April 30

PM: 6 miles easy

I went out into the muggy evening air after two finals: my last exams as a grad student. My legs were kind of sluggish, but honestly my right hand was probably more sore from writing non-stop for five hours today.

April 29 (65 miles/week)

AM: 15 miles moderate

I met Reed mid-morning for a Duke Forest long run. I actually felt pretty good despite a little mugginess in the air. We finished running in the 6:30s, which is solid for Duke Forest.

Overall, it was a decent first week back from Boston. I'm pleasantly surprised with how fast I'm coming back compared to last time at Boston, which beats you up more than other marathons, but the 16,000+ miles I put in between the two races may have something to do with that. The plan now is to dip my toe back in the workout waters next week.

April 28

AM: 9 miles easy
PM: BCTC Beer Mile, 6:42 (PR!)

I ran an hour easy with Reed before running in what was probably my last BCTC beer mile. It was once again painful but a lot of fun, and I shaved 30 seconds off of last time. Reed was pretty smug about waxing me again, but I was really just doing it as a tempo.

April 27

PM: 12 miles easy

I ran with Reed from Fuqua after finishing my last class of grad school in the middle of the day. Darn it if I didn't lose my student ID on the last day of classes when it fell out of my pocket during the run. We backtracked a little through Duke Forest to look for it, making my longest run in more than two weeks.

April 26

AM: 6 miles easy

I worked a little late last night finishing up a paper, so I just got in a short run on my own this morning on the ATT and in Forest Hills Park.

April 25

AM: 8 miles easy

I met Dan for an easy out-and-back on the soft side of the ATT. I'm feeling progress.

April 24

AM: 6 miles easy

I felt a little better this morning on my own on the ATT than yesterday. I'm trying to remain patient coming after Boston, but I know I have a ton of good fitness build up from the past few months that will come in handy over a light summer racing season. I finished up the day with some core work in the evening--something I'm consciously going to try to stay on top of while my mileage is a little lower.

April 23

AM: 8 miles easy

I met Dan at school to test out my legs for the first time in a week since Boston. Honestly, I felt like total crap, but I guess that's to be expected. Two days of cycling probably left them feeling a little weird as well. Still, it's nice to be running again, but I won't be much over 50 miles this week, and it will all be easy running. This all being said, I'm surprised to find myself chomping at the bit to get racing again.

As I continue to look back on Boston 2012 for what it was and what it wasn't, I really liked the following quote from top American Jason Hartmann:


"Any race I go into, I run to compete. I figure if I compete well, the fast times will eventually come. At Boston I was determined not to waste mental energy on anything I couldn't control. You could say that I didn't want to be controlled by uncontrollables. The heat was a factor, sure, but I just focused on running smart. I didn't want to be thinking about excuses before we even started racing. If you do that, you're just beating yourself."

April 22 (27 miles/week)

PM: 1:30:00 bike

I plopped the bike stand up in front of the TV on a slow Sunday afternoon and spun for 90 minutes. I sweat up a storm and was tired and ravenously hungry afterward. My legs feel fine, so I'm going to shoot to do a workout tomorrow, though it will be a few weeks before I start to sniff workouts again.

April 21

AM: 23 miles easy bike

I took the road bike out for my first real ride since last summer with my classmate Will. I got in some core work afterward as well. Today is the first day that I can definitively say that I don't feel any lingering soreness from Boston.

April 20

PM: 50:00 ergometer

This was my first real quality day of cross training after Boston. Rowing on the erg always leaves me pretty cooked when I haven't done it in a while.

April 19

AM: 25:00 swim

I got in a light swim workout in the morning to loosen up a little bit. The lingering soreness from Boston is really just in my quads now.

April 18

DNR

No running today, either. I just played golf in the morning. I'm still pretty sore.

April 17

DNR

Running was absolutely out of the question today. Instead, I hobbled around Boston and Cambridge with Liam. Today begins a self-imposed week off from running to let myself heal from yesterday.

April 16 - BOSTON MARATHON

AM: Boston Marathon, 2:36:22, 49th place - 27 miles

Two days before the Boston Marathon, all of the racers received an email warning about the perils of racing in hot weather, urging runners to exercise caution and offering a deferment option for 2013 because of predicted hot weather. In that context, the email contained the following note:

"For the overwhelming majority of those who have entered to participate in the 2012 Boston Marathon, you should adopt the attitude that THIS IS NOT A RACE. It is an experience."

