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.

The Battle of Spring

Monday, March 9th - Day 1

Remember how I said that even at its worst, winter was usually just annoying? Mayra sent this picture from our driveway six days later:

Mayra: "Hmmm. Puddle over drain? Are the pipes frozen?"
Me: "Um, that's not good."

This drain leads to a catch basin, 8 feet deep, at the lowest point of our driveway. It has an outlet trap about four feet down that leads to the city pipes, and basically any water on our property (including, but not limited to, 110" of melting snow) runs down to this drain.

We had a plumber come out and confirm that, yep, the drain was a solid block of ice. They could charge us a thousand dollars to flush it with water, or we could wait for it to thaw. There was an obvious right answer, but screw that. Some unspoken decision was made to finally beat back winter ourselves.

The first move was Home Depot for a bag of salt. Because it probably wasn't that thick, right? The salt would melt a hole, water drains, done and done. After dumping half the bag that night, we woke up the next morning to... a bigger puddle. Poked the ice with a broom handle, but not much of a reaction. The salt was going to need another day or two to work it's magic, but the puddle was only getting bigger. So back to Home Depot for a pump (and a pry bar. You know, just in case.)

Day 2

Got a small 0.5 horsepower transfer pump that moved 20 gallons a minute. Nothing fancy, because I just needed to buy some time for the salt. Hooked up the garden hoses and started pumping up the driveway out to the working drain in the street. An hour (1200 gallons!?) later I was back down to the ice, a foot below the drain. More salt, more fruitless poking with broom handle.

The puddle obviously reformed, but this time when I poked at the ice, something gave. A few pieces of ice floated up, while the handle went down an extra foot or so. More poking, and now the handle was all the way through. But there wasn't a lot of wiggle room, and more disconcerting, where was the whooshing of water down the hole? I pried open the grate, snaked the hose down the hole I had made, ran the pump for another half hour, and got my first look at what we were up against.

Good news: A hole! Bad news, nothing really went down this hole. It just filled up. And stomping the surrounding ice was like kicking a jersey barrier. It wasn't very satisfying pulling the grate back over.

Day 3 - 11

And this was how it went. If it was a warm day we would come home to a lake and run the pump until you went to bed. Then wake up to a big puddle, and head outside to hook up the pump again. If you left the pump out, that just meant the temperature would drop and the hoses would freeze. Other days it was cold enough that the drain would stay empty for a day or two. One day the pump got clogged with debris, and I was on the verge of panic. Another night when it rained I just stood there with a head lamp, watching the pump battle the rainfall, winning by only the slightest of margins. Wish I had kept track of how many thousands of gallons of water we moved.

There were occasional signs of hope. Random stuff would sometimes be found floating the next morning. Tennis balls, a pingpong ball, nerf bullets. Floatsam from a long-since-buried summer. Something down there must be melting. One morning the puddle had frozen over, but the water had actually receded a few inches beneath. Hey, that's progress! But then we spotted the wiffle bat.

When we moved into the house, it took the kids a few weeks to figure out what did and did not fit through the grate. Then it took them a while to figure out that what went in didn't come back out. One of these experiments involved a wiffle bat. I had completely forgotten this, until one night I finally caught a glimpse of the outlet trap under the ice and murky water, and sure enough the wiffle bat was lodged in there. Of course it was. And it wouldn't budge. I always knew the outlet trap was frozen, but the bat was like a big yellow middle finger sticking out of it.

Day 12

It was a warm, sunny Saturday, and I decided to pry open the grate and, well, do something. The first thing we noticed after draining the water was that the ice was pulling away from the basin walls. You can't tell from the earlier picture, because the grate is only three feet square, but the basin that it leads to is 6-7' in diameter. So there was basically a 7' donut of ice, with a 3' hole in the middle, just hanging there. But seven days of dripping water had weakened one side. And after a half-hour of chipping at it with a spade, it started creaking. Ever try to move something really large and almost, well, unmoveable, and just when it is about to loosen its grip it makes a noise that makes you stop pushing and reevaluate whether you should be trying to move it in the first place? It sounded like that. After a little more work, the ring finally split and fell into the water below, and it was a bit like watching an iceberg launch. The first thing that became painfully obvious was that the "ice" that was on top, the stuff that looks like slushy snow but is really hard as a rock, was not the problem. The problem was the standing water beneath the snow. The water that was at the outlet level, well below the frost line every other winter, which had frozen so perfectly solid that it looked like obsidian. Two feet of it at least. So I guess it was cold this winter. But hey, having that ice floating in the water was better then... um.

And there was another small victory. Cam had just proposed a bunch of ideas for breaking up the ice, including dynamite (Me: "I think that would also break the concrete"), cannon balls (Me: "Fired out of a cannon? Or dropped?"), and a flamethrower (Me: "Actually not a bad idea, but mom would never let us.") Refusing to be left out of this conversation, Grant suggested we use magnets to pull out the ice. But then Cam focused on the bat. We couldn't really get a hold of it, as it was pointing down out of the trap under a foot of water and four feet below the drain. But he managed to catch it and bend it up with a rake, which in turn allowed me to push it down with a shovel, and it was like King Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone. Nobody cared that the outlet was still frozen solid. We had our trophy.

