Getting knocked down is just an excuse to get back up and go have some soup

It is a fool’s errand to try to tell, or even count, all of the stories from even one year of the Boston Marathon. I am but 1 of 30000 to toe the start line in Hopkinton. I could never share every story from the road that brought me to that line and even to try to document each step between Hopkinton and Boston would be impossible. If I were to condense this year’s Boston marathon into a single line it would be this: the most painful start; the least painful finish.

Most definitely, this was one of the very rare occasions that I was happy at the finish line. Cold?  Certainly. Hungry? Most definitely. But despite the normal discomfort of a marathon I was happy. The last time I can recall being happy when I crossed a finish line was September 30th of 2006. Back then I was no less a runner than I am today. Anyone who pins on a number or laces up a pair of trainers heads out the front door for a run is a runner and there are no distinctions among us but back then had many fewer miles on the clock. It was my fourth year of running, my fourth marathon, and my fourth race. I was coming off of a 4:12:00 performance at the New Hampshire Marathon in Bristol the year before and had spent the past year in what was then my typical fashion: forgetting about running the day after the New Hampshire Marathon until about a month before the next year’s race.

As I say, it was my fourth appearance at the New Hampshire Marathon so I knew what was coming on the course and had a general idea of what running a marathon felt like: all pain all the time. In 2006 I never tried to push the pace or race the runners around me. I just put in my ear-buds and coasted close to an 8 minute mile most of the way around Newfound Lake and came across the line in 3:33:00. I was certainly sore for weeks but it was the first time I finished a marathon without having to walk any of it. I was so inspired by that time that I signed up for the Feaster 5 Miler with the full intention of winning. I had after all just finished 38th place out of 231 runners at a marathon and had no idea what was fast or slow.

I have no recollection whatsoever as to whom the photo credit belongs for this one. Statute of limitations?

I ran as fast as I ever had at the Feaster 5 and managed to come in only 301 places after the winner. While I was amazed with myself for running faster than an 8:00min/mile pace I was even more humbled by learning that a not only was a 7:30 pace for a 5 mile race not a fast time it meant the winner finished around the time I was passing the three mile mark. After that race it was almost 9 years and 190 race finishes and 194 race starts before I got back the feeling I had when I finished the last of my 4 tries at the New Hampshire marathon.

It probably all comes down to pre-race expectations. In 2006 I still didn’t have a training log or even a watch. I was running in my walking-around sneakers and had no idea what a good time was for any distance so when I ran a 3:33:00 all I knew was that it was 39 minutes faster than I had run the year before. This year I didn’t even know if I would be able to start the race until April 15th when I visited the doctor to have the stitches taken out of my chin and have my left ear checked out (which still had not recovered its hearing from the injury on the 6th).

On the morning of the race Sarah, Ron and Ann dropped me off about a mile and a half from the Athlete’s Village just as the first drops of rain were falling. I had brought a trash bag which I put on as a precaution against the heavier rain that wasn’t far behind. Standing around the edge of the tent in the Athlete’s Village was frigid and my teeth started chattering. This would not typically be a problem but since it is still very painful to try to close my jaw the chattering was excruciating. My stomach hurt too; I knew that by being off of solid foods for the better half of the last two weeks of training, I had gotten my nutrition all wrong. I just wanted the race to start so that I could try to ignore the pain in my head and stomach. One way or another the race would be over for me and I could get warm.

Eventually they called out corral 6 to go to the start line and I went with everyone else. I saw TR working the corrals and said hi which gave me a boost but then it was back to more waiting around to start. After some time the race started. The start of the Boston Marathon is one of the least climactic events in the world of running if you’re stacked up at the back of a wave. There are some announcements and then perhaps there is some excitement off the line out at the front but buried over 5000 deep into the pack at the start you wait. Then you wait some more before walking forward maybe 50 meters where you come to a stop again for just a little more waiting. Then you start walking again. Some people around you will start pantomiming a running cadence but due to the crush of humanity about they don’t more any faster than your shuffle.