I disagreed. Maybe this puts me in the underwhelming minority, but marathons aren't events; they're foot races. The hot weather in Boston simply meant that times were out the window, which isn't at all like a cross country race or trail race. All of us would have to deal with the heat. My goals going into the Boston Marathon were twofold: break 2:30 and finish among the top-50 men following 2:31 (my PR going into thr race) and a 59th-place finish in 2008.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure that the ominous BAA emails simply meant that runners shouldn't expect to PR. I had no expectations that I would based on the weather forecast, so I simplified my pre-race strategy of running by feel and making absolutely sure I was in the top-50.

Following approximately 1,164 trips to the bathroom in Hopkinton while hanging out with my friends and former teammates from the Georgetown Running Company, I reunited with the Bull City Track Club at the start line. One thing was certain: we were sending a fit team to the line. Jason and Monk were coming off of big PRs in the 5k last week, and we were joined by gritty veterans Brian, Ulf, Alex "Pleather Pants" Varner, and a host of other BCTC allies. Just before the gun, the race announcer said that temperatures were already at 80 degrees.  With that, the surreal race that was the 2012 Boston Marathon began seconds later.

Opening Miles

In the opening miles, I tried with mixed success to keep my pace in check. To play Monday morning quarterback here, Jason, Alex and I probably should have curbed our pace, but the 5:35-5:40s we were ticking off were on target for what I'd hoped to run. Maybe we could handle the heat? We were running in the shade at this point, and I think that sparked an irrational confidence.

Speaking of irrational confidence, my personal favorite and most obvious "this dude is going to blow up hard" candidate was the guy we passed in the first couple of miles who was racing in the replica jersey of Minnesota Timberwolves star Kevin Love. While Kevin Love may be a great at rebounding, there is no rebounding from going out too quickly in Boston. Other than a lot of quips with my BCTC teammates as we slinked past him ("That guy's having a great year! Isn't he averaging 20-20?"), Kevin Love served as a great reminder to keep the pace under control.

I'm big on running as a team for as long as possible to share the work in a marathon, so I tried to make sure I was staying around Jason and Varner because we had similar pace goals. BCTC ally Kevin Pierpoint took off after a few miles, and while we didn't follow suit, he stayed relatively close enough that we could pace off of him. By the time we got to Framingham, the effect of the conditions became obvious. Our BCTC group had splintered, and I decided to try to gradually work back up to Kevin to try to work with him.

I was trying to take in the scene that surrounds the Boston Marathon course in the mean time. In the mild weather of the race in 2008, the first 15 miles felt like a glorified training run and offered a chance to observe a lot of the crowds. That wasn't the case this year at all. As Monk brought up after the race, this felt like 100% race mode from the gun. The race was devolving into a battle of attrition. The pounding on my temples gradually increased in force and rhythm, and I started taking water and Gatorade every chance I could, one mile at a time.

A little bit after 10 miles, I caught back up to Kevin. I asked if he wanted to work together, and he politely declined, saying that he was worried if he didn't back off, he wasn't going to finish the race. Hearing this from a seasoned and really fast marathoner did no less than scare the shit out of me. However, I was committed to try to hold a sub-2:30 pace to give myself a chance to run well, so I pressed onward with the grim realization that I no longer had any teammates or known allies in front of me.

Splits: 5:49, 5:35, 5:35, 5:36, 5:49, 5:45, 5:40, 5:43, 5:41, 5:43, 5:48, 5:43, 5:47 (1:14:58 Half Marathon)

Battling and the Newton Hills

So I dug in and fought. I worked for every place through the echoing estrogen in Wellesley and into the hills of Newton while trying to keep my pace in the 5:40s. At the same time, I was committed to working together with the guys around me to collectively move up in the race where possible. The packs I was racing with started grabbing the unused bottles from the elite tables, passing them around to dump water on our heads. One particularly friendly guy shared a partially frozen bottle; had I gotten his name, I probably would have named my firstborn child after him at that point. I passed a bottle to a Japanese runner who replied politely, "Thank you very much sir." There was a pretty clear understanding of the mutual suffering on the course.

My plan through the Newton hills was to try to average 5:55s to keep a puncher's chance at breaking 2:30. The field started to get really strung out. I stupidly miscounted the hills, realizing around mile 19.5 that, no, that last hill wasn't Heartbreak. I fought back thoughts of bonking and made it to 21. When I saw a 5:55 split after the first post-Newton mile, I really believed that I had a chance to secure at least a PR, though I really wasn't thinking clearly enough to do the math to support that optimism. At one point, I reached down deep to give a crowd high five in attempt to rally some adrenaline, but I nearly ruined my race in the process when my hamstring immediately locked up (I go all-in with my high-fives). I probably dodged a bullet there as it was fine 100 meters or so later.

