the. route  The spectators at Boston are not spectators, they are partners, or rather part owners, with the athletes.  Coming down the hill out of Hopkinton there were a couple of kids in bathing suits frolicking in a front yard.  One guy was wearing a mask and snorkel.  There are countless stories of spectators tying shoes and helping runners with food and nutrition when the athletes hands were too cold to work anymore.  One out of town runner, in a fit of hypothermia went to the crowd looking for a spare rain poncho and got the nice LL Bean rain coat freely off a mans back so he could finish the race.  In some ways it reminded me of 2013 when the people of Boston came together to help each other overcome adversity.  It’s been five years but our spirit is still Boston Strong.  We ran on through to Wellesley staying on a good pace but trying to recover enough for the hills.  Other years you can hear the girls at Wellesley College screaming from a mile away.  This year the hard rain damped the sound until we were almost on top pf them.  They were out there.  They were hanging over their fence imploring the shivering runners with kisses and high-fives.  Eric and I ran through smiling as always.  Even though my energy was low I drifted over and slapped as many wet hands as I could.  … Coming into mile 15 some combination of our slower pace and the increasing ferocity of the storm started to get the better of me.  I could feel my core temperature dropping.  I was working but I couldn’t keep up.  How did this happen?  How could someone with my experience get it wrong?  Why was this different from any other cold rain run?  It was, in a sense, the perfect storm.  The perfect combination of physics, fluid dynamics and temperature conspired to create a near perfect heat sink for the runners.  The wind, on its own, was just a strong wind.  The rain on its own was just a hard rain.  The temperature on its own was just another spring day.  But the combination pulled heat out of your body faster than you could make more. The volume of rain driven by the winds penetrated through my hat and washed the heat from my head.  The same cold rain drove through the three layers of my shirts and washed the heat from my core.  My gloves filled with cold water and my hands went numb.  When I made a fist water would pour out like squeezing a wet sponge.  The rain and wind was constant but would also come in big waves.  We’d be running along and a surge in the storm would knock us sideways or backwards like being surprised by a maniac with a water cannon.  I would stumble and lean into it and mutter “Holy shit storm!” or “Holy Cow Bells!” Really just to recognize and put words on the abuse.  The wind was directly in our faces.  The rain was directly in our faces.  The whole time.  We never got out of it.  There would be lulls but then it would return with one of those smack-you-in-the-face hose downs.  My shoulder and back muscles were sore from leaning into it.  I was having difficulty drinking from my bottle because I couldn’t squeeze my hand hard enough.  I resorted to holding it between two hands and pushing together between them.  People reported not having the hand strength to take their nutrition or even pull their shorts up after a potty stop.  I was starting to go hypothermic and my mind searched for a plan.  Eric knew I was struggling.  I started scanning the road for discarded gear I could use.  The entire length of the course was strewn with gear.  I saw expensive gloves and hats and coats of all descriptions.  We passed by an expensive fuel belt at one point that someone had given up on.  Eric knew I was suffering and I told him I was going to grab a discarded poncho if I could find one.  As if on cue a crumpled orange poncho came into view on the sidewalk to our left and I stopped to retrieve it.  Eric helped me wriggle into it.  It was rather tight, and that was a good thing.  It was probably a woman’s.  It clung tightly to my torso and had a small hood that captured my head and hat without much luffing in the wind.  It's at this point that Eric says I was a new man.  I may not have been a new man but the poncho trapped enough heat to reverse the hypothermia and we got back to work.  By now we were running down into Newton Lower Falls and looking up, over the highway at the Hills.  Eric said, “We’re not walking the hills.” I said, “OK” and we were all business.  We slowed down but we kept moving through the first hill.  I focused not on running but on falling. Falling forward and catching myself with my feet.  Hips forward.  Lift and place the foot.  Not running just falling. The hood of the poncho was narrow.  I had an enforced tunnel vision, but it was somehow comforting, like a blinders on a race horse.  I could see Eric’s blue shoes appear now and then on my right, or on my left.  I settled into my own, little, six-inch oval of reality and worked through the hills.  Other runners would cross my field of vision and I’d bump through them.  I was in the groove.  I don’t know why but people’s pacing was all over the place during the race.  It might have been the wind or the hypothermia addled brains but they were weaving all over the road.  I had to slam on my brakes for random stoppages the entire race.  Eventually I just ran through them as best I could.  I didn’t have the energy to stop.  This kind of behavior is unusual at Boston in the seeded corrals, but the whole day was unusual. I think the relative chaos of the start may have had something to do with it. When we got to the corrals they had ceased worrying about protocol and were just waving runners through.  If you wanted to bandit Boston this year or cheat, Monday would have been the day to do it.  But you also might have died in the process, so there’s that.  We got through the chutes and over the start mats without any formal starting ceremony.  The flood gates were open, so to speak.  Because of this I think the pacing was a bit strange at the start and we passed a lot of people.  I was racing and Eric was doing his best to hold me back.  We chewed through the downhill section of the course with gusto.  Given the conditions we were probably too fast, but not suicidal.  Both of us have run Boston enough times to be smart every once in a while.  We were holding a qualifying pace fairly well and trying to draft where we could.  Eric had to pull off and have someone tie his shoe but I stayed in my lane and he caught up.  