It was somewhere around two and a half or three minutes into the race when I came to the line and started my Garmin. Even there it was slow going; it was almost a hundred meters before I felt like I was up to some semblance of marathon pace. The early miles of the Boston Marathon can be demoralizing. Though I lined up about 5200 places back into a 7500 runner corral, it seemed like a thousand or more runners streamed past me before I reached the first 5km marker. If I passed anyone I didn’t notice. I told myself that the next 5km would be stronger but dared not push the pace much due to the hammering in my left ear with each step.

When I went through the 10km mark I saw that I was just around the pace I wanted. My plan had been to run the first 10km in roughly 43 minutes since that was approximately one minute per mile slower than I had run at the Malden Rotary 10km three weeks earlier. If I could do that I would decide if had the legs under me to go after a sub- 3 or if I needed to back off and just try to survive the jog to Boston. The 43 minute 10km would have put me on pace for something like a 3:01:35 which admittedly was quite a bit more aggressive than my official goal of just getting across the finish line in one piece. Not only was that pace ahead of what my running math said I could do but a bit quicker than the average pace from my 3:02:47 PR.

One of the many tabs in my running log is for fitting data from races and/or training runs. The PR plot is mostly for fun; the analysis of recent racing and training is more useful in general but this time underestimated how I would do at Boston this year. I think that including the Seoul Marathon as a race effort in the calculation even though it was intended to be more of a training run weighted the math towards a slower time. My other PRs suggest that I should be capable of running a marathon PR in 2:57:45 to 3:00:23 but my more recent racing (last 12 months’ worth of data) said that I should only have been targeting a 3:08:58.

I made it to the 10km mark just a little bit behind my 43 minute target but I still couldn’t guess how I was going to hold up. My body hadn’t really warmed up yet so I kept my long sleeve shirt on over my singlet and decided that I would kick the decision about my race strategy down the road and make the call when I ditched the long-sleeves at the 15km mark. The rain really started to come in earnest as I went under the gantry at 15km and I delayed deciding about the shirt and the race again. I’d make the decision at the half way mark, I told myself. At the half I was still too cold so I decided again to wait around at the same pace.

Photo by Richard Blake from Coolrunning. This is one of the few pictures of me on the course because the shirt I planned to throw away at the start hid my GLRR singlet and obscured my bib number for the official pictures.

Not long before the 25km mark I could tell that there was a problem. The stomach pain that I had started the race with had become almost unbearable and it felt like my throat was closing down with phlegm. There were a set of port-a-johns just past the 15 mile mark and I pulled off course. I tried to use the restroom to fix my stomach but it was no benefit. Almost as soon as I stepped back onto the road I had to pull off again and throw up. The whole experience of pulling off course probably only cost me about a minute but I hadn’t been looking at my watch so I just presumed that it had cost me my race.

I gave up on 3 hours or qualifying and just put my head down and started the death-march that I usually need to settle into around 30km. At mile 16 I started telling myself: “It’s just another 10 mile jog. Don’t look at the other runners, just keep your legs moving.” At the Wicked Running Club station at mile 17 I heard someone shout my name. It was Tim Short. I pumped a fist weakly in reply but his shout had brought my head up and I noticed that rather than falling back in the pack I had been passing people. Feeling a little energized, I settled back into a racing form and tried to prepare my mind for the big hills ahead. Without Tim’s shout I most likely would have ended up walking within the next few miles.

As I worked my way through the hills of Newton I constantly reminded myself to hold back. I don’t always talk to myself while racing, but this year I couldn’t seem to shut myself up: "don’t spend it all on this hill; the big one is still somewhere up the road." Then I was coasting out of Newton without having really taken much notice of the hills but with the downhill and my longer stride I was really starting to move up through the pack. Some were walking; others were jogging but no one else appeared to still be racing. When I got to mile 23 I looked at my watch and was amazed to see that I still had a chance to hit my qualifying time if I could just hold my pace.