Splits: 5:41, 5:46, 5:38, 5:50, 6:03, 5:50, 6:02, 6:30 (Heartbreak Hill)

At 30k, I was still on track to run a PR or close to it, but the heat really started to bear on me. I tried like hell to keep fighting and catching guys in front of me, but it was becoming clear that I was starting to fade despite what I thought was a pretty convincing internal monologue of complete and total denial. That being said, the mile splits don't lie. In 2008, I attacked after Newton and ran my fastest mile split at mile 22, but any ammunition I had left this was about depleted at that point this year. What was "only" 8 miles left in the race less than a half hour before had become a completely unthinkable 4-mile gauntlet of noise, personal agony, and unrelenting abuse from the sun all in front of me. The field inevitably gained on me for the first time in more than 20 miles. I got downright angry every time a runner I thought I'd put away in Wellesley or Newton came limping by me again, but my body had no will to give anything that resembled a pursuit.

Every photo I've seen looks like
I've just had the shit kicked out of me.

When I'm not dying at marathon majors, I sometimes have reoccurring nightmares of running in races where my legs feel like they're made of concrete and won't move, and eventually I'm reducing to crawling on my hands and knees to try to catch up with a field fading away in front of me. That's a lot what the last 5k in Boston felt like for me--but only if you also poured warm saltwater onto my head and into my eyes and ninja-kicked me in the stomach.

I knew that any shot at PR was out of the question in the latter stages of the race despite giving it the good fight in the first 30k of the race. Top-50 was still in reach. I heard a spectator yell at one point that I was in 44th, but I was running 6:30-7:00 miles and genuinely concerned that I wasn't going to finish the race because a stiff breeze would have blown me over (not that there were any stiff breezes out there...ever). I want to provide more detail here about the final miles, but it's honestly pretty hazy.

The rush of the crowds in the last mile faded into barriers of blurred faces and my own desperate yearning to put myself out of my misery. In every marathon I've ever raced, no matter how badly I've hit the wall or depleted, I've always been able to burn off my last fumes of energy and kick down the last .2 from mile 26 to the finish. I couldn't even muster that much: I tried to drive my knees and got absolutely no response whatsoever.

Splits: 5:56, 6:31, 6:30, 6:59, 1:32 (.2), 7:07 (last mile)

My bloody post-race foot.

After about five steps across the finish line, I leaned onto a volunteer to keep myself upright and avoid a mouthful of asphalt. My sides and back throbbed, so much that I couldn't get in any oxygen. That meant my first trip real trip to the medical tent. However, after lying down with some ice while a bunch of staff took my vitals and got some water in me, I felt like I was just in the way from the people coming in with more serious shit wrong with them, to which I assumed there would be many, so I hobbled out about 10 minutes later. Outside in the sunlight that I really wasn't ready to see again, I looked at the faces of runners crossing the line. I saw the same ghostly visages of emptiness and utter exhaustion, and I exchanged a lot of random nods and wordless handshakes that basically all implied the same thing: "What in the hell did we just go through?"

I've been asked a few times, and I don't have any plans to race again any time soon. Boston 2012 was all-in for me. I'll figure out what's next once my quads and back don't feel like hamburger. I understand that training for a marathon means putting all of your eggs in one basket means that getting a day of bad weather (like this year) is just as probable as getting a day with awesome weather (like last year). It's just part of the sport of road racing. I'm of course disappointed that I didn't get a chance to use PR-level fitness to get an honest-to-goodness PR. I'm pretty psyched that I snuck under my top-50 goal by the skin of my teeth 49th, but even that is somewhat bittersweet when top-40 or better was in reach at some point out there.

Sitting back in the hotel room with the Bull City Track Club, we traded war stories while thoughts became more lucid and sentences more coherent, and I felt the deep sense of satisfaction companionship that you get when you train and race as a team. This was very much a shared experience, and it wouldn't have been nearly as rewarding without my teammates and friends there, both past and present. Despite it's reputation for loners, running will always be a team sport to me.

In summary, I'd be lying if I said that Boston 2012 was an enjoyable experience, and I'm not even sure as I write this if it was even a rewarding experience, but it unquestionably was memorable. That was the hardest damn race of my life.