We rolled through the storm this way until I realized this was not a day to race and we had to conserve our energy if we wanted to finish.  We metered our efforts and this budgeting process culminated in the voluntary pit stop at mile 9. … In Newton between the hills we’d focus on pulling back and recovering enough for the next one.  Eric had a friend volunteering at mile 19 who we stopped to say ‘hi’ to.  We were slow but we were moving forward.  We reached a point of stasis.  Every now and then Eric would pull out his video camera and try to capture the moment.  I was thinking sarcastically to myself how wonderful it would be to have video of my tired, wet self hunched inside the poncho like a soggy Quasimodo. I had brought a bottle of a new electrolyte drink called F2C with me.  It was ok but because of the cold I wasn’t drinking much.  I knew my hands couldn’t get to the Endurolytes in my shorts pocket.  I had enough sense to worry about keeping the cramps away.  I managed to choke down a few of the Cliff Gels they had on the course just to get some calories, and hopefully some electrolytes.  Eric and I continued to drive through the hills.  I miss-counted and thought we’d missed HeartBreak in the Bedlam.  With the thinner crowds I could see the contours of the course and knew we had one more big one before the ride down into Boston.  We successfully navigated through the rain up Heartbreak and Eric made a joke about there being no inspirational chalk drawings on the road this year.  Eric was happy.  He had wrecked himself on the hills in previous races and my slow, steady progress had helped him meter himself.  With those ultra-marathon trained legs he was now ready to celebrate and took off down the hill.  I tried my best to stay with him but the hamstring pull in my left leg constrained my leg extension and it hurt a bit.  I was happy to jog it in but he still had juice.  I told him to run his race, I’d be ok, secretly wishing he’d go so I could take some walk breaks without a witness, but he refused.  He said “We started this together and we’re going to finish together.”  OK Buddy, but I’m not running any faster.  I watched his tall yellow frame pull ahead a few meters though the last 10K, but he would always pull up and wait for me to grind on through. And so we ground out against the storm and into the rain and wind blasts through the final miles.  In my mind I never once thought, “This is terrible!” or “This bad weather is ruining my race!”  All I was thinking is how great it was to get to be a part of something so epic that we would be talking about for years to come.  The glory points we notched for running this one, for surviving it and for doing decently well considering – that far outweighed any whining about the weather. This type of thing brings out the best in people.  It brought out the grit in me and the other finishers.  It brought out the challenges for those 2700 or so people who were forced to seek medical treatment.  That’s about 10% of those who started.  It brought out the best in Desi Linden who gutted out a 2:39 to be the first American winner 33 years.  In fact it brought out the best in the next 5 female finishers, all of whom were relative unkowns.  The top 7 women were 6 Americans and one 41 year old Canadian who came in 3rd.  No East Africans to be seen.  The day brought out the best in Yuki Kawauchi from Japan who ground past Kenyan champ Geoffrey Kirui in the final miles.  It was an epic day for epic athletes and I am glad to have been a part of it.  I am grateful that this sport continues to surprise me and teach me and humble me.  I am full of gratitude to be part of this race that pushes us so hard to be better athletes, to earn the right to join our heroes on this course.  I am humbled to have friends in this community, like Eric, who can be my wing men (and wing-ladies) when the storms come. I am thankful for that day in 1997 when a high school buddy said, “Hey, why don’t we run the marathon?”  Those 524 miles of Boston over the last 20 years hold a lot of memories.  This race has changed me for the better and I’m thankful for the opportunity.

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-362 – Rick Hoyt – a Running Life  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4362.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello my friends and welcome to Episode 4-362 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Chris here.  I am criminally behind in my production schedule.  As some of you may have divined, especially those of you on LinkedIn, I changed gigs over the last couple months and am now back in startup land.  It’s not my startup, but still the the urgency and lack of resources spills over.  (Humorous editor’s note: Microsoft word tried to change ‘divined’ to ‘deveined’ which is something totally different.  That combined with being in my last few weeks of marathon training for Boston creates less space and opportunity to write and record.  The company is out of Silicon Valley, (of course), and I’m out of Boston so there’s a 3-hour time change.  Even thought you’d think you’d be able to adjust your work days, it always seems to add 3 or more hours to the day.  It reminds me of when I had a job where I had to contend with Boston’s infamous traffic.  I devised a plan to go in a couple hours early to beat the traffic and then leave a couple hours early on the back end of the day to beat the traffic again.  What really ended up happening was I’d go in early, get caught up in the day, and end up going home late after the traffic.  I’m sure there’s some math we could use there to make everyone’s lives simpler.  The way we have arranged it everyone’s whims always line up.  For example, let’s say you’re sitting at work on a warm Friday in June and you think “I know, I’ll leave early and get a jump on driving to the Cape for the weekend!” You can bet that there are a couple hundred thousand people having that same thought at that same time and you will be soon sucking C02 with them on Route 6.  I’m sure all of this will be solved when the impartial Artificial Intelligence of the robot overlords takes over.  But, will we miss it?  Will we someday be writing long, sorrowful poems in praise of a good traffic jam?  How it brought our families together and made the fabric of society stronger?  How did I get down this rat hole? Oh, yeah.  It’s Saturday Morning and It’s snowing.  