Somewhere between 23 and 24 the course flattened out and the rain was starting to pool on the road. With about 400 miles and multiple flights across the Pacific in the belly of a 747 there was little tread left to my soles and my steps started to hydroplane. I was a little nervous because I didn’t want a repeat of the recent head injury but I also don’t believe in living timidly so the mantra I switched to under my breath was: “Don’t let it cost you the qualifier” and “Hold the pace” and I told myself there would be soup at the finish. I knew it was a lie but I didn’t care; the prospect of hot soup kept me moving. From some distant place in my mind I recognized how strange that I wanted soup so much. At the end of the Maine Coast Marathon my biggest disappointment had been that the coffee jugs were full of soup and I had to settle for a cup of soup instead a cup of coffee. I didn’t care. I wanted a blanket and that imaginary soup.

As I came into Boston the Five College Realtors 10 Miler shirt was sitting heavily both on my shoulders and on my mind. I wanted to cross the finish with my Greater Lowell Road Runners singlet out but I also didn’t want to try to pull the shirt off in traffic. My left shoulder didn’t have its normal range of motion due to the tetanus shot I had been given recently so I knew that I needed to come to a full stop and bend over almost enough to touch my toes just to get the shirt off. As I passed mile 25, I decided it was time. I pulled off, stopped and bent over. The crowd took noticed and the air was full of shouts not to stop with the finish so close. As soon as the shirt was off and I was back on the course surging past the runners around me the cheers changed from the normal “Almost there,” and “Good job, keep going,” to much more enthusiastic “Go Lowell!” Lifted by the cheers, I surged again and turned my focus to getting to the finish in under 3:05:00 which I knew had been pushed a little farther out of reach by stopping to ditch the shirt.

I did not look at my watch once I hit Boylston Street and didn’t know the actual time difference between my start and the race start so when I finished I still didn’t know if I had qualified. Here are my splits, all are approximate because the GPS measures long; it had the course at 26.4 miles which is surprisingly close to the actual course distance of 26.22:

Distance	Mile	Time	Net Time	Avg Pace	Projected Finish
1	1	0:07:18	0:07:18	07:18.0	3:11:24
2	1	0:07:03	0:14:21	07:10.5	3:08:08
3	1	0:06:51	0:21:12	07:04.0	3:05:17
4	1	0:06:50	0:28:02	07:00.5	3:03:46
5	1	0:07:01	0:35:03	07:00.6	3:03:48
6	1	0:06:39	0:41:42	06:57.0	3:02:14
7	1	0:06:41	0:48:23	06:54.7	3:01:14
8	1	0:06:48	0:55:11	06:53.9	3:00:52
9	1	0:06:44	1:01:55	06:52.8	3:00:23
10	1	0:06:51	1:08:46	06:52.6	3:00:18
11	1	0:06:51	1:15:37	06:52.5	3:00:15
12	1	0:06:46	1:22:23	06:51.9	3:00:00
13	1	0:06:52	1:29:15	06:51.9	3:00:01
14	1	0:06:56	1:36:11	06:52.2	3:00:08
15	1	0:06:59	1:43:10	06:52.7	3:00:20
16	1	0:08:00	1:51:10	06:56.9	3:02:10
17	1	0:07:04	1:58:14	06:57.3	3:02:21
18	1	0:07:04	2:05:18	06:57.7	3:02:31
19	1	0:06:54	2:12:12	06:57.5	3:02:26
20	1	0:07:02	2:19:14	06:57.7	3:02:32
21	1	0:07:12	2:26:26	06:58.4	3:02:50
22	1	0:06:40	2:33:06	06:57.5	3:02:28
23	1	0:06:55	2:40:01	06:57.4	3:02:25
24	1	0:06:55	2:46:56	06:57.3	3:02:22
25	1	0:07:05	2:54:01	06:57.6	3:02:31
26	1	0:07:24	3:01:25	06:58.7	3:02:57
26.22	0.22*	0:02:44	3:04:09	07:01.4	3:04:09

My Garmin claimed 0.4 miles for this split so miles 1-26 are measured an average of 0.007 miles short of the actual distance.

