It's 11:58pm. Do you know where your Boston training is?

I’ve been looking around but haven’t found any 16 week marathon training programs that recommend an ER visit to start week 14. Certainly it was not in my plan when I started training at the end of December. It was exactly how the week started on Monday 06/04/15.

The run started much as any of my other runs. The loop that I had planned took me around Pine Banks Park with an additional loop around Swains Pond Ave. There is a little section there on Lebanon Street between Sylvan and Forest that I had run literally 145 times prior to this run. I was no virgin to this bit of pavement. I only knew the loops around Fresh Pond in Cambridge and Spy Pond in Arlington better. Now I don’t think that I know any bit of road quite as intimately.

I coasted along Lebanon Street at around a 7:30 pace up onto Swains Pond Ave. The highest point on this particular loop is on Beach Street so coming off of Beach and back onto Lebanon I was moving at a reasonable clip of about 6:27min/mile according to my Garmin. Lebanon Street rolls a little bit between Beach and Forest but I did my crossing as the road dips around Sylvan. I don’t use cross-walks. When there is a break in the traffic I pick up the pace and surge to the other side.

As I crossed from the east side of Lebanon to the west side I had to cross a bit of grass between the street and the sidewalk (feel free to debate what that grass is actually called…the verge?).  I stepped into a rusty band of some sort of metal lying in the grass with my left foot (not seeing it) and caught the front end of the loop with my right foot. Feet tangled up in the loop I went flying and landed on my chin, my palms, my left knee and my left hip. I don’t know the order in which things hit but none of those parts of my body are particularly comfortable.

I created a segment on Garmin Connect that I call The Danger Zone. There isn't anything particularly dangerous about it but it's where I happened to break my face.

For 84 seconds I lay face down on the pavement. I don’t recall what I was doing at this time but when I pushed myself up off the ground I stopped my Garmin and realized that I had some crushed teeth in my mouth. I spit the tooth dust out in a puddle of blood and tried to stand up. It didn’t quite work. Someone was saying something but I couldn’t hear anything. I turned my head to look across the street and then could hear a man asking if I was OK.

“No,” I replied and then I crawled over to sit with my back against the cemetery’s stone wall and wait for the ambulance. I don’t know which service the ambulance was from or the names of the EMTs that got me on board but I do recall that they mentioned that they had worked the New Bedford Half Marathon because one of them said that I was lucky that I hadn’t fallen in that race because they had seen many discarded needles on the ground at the race. Maybe he was joking? I don’t know. I couldn’t hear at all from my left year and had only a little hearing from my right.

The EMTs dumped me near the central nurse’s station in the ER where I lay for a while before finally being able to call Sarah before being wheeled down for a CAT scan and then some X-Rays. I met Sarah when I was wheeled back to the hallway near the nurse’s station. I jammed my blanket up under my chin to try to slow the bleeding a bit and lay back to wait for my stiches. Finally, I got brought back to another room for a tetanus shot and 4 stiches in my chin. To add figurative insult to literal injury my Badgers were in the process of losing the NCAA basketball title on the TV over my bed while they worked on me.

I got prescribed some pain killers and Sarah took me home. Sleep did not come Monday night due to every part of my body being in extreme pain. Well not every part of my body. Just my left knee, left hip, palms, wrists, left shoulder, neck and head from the fall, my ankles from getting tied up in the metal hoop and my stomach from being hungry since I had gone out for my run before dinner and didn’t get home until midnight and wasn’t able to work my jaw well enough to chew anything. My right elbow was doing great though!

Tuesday I stayed home and worked from home while popping horse-pill sized ibuprofen as though it was candy. Actually, I took three of them over the course of the day (thanks Sarah for filling the prescription!) which was roughly 3 more than I usually eat pieces of candy in any given day. Late in the afternoon my hearing returned in my right ear and I went out to buy some quiche and yogurt (I needed soft food since I couldn’t close my jaw enough to chew anything).

I did not eat solid food again until Friday evening when Sarah and I went down to Ferry Street for dinner. Linguine carbonara and pana cotta might not qualify as solid food to most people but for me it was a win. I even skipped my evening dose of the pain killers so that I could have a Wireworks Gin and Tonic with lemon. I almost felt like a human being. Sure a human being that went to bed at 9pm but a human none the less.

Saturday morning I finally made it out for my first run post-injury. I ran over to Marathon Sports in Melrose for the Saturday morning group run. I had been meaning to make it over for the run since I first got the email about it back in January or February but it was only my second Saturday at home since getting the email and I forgot about the run the other day. It was a good (but very slow) run in the Fells. It was exactly what I needed. Saturday afternoon Sarah and I went up to Nashua to hang out with Jeff and meet Ann. On Sunday I ran down Main Street in Melrose to Lynn Fells Parkway until Main Street in Saugus before heading home to get cleaned up to go to Red Bones with the Curriers.