It’s been snowing for 24 hours and it’s April first.  Last time we got this kind of spring weather two weeks before the Boston Marathon was 2006.  It ended up being 85 degrees at the starting line that year.  Today I bring you a RunRunLive podcast exclusive.  An interview with Rick Hoyt.  Rick has run almost twice as many Boston marathons as I have and I’m running my 19th this year.  I am thrilled to be able to ask him questions directly.  My favorite Hoyt story is how Dick and Rick pushed their way into the Boston Marathon.  The Boston Athletic Association of the late 1970’s would not be considered an ‘open-minded’ organization.  They were steadfast in their belief that the Boston Marathon was a traditional race.  You had to qualify.  You had to be a man.  You had to pass a physical and be a ‘real’ able-bodied athlete to get in.  Dick tried to get in and they wouldn’t let him.  They thought they had a good barrier to entry that he wouldn’t be able to get over.  They told him that he had to qualify, not only in his age group, but in Rick’s age group as well.  At the time this meant Dick had to run better than a 2:50 marathon with Rick.  Dick didn’t whine about it.  He didn’t sue them.  Instead he trained and ran a 2:45 qualifying race pushing Rick.  This was before racing chairs existed.  This was before the first running boom.  These guys were breaking new ground.  They were all alone.  Their dogged persistence, their unassuming commitment to the sport, their grit earned them a spot on the starting line in Hopkinton.  The way they did it also earned the respect of the running world and opened a door for a generation of runners.  They were pioneers who caused change.  They caused change by living that change.  So that’s the context of our interview today.  In section one I’ll go deep into how I do a pace run on the treadmill.  In section two, I’m going to give you an audio recording of the 2nd most read blog post I ever wrote, a chapter from my first book, called “Running with Buddy”.  This will give you a good lead in for the sentiment going into our next show which will include an interview with Luaren Fern Watts about her new book, Gizelle’s Bucket List.    After we last spoke I attempted a 22 mile tempo run on the Boston course.  Frank and I did an out and back from Ashland, around mile 4, to Wellesley mile 15, right before the dip down into Newton Lower Falls.  This is the so-called ‘flat’ portion of the course.  I’m always surprised at just how not-flat it is.  It’s rolling hills.  Nothing major, but some good pulls when you’re racing.  I was rolling off a hard week with a lot of miles. The plan was to run an hour in zone 2, then drop to race pace -5 for an hour and a half then do 5 minute on/off zone 3 surges for the last half hour.  My legs were heavy going in from the big week.  I ran 7 miles the day before and a set of hill repeats on the Friday.  It was around freezing and overcast to drizzly.  We didn’t see as many runners out as we thought we might.  When we hit the hour mark I dropped into what felt like race pace to me, but my pacing ability proved to be clueless.  I was shooting for around 8 minute miles but we were clocking 7:30’s and 7:40’s.  At the end of each mile I’d say ‘Oh crap’ and let Frank lead for a while and we’d manage an 8:05.  Then I’d drop back into the 7:30’s.  It was a pacing disaster! We hung in there trying to find race pace until around the 18 mile mark my wheels fell off.  We were climbing a long hill and my legs just went dead and said ‘no mas’.  This was about an hour into the pace part of the run.  I let Frank go and tried to find a pace I could manage and recover a bit.  I managed some to bash it out in the low 8’s with a couple of walk breaks.  I finished up with over 22 miles and over 3 hours of decent effort.  I even recovered a bit in the last mile.  All-in-all I wasn’t horribly disappointed. It’s another brick in the wall and a good race-specific workout and a good reminder of just how deceptively nasty that Boston course is with its constant rolling hills. Then I jumped on a plane to Silicon Valley.  Spent the week out there that nicely coincided with a rest week, although I did manage to run up a 1,500 foot mountain behind my hotel twice.  Now I’m finishing up my last hard week and tuning up for the big show.  I’m off the beer and seeing how far I can get my weight down for the race, which adds to the stress of it all!  I made some poor nutritional choices in Cali and have been hovering around 180, which isn’t horrible for me.  This week I’ve stayed on top of it better and am down around 175.  Those 5-10 pounds make a huge difference for me on race day.  Especially where my current bottleneck is my legs not my engine.  Taking a few extra pounds off my quads will buy me a couple extra miles at race pace on Patriot’s day.  … And the weather continues to not cooperate.  We are in the midst of yet another storm here 2-weeks out.  My day got away from me yesterday and I ended up doing a hill repeat session at dusk in the slush.  Now normal people might think, “hey, the sun is setting, it’s 33 degrees out and alternating rain and snow, I think I’ll skip that hill workout.”  But, I think, “Here are the marathon gods putting another challenge in front of me.  Here is another opportunity for me to rise to the occasion.  To do what others will not.  And that has some merit to it.  I kitted up quickly, before I lost my nerve, and headed out through the trails to a secluded road behind my house with a nice hill.  The woods were quite peaceful.  The snow/ice was a couple inches deep but nice and granular, like running on beach gravel.  There was no wind, and it was quite beautiful with the hiss of the sleet in the tree tops.  The hill repeats themselves were a bit tricky.  I had 3 sets of 5 X 40 seconds.  It was snowing fairly hard.  There was slush on the road.  It was maybe an inch deep on the shoulders, but the tire paths from the occasional car were relatively clean with just a skim of icy slush.  There were parts where the melt water was running in streams down the hill.  The question in my mind was where would I get the most traction?  The tire tracks?  The slush?  The shoulders?  I opted for the tire tracks.  It was slick and I had to run a bit flat footed. I couldn’t really toe off with any vigor.  The trick was to find the places where the road was cracked or lined because these irregularities provided a bit of a traction point.  