Thursday, March 26th - Day 17
I didn't even look at the forecast. I was simply fed up. First I drained the basin below the outlet trap. Then I stuck an 8' ladder all the way down into the muck and climbed in. Grant and Mayra's mom formed a bucket brigade to the kitchen, and I poured hot water over the trap. Then I got the biggest screwdriver I had and started blindly poking around. There was an elbow of ice, but now it was loose and rattling, and after a few more buckets it finally slid out. But that was too easy, and it was also as far as I could reach into the trap with the screwdriver. When I tried to snake some wire farther down the pipe, there was more resistance. I thought about pulling off the trap altogether, but the basin was filling back up and I decided to break for lunch. Before going in, melt-off had already filled it almost to the top of the drain again. Sigh.

Then it was over. I looked out the window after lunch to see how big the puddle had gotten, but it was gone. I ran outside, and the drain was empty. Some combination of the hot water bath, removing ice from the elbow, and static pressure had finally flushed it. But I didn't even get the satisfaction of watching it happen. We didn't win as much as winter had finally given up. And then the rain came. Pounding, heavy spring rain, all afternoon. More water than the poor pump could have possibly kept up with. And it all just drained away.

This is a ridiculous story, the morale of which is obviously "hire a plumber". As far as annoyances, this probably rates somewhere between "it gets dark too early" and "I need to shovel again". Our neighbors had their car crushed by snow and ice sliding off their roof. An avalanche in Cambridge buried five people. We didn't even have flooding in the house, just the driveway and garage. But the story wrote itself, which is good since I haven't written much else this winter. And I stood in the garage for a long time that afternoon, just listening to the rain gushing down the drain. Later that night I went for a run, warm puddles washing two months worth of salt from my shoes. It was still raining, but there was also fog. Hound of the Baskervilles fog, rising out of the snow. It felt like the soul of winter was finally slipping away into the night. Our last long training run was Saturday, and or course it was snowing. But whatever. Spring has been sprung.

Snow Daze

A few thoughts now that Febru-buried is behind us...

• For those of you living in Boston, who claimed back in January that winter hasn't been too bad this year, this is all your fault. You can also stop reading now, as you've seen / heard the rest of this already.
  
  

• Most of my coworkers are rooting for more snow. We're currently at 104.1 inches for the season, and the record is 107.6. Why not at least set a new record, right? Of course, 64.8 inches of snow this February is a Bob Beamon-esque mark.
  
  

• Ever notice that it's hard to take a picture that conveys the magnitude of a large snowfall? Or in this case, consecutive large snowfalls. All perspective gets lost.
  
  
  
  How tall are my kids anyways? Or maybe you just get used to it. But photos plus poetry? The "Becket Quotes on Photos of Boston's Snow" Tumblr was pretty awesome.  These were two of my favorites.
  
  

• I squeezed in a snowboarding trip out west, between storms in February. Checking the ski reports as we got on the plane, we couldn't help but notice that Wachusett and Blue Hills had the most fresh snow in North America. Harley was quick to point out the continued lack of elevation. But still. I swore I heard them doing avalanche control work on Heartbreak Hill later that week.
  
  
  
  
  

• In terms of natural disasters you can do a lot worse than snow. Some people were starting to get pretty worked up. Ice dams! Potholes! Traffic! Snow days! I'm not going to pretend to know the economics of lost business and snow removal budgets. If financial relief is in order, great. But come on. Would anybody like to compare notes with the people of Moore, Oklahoma? Lots of snow can be really annoying. Let's leave it at that.
  
  

• That said, this post also made the rounds, and it's worth remembering: "The day-to-day mechanics of being a member of the working poor is a ton of work." If you relied on public transportation to get you to your job, a job you could not afford to be late for, well, the MBTA was not prepared to hold up their end of the bargain. Back in the day when I took the commuter rail in from Worcester, it seemed like the MBTA had a "we'll do our best" attitude. That's a great answer from my six year old, not so good for a public transportation system. But by all means, bring on the Olympics!
  
  
  
  

• So what about training? Like everything else, you grind it out. Most of my old routes and routines got tossed (running from the house in the morning) so you come up with new ones (driving over to Jamaica Pond at night.) Core work was replaced with shoveling. Sprinting from driveway to driveway on busy streets, growing a really ugly yet super-practical beard, remembering to wear safety glasses at night when it was snowing hard, etc. Still no days on a treadmill, but I definitely thought about it. There were lots of times where it felt like nobody else was training, but then you get on the course on Saturdays and runners had filled the Comm Ave carriage lane to capacity. Not ideal, but you make it work, and every once in a while maybe even enjoy the scenery.
  
  

So, um, what happened?

(A quick refresher: Seven months ago I attempted to run my first marathon. In under 3hrs. In Boston. Hard to type that today without laughing. A tiny, painful little laugh. Anyways, here's what happened:)

The morning-of was pretty uneventful. Logistics went off without a hitch, bus ride was easy, found Team Brookline, had all the right food / fuel, long enough in Hopkinton to get a good stretch and relax, but not too long. The only detail of note was how warm it was. I would guess mid-60s by 11am? Not hot, but not really cool either. But the weather was also going to make for fantastic crowds, so I just made sure to keep hydrating, put on some sunscreen, and roll with it.

I started in the fourth wave at 11:25, but I was in the third corral and I was only 30 yards from the line when we started. Which means that I was actually relatively in the clear less than a half-mile into the race. This was not what I was expecting. The threat of crowding at the start had been one of my biggest concerns. But I also remember making a concerted effort to not get too excited about my unexpected freedom. First mile was 7:11, which was faster than I thought the crowds would let me run, but not faster than my target pace. Mile two was 6:37. We'll get back to this later, but for now we can all agree that this was a little too fast. But then I settled down into 7:00 pace for the next 11 miles. Ironically, the worst stretch was going through downtown Natick, right after mile 10, where it seemed like I caught up with all nine thousand runners from the wave before us.

