Fear the Beard

There are a lot of injustices that go along with supporting a spouse who is training for a marathon. You could start with the sheer number of hours for which you are basically abandoned. Since last July, when I started training for Philadelphia, I've run over 1000 miles. That is somewhere in the ballpark of 135 hours. I did my best to log as many as possible after everybody went to bed, or before they woke up. But still, that probably pushes the idea of "quality time with the kids" a bit too far. And when you get up at 7am to run 20 miles, you aren't exactly useful when you get back. I could claim those were naps, but it's really more like passing out. There were Saturdays when I wasn't functional until 2pm.

Then there are the piles of sweaty clothes laying around. I'm usually pretty good about picking up after myself, but somewhere in the middle of January I gave up washing my stuff after every run. And once you slip, well, what's the difference between 2 days and 5 days? Again, in my defense I don't think I went more than seven days. But how does that saying go about not being able to smell your own (fill in the blank)? Let's just say that I could definitely smell my own gear.

This is all pretty standard stuff. Some of you may have even endured (or partaken in) such behavior independent of marathon training. But there were two aggravating factors this season that are worth calling out.

This was Grant's first year playing hockey. You'll notice a couple of things from that picture. a) He loved it. Didn't want to miss a practice. b) That rink is outdoors. There were two practices a week, one of which was Saturday morning. Saturday mornings were also my Team Bookline runs: The longest runs of the week, usually somewhere along the course, starting at 8am. So for eight straight Saturdays in January and February, in the midst of Boston's worst winter evar, Mayra would get both kids out of bed, fed, get Grant into his gear, and take them over to Larz Anderson, a completely exposed park at basically the highest elevation point in Greater Boston, for hockey practice. Outdoors. By herself. Even Cameron, the kid who can't be bothered to wear a jacket most days, would sit in the warming hut reading a book ("Are you crazy? I'm not going out there. It's freezing.") while Mayra would stand in her parka and boots on the side ice, squirting ice chips out of a water bottle for Grant, who would then skate off in a howl of delight, a howl that would promptly be drowned out by the howl of a polar vortex or something.

Did I mention that Mayra is from Puerto Rico? You could spend a lot of time devising ways to torture her and not come up with something worse than Ice Mice this winter. But that didn't stop me from trying!

I look very respectable in pictures from New Years, so it must have started sometime after that. I basically stopped shaving. This happens a lot, as my job normally doesn't require anything better than scruffy, and I usually hit the reset button after a week or two. But not this time. I thought about giving up at the beginning of February, because it was already quite terrible, but get this: Mayra told me to keep it! The beard was protecting my face on some of the colder, snowier runs, and she said I would be crazy to shave now. So as the winter got more ridiculous, so did the beard.

This was Feb 10th.

This was a week later.

There was no going back. It had become a thing. A direct reflection of how crazy and stupid the weather and training had gotten this winter. Even in the middle of March we kept getting the absolute worst weather every Saturday morning, without fail, including three inches of snow the day we ran a simulated half. The beard had become part playoffs, part protest. In the mean time I drew many comparisons to, among other things, a homeless person, Jonny Gomes, Marc Davenport, and "somebody from Oregon." I stood in the peripheral view of long-time friend for two full minutes before they recognized me. My father in-law totally missed me when I picked him up at the airport. And all Mayra could do was smile politely. "Yes, isn't it crazy?" It was sort of her idea, but beards definitely aren't her thing, and this one, to quote Jeff Goldblum discussing his facial hair in The Grand Budapest Hotel, was "a real alien creature on your face."

Marathon training isn't easy. For anybody involved. Schedules get tossed, stuff gets dropped, and sometimes you have a hard time recognizing people anymore. But there was never a missed morning of hockey, never an interrupted nap, and while maybe a few air kisses near the end, never a single complaint. Thanks Mayra, couldn't have made it this far without you. And sorry about the beard.

Epilogue: No, I didn't keep the beard for the actual marathon. I had no intention of running 26 miles in that thing in 70 degree weather. A friend of mine grows a much better beard every winter, and then creates a bit of performance art each spring by taking it down in stages over the course of a week. I'm not even remotely that brave. But at least now I'm ready to run.