When the occasional car passed, I’d drift over to the slushy shoulder mid repeat.  That wasn’t bad either because there was barks and sticks and dirt under the slush on the shoulder that could give you some traction.  But you had to run through the deep stuff and got much wetter feet.  I switched back to my old Hokas for the outing so as not to abuse my race shoes. And you know what?  It wasn’t that bad.  I got my workout done and felt like a total stud.  I felt like I ‘won’ somehow.  That’s the lesson here my friends.  You make your own rules in this world.  Don’t let the slush storms of life cause you to miss a workout.  On with the show. I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad.  As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food.  We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. I’ll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon.  I would appreciate any help you can give.   The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don’t have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.  … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Yes, we are still working on setting up the separate podcast feed for the member’s content.  Most recently I recorded and uploaded the first chapter of the zombie novel I’ve been writing for 30 years.  Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Exclusive Access to Individual Audio Segments from all Shows Intro’s, Outro’s, Section One running tips, Section Two life hacks and Featured Interviews – all available as stand-alone MP3’s you can download and listen to at any time. Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – Treadmill pace run - Voices of reason – the conversation Rick Hoyt – Team Hoyt   The Early Years Rick was born in 1962 to Dick and Judy Hoyt. As a result of oxygen deprivation to Rick’s brain at the time of his birth, Rick was diagnosed as a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy. Dick and Judy were advised to institutionalize Rick because there was no chance of him recovering, and little hope for Rick to live a “normal” life. This was just the beginning of Dick and Judy’s quest for Rick’s inclusion in community, sports, education and one day, the workplace. Dick and Judy soon realized that though Rick couldn’t walk or speak; he was quite astute and his eyes would follow them around the room. They fought to integrate Rick into the public school system, pushing administrators to see beyond Rick’s physical limitations. Dick and Judy would take Rick sledding and swimming, and even taught him the alphabet and basic words, like any other child. After providing concrete evidence of Rick’s intellect and ability to learn like everyone else, Dick and Judy needed to find a way to help Rick communicate for himself. With $5,000 in 1972 and a skilled group of engineers at Tufts University, an interactive computer was built for Rick. This computer consisted of a cursor being used to highlight every letter of the alphabet. Once the letter Rick wanted was highlighted, he was able to select it by just a simple tap with his head against a head piece attached to his wheelchair. When the computer was originally first brought home, Rick surprised everyone with his first words. Instead of saying, “Hi, Mom,” or “Hi, Dad,” Rick’s first “spoken” words were: “Go, Bruins!” The Boston Bruins were in the Stanley Cup finals that season. It was clear from that moment on, that Rick loved sports and followed the game just like anyone else. In 1975, at the age of 13, Rick was finally admitted into public school. After high school, Rick attended Boston University, and he graduated with a degree in Special Education in 1993. Dick retired in 1995 as a Lt. Colonel from the Air National Guard, after serving his country for 37 years. The Beginning of Team Hoyt In the spring of 1977, Rick told his father that he wanted to participate in a 5-mile benefit run for a Lacrosse player who had been paralyzed in an accident. Far from being a long-distance runner, Dick agreed to push Rick in his wheelchair and they finished all 5 miles, coming in next to last. That night, Rick told his father, “Dad, when I’m running, it feels like I’m not handicapped.” This realization was just the beginning of what would become over 1,000 races completed, including marathons, duathlons and triathlons (6 of them being Ironman competitions). Also adding to their list of achievements, Dick and Rick biked and ran across the U.S. in 1992, completing a full 3,735 miles in 45 days. In a triathlon, Dick will pull Rick in a boat with a bungee cord attached to a vest around his waist and to the front of the boat for the swimming stage. For the biking stage, Rick will ride a special two-seater bicycle, and then Dick will push Rick in his custom made running chair (for the running stage). Rick was once asked, if he could give his father one thing, what would it be? Rick responded, “The thing I’d most like is for my dad to sit in the chair and I would push him for once.” The 2009 Boston Marathon was officially Team Hoyt’s 1000th race. Rick always says if it comes down to doing one race a year he would like it to be the Boston Marathon: his favorite race. 2013 was going to be Dick and Rick's last Boston Marathon together, but they were not able to finish due to the bombings. They vowed to be back in 2014 to finish "Boston Strong" with all the other runners, which they did; stopping many times along the 26.2 distance to take photos and shake hands of the many well wishers, and finishing with several of the runners from their Hoyt Foundation Boston Marathon team. Dick and Rick will continue to do shorter distances races and triathlons together, and teammate Bryan Lyons will be taking over in pushing Rick in the 2015 Boston Marathon. Bryan and Rick ran some local races together this year, and will start training for Boston after the holidays, doing a half marathon in Carlsbad, CA in January, as well as, other local half marathons and races. Neither Dick or Rick are ready to retire yet. The Team Hoyt Theme Song “Run!” By the Ted Painter Band It's available for download at  as are other songs and information about the band.   It was written by yours truly and band members John Prunier and Kat Duffey, recorded in Nashville and Harford, CT. and performed by the Ted Painter Band.  