Mile 10 also happened to be where I started having some doubts. You have a lot of time to do math in your head, and I could tell that I was barely going to get through the first half in under 1:30. And I didn't feel all that great. Nothing specifically was bothering me, but they say the first half is supposed to be easy, and between dodging other runners, stopping and starting for every water station, and probably being too obsessed with my target pace, I could tell that I was exerting way more energy than I wanted to, both mentally and physically. Looking back at my splits, I didn't back off my pace too much. Still went through mile 13 at 1:30:08. But I was already coming to terms with the fact that 3hrs probably wasn't in the cards. And if mile 10 was the first mental slip, then mile 13 was the first physical crack. I "backed down" to 7:15 for the next two miles, but it didn't matter how much I slowed down at this point. My legs were getting tight. I started grabbing every banana in site, but I knew this was going to be too little too late. Just before mile 16, at the top of the hills that lead down into Newton Lower Falls, my right hamstring cramped.

I was stunned. a) I've never had a hamstring cramp while running before. I've had tightness in my calves, but I didn't even know a hamstring cramp was possible. b) I was TEN F'ING MILES from the finish line. I wasn't even at the hard part yet. So... now what? I honestly had no idea what to do. I pulled over to the side and started to stretch, but was that even going to help? Was I going to be able to run anymore? Jog? Was I going to have to walk the last 10 miles? Did I need to go to an aid station? Was I done? A guy running by yelled out "I was there last year buddy! You can do it!" and that's when I realized that I was also in a messed up mental place. My target time was out the window, but whatever, I always knew that was a stretch. This was different problem. I wasn't running anymore. I was standing there, stretching, trying not to make eye contact. I was mortified.

(Quick aside, I started having flashbacks about this two months later, when I was watching, of all things, LeBron's cramp game. Google "Lebron cramp game" if you missed it. Anyways, instead of enjoying a small chuckle at Lebron's expense like most Cleveland natives, I was grimly nodding my head. "Yep, that sucks. And nope, there's nowhere to hide." But I'm sure that won't happen again, right Cleveland?)

I have no idea how long I was bent over at that curb. It felt like forever, but it was probably closer to one or two minutes. I will never forget that stupid spot. But then I started to walk, and after fifty yards I tentatively started jogging again. And to my amazement, my leg didn't immediately seize up. Factoring in the stretching, mile 16 ended up at 9:08. Mile 17 was actually 7:54, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep that up. Once my hamstrings quit, my calves and quads were quick to remind me that this was not part of the original deal. I discovered that slowing to a walk was way more cost effective than cramping / stretching again, so for the remaining 10 miles that was the game I played. Jog until the last possible moment before the onset of another cramp, and then walk. On average I probably jogged half a mile, then walked 30 seconds. For 10 miles. Average pace over that stretch was 8:56.

And then it was over. Final time: 3:26:56. Basically a 1:30 front half and 2:00 back half. As I wobbled through the maze of exit chutes, I realized that I wasn't even that winded or dehydrated. My legs were gone, but otherwise I was fine. Grabbed my stuff, and hobbled onto the T at Boylston. (But not before I went down the wrong entrance first, making for an extra trip up and down 20+ steps. Me: "Sorry about that." Legs: "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!") And then spent the next three days in bed.





What happened? I'm still not entirely sure. Yes it was warm, but I wasn't dehydrated. And yes, it was an aggressive pace, but I had easily maintained that same pace for most (but not all) of my 20 mile training run three weeks earlier. If forced to guess, I would blame the second mile.The third most famous blunder in the world is "Never go out too fast in the Boston Marathon." I can't think of a single person who didn't warn me about this for the weeks leading up to the race. So I probably shouldn't have run a 6:40 second mile. Especially when compared to the first couple of miles of the aforementioned 20 mile training run, which I ran at 8 min/mile while warming up, and, well, oops.

But I finished my first marathon. The Boston Marathon. In under 3:30. As almost every single person has reminded me whenever this comes up, that's pretty cool, no matter what the circumstances. People were dropping left and right that day. It was hot. Aid stations were overflowing. As far as sob-stories go, I don't have a particularly good one. And while I talked a big game about trying to run under 3 hrs, I knew that was going to be a stretch (!) and in the end I was never going to care what my time was anyways. As I mentioned before, I don't make race plans, and even when I do I don't keep them. Was I going to be disappointed if I ran 3:05? Or 3:15? Of course not. Can I run faster than 3:26? Probably. Does 3:26 bother me? Not in the least.

So why was I completely depressed? Michelle, a good friend and Boston veteran, kept telling me before the race to make sure I enjoyed myself, yet that was the one thing I clearly forgot. If I didn't care about my time, why was I so obsessed with it? Even going back weeks before the race I was agonizing over whether to wear racing flats or trainers, worried about squeezing every second I could out of my equipment. I caught up to Pete somewhere between the first and second mile, but instead of relaxing and having a few laughs together, I shot past him, hopping curbs and compulsively checking my pace every thirty seconds. (Pete ran a great race, btw. Took 20 minutes off his previous time.) And of course for the last ten miles I was in a shell. Shut down mentally, staring at the road 10 yards ahead of me, avoiding all eye contact. I might as well have been on a treadmill for all I noticed. And this is not how you're supposed to run Boston, or at least not Boston 2014. After 2013, and after a brutal winter, the entire city of Boston turned out on a glorious spring day for a 26 mile block party. And I basically missed it. There are almost too many quotes to pick from, but I'll go with this one: "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

---

My dad came up from Maryland to watch the marathon, but there was a wrinkle. He was competing in the CrossFit Open, and he had one more workout to do in the 3rd round. So on Saturday, on the way to pickup my bib, we arranged to go to the Fenway box to complete this last workout before the deadline. When I asked what the workout was, he said three circuits of rowing (easy), double-unders (easy for him), and handstand pushups. After a very long pause:

Me: "Have you ever done handstand pushups before?"
Him: "Not really."
Me: "How many do you have to do?"
Him: "15."
Me: "Total?"
Him: "Each round, God willing."

