Lessons from Running the Boston Marathon

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about the lessons learned on the path to qualifying for the 2019 Boston Marathon – a lifelong dream for which the vast majority of my life I didn’t believe was possible. Part of the reason I wrote the article was because I believed my learning was done. After all, I had come so far in seeing a dream become reality in earning the right to run the Boston Marathon. What could possibly be left to learn?

After qualifying for the Boston Marathon, running the actual marathon was going to be a dream come true regardless of my time but I couldn’t shake the idea of how unbelievable it would be to break 3 hours on the world’s biggest marathon stage. I wouldn’t just have to run 4 minutes faster than my qualifying marathon time, I’d have to do it on a much more difficult course, navigating the legendary hills of the Boston Marathon. Despite the risk of falling short, I couldn’t let the idea go and I decided to make my goal public 6 months before the race. I had made my goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon public so why not try it again?

If Your “Why” is Strong Enough, You Can Run through a Brick Wall

I wasn’t expecting the new lessons to come so quickly into training for the marathon but when does life go exactly as we plan? The increased mileage of marathon training takes a toll on you mentally and physically. To add a level of difficulty, my wife Kelly gave birth to our daughter Brooke two months before the marathon. Brooke’s night feeding schedule was usually around 1 am and then again around 6 am. I ran in the mornings, which meant if I wanted to run and still pull my weight at home, I was on point for 1 am feedings. Running 50+ miles a week can be a grueling schedule. Doing it on 5-6 hours of broken sleep with a newborn at home was a little higher degree of difficulty. Our 2 year-old son Blake decided to pile on by choosing this time to have a major sleep regression, further reducing those few hours of precious sleep during training. It became painfully apparent to me why sleep deprivation has been used as a torture tactic.

Yet each morning, I got dressed and took off running into the cold, dark silence. My running coach told me recently that training for the marathon with a newborn at home was the most impressive feat of this entire journey to him but to be honest it didn’t feel that difficult. Not because I wasn’t exhausted in desperate need of more sleep – I was, seemingly each and every day. It should have been really hard but each morning as I laced up my shoes, I’d look up at the jacket beside the front door. It was the Boston Marathon finisher’s jacket, a jacket you don’t wear until you’ve earned the right to wear it after crossing the finish line. That jacket was so much more than a jacket to me – it was a daily reminder of a lifelong dream about to come true. And when you’re on the precipice of achieving a goal you never believed you were good enough to accomplish, I could have run each morning with a weighted vest with half as much sleep. That jacket was a symbol of my “why” and with my “why” staring me in the face each and every morning, the “how” came easier than I would have ever imagined.

Are You Nervous? That’s Good

Most marathons start early in the morning to beat the heat, which leaves you less time to think about the race and have the inevitable doubts creep in your mind. But the Boston Marathon is different – it starts at 10 AM giving runners plenty of time to think about the race before the race begins.

I had plenty of reason to be nervous the morning of the race. It was a day I had waited for all my life and of course I wanted to run well. But I had also made a very public goal of breaking 3 hours on a much tougher course than where I qualified 10 months prior. The risk of falling short was real and I was keenly aware of that. And there were a lot of people who knew my goal and were following the race. To make things tougher, it was a warm, humid April day in Boston – conditions difficult to simulate during winter training in St. Louis.

Like many, I’ve always gotten a little nervous before big presentations or tests. At one point or another, the nerves transform themselves into self-doubt and the question you fight like hell to keep locked in its mental box gets out – what if I fail? Why does my mind always want to go there when the stakes are high?

As I rode the long bus ride to the starting line, the nerves started to creep in. And then the mental box started to rattle – what if the heat gets to me and I fail? (It had happened less than 2 years prior during a half marathon.) How embarrassed will I be with so many knowing my goal of breaking 3 hours? But this time, for reasons I can’t explain, the box didn’t get open before I slammed it shut. I quickly answered my own question emphatically – no one would be more disappointed in not achieving the goal than me so why would I care what anyone else might think? No one else’s expectations could come close to my own.