After the finish I met Mark at the family meeting area first and then Sarah arrived with my dry clothes. We rushed to the T so I could get changed and get a coffee. Then it was home to celebrate with pasta.

As usual, I owe my ability to finish to Sarah. Sarah held everything together when I was stuck in bed on pain killers and deaf in both ears and put me back together and got me healthy not just enough to think about racing but to finish 3 seconds per mile off of my PR despite the rain and headwind.

The race was cold and uncomfortable and I was in serious pain at the start but I was walking fine at the finish and had none of the sunburns that I took home as souvenirs from last year’s race and I had beat my expectations so I was happy even though there was no soup. Recovery was a 6 miler on Tuesday and an 8 miler on Wednesday, both around 7:30 pace before catching the 6am flight out of Boston to Seoul, Korea by way of SFO.

I’m happy with 3:04:09 at Boston this year (compared to 3:18:12 at Boston last year and 3:13:31 at the Seoul Marathon last month) but I don’t know how it will hold up when it comes time to register next fall. You can bet that I’ve got another marathon in me between now and when Sarah and I go to France to enjoy the wine tour disguised as a marathon known as Marathon du Medoc. I'm not going to let that 3:02:47 PR sit around for long.

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!

Seoul Marathon Part 3: The Recovery Road

Two weeks of recovery after the Seoul Marathon are in the books. The first week was 5 runs for a total of 36.56 miles in 4:30:09. The first two of those runs were in Dongtan, South Korea. On Monday 3/16 I ran 4 miles on the treadmill after work. The plan was to run in the morning but I was sleepy so I snoozed until it was time to get up for work. After a full day of work and then dinner:

Dinner wasn't traditional but it was good.

Grilled pig parts with fried rice with mecju and soju wasn't the best idea to prep for the run but it was my next to last night in Korea of the trip so dinner with the team was sort of a requirement. With a full belly, I ran 4 miles in 31:58 and went to bed early (ish) to be ready to run in the morning.

Tuesday morning I got up for my usual loop through the river park across the street from the Dongtan Shilla Stay. About 3 miles into the loop I crossed into a construction site. On the far side of the site there was a rope across the path. As I approached, I decided to jump over it. The rope was only about a foot off the ground so normally it would be no problem. My left foot made it over the rope but the toes on my right foot didn't quite clear the rope. I got my hands up to break my fall a bit but ended up face down laid out on the bricks. I stayed down for a few moments taking stock of my injuries. They pretty superficial. Skinned knees, a skinned elbow and skinned palms:

Just a smiley face scratch.

After cleaning myself up I went to work for another day that never ended. I got out of work at around midnight and stopped by S Bar to meet Mark for a few beers before bed and then the flight home. It's a long flight home I got on the bus at the hotel at 9 and was on my flight from Seoul to Beijing by 1pm. It was 11pm when I got to Boston. Call it a really long rest day thanks to the International Date Line.

The second week of recovery was 73.67 miles in 8:59:34. This included second place at the Malden Rotary 10km in 37:19.  Then today I went for a slow 19.11 miles. Now time to start tapering down a little bit for Boston.

Seoul Marathon Part 2: Check Your Time, Boy…

…check your time. Those words are not mine. Those words belong to a band that Sarah introduced me to years ago called Westbound Train. Those may not be my words but had I heeded their advice at the Seoul International Marathon perhaps I would not have taken such a painful route to the finish line.

I did not realize it when I signed up for the race but it is an IAAF Gold race. This year it featured an elite team that included 24 men with sub 2:09:00 marathon PRs and 19 major marathon victories. The fastest PR of the 6 men coming in with a sub 2:06:00 performance belonged to Berhanu Shiferaw Tolcha who had run 2:04:48 to take second place in Dubai in 2013. The woman’s competition was no less fierce; it was headlined by Fireiwot Dado Tufa who lays claim to a win at the New York City Marathon and a 2:23:15 PR.