He ended up grinding out the first set, taking almost 30 minutes to get 15 good reps, with probably another 20 or more no-reps. (Forget the pushups, just getting up on the wall unassisted is brutal.) And then he called it. Was he disappointed? Sure. But on the way back to the airport on Tuesday, I asked if he had plans for the week.

"Work on my handstand pushups."

Fast forward seven months. I was talking to him on the phone the other night. "Not sure if you remember that CrossFit workout, but I can do the pushups now." And then we coordinated where to meet up in Philadelphia for the marathon this weekend. My cousin Rachel said that she didn't know anybody who only ran one marathon, and hopefully by this time tomorrow I will no longer be the exception.

Readysetgo

Narrator: Tyler, you are by far the most interesting single-serving friend I've ever met... see I have this thing: everything on a plane is single-serving...
Tyler Durden: Oh I get it, it's very clever.
Narrator: Thank you.
Tyler Durden: How's that working out for you?
Narrator: What?
Tyler Durden: Being clever.
Narrator: Great.
Tyler Durden: Keep it up then... Right up.
[Gets up to leave]

One last pre-race post, but zero more deep thoughts. As I mentioned previously, I usually go into races without a plan, or a plan that's so conservative that I throw it out the window after the first half mile. So I'm going the other way this time. The target is 3 hrs. That's 6:52/mi.

(Stealing a gimmick from Simmons here...)

What I'll tell myself if I make it? That half marathon back in February was a good leading indicator. I trained strong, and I was injury free. Weather was a tad warm, but otherwise perfect. I ran pretty close to that pace for 20 miles just three weeks ago, with no taper. The crowd totally carried me the last six (or 26) miles. Racing flats rule.

What I'll tell myself if I don't make it? It was crazy to think that I could run 3 hrs my first marathon, especially Boston. I knew it was going to be crowded at the start, but not that crowded. I knew those hills were going to eat back a few precious minutes. Everyone warned me about those last six miles. People joke that it's the last 0.2 that gets you, but in this case it was true.

Anyways, bib #29458. And I'm in the fourth wave, so I don't start until 11:25am. You can sign up here if you want to follow along via email / text alerts. Nervous? Of course. But I will say this: When I started out back in December, I didn't even dream of coming close to raising $10k for Team Brookline. But the final total: $10,026. You guys did your part, now it's time to do mine.

Dirty Water

I'm from Cleveland. Born and raised. Specifically, Cleveland Heights, the first suburb east of Cleveland proper. But I also took the city bus across town for high school, and spent a fair amount of time downtown. We would collect canned goods outside Municipal stadium to get free standing room tickets for Browns games. We used to have "workouts" where we would run across the flats, duck into an empty, meaningless Tribe game for a few innings and then run back. And we never went to a single Cavs game, because honestly who was going to drive out to Richfield for that. This was long before The Jake, The Q, and FirstEnergy. We played basketball late into the night in Strongsville. We hung out at Record Revolution on Coventry. We had all the lights timed on Euclid Avenue. We were the opening credits of Major League.

But then in 1990 I went away to college, and my family moved to Virginia. The first couple of years I went back often. My brother lived there for a few summers, still met up with friends, extended family get togethers, holidays, etc. But over the years the visits got predictably less frequent. At the same time, the city itself kept changing, like all cities do. (Yes, even Cleveland.) Old steel mills were turned into nightclubs, the flats became a scene, new stadiums, downtown renaissance. And then the flats died, the Tribe was terrible again, housing crisis, ghost-town. I think the last time I went back was three years ago for my Grandmother's funeral? Stayed in a turn-of-the-century bank that had been converted to a Holiday Inn downtown. Had drinks at a hipster bar that used to be in a pretty shady neighborhood. Gray drizzle. The city was like a second cousin that you only see once every six or seven years. There's something strikingly familiar at the core, but there is so much context and backstory that fills in those gaps that they might as well be a total stranger. (Assuming that you aren't Facebook friends of course.) It's an amazingly disorienting form of nostalgia. Layers upon layers of recent history, almost like an archeological dig, all obscuring something that you lived and breathed for 18 years. Maybe you never really appreciate what it means to be from someplace until you leave it.

But in two years, I will have lived in Boston for as long as I lived in Cleveland. I’ve lived across from Fenway Park, the North End, East Cambridge, and most recently Brookline. (I'm not counting the three years in Worcester, because that never happened.) I’ve worked in Cambridge for 16 years. I've walked from one end of the city to the other in the wee hours of the morning, and I've run around the esplanade approximately 1,356,231 times. I’ve watched with a jealous eye the absolutely ridiculous stretch of sports teams that have graced this town. And of course my boys are from here. They've visited Cleveland multiple times. Cam's first baseball game was even at The Jake, even though he fell asleep on my shoulders the second we stepped foot in the park. But to them it’s just another place where they know some people, no different than DC, Chicago, NYC. Their memories will be of Fenway. Grant knows the names of all the bridges across the Charles. They know all the words to Dirty Water. I'm not from Boston, but I know Boston. It's weird being back in Cleveland for all the reasons I mentioned, but there's nothing weird about being here.

