Victory Nearly Deferred

The Boston Athletic Association sent me a love note a few weeks ago, expressing their concern if I ran the Boston Marathon with expected temps in the 80’s. They were basically telling me “we love you, but you don’t have to do this…” So I reacted the way I normally would if anyone told me that.

I decidedly I definitely had to do it.

I’m not pretending there wasn’t a moment I didn’t think of taking the deferral, but it was truly just a moment.

Because a marathon is not a day you can just make up next year. It’s an investment of five months of preparation. Its 20 weeks of everyone asking you how your training is going. It’s 140 days of waking up thinking about how far you have to run, when you can steal the time to run, and what you should or should not eat before and after you run.

And the promised do-over next year would require another 20-week training investment and paying the exorbitant entry fee once again.

So on Marathon Monday, I followed the BAA’s instructions for runners to “wear as few clothes as decently possible”, taped a sign on my butt reading “Too hot? Too late!” and headed out for my well-planned race.

The only problem was that my plan called for temps in the 50’s, but instead temps peaked in the mid 80’s just about the time I climbed up, but not over, the peak of Heartbreak Hill.

I could be dramatic and say I took the bus at mile 22 because I feared for my life if I continued or that I was so crazed with heat exhaustion they had to pull me off the course as I begged to finish. But in reality, I just decided I had enough. The combination of labored breathing, drinking hot water for almost four hours and an ill-timed orange Popsicle that wanted out as soon as it went in was my ultimate undoing.

I was shocked when the driver of our bus stopped at mile 25 and opened the door to let out anyone who wanted to complete the final 1.2 miles and cross the finish line, a decision I’m sure will be controversial to some. But before she could change her mind, I bolted out the door and painfully slogged through the final stretch, confident I had made the right decision to pull off the course when I did. Yes I crossed the finish line. Yes I have a finishing time. And yes I have a medal.

Which made it even more difficult to tell everyone that I didn’t really finish.

Having to tell everyone who congratulated me the truth about my time made me a fast expert on humble pie, which tastes a lot like the dirt pie a bully once tried to make me eat. And I’ll never forget the bitter taste of either one.

But in my yoga class a few days later, our instructor stated this intention: Let us pay honor to our efforts without judgment. And I got it.

In retrospect, I tried to race one of the hottest Boston Marathons in history, at least in part because of what people might think of me if I didn’t. And I stopped running because at that moment, I couldn’t care less what anyone thought of me. I just knew I had given it the best effort I could under the circumstances.

And in some weird way, my acceptance of that effort without judgment is a personal victory. Not the kind of victory I had envisioned over my 20 weeks of training, but a victory just the same.