April 15 (50 miles/week)

AM: 4 miles easy

I got up early and ran an easy half hour with Liam through South Boston around Pleasure Bay. I felt pretty good and got in a good stretch afterward before heading to the expo to pick up my number.

The work's officially done before tomorrow. Based on projected temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s, I'm going to take a more conservative strategy tomorrow: go out in 1:15:30 and then race my ass off from mile 21. I accidentally fell into this strategy in 2008, so I'm pretty keen on trying to repeat it more deliberately this year. Tomorrow's warm day may not be the day to really test myself and go for 2:25 or 2:26, but sub-2:30 and a Top-50 finish are ultimately what I really came to Boston to achieve.

April 14

AM: 6 miles easy, strides

I took in a morning run on the ATT and Forest Hills Park before flying to Boston in the afternoon. All in all, I'm feeling pretty good about my fitness, but I'm worried about the weather at this point.

April 13

AM: 7 miles easy

I felt considerably better this morning than yesterday morning during a short run on the ATT. I added some core work in the evening.

April 12

AM: 4 miles @ MP - 8 miles

I hit the track in the morning on my own for four miles at Monday's goal pace. I actually felt only OK (Splits: 5:40, 5:42, 5:42, 5:39), but I think that had more to do with a strong wind and not great sleep the night before. The warm weather forecasted for Monday (88 degrees) is admittedly becoming a point of concern.

April 11

AM: 8 miles easy

I set off again on my own this morning through Forest Hills Park. The soft surfaces felt really nice.

April 10

AM: 7 miles with 4 x 2:00 on/off pickups

I did a very light workout this morning on the ATT, and I felt mostly fine in the process.

April 9

AM: 10 miles easy

This morning was a relaxed campus run with Reed. The final week of taper madness begins...

April 8 (82 miles/week)

AM: 15 miles easy

This was my last pre-Boston long run with Reed through campus and Duke Forest on a pleasantly cool spring morning. Fortunately, I can report that it was entirely uneventful, and I got in a good stretch afterward. This was my lowest week of mileage in 2012, so tapering is officially here in earnest.

April 7

AM: 10 x 1:00 on/off - 8 miles

I took off on my own in the late morning for a light workout on the ATT. The legs felt good and loose. I also saw a four-foot rat snake slithering across the trail at one point.

April 6

AM: 9 miles easy
PM: 4 miles easy

I ran a campus loop with Reed in the morning and a shake-out on the ATT in the afternoon. The taper continues...

April 5

PM: 11 miles easy

I had a conference in the morning, so I waited until the late afternoon to run the Forest Hills Park-WaDuke loop.

April 4

AM: 4 miles easy
PM: 4 x 1:00 on/off, Blue Cup race - 10 miles

After a shake-out in the morning, I drove to UNC in the afternoon for the annual race between Duke and UNC's MBA programs as a part of an inter-school Olympic-style competition. Varner has been injured and wasn't racing for UNC, so I was pretty content to tempo it, which I did in 17+ minutes (it was a little long, apparently) for the win, and Fuqua took both races again this year. The XC course was a little sloppy after afternoon rain dumped on us before the race.

April 3

PM: 11 miles easy

I did core work in the morning before class, and I met Reed and David at school in the mid-afternoon for a warm run in Duke Forest.

April 2

AM: 10 miles easy

I got in an easy morning recovery run through campus with Reed. My legs felt great despite the race yesterday, which was a refreshingly positive beginning to my Boston taper.

April 1 - Cherry Blossom 10-Mile (96 miles/week)

AM: Cherry Blossom 10-Mile, 52:16 (PR), 23rd overall - 16 miles

In this Boston Marathon prep cycle, I hadn't had a chance to really open up the legs and try to run a fast time until this morning at the Cherry Blossom 10-Mile. I've been putting in a lot of work I've been happy with since Monk, Alex and I raced the 3k at Liberty in January, which now seems like forever ago.

This was my sixth Cherry Blossom 10-Mile--the fastest and most competitive race in the Washington, DC area. There are always guys to race, and the course is lightning-quick with only a few modest slopes and hairpin turns to really slow you down. Sidenote: the elite tent is always an interesting experience as well. Without getting overly runner-geek on you, sitting in the elite tent, I literally sat next to Bill Rodgers while I laced up my flats and Joan Benoit-Samuelson milled around. I chatted with Colleen De Reuck afterward about our respective races. It's kind of cliche, but you can't take the field and pitch to Hank Aaron or throw a pass to Jerry Rice, but I love that you can race Running Hall of Famers who are still getting after it. It's awesome to race with the pioneers of our sport.