But I wasn’t done with the mental failure box in my head. I’m not sure why but the question in my mind changed - from what if I fail to what if I succeed?

This was the day I had waited for all my life, already making it a day I would never forget. But how much more amazing would it be if I achieved 2 goals in the same day that I once believed were impossible – running the Boston marathon and finishing in less than 3 hours? I had put in all the hard work, I was prepared for success. I started to envision how that would feel, how it would stay with me forever.

"Forever" was that word I wrote on the inside of my forearm in black magic marker the morning of the race. When the race got difficult as all marathons do, I wanted a visual reminder of why I should push through the inevitable pain – because the achievement would be mine for the rest of my life.

Another question jumped on the mental failure box – rather than thinking about what if I fail, I thought how many days in my life do I wake up with the opportunity to do something that’s truly epic or legendary? Not many – after all, this day was 2 years of running in the making. How can you not be exhilarated by the opportunity to do something that you’ll remember for the rest of your life??

I’ve tried to take to take this shift in mindset to other parts of my life – 1) stop asking what if I fail, start asking what if I succeed? 2) If I’m feeling nervous, embrace it as a positive - it means there’s an opportunity for greatness sitting right in front of me!

Haters can Derail You or Drive You

The pre-race festivities lived up to expectations with 2 fighter planes flying overhead after the national anthem. It was the first time being at a sporting event with that kind of pageantry that I didn’t have a beer and a hot dog in my hand. I was on the playing field and I had goosebumps. The starting gun went off and the first few miles were all about keeping your emotions in check and not going too fast because the 2nd half of the race is hilly and tough and the weather was going to make it even tougher. I got high fives from my family at mile 10, which gave me a big pick-me-up before the race turned more difficult.

I crossed the half marathon line at exactly one hour and thirty minutes, putting me right on pace for a 3 hour finish. While it was part of the plan to go slower in the first half and save some gas in the tank for a faster 2nd half, I’d be lying if doubt didn’t creep in. How was I going to run the more difficult second half faster than the first half as fatigue was starting to set-in and the heat continued to have its effects? Fortunately, I was able to remind myself that this was part of my coach’s plan, to trust the process, stop thinking, and just execute the plan.

The famous Newton hills in the Boston Marathon are no joke as they collectively wear you down one by one. The last one is the most famous, Heartbreak Hill, which ends near mile 21. After reaching its summit, I was starting to weaken from the hills, the heat, and of course having run 21 miles. My mental failure box was starting to open again.

As I passed mile 22, I started to think about why I was here – why the Boston Marathon mattered so much to me. It was because I was heavier as a kid and I got teased about it in school. Kids would call me names and make fat noises around me. It was a real downer for my self-confidence. I started running a few miles at a time in my early teenage years for sports but also to try and keep some of the weight off. It was then when I heard about the Boston Marathon and how only elite runners ran it. That’s why it was always an insurmountable dream – because elite runners ran the Boston Marathon, not fat kids.

As I climbed aboard the pain train around mile 22, I heard those same kids’ voices calling me names, saw their faces telling me I wasn’t good enough, and that I would always be a fat kid. I tried to fight the thoughts but the mental and physical fatigue were getting close to my breaking point. I barely had the strength to keep running, let alone control the voices in my head. What those kids said about me was going to be true all over again if I failed, or so I told myself.

In the haze of utter exhaustion, a moment of clarity led to an ultimatum – I could give into the pain and anguish and let the kids be right about me 25 years later or I could suck it up and endure another 20 minutes of pure and utter hell and prove every last one of them f*ing wrong and have an epic story for the rest of my life that they nor anyone else could take away from me.

It was exactly the self-talk I needed – there were no guarantees that I was going to hit my 3 hour goal or even finish given how exhausted I was but one thing was for sure – if I wasn’t going to finish, I was going to end up in the medical tent because I wasn’t going to quit unless my body quit on me.