On Monday I decided to see if I could go the entire day without any pain killers. I made it but it was a miserable day. I did not run. It was probably 8pm when I deposited myself in bed. On Tuesday I shunned the prescription pain killers again but let myself have over-the-counter acetaminophen and actually had a good day. I went out on a run after work with the intention of finding a loop around Spot Pond. I hit some trails near where 28 and 93 come together which turned into single-track and then turned into no-track. I gave up on Spot Pond and came back down Lynn Fells Parkway.

Kevin was trying to pull out of his driveway as I ran past his place so we chatted for a little bit and then I kept on Lynn Fells until Main Street in Melrose. Running through downtown Melrose my hearing in my left ear kept coming and going. After a week of nothing in the ear, even the booming of the ear popping in and out of use was comforting. By the time I was passing Marathon Sports the ear had decided not to be able to hear but the half mile or so when I could hear boosted my spirits.

Coming past Pine Banks, I detoured around the backside of the Windsor condos to avoid some traffic and ran into Chris on his bike as I was turning back up through the condos to get to Main Street and he was riding home from Oak Grove. I don’t think I’ve ever seen either Kevin or Chris when I’ve been out running before so it was definitely a very odd coincidence to run into both on a day that I had planned to run nowhere near where either of them lived.

So now it’s the Thursday before the marathon. I’m still injured but it could have been a lot worse. I have a good pile of Year-To-Date miles (707.35 miles as opposed to the 381.85 miles that I had run by the time I started the Boston Marathon last year) but the past two or so weeks haven’t really contributed to my mileage total in a meaningful way. There is certainly a mix of good and bad but my goal will not be to hit any specific time next Monday. I’m just grateful to be able to make it to the start line and my goal will just to finish. Everything else will be bonus. Boston will certainly be an experience this year.

Here are the normal Q&A things about Boston:

Marathon Experience? 13 completed including 1 Boston. 1 DNF. 4 DNS (Technically there are many marathons that I did not start but there were only 4 that I both signed up for and did not start.)

*Mileage refers to the cumulative mileage over the last 180 days prior to race day.
**Mileage for Boston 2015 does not include Friday-Sunday before the race which should add something like 24 miles.

Training Plan? Read the Daniels book on the flight to Mexico in December and used the philosophy to guide my training plan but didn’t stick to any canned/prescribed plan.

Here is how my mileage has stacked up this year compared to other years:

My 2015 mileage has certainly dropped off since busting my face at the start of April.

Do you like the taper or does it drive you nuts? No idea. I ran my max mileage week of ~73 miles and then basically came to a dead stop. I do not recommend head injuries to distract you from your taper.

Pre-Race Dinner? Whatever. I don’t think the pre-race dinner really matters that much. It’s just another dinner. As long as you eat something but don’t totally over-do it you’ll be OK.

Race Day Breakfast? Oatmeal for marathons. Sausage, egg and cheese on a croissant with a French vanilla coffee from Dunks for shorter races. Yeah, the moral of the story for me with pre-race diet is that you just need some fuel in the tank but for shorter races you’re across the line before you’ve really digested breakfast so have a good one. Then have a second breakfast after the race, preferably pizza and beer as your second breakfast.

Marathon Morning Rituals? Hit snooze too many times. Rush a quick shower. Put on my team uniform and forget to put on band-aids and sun block. Get to the race start area WAY too early. Be excited/nervous until the gun; usually with 1-2 trips to the restroom before the race starts. For shorter races I’ll do the exact same routine but with a 2-3 mile warm-up followed by strides. For Boston I won’t bother warming up because I’ll be in corral too long for it to matter and the first mile or two of waiting for the pack to thin will serve as warm up.

What is your manta during the race? I’m usually fine for the first half of the race. In the second half I just keep reminding myself that it’ll be over sooner if I keep going than if I drop out and run back to the start.

What is your goal? Publicly it is just to finish because I have to pretend to be smart enough to recognize that two weeks after a serious head injury I am not fit to race. Privately I still want to run sub 2:55 and think that I can PR.

Bib number/Corral? 5012, Wave 1, Corral 6

Any final thoughts about the race? Both times I’ve run my BQs were in 2013. If I don’t run sub 3:05 I’ll need to add a race to my schedule. The Marathon du Medoc is on 12/9/15 so might technically count as a qualifier but with that many wine and cheese stops on the course I don’t want to count on that course for my 2016 BQ. Basically it comes down to this: if I want to avoid running the Around the Lake Marathon in July then I had better go sub 3:05.

See you all in Boston!