Which brings us to the marathon. I've watched a lot of Boston Marathons over the years, and always regarded it as a pretty cool tradition. Just not mine. (It doesn't help that I can't watch a race without feeling guilty that I'm not running.) After last year people were quick to rally around the city. Boston, even America, had been attacked. But personally, I was more outraged that somebody would target the finish line of a road race. This was about running. And then I got wrapped up in the training and fundraising challenge. Marking off a marathon from my bucket list. Plus being a part of the absolute spectacle / circus that this race promises to be. Not every day you can simply enter an event like this. But the undeniable Boston-ness of this whole thing is starting to take hold. It's hard to go to team meetings at the public library, the police station, the teen center, and not feel like a local. It's hard to raise money for a local charity, and not feel a sense of civic pride. And it's hard to train through the winter in this city and not start to bond with it. I dragged the boys out of bed at 6:30am last Saturday to go downtown to the finish line and be a part of the SI "Boston Strong" cover shoot, telling myself this will be a cool bit of history for them. But I'm not sure I would have bothered four months ago.

(You can't really see us in the main picture. Grant decided to jump off my shoulders at that particular moment. But here we are in the back.) 

Nothing will be different on Tuesday. Well, I'll be really sore, but you know what I mean. It's just a road race. And I still won't own a Red Sox hat. But at the same time, it's the Boston F'ing Marathon. I'm going to go down to Copley on Saturday to pickup my number and jacket, I'm going to get on a bus at the Commons on Monday morning, I'm going to get dropped off in Hopkinton, and I'm going to run home.

Brookline FC

I played a lot of soccer growing up, and I was just good enough to assume that I would continue playing in high school. So then I get to high school, and it turned out I wasn't that good. I was actually pretty terrible. I "made" the team, but only because they didn't cut anybody from freshman soccer. I'm not sure I saw more than 10 minutes of garbage time the entire season. Did I even have a jersey?

When spring rolled around, my dad suggested that maybe running track would help my chances of making soccer team in the fall. Better conditioning was basically my only hope. So I went out for the track team, and that was even more fun. Ever watch high-school freshmen "compete" in the 3200m? All of the distance scrubs, sitting around in the freezing rain waiting for the end of the meet when everybody else has already gone home, just to run 7 and a half laps at an absolute crawl, and then put on a really awkward, painful sprint to the finish that was equal parts meaningless and embarrassing to watch. The duel for "at least I wasn't last." This was me. While I don't remember trying to quit soccer, I definitely remember trying to quit track.

But it worked. I didn't get cut from JV soccer in the fall. And I kept running in the spring. But after three years, the bit flipped. By senior year, the track coach made a pretty convincing argument that cross-country in the fall was a prerequisite for states in the spring. And while the soccer coach, who would have been my fourth in four years, told me that I had a spot on the varsity back line, that was no longer enough. So I walked away from soccer to focus on running, and then four years of track in college.

But after I graduated, I had a Forest Gump moment and stopped running. And later that year, a few coworkers from my first job started to play pickup soccer after work. And then we started playing pickup with the folks at Bristol-Myers down the road (which led to a surreal weekend in Brussels to essentially play in their global corporate pickup game.) And then a buddy found a bruising league for us to play in eastern PA. Then I moved to Boston, and another friend hooked me up with Busy Bee FC team for their last couple of seasons in the BSSL. Then I jumped to a BSSC team (with Live Poultry, Fresh Killed jerseys!). And then a bunch of us went to play with Medfield's NEOTHSL (OTH = Over the Hill) team. And then a friend from the Medfield team started the Brookline FC team...

(You're probably wondering where this is going, and when it's going to get there.)

One version of this narrative is the "love of the game", or something like that. But looking back, this was all about the team. Running can obviously be a pretty solitary activity sometimes, but high school and college track were some of the best team experiences of my life. I didn't choose running over soccer in high school because of states. I chose it because of my buddies on the track team. But after college, I needed my fix, and I went back to soccer to get it. Every introduction to every pickup or organized team I've played on for the past 20 years has been through a good friend. I started thinking about this when I lost count of how many former track and soccer teammates, some of whom I haven't talked to in years, have donated to my marathon fundraising. My past few months training with Team Brookline also reminded me what a difference running with a team can make.

But this past Sunday was also the first game of the 2014 spring campaign for Brookline FC. And I sat it out. Plus I'm sitting out the next two games after that. I decided not to risk the marathon with what would essentially be a guaranteed Murphy's-Law-style injury. Funny how sometimes you can hear the faintest echoes from your past*. But it kills me to not be out there on Sundays.

(*A few years ago, during my last season with Medfield, the guy who organized the team pulled on a t-shirt after the game, and I had to do a triple-take. It was an Ohio High School Athletic Association, track & field, state finals t-shirt. From my senior year. He ran in that meet too. Ok, so maybe sometimes the echoes aren't so subtle.)