Incidentally, I'm also a member of Team Hoyt and have been running with Nick Draper, a 27 year old man with a similar disability as Rick, for the last 3 and a half years.  This will be our 4th Boston marathon and 16th marathon.  We also do triathlons.  If interested, you can learn more about "Team In the Nick of Time" at  Thanks for your interest in the song, Chris.   Take care, Ted Section two Running with Buddy - The Mid-Packer's Lament: A collection of running stories with a view from the middle of the pack Paperback – November 21, 2005 by  (Author) Outro Alright my friends.  I’m running out of daylight so I have to get this show out the door! You have slip-slided through the snow and slush to the end of episode 4-362 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Like I mentioned, next week we talk about dogs! Going to the dogs.  I love my old dog.  He’s lying on the floor by the door here with me as I write.  He’s bored.  He’s wearing one of the ridiculous shirts Teresa bought for him.   The music in the Rick Hoyt interview today was the The Team Hoyt Theme Song “Run!” By the Ted Painter Band.  I got permission to use it from Ted who also runs pushing Nick for Team Hoyt Boston Marathon team- they do sub 3 hour marathons and this will be their 3rd or 4th Boston together. It's available for download at  as are other songs and information about the band.   To learn more about Ted and Nick search for “Team in the Nick of Time” on Facebook – or find the link in the show notes. It was written by yours truly and band members John Prunier and Kat Duffey, recorded in Nashville and Harford, CT. and performed by the Ted Painter Band.  "Team In the Nick of Time" at  I just assume at this point that everyone knows what I’m talking about but I guess it wouldn’t kill me to give you a quick review.  I post the text of all these shows on my website, .  You can also click on the show in your podcast player and all the links and notes and text are in the actual show file.  That’s what I mean when I say – it’s in the show notes.  I would appreciate any contribution to my Team Hoyt fund you can make. The crowdrise link is ironically enough, in the show notes.    … I told you my hill-repeats-in-the-slush story.  Let me tell you another story from this week where the evil gods of marathon chaos beat me.  Tuesday I had one of those 13 mile pace runs on the calendar.  I had it scheduled for mid-morning. I had a gap in my schedule and weather window where it would warm up a little and before it started raining.  Of course calls got rescheduled and things went sideways and I couldn’t get out.  I repositioned it for early afternoon.  The challenge for me with this kind of run is I’m looking at close to 2 full hours out on the road.  It’s hard to squeeze into a day.  And that 2 hours is just the running part.  I should have done it early morning but I was still recovering from West Coast jet lag.  Early afternoon comes and I’m still at my desk.  Now it’s getting dark and it’s raining.  I’d squeeze in a regular run in these conditions but a 2 hour tempo run in the pitch black rain, not really.  I didn’t have the right clothes with me or a headlamp.  But, I had a flash of inspiration.  I still have the key card for the gym at my old office.  I had to pick up Teresa later so I would drive to the treadmill, knock out this run and get to the train.  I ended up getting to the treadmill after 6 and had to take some potty breaks, etc. but was getting the work out done.  Then around 8:00PM I’m 8 miles in, 2 miles into that last 5 hard zone 4 miles and I notice I’m the only one in there and the cleaning staff is in.  I look at the clock, and I look at the cleaning lady and it turns out the gym closes at 8:00!  That was it.  I got my 8 miles in and didn’t concede defeat as much as called it a draw.  The evil marathon gods of entropy and chaos didn’t let me complete my planned workout, but I did get an 8 mile tempo run in.  We’ll call it a tie. Because sometimes.  Even when you really hang in there.  When you make the extra effort.  The chaos and entropy still wins.  Just go down swinging. And I’ll see you out there. MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-362 – Rick Hoyt – a Running Life  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4362.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello my friends and welcome to Episode 4-362 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Chris here.  I am criminally behind in my production schedule.  As some of you may have divined, especially those of you on LinkedIn, I changed gigs over the last couple months and am now back in startup land.  It's not my startup, but still the the urgency and lack of resources spills over.  (Humorous editor's note: Microsoft word tried to change ‘divined' to ‘deveined' which is something totally different.  That combined with being in my last few weeks of marathon training for Boston creates less space and opportunity to write and record.  The company is out of Silicon Valley, (of course), and I'm out of Boston so there's a 3-hour time change.  Even thought you'd think you'd be able to adjust your work days, it always seems to add 3 or more hours to the day.  It reminds me of when I had a job where I had to contend with Boston's infamous traffic.  I devised a plan to go in a couple hours early to beat the traffic and then leave a couple hours early on the back end of the day to beat the traffic again.  What really ended up happening was I'd go in early, get caught up in the day, and end up going home late after the traffic.  I'm sure there's some math we could use there to make everyone's lives simpler.  The way we have arranged it everyone's whims always line up.  For example, let's say you're sitting at work on a warm Friday in June and you think “I know, I'll leave early and get a jump on driving to the Cape for the weekend!” You can bet that there are a couple hundred thousand people having that same thought at that same time and you will be soon sucking C02 with them on Route 6.  I'm sure all of this will be solved when the impartial Artificial Intelligence of the robot overlords takes over.  But, will we miss it?  Will we someday be writing long, sorrowful poems in praise of a good traffic jam?  How it brought our families together and made the fabric of society stronger?  How did I get down this rat hole? Oh, yeah.  It's Saturday Morning and It's snowing.  It's been snowing for 24 hours and it's April first.  