Because of a talented international field, it always goes out insanely fast. True to form, the men's winner won by over a minute and ran a 45:15. That is not a typo. I consequently tried not to lose my head early on as packs formed and I tried to key off some familiar faces. The Georgetown Running Company (GRC), my old team, had more than 20 guys in the race, many of whom I used to train and race with on a regular basis. Jake Klim and I talked strategy before the race, and it sounded like we were both shooting for 5:12-5:15 pace. I saw him, but he was at least five seconds ahead of me through the first mile.

Going around Memorial Bridge, I tucked in behind a pack, but I noticed that Klim and his pack were pulling away, so I followed a guy in a Falls Road Running (an "ally" team from Baltimore) singlet. By the third mile mark, I was still 5-10 seconds back and running by myself, and I knew I had a decision to make: put in a surge now and get on the train with the pack of five ahead of me, or settle in and hope they gradually come back to me. I chose the former.

Once I caught them a half-mile later, there were two unknowns, Klim, and the GRC's Karl Dusen. This admittedly made me a little uneasy because I've only ever beaten Klim once, and Karl ran in the 2008 Olympic Trials and 50:00 in this race last year. That being said, because I've logged more than a few runs with those guys in the past, it started feeling like another training run as our group of five pushed onward and traded the lead. With overcast skies, light wind, and 50-degree temperatures, if there was a day to go for it and take some calculated risks, today was the day.

Pack running with GRC'ers Klim, Karl, Paul and Jerry

In the back of my mind, I realized that there was a good chance I was going to PR through 5 miles and 10k. As it turns out, I did, apparently letting out an audible "oh shit" groan at the sight of these new PRs (25:49 and 32:05) according to Klim during our cool down after the race. Visual confirmation had both good and bad repercussions. For one, it meant that I was running faster than I have before, and I was possibly on the way to one of the best races of my life. On the other hand, I still had almost four miles of racing around the crowd-less Hains Point. This famous peninsula sits far removed from the crowds and comes in the most difficult part of the race in miles six through nine. If you find yourself alone at all, it's also where dreams go to die.

Sure enough, by mile 7, I was alone and watching my dreams die. Karl and the two other guys surged down the peninsula. I had no response, and suddenly I was racing by myself and trying in vain to stop the bleeding in front of me. I was slowing modestly, but they were also negative-splitting the second half of the race, which made it seem so much worse at the time. I started ticking down the minutes and I had left to be uncomfortable, hoping that someone would fall back to me and praying no one was catching up from behind

Around Hains Point, I also saw some neon orange ahead that caught my attention when I spotted one of the elite women runners sporting a Bull City Track Club singlet. I grunted out something inaudible like "YEAHBULLCITY" at the runner who turned out to be Rachel Kirsch.

Meanwhile, I fought off the creeping death that comes with taking a race out faster than planned, but I only had a mile to go. I drove my knees and pumped my arms up the only real hill on the course placed 400m from the finish. I heard people cheering for Klim behind me, scaring the pants off of me because even though he's coming off of two frustrated and injury-plagued years, the guy can still close with the best of them. I crossed the line and felt that familiar rush of relief that I'd spent basically all of Hains Point trying not to think about. Pound for pound, this was one of the fastest races of my life and one of my best races in not months, but years. I left DC with HellBurger in my belly after we had lunch with Patrick and John, a spring in my step, and a song in my heart (and in my head, and in my car, and at the race...).

I got exactly what I wanted out of the 10-mile today: a big PR and a confidence boost before Boston in 15 days. With the last tough effort behind me, now it's time to enjoy the taper.

Splits: 5:11, 5:13, 5:05, 5:02, 5:16, 5:09, 5:13,  5:23, 5:20, 5:18

March 31

AM: 6 miles easy, strides

I made it to my first GRC store run in a year with Patrick, where we ran on Teddy Roosevelt Island with Paul and Jerry. Strides on the towpath afterward felt good and crisp.

March 30

AM: 11 miles easy

I met Reed for the standard campus loop in the morning before driving to DC in the evening with Valerie.

March 29

AM: 11 miles easy
PM: 6 miles easy

Both runs today were solo--the first on the Forest Hill-WaDuke loop, and then again on the ATT and Forest Hills Park in the evening.