Pops

My dad ran marathons when I was little. In fact, I was roughly the same age as my kids are now. (Just to be clear, my dad was only in his late 20's back then, while I'm in my early-multiples-of-20's now.) As a kid, it's hard to appreciate what running a marathon entails. As a spectator sport, it's pretty damn boring, as my brother (pictured below) expertly demonstrated. And my kids still have a pretty tenuous grasp on concepts like time and distance, especially when trying to combine them. "I bet I could run a mile in thirty seconds." At least that's my excuse for never bothering to ask about the details: I was a kid. Basically, I knew that he ran a few marathons, but that was it.

It turns out that he ran the Cleveland Revco marathon twice and the Detroit Free Press marathon once. The first Cleveland marathon was technically held in 1976 in Hudson, which would be a lot like holding the Boston marathon in Worcester. (Not that there's anything wrong with Worcester.) But in 1978, they moved the course to downtown Cleveland, and my dad was one of the 1,901 runners that year. His best time was 2:45, which qualified him for Boston. But work - he taught english and drama at Heights High, and was directing the school play that year - kept him from going.

(*I had actually convinced myself, until recently, that he actually had run the Boston Marathon. Possibly because we had the official Boston Marathon Board Game when we were growing up, and played it all the time, which I swear seemed perfectly normal.)

Anyways, he never ran Boston. "I've always regretted that." And then I got the following text from him on April 18th last year, three days after the 2013 marathon: "I have at least one more marathon in me. I would like to run the Boston Marathon in 2014. Training begins now. Love, Pops."

I think we both knew that this was a long shot. Not that you can't run marathons in your 60s, but my dad is into a different kind of fitness these days. As I mentioned in a prior post, he threw himself into CrossFit after retiring a few years back. Works out five days a week, became a certified instructor, and is currently ranked 51st in the world in the Master's 60+ division of the CrossFit Open. (I'm not making this up. 10 deadlifts, 15 box jumps, 15 deadlifts, 15 box jumps, 20 deadlifts, 15 box jumps, 25 deadlifts, 15 box jumps. In 7 min, 32 sec. CrossFitters are a different breed.) And while CrossFit certainly helps your running, you still need to put in a lot of base miles for a marathon, and that was always going to be a stretch with his knees. A marathon just didn't make sense.

But I've quoted him a lot this past year, with one small edit: "I have at least one more marathon in me." 

 

Let's hope I look half that good.  33 days to go.

Half at the Hamptons

Training update this week. Ran the Half at the Hamptons half-marathon this past weekend. Part tune-up, part benchmarking to help establish a marathon target. I finished in 1:23:29, which averages out to 6:23/mile. A couple of thoughts / observations in no particular order:

• Yikes
  
• This was only my third half marathon. But I lowered my personal best by 4 minutes. Granted this was a much flatter course than the BAA Half, but still. To say that I didn't think I had that race in me is a bit of an understatement.
  
• New Hampshire in February, along the ocean, yet 40 degrees at race time. Let's just say the weather could have been a lot worse.
  
• According to my watch, my split at the 10k was 39:04. That was a personal best. And my split at the 5k was 19:13. Also a personal best. To be clear, those weren't personal bests for 5k and 10k splits of a half marathon. Those would have been personal bests for 5k and 10k races. (Again, with the caveat that I've only run a single 10k and one or two 5k's in the last few years, so I don't have a lot of data points to work with. But still.)
  
• My fastest split was mile 9 in 6:06. My slowest were miles 7 and 13, both in 6:33. I think miles 7 and 9 correspond to what little climb and downhill this course had (only 60ft of elevation.) But my mile splits still varied anywhere from +/- 2% to +/- 4% for most of the race. This was not a very comfortable race.
  
• Big thanks to Scott C. and Katie M., complete strangers that I met at mile 3 and mile 4 respectively, who proceeded to tow me through the bulk of the race. (That's Scott in the picture. I was parked 6 feet off his right shoulder for 9 miles. I ruined most of Katie's pics as well.) At some point Scott mentioned that he was targeting a 1:23:30. I almost gave up contact right then and there, but decided to see how long I could hang on. Plus there weren't a lot of other options. I run most of that race alone and probably finish closer to 1:26 if I had decided to let them go. Oh yeah, and Scott, who finished 3s ahead, clearly knew what he was doing. I wonder what it's like to plan to run a specific pace and then actually do it?
  
• Racing: It's different.

What does this mean for my projected marathon time? I'm not going there yet. Ironically, having tapered last week, and with the temperatures dropping back down, and being sore as hell, I'm actually having a hard time just motivating to get back on the road this week. Part of my brain is clearly asking "Um, was that it? Are we done now?" Nope, not done yet, but good effort.

I Quit

I quit. (My job, not the marathon thing.) Last day was today, Valentines Day. For those of you not familiar with the backstory, I joined a startup in 1999 with some friends from college, under the assumption that I would work there for a few years (or less, if there was some kind of crazy bubble or something) and then move on to the next thing. 14 years, 7 office moves, 2 (3?) bubbles, and 1 acquisition later, it's finally time to get around to that next thing.

What is the next thing? I'll save the details for another day, but it's a new idea / startup, from scratch. I've gotten a couple of responses along the lines of "Really!? You're going through that again?" Maybe 14 years made me overly nostalgic. Or worse, maybe I can't remember anything I learned 14 years ago. Maybe startups should be left to the kids and their energy drinks. But whatever. It's a convergence of ideas + people + timing + experience that I wasn't going to pass up. And it's going to be awesome.

The timing relative to this whole marathon endeavor, however, was not intentional. My work routine was, well, routine, and that made training that much easier. Locker room at the office, run during lunch three days a week, done and done. It wasn't a lack of work, or even a lack of interesting work. If given a chance I will still talk your ear off about the opportunities and challenges we faced. There just weren't many surprises left. You could make, and then stick to, a plan. It was comfortable.