Last time we got this kind of spring weather two weeks before the Boston Marathon was 2006.  It ended up being 85 degrees at the starting line that year.  Today I bring you a RunRunLive podcast exclusive.  An interview with Rick Hoyt.  Rick has run almost twice as many Boston marathons as I have and I'm running my 19th this year.  I am thrilled to be able to ask him questions directly.  My favorite Hoyt story is how Dick and Rick pushed their way into the Boston Marathon.  The Boston Athletic Association of the late 1970's would not be considered an ‘open-minded' organization.  They were steadfast in their belief that the Boston Marathon was a traditional race.  You had to qualify.  You had to be a man.  You had to pass a physical and be a ‘real' able-bodied athlete to get in.  Dick tried to get in and they wouldn't let him.  They thought they had a good barrier to entry that he wouldn't be able to get over.  They told him that he had to qualify, not only in his age group, but in Rick's age group as well.  At the time this meant Dick had to run better than a 2:50 marathon with Rick.  Dick didn't whine about it.  He didn't sue them.  Instead he trained and ran a 2:45 qualifying race pushing Rick.  This was before racing chairs existed.  This was before the first running boom.  These guys were breaking new ground.  They were all alone.  Their dogged persistence, their unassuming commitment to the sport, their grit earned them a spot on the starting line in Hopkinton.  The way they did it also earned the respect of the running world and opened a door for a generation of runners.  They were pioneers who caused change.  They caused change by living that change.  So that's the context of our interview today.  In section one I'll go deep into how I do a pace run on the treadmill.  In section two, I'm going to give you an audio recording of the 2nd most read blog post I ever wrote, a chapter from my first book, called “Running with Buddy”.  This will give you a good lead in for the sentiment going into our next show which will include an interview with Luaren Fern Watts about her new book, Gizelle's Bucket List.    After we last spoke I attempted a 22 mile tempo run on the Boston course.  Frank and I did an out and back from Ashland, around mile 4, to Wellesley mile 15, right before the dip down into Newton Lower Falls.  This is the so-called ‘flat' portion of the course.  I'm always surprised at just how not-flat it is.  It's rolling hills.  Nothing major, but some good pulls when you're racing.  I was rolling off a hard week with a lot of miles. The plan was to run an hour in zone 2, then drop to race pace -5 for an hour and a half then do 5 minute on/off zone 3 surges for the last half hour.  My legs were heavy going in from the big week.  I ran 7 miles the day before and a set of hill repeats on the Friday.  It was around freezing and overcast to drizzly.  We didn't see as many runners out as we thought we might.  When we hit the hour mark I dropped into what felt like race pace to me, but my pacing ability proved to be clueless.  I was shooting for around 8 minute miles but we were clocking 7:30's and 7:40's.  At the end of each mile I'd say ‘Oh crap' and let Frank lead for a while and we'd manage an 8:05.  Then I'd drop back into the 7:30's.  It was a pacing disaster! We hung in there trying to find race pace until around the 18 mile mark my wheels fell off.  We were climbing a long hill and my legs just went dead and said ‘no mas'.  This was about an hour into the pace part of the run.  I let Frank go and tried to find a pace I could manage and recover a bit.  I managed some to bash it out in the low 8's with a couple of walk breaks.  I finished up with over 22 miles and over 3 hours of decent effort.  I even recovered a bit in the last mile.  All-in-all I wasn't horribly disappointed. It's another brick in the wall and a good race-specific workout and a good reminder of just how deceptively nasty that Boston course is with its constant rolling hills. Then I jumped on a plane to Silicon Valley.  Spent the week out there that nicely coincided with a rest week, although I did manage to run up a 1,500 foot mountain behind my hotel twice.  Now I'm finishing up my last hard week and tuning up for the big show.  I'm off the beer and seeing how far I can get my weight down for the race, which adds to the stress of it all!  I made some poor nutritional choices in Cali and have been hovering around 180, which isn't horrible for me.  This week I've stayed on top of it better and am down around 175.  Those 5-10 pounds make a huge difference for me on race day.  Especially where my current bottleneck is my legs not my engine.  Taking a few extra pounds off my quads will buy me a couple extra miles at race pace on Patriot's day.  … And the weather continues to not cooperate.  We are in the midst of yet another storm here 2-weeks out.  My day got away from me yesterday and I ended up doing a hill repeat session at dusk in the slush.  Now normal people might think, “hey, the sun is setting, it's 33 degrees out and alternating rain and snow, I think I'll skip that hill workout.”  But, I think, “Here are the marathon gods putting another challenge in front of me.  Here is another opportunity for me to rise to the occasion.  To do what others will not.  And that has some merit to it.  I kitted up quickly, before I lost my nerve, and headed out through the trails to a secluded road behind my house with a nice hill.  The woods were quite peaceful.  The snow/ice was a couple inches deep but nice and granular, like running on beach gravel.  There was no wind, and it was quite beautiful with the hiss of the sleet in the tree tops.  The hill repeats themselves were a bit tricky.  I had 3 sets of 5 X 40 seconds.  It was snowing fairly hard.  There was slush on the road.  It was maybe an inch deep on the shoulders, but the tire paths from the occasional car were relatively clean with just a skim of icy slush.  There were parts where the melt water was running in streams down the hill.  The question in my mind was where would I get the most traction?  The tire tracks?  The slush?  The shoulders?  I opted for the tire tracks.  It was slick and I had to run a bit flat footed. I couldn't really toe off with any vigor.  The trick was to find the places where the road was cracked or lined because these irregularities provided a bit of a traction point.  When the occasional car passed, I'd drift over to the slushy shoulder mid repeat.  