As the Oldest Man to Run the Boston Marathon Centennial Military Relay, Risking the Absurd, What Have I Learned?

 Back in 1998, I found myself hanging on a cliff - climbing one of the tallest mountains in the lower 48. I recall one point when I paused looking up to where I was going and I looked back. To gauge the depths below, I kicked off a small rock and it fell and fell and fell – hitting a rock wall with the smack of a rifle round. Then a wave of terror flashed over me. I did not want to have the fate of that rock – and yet thought I had more difficult terrain ahead including navigating ice and snow. Could I make it? I was free hand – ascending like a monkey, inch by inch and crack by crack thousands of feet above rock-studded snowfields below on the most difficult mountain I’ve ever climbed. My only other option was to follow the fate of that rock. Silver-haired now, as then, some ask “Are you crazy?” Most simply shrug my story off as a kind of fairy tale. Now in my seventies and running in the Boston Marathon as one of eight teams with my teammate Laura Piscopo, I’m again out there risking falling from grace by falling flat on my face. Like the rock, it’s a long, long way down. This time, I’m representing the U.S. Military in the historic relay last done in 1918 by veterans of World War One. But this time, though it’s the most difficult leg of the entire route, Newton, I won’t make the same mistake; I won’t look back!