Another thing that was comfortable? Not running a marathon.

My dad is a CrossFit guy, which means I get indirect yet steady exposure to that scene via social media. Plus I go to a session or two with him whenever I visit, and promptly have my leg muscles deatomized. (Shout out to CrossFit Ocean City.) That was where I first heard the phrase "getting comfortable with being uncomfortable." (Not surprisingly, a large number of entrepreneurs latched onto it as well. And everyone else. It's catchy like that. Well, except for maybe programmers. I've worked with more than a few people who would probably rail on this as livelock or something.) Anyways, while the timing might not have been intentional, the startup and the marathon are pretty clearly related. Time to get uncomfortable. (Er, comfortable? Wait, I'm confused.)

On a final note: A tip-of-the-cap to all those who I've worked alongside for the last decade+. That was a lot of fun. "Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who'll argue with you." - John Wooden

Do the Math

How fast do you run your first marathon? This question has been bouncing around in my head for the last 190 miles or so. Yesterday I bumped into an old friend and fellow first time marathoner who has been struggling with the same thing. Some experienced marathoners have taken my half-marathon time ("fast") and projected some pretty intimidating targets. And Jordan pointed me to a VDOT calculator which, based on the amount of oxygen my body consumes during a minute of running, speculated that I could run a 5:30 mile. (More on VDOT here. Although I'm not sure I trust anything that doesn't ask me my age first.) The Team Brookline coach also projected a fast time, reassuring me that "I finished my first marathon in under 3 hrs. Well, actually, it was my third marathon, but the first that I finished."

And see, that's the thing: Shouldn't I plan on finishing my first marathon? It's not like a 5k, where I'll probably finish regardless of how bad I bonk. It seems like it's pretty easy to not finish a marathon, and that would be unfortunate since I don't plan to make this (running a marathon) a regular thing. So just take it slow and be conservative, right? On the other hand, I was joking with Jeff the other day that I think I'm 0-for-12 in sticking with my last dozen pre-race strategies. For my last half, I ran the first mile 45 seconds faster than my target pace. Apparently my legs had zero interest in what my brain had previously decided on this topic. But that was my second half marathon and I'd like to think that my legs had some idea what they were getting themselves into. And to their credit, they pretty good job matching the VDOT targets on the fly. It'll be interesting to see what they decide to do in April. (Meanwhile my brain will be that kid in the front of the class that the teacher refuses to call, but still frantically waving his hand in the air.)

Speaking of setting goals, when I first kicked off my fundraising, a buddy stopped by my office and laughed: "$5k? That shouldn't take long." He was right. Specifically, it took 17 days, 14 hours. But how was I supposed to know that? $5k is still a lot of money, right? Turns out you guys are way more generous than I gave you credit for. Or, more likely, I was intimidated by the idea of raising money, plus I was too lazy to do a little math. Either way, a big thank you to everybody who has donated so far, and it's time to set a new goal. My initial thought was $8k. Seemed like a nice safe number. But screw that. Let's put a real target out there: $10,000. What's the worst that can happen, right? (Yep, still too lazy to do the math.)

Music

Ever curious what music people are listening to when they run? No? Well, unfortunately that's all I have to offer this week, so maybe check back next week.  But before you go, if you haven't already, how about a donation to support Team Brookline?  Just click the big green banner on the right.

For those of you who are still reading, the following is a sample of what has been loaded into my iPod shuffle for what feels like the last 50 years. Which is odd, because while I don't have "a lot" of music by some people's standards, I still have 700+ hours worth. Yet I keep listening to these same songs. At first I assumed I was just being lazy. But then I bought a new shuffle and, yup, loaded the exact same songs. Note the "comfort in repetition" theme from my last post. Occasionally new tracks will sneak in, and this is not an exhaustive list. But these are the anchors that will carry me through April.

Disclaimers:

1) I watched most of most of these links, but if something inappropriate happens to surface, you know what to do. That's right, dump the nearest hot liquid on your computer.

2) You may not like any of this music.

Without further ado, my top 19, in no particular order:

• Percussion Gun by White Rabbits - "I know which way to run!" Apparently this was on the Friday Night Lights soundtrack? Who knew.

• Dance Yrself Clean by LCD Soundsystem. Bonus versions featuring absurd street skiing, and Muppets. 