That wasn't bad either because there was barks and sticks and dirt under the slush on the shoulder that could give you some traction.  But you had to run through the deep stuff and got much wetter feet.  I switched back to my old Hokas for the outing so as not to abuse my race shoes. And you know what?  It wasn't that bad.  I got my workout done and felt like a total stud.  I felt like I ‘won' somehow.  That's the lesson here my friends.  You make your own rules in this world.  Don't let the slush storms of life cause you to miss a workout.  On with the show. I'll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don't have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad.  As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food.  We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member's only audio. I'll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon.  I would appreciate any help you can give.   The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don't have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.  … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Yes, we are still working on setting up the separate podcast feed for the member's content.  Most recently I recorded and uploaded the first chapter of the zombie novel I've been writing for 30 years.  Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Exclusive Access to Individual Audio Segments from all Shows Intro's, Outro's, Section One running tips, Section Two life hacks and Featured Interviews – all available as stand-alone MP3's you can download and listen to at any time. Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – Treadmill pace run - Voices of reason – the conversation Rick Hoyt – Team Hoyt   The Early Years Rick was born in 1962 to Dick and Judy Hoyt. As a result of oxygen deprivation to Rick's brain at the time of his birth, Rick was diagnosed as a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy. Dick and Judy were advised to institutionalize Rick because there was no chance of him recovering, and little hope for Rick to live a “normal” life. This was just the beginning of Dick and Judy's quest for Rick's inclusion in community, sports, education and one day, the workplace. Dick and Judy soon realized that though Rick couldn't walk or speak; he was quite astute and his eyes would follow them around the room. They fought to integrate Rick into the public school system, pushing administrators to see beyond Rick's physical limitations. Dick and Judy would take Rick sledding and swimming, and even taught him the alphabet and basic words, like any other child. After providing concrete evidence of Rick's intellect and ability to learn like everyone else, Dick and Judy needed to find a way to help Rick communicate for himself. With $5,000 in 1972 and a skilled group of engineers at Tufts University, an interactive computer was built for Rick. This computer consisted of a cursor being used to highlight every letter of the alphabet. Once the letter Rick wanted was highlighted, he was able to select it by just a simple tap with his head against a head piece attached to his wheelchair. When the computer was originally first brought home, Rick surprised everyone with his first words. Instead of saying, “Hi, Mom,” or “Hi, Dad,” Rick's first “spoken” words were: “Go, Bruins!” The Boston Bruins were in the Stanley Cup finals that season. It was clear from that moment on, that Rick loved sports and followed the game just like anyone else. In 1975, at the age of 13, Rick was finally admitted into public school. After high school, Rick attended Boston University, and he graduated with a degree in Special Education in 1993. Dick retired in 1995 as a Lt. Colonel from the Air National Guard, after serving his country for 37 years. The Beginning of Team Hoyt In the spring of 1977, Rick told his father that he wanted to participate in a 5-mile benefit run for a Lacrosse player who had been paralyzed in an accident. Far from being a long-distance runner, Dick agreed to push Rick in his wheelchair and they finished all 5 miles, coming in next to last. That night, Rick told his father, “Dad, when I'm running, it feels like I'm not handicapped.” This realization was just the beginning of what would become over 1,000 races completed, including marathons, duathlons and triathlons (6 of them being Ironman competitions). Also adding to their list of achievements, Dick and Rick biked and ran across the U.S. in 1992, completing a full 3,735 miles in 45 days. In a triathlon, Dick will pull Rick in a boat with a bungee cord attached to a vest around his waist and to the front of the boat for the swimming stage. For the biking stage, Rick will ride a special two-seater bicycle, and then Dick will push Rick in his custom made running chair (for the running stage). Rick was once asked, if he could give his father one thing, what would it be? Rick responded, “The thing I'd most like is for my dad to sit in the chair and I would push him for once.” The 2009 Boston Marathon was officially Team Hoyt's 1000th race. Rick always says if it comes down to doing one race a year he would like it to be the Boston Marathon: his favorite race. 2013 was going to be Dick and Rick's last Boston Marathon together, but they were not able to finish due to the bombings. They vowed to be back in 2014 to finish "Boston Strong" with all the other runners, which they did; stopping many times along the 26.2 distance to take photos and shake hands of the many well wishers, and finishing with several of the runners from their Hoyt Foundation Boston Marathon team. Dick and Rick will continue to do shorter distances races and triathlons together, and teammate Bryan Lyons will be taking over in pushing Rick in the 2015 Boston Marathon. Bryan and Rick ran some local races together this year, and will start training for Boston after the holidays, doing a half marathon in Carlsbad, CA in January, as well as, other local half marathons and races. Neither Dick or Rick are ready to retire yet. The Team Hoyt Theme Song “Run!” By the Ted Painter Band It's available for download at  as are other songs and information about the band.   It was written by yours truly and band members John Prunier and Kat Duffey, recorded in Nashville and Harford, CT. and performed by the Ted Painter Band.  