That’s the long way of saying that this was not the kind of race where I would be racing for any kind of placement. This one was all about getting in a big workout before Boston and getting a little redemption after disappointments racing in The Netherlands (DNF: Rotterdam 2009) and Italy (3:48:32: Napoli 2012). My seeding time had placed me in Corral A so this gave me access to the 2:50 pacer, the 3:00 pacer and the 3:10 pacer. My plan had not involved a pacer; a day or two before the race I plotted out each kilometer of the course and set a goal time, fast time and slow time and come up with a plan to run ~3:02.

That goal of running a PR as a workout in the Boston build-up was a bit of a stretch. During training I had built around a plan to run around 3:10 in Seoul and 3:00 in Boston. About 200m after the start line I found myself running just a little behind and to the left of the 3:00 pacer so I threw out my race strategy and decided to forget about my splits and let the pacer do the work. I figured that as long as I stayed behind him but kept him in sight that everything would work out OK. I only get a few short days on this earth so I figured that if we’re going to pin numbers on our chests I might as well race.

The first kilometer passed before I even noticed it but for the next 9km it felt like I was working hard just to keep the balloon pinned to the pacer’s back bobbing in the distance. Around the 15km mark the pace started to feel easier and within a few kilometers I was running stride for stride with the pacer. I chalked that up to finally finding my stride. At 20km the pacer dropped out of the race and we were left to our own devices. Not long later I went through the half marathon mark with about 1:38 showing on the clock; I had not noted how far behind the gun I crossed the start. Not far past the timing mat I recalled my watch and saw that I was about ninety-minutes in.

At 28km I knew that my race was over. I had just run half a mile more than the longest run in my training and it was suddenly death-march time. Just past the 30km mark I stopped to eat a banana and a cookie and drink some Pocari Sweat before continuing with a mixture of running and walking until 35km when I hit the bridge over the Han River. The ascent up the bridge was tough and shuffling across the wide river was a grind but on the backside of the bridge we caught the downhill and I was able to finally get my leaden legs to move again. It was a slow jog from there to the Olympic Stadium; every kilometer marker that I past felt like both an accomplishment and a painful reminder of just how many damn kilometers there are in a marathon. Finishing on the Olympic track was a boost but it was too little and too late to salvage a good time.

After the race, I got my splits and they confirmed that I had gone out a bit too quickly and that I had paid most of the price for that in the 30-40km leg of the race (I could have told you that without looking at my splits). It looks from my splits that the 5-10km stretch was what cost me. My goal pace was 4:18min/km even though I had trained to run 4:30min/km pace. Converting to miles this means that on race day I arbitrarily decided to try to run 19 seconds/mile faster than I had trained for and in the second 5k I had run 12 seconds/mile faster than the goal that I had not trained for. Running 31sec/mile faster than you trained for is definitely dangerous territory.

Sarah says this isn't a picture.

I have only a passing interest in these splits so I cannot blame you for your complete disinterest. I suspect that you clicked on this story in hopes of either learning something useful about the Seoul Marathon or perhaps to find a picture of something awkward that I saw while in Korea. Sadly, you’re left with me to tell the story so brace for nothing useful. Unfortunately I also have no awkward pictures from this trip so I’ll just share some oldies that I like from trips to Suwon and Cheongju in 2014:

They had a meeting in Suwon in February 2014

To decide if the Ramada hotel toilets needed lights in the bowl. Yes. Yes they do.

While I’m riding the juvenile humor train, let me share the menu from a restaurant that I stopped into in Palma de Mallorca back in February 2014 with Sarah, Sarah and Harold. We splurged and paid the 4.5 Euro. It was left to me to order and I very nearly made the order without giggling:

My real story about the marathon starts not long after my last post left off. I completed my job in Cheongju and traveled to Dongtan after work on Friday. I got up on Saturday morning for a teleconference and then for a shake-out run; I ran the 5.87 mile loop through the park across the street from the Shilla Stay and out along the brick path that connects up with the river track for the return trip to the city. It was warm, clear and felt as though a weight had been lifted with the completion of the work in Cheongju so I coasted along easily at around a 7:20 pace.

