A little known, very useless fact: despite the number of races that I run (on average, about 8–10 a year including one or two trail ultras), I have not run a road marathon since Boston Marathon in 2009. Just about nine years ago! The reason? Marathons hurt. Very, very badly.
I have suffered greatly at each and every road marathon I have ever run (I believe about 13 or 14 in total). And if I am going to be really honest, I grew very frustrated with the marathon, as I was never really able to have what I’d categorize as a solid race, let alone “mastering” the distance. Which I might add, is a near impossibility. The closest I ever came to running a decent marathon was Walt Disney marathon, where I ran my PR of 3:21. However, I was on track for a time that was much faster than that, when the wheels came completely off at the 35k mark, which was a ddisappointment.
Anyway, I write all of this, because I am planning my (hopefully) triumphant return to marathoning this fall, where I will be running the Madison Marathon, My rationale for this race is threefold: it’s an opportunity to visit and maybe even run with my son, who is student at the University of Wisconsin; it’s a nice flat course on what should be a beautiful, cool midwestern day and lastly, I really want to run a Boston BQ time.
I’m old now and one of the only upsides to being an old runner is that BQ times become a tad bit more attainable. So I’m going to go for it: I think my qualifying time of 3:30 is within reach.
I’m already hitting the track at least once a week and mixing it up a bit with some more road running. I was out there today, just two days post half marathon and I am aiming to be consistent. I guess I’ll be doing some hard road runs as well. To that end, I plan to run to the office (15 miles) at least once every two weeeks, including tomorrow.
Should be an interesting journey and I’m actually kind of stoked. This is not nearly as much about running Boston again — in fact, I’m not sure I even will, should I happen to qualify — but rather proving to myself that I can do it.
I’ll be sure to write periodic training updates along the way.
