MARATHON MANIFESTO
Hi everyone this is Chris. They say that announcing your goals publicly
helps you accomplish your goals. I think
because of the inherent peer pressure, basically. Normally I don’t do this because I think that
I can accomplish my goals without peer pressure and because when I announce my
goals publicly and fail, then that is embarrassing. I once before announced a similar goal to the
family and failed. However, I have
thought long and hard about this and I want to announce a goal that I
have. I want to run in the 2014 Boston
Marathon. I am going to need all of the
self-discipline and fear of public humiliation that I can get in order to
motivate me to get out the door six times a week and to run hard on three of
those days (the other three days are easy days and getting out the door is the
only issue).
Running a Marathon has always been
on my “to do” list, or bucket list, for you young hipsters. Growing up for a number of years in the
Holliday area of Salt Lake, every Pioneer day I heard about the Deseret News
Marathon. It was the only marathon on
the Wasatch front that I was aware of.
One year my classmate, named Art, at Oakwood Elementary school actually
ran the Deseret News Marathon. It seemed
like every year this guy named Demetrio Cabanillas won. It turns out that later he was one of my
nephew’s teachers in Jr. High or something in West Jordan. My brother, ran the Deseret News Marathon in
the late 1990’s. That made the marathon
that more achievable, because you know, if he did it, I can do it, right?
Fast forward to 2004. My sister-in-law ran the St. George
marathon. I ran with her on the course
for about four or five miles. She
finished the marathon which is commendable in and of itself. She also finished four minutes off a Boston
Marathon qualifying time (BQ). I was
impressed that in her first marathon she wasn’t running just to finish, but for
the BQ. That brought me one step closer
to running a marathon, because you know, if she can do it so can I. So in 2005 my sister-in-law, brother-in-law,
and I all signed up to run the St. George marathon together. We did not get accepted in the lottery. We put our names in the hat again in 2006 and
we got accepted. We started off the
training cycle for the October 2006 St. George marathon by running a 5k
together in Safford, Arizona in May of 2006.
Both of them declared at the outset of training that they were going to
try and BQ at St. George. My goal was
just to finish a marathon to cross it off my list and be done with it. A secondary and less important goal was to
finish at a ten minute pace which would be around four hours and twenty two
minutes. I really didn’t think that I
would run another Marathon after that.
After finishing the 2006 St. George Marathon each of us achieved what we
were shooting for. I had finished and I
exceeded my pace by running four hours and ten minutes which is around a nine
minute and thirty three second pace per mile.
I was very impressed with my wife’s siblings because they each were able
to BQ. In fact, they had shone a light
on a pathway that heretofore had been dark to me. I had never known anyone personally to have
qualified for the Boston Marathon. I did
not know that mere mortals could have the audacity to aspire to amateur
athletic greatness. So here I was
standing around at the finish line just having accomplished a life-time goal
and thinking “man, this is only the beginning, there is another higher mountain
to climb.” This then opened up a whole
new world for me as a runner.
On April 21, 2008 those same two
family members ran the Boston Marathon together. In so doing they walked down that now lighted
path. I looked down that path from afar
and deemed it desirable despite the pain and time involved. The weekend before the Boston I sent them
this poem entitled “The Few” by Edgar A. Guest that has since become my running
mantra:
"The easy roads are crowded
And the level roads are jammed;
The pleasant little rivers
With the drifting folks are crammed.
But off yonder where it's rocky,
Where you get a better view,
You will find the ranks are thinning
And the travelers are few.
And the level roads are jammed;
The pleasant little rivers
With the drifting folks are crammed.
But off yonder where it's rocky,
Where you get a better view,
You will find the ranks are thinning
And the travelers are few.
Where the going's smooth and
pleasant
You will always find the throng,
For the many, more's the pity,
Seem to like to drift along.
But the steeps that call for courage,
And the task that's hard to do
In the end result in glory
For the never-wavering few."
You will always find the throng,
For the many, more's the pity,
Seem to like to drift along.
But the steeps that call for courage,
And the task that's hard to do
In the end result in glory
For the never-wavering few."
That day, April 21, 2008, I committed to myself that I would
run in the Boston Marathon. I drew up
plans and came up with a training program.
A couple of years and several starts and stops later I was in the
process of accomplishing my goal by training for the St. George Marathon in the
summer of 2010. I had signed up with two
very close friends from High School. We
would text each other on a weekly basis to see how our training was going. My goal was to be at a seven minute mile
pace. About halfway through the 16 week
training schedule I had to come to grips with the fact that a seven minute pace
was out of reach. I had signed up and
paid the money and dropping out was not an option. So, I re-adjusted my goal to run between
eight and a half minute to a nine minute pace.
I was able to finish in three hours forty minutes and thirty six seconds
which is eight minute and twenty six second pace. I was happy with a thirty minute improvement
but not satisfied. My goal was still to
run a BQ, which was and is 3:10 for me.