The transformation from letting the haters derail my beliefs of what I could achieve to serving as my jet fuel launching me towards the finish line proved to make all the difference. Ultimately, I owe those kids that told me I wasn't good enough a debt of gratitude because without them I never would have pursued such a lofty goal as running the Boston Marathon in the first place, had the hunger to fight through the adversity of a newborn during training, or the fuel to finish the race. We all face haters in life – it is our choice whether we choose to let them derail us or drive us.

“Marathons Don’t Seem Very Fun”

I knew my family was waiting at mile 25 and for the 2-3 miles before that, my sole focus was to get to my family. I knew seeing them would be an energy boost that I desperately needed and if I could get to mile 25, I could finish the last mile…or so I thought.

I was fortunate to see them at mile 25 and instead of high fives, this time I was so drained that all I could muster was a thumbs up. But I heard their cheers and it gave me life, even if it wasn’t visible in my slowing pace.

It was shortly after mile 25 that I looked at my watch and given how fatigued I was, I couldn’t do the math exactly but I knew hitting my 3 hour goal was going to be close. I decided from that point on that looking at my watch wasn’t going to help me run any faster – I’d give it my best and it’d have to be good enough because my gas tank was running on fumes.

I made the final famous turn onto Boylston Street and could see the finish line ahead, all the while praying that my severely fatigued legs wouldn’t give out. I crossed the finish line and doubled over in both pain and exhaustion. I looked at my watch – it said 2:59:53.

I wore a running watch but it was unofficial and its time could have easily been off from official time by a measly 7 seconds. I limped over to the railing separating runners from the crowd. I found someone holding a cellphone and begged them to look up my official race time – thankfully he obliged. 2:59:53 – I dropped my head and just cried. No clapping, no fist pumps, no screaming – I could barely walk let alone celebrate. I just leaned on the railing and balled.

I must have had 5 or more volunteers ask if I needed medical attention as I made my way through the finish line area. I said I was fine but the fact that so many asked told me my face and physical presence told a different story. Someone put a Boston Marathon medal around my neck and I posed for a picture. In the picture (below), I’m smiling from ear to ear, but I’m not sure I’ve ever felt physically worse – as the volunteers could have told you.

My family finally made their way to the family meeting area and there was a litany of hugs and tears. As I walked gingerly to the subway, my dad and brother-in-law walked in front of and behind me because if someone bumped me, I was going to hit the pavement.

It was at this point that my brother-in-law, looking at my ragged condition and other runners around me in similar agony, made the simple but fair assessment that “marathons don’t seem very fun.”

His comment stuck with me for a long time after the race because he was right – marathons aren’t really “fun.” I’ve never felt as much pain as I felt that day. But I’ve also never felt so alive, so powerful, and so capable of anything. Finding a way to grind through the pain and agony of the race and the doubts and haters in my head showed me that the boundary of my own limitations was in fact a self-established boundary.

The suffering and subsequent achievement in the marathon that day showed me that our capacity for success is far larger than we believe. It’s that realization, that ticket to my own personal freedom, that made running the Boston Marathon more fun and rewarding than any accomplishment in my life.

The cherry on top of my finish to the race last April was earning the right to come back and run Boston again this year. The 124th running of the Boston Marathon was scheduled to be run today, on Patriots Day as its called in Boston. The coronavirus abruptly changed those plans six weeks ago.

The disappointment and sadness that lingers today isn’t resentment – it was the right decision. But last year’s race taught me that just when I thought my learning was done, there’s always more opportunity. Running the Boston Marathon for a 2nd time today would have given me so much – the opportunity to put my lessons from last year to work, the opportunity to learn new life lessons, and to achieve my new goal of finishing under 2:53.

Fortunately, the race wasn’t cancelled but only postponed until September, for which I’m grateful beyond words. Which serves as an early life lesson from this year’s race and a critical reminder during these challenging times – the lesson of gratitude. Stay safe and be well.