After my shake-out I showered, grabbed a quick lunch at the Rolling Pin (a coffee shop attached to the hotel lobby) and then packed for the trip up to Seoul. Originally, I had thought to catch a bus and try to navigate the Seoul subway system to the office building where the number pick-up was located but with a 6pm closing time I decided to forgo the adventure in favor of the guarantee that I would get to run the race. I had the concierge call a taxi and program the GPS.

Dongtan is only about 36km from the heart of Seoul but on a Saturday afternoon (or on any day for that matter) that 22.5 mile drive will take you over an hour. Unlike many marathons like Boston, Rotterdam and even Napoli (and actually every other marathon that I’ve ever run), there is no race expo for Seoul. The number pick-up is on the third floor of a nondescript office building a few subway stops south of the palace at the top of the Gwanghwamun Square. You just go up the elevator, give them your number (assuming that you’re a running nerd and looked it up ahead of time), show them your passport and they give you your race packet. I took my packet and went for the hour and a half walk north through Gwanghwamun Square to familiarize myself with the race start location and then to my hotel near Anguk Station. Finding the hotel turned out to be a bit of a challenge because it was a traditional-style Korean guesthouse tucked away on an alley. Here is the google-maps picture that I relied on to find the place.

When I got to the guesthouse I took a few quick pictures to share what I meant by “traditional-style Korean guesthouse”. In summary, the room was small enough that I needed to lay the inch-thick futon mattress diagonally so as not to hit either my head or my feet on the walls. I had to remove my shoes in the courtyard at the center of the complex before entering my minuscule room.

This was the photo provided in the confirmation email. Not being able to read the address markers on the buildings in the Anguk neighborhood I resorted to matching up doors with this picture to find the guesthouse.

What you see here is a picture of the step and sliding door to my room taken from the open air courtyard at the heart of the guesthouse.

That's the lock on my room. The padlock holds a nail in place that pins the two sliding doors together. From the inside of the room you have another pin to lock the doors, Just remember not to leave the latch open on the outside or some jerk can come by and pin you in your room!

This is how wide the room is. It is a square.

Here's my bed and the pile or race swag.

The guesthouse was both quaint and cozy and the floor of the room was warmed so the futon was surprisingly comfortable. Though the room was warm, the knowledge that I needed to cross the outdoor courtyard to get to the toilet/shower I concluded that the BO that I was going to bring with me by not showering in the morning would pale in comparison to how I would smell once the race started. A shower could wait until after the race when the day had warmed a bit. A short side note: there were no shower stalls or tubs at this hotel. There was a shower head next to the sink in the bathroom and a drain in the center of the floor and hand towels with which to dry off.

I settled into my room and cracked open my race packet with great anticipation. I have to confess to some ambivalence to what I found. On the one hand I was disappointed with the decided lack of any real souvenir to commemorate my fourth race on foreign soil. On the other hand I could not help but laugh at how this was just so close to being a normal race packet except for a few key details.

The packet included my number, a bag for baggage check at the start, a program about the event (entirely in Korean of course), the race shirt and a small tube of Sensodine toothpaste. I’m not sure what Sensodine had to do with the marathon but I had run out of toothpaste that morning and had been planning to go out and buy a new tube in Seoul so at least I was saved that task. That was it for the packet. I’m not sure what else I was expecting.

Actually, the biggest difference from what I was expecting was the race shirt. That one I know is far different from what I’ve found at any other race. Here are pictures of both sides of the race shirt from the IAAF Gold Label Donga Seoul International Marathon:

Here's the front

and the back.

That was what the race packet was missing! Any sort of branding from the race. I appreciate that they gave me a nice new winter running top for signing up for the marathon but it was decidedly odd to receive a shirt from a race that did not advertise for that race in any way. I’m more used to shirts from races going in the other direction, sometimes to the extreme. This was where I was going to add a picture of a race shirt from last fall but because I like the race I decided against calling it out. You know you’ve gotten at least one completely obnoxious race t-shirt.