I felt like given a year’s time I would be able to BQ at St. George
2011. To this end I was happy about my
time at the Pima Turkey trot on Thanksgiving Day 2010. My sister and brother-in-law were with our
family and ran it as well. However, in
2011 a much more important and memorable event occurred in my life that I
wanted to focus on. My wife was doing
her own marathon of sorts with much bigger significance. It was my turn to support her through her
nine month marathon. She gave birth to a
boy, the Friday before General Conference and the St. George Marathon. What she has done three times over is much
more difficult physically, mentally, emotionally, in every way than any race I
have done or will ever do so I give credit to her for what she has sacrificed
for our family.
Now, pause the story for a minute for some Boston Marathon
history. In the fall of 2010 something
unique happened to those trying to register for the 2011 Boston. For many, many years the Boston would not
reach its limit of registered entrants until February or March for the April
race. However, sometime in the late
2000’s it started to fill up faster each year.
For a couple of years it would fill up in half the time that it did the
previous year. Finally in the late
summer of 2010 thanks to social media, there was a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Runners blogs and facebook
pages started to quote someone else, advising others to register early because
the Boston was going to fill up fast. No
sooner had registration day opened than the feeding frenzy of registration
began. People woke up at four in the
morning. Others took the day off from
work. It was wild. The server went down, people’s registration
process would lock up on them in the middle of the process and they didn’t know
if they should wait it out and continue or start anew. Sure enough on the first day of registration,
it reached maximum capacity in a record eight hours. After several months of hunkering down and
closed door meetings the Boston Athletic Association, who runs the show, came
out with a modified registration process for 2012 and a permanent change for
2013 and beyond. They lowered everyone’s
qualifying time by five minutes and gave preference to faster runners. If you run twenty minutes faster than your
qualifying time you can register on day one and two. Ten minutes faster and you get a crack at it
on day three and four, and five minutes faster and you squeak in on day five
and six. Starting the second week if
there are still slots available anyone who has run a minimum BQ can
register. This meritocracy seems to have
restored order to the marathon world, at least for the time being. Media outlets reported that the registration
for 2012 went smoothly and in 2013 the registration was still open into the
third week. While this historical
context may seem trivial to some, it plays an important role in my story, hence
the background.
Back to the story. In
2012, I wanted to run the Utah Valley Marathon in June. When it came time to sign up though, I did
not feel like I was in good enough physical condition to BQ. In April when it was time to register in the
lottery for the St. George, I again felt like even with four or five months of
training I would not be able to BQ. I
signed up for a sprint triathlon the last Saturday in August 2012 which kept me
in shape. Then in October I did another
5K that kept me training. Then through
the winter I was training consistently because I had signed up to run the
Ragnar Relay with the some great friends in Phoenix the end of February of
2013. That was a blast. Someday I would like to do that again with my
family or my wife’s family.
On
April 15, 2013 I got on runnersworld.com and followed the live updates of how
the Boston Marathon was going for the elite runners. Yet, another Boston Marathon that I was not
privileged to run, how sad. Another year
that Americans came oh so close to winning.
Later in the day my brother called me and told me that there had been
some bombings at the Boston Marathon. I
knew that the marathon world would be changed forever, and the Boston would
never be the same either. There was a
certain innocence lost to future marathon events and in particular Boston. Also, after a minute or two of digesting what
was going on, I had this sudden urge well up inside of me to run in the 2014
Boston Marathon. It wasn’t a “it would
be cool to do that” feeling. It was much
stronger. I spent much of April 15
grieving for the loss of life and injuries.
It is almost like I took it personally.
Every time I would read a news report about Boston the feeling kept
coming back, “I have to run Boston next year.”
I knew that there were a lot of people out there having similar
feelings. Jeff Benedict, an occasional
columnist for the Deseret News felt the same way, albeit not the running
part. I read a post of his in the
Deseret News that I really related to.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865578618/Terrorists-messed-with-wrong-people-in-Boston.html
I felt like getting into Boston just got that much
harder. My suspicions were confirmed
when runnersworld.com reported an off the charts spike in google searches for
“qualify for boston marathon” soon after the bombing tragedy.
That brings me to the present day. The first day for registration for Boston
2014 is on a yet to be determined day in September. For me that rules out any Marathon after
Sept. 1 including St. George.
Consequently, I narrowed my options for a Boston qualifying marathon to
a handful. I have selected the 14th
annual Portneuf Medical Center Pocatello (Idaho) Marathon August 31.
The altitude is a little high, I would prefer sea
level. The initial downhill is pretty
steep and has the potential to tear up the quads. On the plus side there are no major sustained
up-hills and it shouldn’t get too hot.
Hopefully the Idaho wind will take a break on that day. Finally, and most importantly I gives me the
ability to do a full 18 week training cycle to build up to that seven minute
mile pace. Technically a 7:15 mile pace
will get me a 3:10 marathon, but I need some room for error so I am shooting
for the ever elusive seven minute mile pace.
This is my goal and I am committed.
If I fail it will not be for lack of trying. Anyone want to do it with me? There is still time to do a 16 or 18 week
training program. This is my third time
using a program from halhigdon.com .
Chris
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