• Atlas by Battles. How is this not the entrance music for an NBA team? (Maybe because the lyrics sound like gibberish.
• Mountains in the Sky by Noah's Arkestra. But this track was featured in an old NBA playoffs commercial.
• List of Demands by Saul Williams. And I lifted this from a Nike commercial a few years back. A lot of overlap with my "good music from commercials" playlist. 
• I Gotta Rokk by DJ Shadow. "Shake yourself alive!"  Must listen with good headphones.
• Stomp by The Roots. I always thought the first 30s of this track was my own little personal "Any Given Sunday" speech. (Turns out it was a Georgia Tech pre-game speech.)
• Escape Velocity / Superflash by The Chemical Brothers. This is probably better suited for a 5k. Also, honorable mention for the rest of the Don't Think album.
• Air War by Crystal Castles. According to Dan this is the only good track this group has.
• Not Even Jail by Interpol. iTunes claims I've only played this song 109 times. I think that's conservative.
• Higher Ground by TNGHT. This post does a much better job of describing these guys than I ever could: "These are beats that are part Star Fox soundtrack, part mad/evil scientist, part synths bigger than the house you grew up in, part snap music that will crack your knuckles in two"
• Middle Distance Runner by Sea Wolf. Not a very clever song. But as a former middle distance runner it's good reverse psychology on the longer runs.
• Heaven by U.N.K.L.E. Atmosphere music for when you're zoning out on a run. Or dead. Either one really. Bonus points awarded for an awesome Spike Jonze skateboarding video. Make sure you get to at least the 2 min mark.
• Unsung by Helmet. Metal circa 1992? I have no idea how this ended up in my walkman, but I listened to this track before every single race in college. Without exception. Hasn't really held up that well, but it always gets the sentimental nod.
• Little Black Submarines by The Black Keys. Helps me start slow. And then blows out my eardrums.
• (Just Like We) Breakdown (DFA Remix) by Hot Chip. A quick lesson in self-hypnosis. Comes in handy when running 26 miles.
• Rock Co. Kane Flow by De La Soul ft MF Doom. This is a pretty obscure De La track from a not-so-great De La album. But coming out of the breakdowns is best summed up by Doom: "He said it made him tougher than a bump of raw medicine."
• Don't Pretend You Didn't Know by Dinosaur Jr. "Waiting on the line, all the people thinking why." Amherst MA natives still rocking 30 years later. God bless Dinosaur Jr.
• Wolf Like Me by TV On the Radio. Live Letterman version linked. Sorry, I need to go for a run. Be right back....

Sorting Skittles

Ironically, after talking up how challenging it will be to train in Boston during the winter, I kicked off my training with two weeks in Puerto Rico. Best way to sum it up is "different." My lungs were a little confused, but at least my body held up better than my watch. Designed to be water resistant up to 5 ATMs, for "dancing in the rain without a worry", it promptly fogged up under the display and died. Never under estimate the humidity in PR. Of course, one of my teammates running back in Boston slipped on a patch of ice and ended up with a broken nose and chipped tooth. And I wasn't in Chicago. So I'm going to stop complaining.

And now it's back to the regularly scheduled program. Mid 20s. (Unless there's a vortex. Or spring.) Hopping snow drifts, dodging plows, and generally just trying to finish with your teeth intact. But a bit gets flipped in my brain after a while. What I start out dreading becomes something else. A craving. Or scratching an itch. This happened back in college as well, training in Northern Virginia in August. (Another environment my watch wouldn't have appreciated.) I would run at the least uncomfortable time of day, which happened to be 2am. Still 90 degrees, humid, pitch black, crushing unsuspecting frogs with every other step. And it was terrible, until it was fun.

It's not a case of "runners high". Sure I like endorphins as much as the next guy, but it doesn't outweigh struggling against headwinds on the Charles. It's closer to runners OCD. Lots of repetition, step after step, day after day. Obsessively count the runs and log the miles. Check the splits. Replay the GPS route. Again. This is the same part of my brain that sorts Skittles. And when my watch drops out during a run, and only records some of the miles, or slashes straight across the map from where the GPS signal was lost to where it was picked up again, incorrectly calculating the pace and throwing off my lifetime per-mile average...

(Deep breath)

Ironically I'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to running tech. My dad and brother gifted me my first GPS watch only last year. And I used to think running with a phone was ridiculous. But maybe that was just one part of my brain trying to protect this other part. Did you know I ran 641.0 miles in 2013? I can show you the chart. It's very pretty.

Replacement watch on the way.

Game On

(Kicking this blog off with an email that I recently sent to friends and family. If you already got said email, then obviously no need to read this twice. New content coming soon...)

Happy New Year!

It turns out I made my New Year's resolution a little early this year: I decided it was time to run my first marathon. After putting it off for years, the 2014 Boston Marathon was just too meaningful an opportunity to pass up. So with a couple of half-marathons under my belt, and 16 more weeks of cold Boston winter standing between me and April 21st, training is already in full swing.

As many of you know, an important part of the Boston Marathon tradition has been the official charity program associated with the race. Now in its 26th year, this program allows runners without qualifying times to participate, while raising over $12 million a year for Greater Boston charities. If you've ever had a chance to watch the race in person, and paid close attention to the jerseys being worn by the sea of humanity shuffling by, and realized that so many runners have spent so much time and energy raising money for so many great causes, all for the privilege of running 26 miles... well, it's a pretty amazing sight.

And now it's time to do my part. I will be running this spring as a member of Team Brookline, my town's official marathon team, which supports a number of local Brookline charities. In particular, I'll be raising funds for the Brookline Community Mental Health Center, and my personal goal is to raise $5,000.

If you're willing and able, please sponsor me by making a contribution on my FirstGiving page. Alternatively, you can write a check to Team Brookline and mail it to me. (Let me know if you need my address.)

So what's the plan for the rest of this blog? Not quite sure (but credit to +Jeff Larimer for the idea.) I have a hunch this will be less of a training diary, and more just random stuff. Why the name "Base Work"? This refers to my least favorite part of training when I ran in college. The long, slow miles that you put in day after day, building up a strong aerobic foundation, increasing blood volume and glycogen storage, yadda yadda. I just remember how lonely and tedious these runs were, when meaningful races were still 6 to 9 months away. It wasn't glamorous, but it also wasn't optional, especially if you want to run 26+ miles. So you learn to make your peace with it. And it leaves you with a lot of time to think.

That's all for now. I should be going for a 5 mile run right now, but I think I'll shovel the driveway instead. Thanks Hercules.