Well, disappointed or not, it was time to find some dinner and get some sleep. I had seen a coffee shop that advertised that they had pasta so I went there and had a salad followed by tomato pasta with sliced beef and a cup of tea. Damn, my taxi driver from Singapore was right!

Flashback…flashback…flashback…

Shijian and I were in Singapore, staying at the Peninsular Hotel to support the installation of some oxygen plasma ash systems at a flash memory manufacturer. Our customer was located up in the Woodlands region of Singapore which is quite far from our hotel which was located down near Raffles so every day, twice a day, we enjoyed the company of whatever taxi driver happened to be at the head of the stand when we came out from breakfast.

One day we got in a taxi not knowing that we were about to learn of a massive plot intended to disrupt the world as we knew it. After a few minutes of some conversation which was not interesting enough to stick in my memory, the taxi driver became comfortable enough with us to tell us of the two worst people alive. President Obama and Prince Charles. Whatever you have heard about the faults of either of these two men, forget them. Our taxi driver knew the truth.

President Obama and Prince Charles were the heads of a global conspiracy to have the Queen of England assassinated. That’s not the worst of it. That assassination was not the end-game but only a tactic along the way to achieve their plot of forcing everyone to eat all of their meals at coffee shops!

Back to the present…back to the present…back to the present…

It had taken four years, and the Queen still lives but those two dastardly men had forced me to eat all of my meals at coffee shops that day! The worst part; even though I had been warned in 2011 I didn’t see it until it was too late. Feeling defeated by the global conspiracy, I went back to my hotel and went to bed early.

I woke a bit before my alarm and rolled over and went back to sleep. I hit snooze three times before finally getting up and calling Sarah. Sarah was out with Jenn at a paint-party so we we’re not on the phone long. As I kitted up for the race, my biggest worry was the temperature swing shown in the forecast for the day. It was in the low thirties outside when I awoke and I had not brought a throw-away top so I put on a long-sleeve under my singlet despite the high in the mid-sixties that was being predicted. There were no decisions to be made below the waist. I was in Adidas Adios Boost trainers, Balega Hidden Comfort socks and Adidas racing shorts.

2015 is the first year since 2011 that I belong to only one running club so there was no choice to be made for my singlet.

Though I feared that I might be over-dressed for the race, I was certainly underdressed for the long bit of milling about that precedes the start of big races. There were a bunch of announcements in Korean and then two Pocari Sweat cheerleaders got up on the stage to lead the roughly twenty thousand runners in warm-up exercises. The hip rotating and thrusting that they tried to get everyone to do while making exaggerated arm motions were not like anything I’ve learned from Mike’s track clinics so I did my own warm-up of hiding from the wind in a corner between a Woori Bank and an Angel-in-Us coffee shop. When the dancing was over, I joined the throngs and stood around being cold for a bit longer while there were more announcements and drones cycled above the race. It was unclear if the drones were there to get the race photos or for “security”.

Finally the race started at about 8:10am. The Seoul Marathon organizers must have studied at the D5K School of Races that Start Promptly at 7:15pm-ish. I wish that I could tell you all about Seoul from my run through it but like all races; the scenery was mostly a blur. My focus was on avoiding tripping myself or anyone else as I weaved left and right across the course to make a path through the forest of runners. There were markers every kilometer and there was water and Pocari Sweat every 5km. The water/Pocari Sweat tables were always on the right of the course so given the density of runners, I found that it was best to start working your way to the right about a kilometer out from the stations.

Almost as soon as the was starting to thin out around the 30km mark we were joined by the 10km which shared the last 9.5km of the marathon course with its start delayed 150 minutes behind the marathon. You could tell the 10km runners because apparently it is customary in Korea for everyone to wear the official shirt from the race. The marathon was the blue and yellow shirt that I received and the 10km had a black, short-sleeve shirt with a similar design.