Incidentally, I'm also a member of Team Hoyt and have been running with Nick Draper, a 27 year old man with a similar disability as Rick, for the last 3 and a half years.  This will be our 4th Boston marathon and 16th marathon.  We also do triathlons.  If interested, you can learn more about "Team In the Nick of Time" at  Thanks for your interest in the song, Chris.   Take care, Ted Section two Running with Buddy - The Mid-Packer's Lament: A collection of running stories with a view from the middle of the pack Paperback – November 21, 2005 by  (Author) Outro Alright my friends.  I'm running out of daylight so I have to get this show out the door! You have slip-slided through the snow and slush to the end of episode 4-362 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Like I mentioned, next week we talk about dogs! Going to the dogs.  I love my old dog.  He's lying on the floor by the door here with me as I write.  He's bored.  He's wearing one of the ridiculous shirts Teresa bought for him.   The music in the Rick Hoyt interview today was the The Team Hoyt Theme Song “Run!” By the Ted Painter Band.  I got permission to use it from Ted who also runs pushing Nick for Team Hoyt Boston Marathon team- they do sub 3 hour marathons and this will be their 3rd or 4th Boston together. It's available for download at  as are other songs and information about the band.   To learn more about Ted and Nick search for “Team in the Nick of Time” on Facebook – or find the link in the show notes. It was written by yours truly and band members John Prunier and Kat Duffey, recorded in Nashville and Harford, CT. and performed by the Ted Painter Band.  "Team In the Nick of Time" at  I just assume at this point that everyone knows what I'm talking about but I guess it wouldn't kill me to give you a quick review.  I post the text of all these shows on my website, .  You can also click on the show in your podcast player and all the links and notes and text are in the actual show file.  That's what I mean when I say – it's in the show notes.  I would appreciate any contribution to my Team Hoyt fund you can make. The crowdrise link is ironically enough, in the show notes.    … I told you my hill-repeats-in-the-slush story.  Let me tell you another story from this week where the evil gods of marathon chaos beat me.  Tuesday I had one of those 13 mile pace runs on the calendar.  I had it scheduled for mid-morning. I had a gap in my schedule and weather window where it would warm up a little and before it started raining.  Of course calls got rescheduled and things went sideways and I couldn't get out.  I repositioned it for early afternoon.  The challenge for me with this kind of run is I'm looking at close to 2 full hours out on the road.  It's hard to squeeze into a day.  And that 2 hours is just the running part.  I should have done it early morning but I was still recovering from West Coast jet lag.  Early afternoon comes and I'm still at my desk.  Now it's getting dark and it's raining.  I'd squeeze in a regular run in these conditions but a 2 hour tempo run in the pitch black rain, not really.  I didn't have the right clothes with me or a headlamp.  But, I had a flash of inspiration.  I still have the key card for the gym at my old office.  I had to pick up Teresa later so I would drive to the treadmill, knock out this run and get to the train.  I ended up getting to the treadmill after 6 and had to take some potty breaks, etc. but was getting the work out done.  Then around 8:00PM I'm 8 miles in, 2 miles into that last 5 hard zone 4 miles and I notice I'm the only one in there and the cleaning staff is in.  I look at the clock, and I look at the cleaning lady and it turns out the gym closes at 8:00!  That was it.  I got my 8 miles in and didn't concede defeat as much as called it a draw.  The evil marathon gods of entropy and chaos didn't let me complete my planned workout, but I did get an 8 mile tempo run in.  We'll call it a tie. Because sometimes.  Even when you really hang in there.  When you make the extra effort.  The chaos and entropy still wins.  Just go down swinging. And I'll see you out there. MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

To run the 113th Boston Marathon with minimal preparation I have to condition my body for constant and repetitive motion for at least five hours.  What’s more, I must be able to carry the weight of my body on a gradual 16 mile course into Newton Lower Falls, up the hills of Newton and over a goofy little speed-bump, and finally down the other side past mile 22 with as much strength as I have left. Traditional marathon training programs begin with a base and gradually work up to build strength and endurance, so this training program, more than the race itself, is the real test of how well the maintenance miles I’ve been running can prepare me for a race like the Boston Marathon. Boston is more than just a race, and my efforts in these five weeks will be exhausting, painful, time consuming and demanding: but that’s what I’m compelled to do…and if there is such a thing as a siren song from the island of Sirenum Scopuli…the song I hear is coming from Hopkinton Massachusetts and I can’t help but show up on Patriots Day, ready to run as best I can. Show Links:Fdip Blog of the Week: Featured PodCast: Early Morning Runner“A Cautionary Tail” by Matthew Ebel at

What happens in Boston, starts in Hopkinton.  In this episode I take my last 16 miler from the starting line of the Boston Marathon through the bottom of Newton Lower Falls.  For those of us who will run the race, you’ll eventually come to Hereford Street where crowds will block your forward progress and urge you to turn right.  You’ll run this short block with the screams of spectators echoing off the buildings and will finally make your left hand turn onto Boylston Street, with the finish line just ahead of you…with the promise of a well earned time and an ice cold beer there beyond the portal.   Thank you so much for your incredibly kind words, good wishes and thoughtful prayers in both emails and audio comments on episode 21 of The Extra Mile Podcast.  It means so much to me that you’d take the time to wish me luck, and a happy taper.  In the words of the ancient Romans: “Omnia vincit amor‿ (love conquers all). Show Links: The song “Still in Massachusetts‿ was by “Refuse Resist‿

The first 16 miles of the Boston Marathon are downhill, but it’s what happens coming out of Newton Lower Falls that separates the weak from the strong.