After the finish line they herded us to tables of Pocari Sweat and then out to a photo wall where they would take your picture, superimpose your finish time onto the display and print the picture onto a can of Pocari Sweat. At the time, I was so disappointed with my collapse and 3:13:31 time that I wanted no souvenir with that time showing so I skipped the picture.

After that station, there were more Pocari Sweat stations, a snack station with chocolate-covered marshmallows, bananas and raisins and then a station to return your chip and collect your medal. I had planned to meet Mark and Byungsoo for beers after the race but Mark was stuck in Dongtan for work and I had forgotten to bring my phone and had no way to contact Byungsoo so I grabbed a taxi back to Anguk Station, showered and went back down to Dongtan where I went out for dinner and beers with Mark at the Cocky Pub (a western style bar in downtown Dongtan) where I had a pizza as an appetizer and then the Cocky Burger (a cheese burger with a fried egg). Then it was time to go to bed and start recovering for Boston.

Here is the finisher medal:

Now on to recover from this one and get ready for Boston!

Donga Seoul International Marathon: Part 1

Part 1: Before the Race

It all started on the 11th of December last fall. By it all, I actually just mean that was when I registered for the Donga Seoul International Marathon. I was in the Axcelis office in Cheongju killing time between teleconferences by scanning www.MarathonGuide.com to see if I could find a race in Mexico while Sarah and I would be there around the New Year.

To make a short story only slightly longer: I couldn't. Or at least not one near Tulum where we were staying. This was probably a good thing. I was in no shape to run a marathon at the end of 2014 and the trip to Mexico was better for not killing myself in a race. I did find a race in Seoul scheduled for March 15th and figured that there is a 50/50 chance of me being in Korea on any given weekend so I signed up. It was only 50,000 Won (roughly $50). You can't beat the race prices over here!

How out of shape was I at the end of 2014? I ran a grand total of 1093.74 miles; this was the second fewest miles I ran in any year since I started my running log in December 2009. I completed 8 races last year. I had two wins and two second place finishes but did not register a PR so the placement was more a function of attendance than performance. I did not break 60 miles in either November or December...not 60 miles in a week in either month: I ran fewer than 60 total miles in each of those two months!

Finally on December 28th I went out for a run and started a 42 day, 302.43 mile running streak. The streak started in Malden and survived flying down to Mexico for vacation and exploring all over the area around Tulum.

Pyramid at Coba. Rent bikes if you visit Coba; the place is massive.

It was only 31.92 miles, but I ran all 6 days in Mexico before coming home and running 106.86 miles over then next 15  days before flying to Korea. That 15 days included getting up at 2:45am on 1/20 to run a quick 4 miles before going to Logan for my flight to Seoul. In Korea I kind of hit my stride and ran 151.44 miles in the next 18 days before flying home on February 7th. Along the way, I topped my previous highest January mileage of 204.81 miles with 224.88 miles.

The flight home on the 7th was not a pleasant one. As Sarah and I skyped in the morning, I got 7 email updates alternating my flight from being delayed to 8pm to departing as scheduled at 6pm. After going out for sushi with Mark near the Shilla Stay we took the shuttle to the airport early enough to make the original departure. By the time we got to the airport, United had finally made up their collective mind and decided to delay the flight to 8pm which meant that we would miss our connection in San Francisco.

18 days is a LONG time to be away and I was really missing Sarah (as usual when I'm in Korea) so despite the fact that they only had middle seats left in regular economy, I switched onto a Singapore Air flight that would put me into SFO on time to make my connection home. In general, I would compare Singapore Air favorably to United but there was not an empty seat anywhere on the flight and I'm not really used to being cramped into regular economy seats anymore. Between the cramp and the crowd, I ended up sick when I got home. Perhaps I would have missed some days because of the snow if I was healthy but I didn't get out of bed for two days so I cannot blame the snow for the three days I missed upon getting home.

No one in Boston needs me to tell them how much snow we had in February this year.

 On February 22nd I ran the Five College Realtors 10 Miler out in Amherst. It was my 3rd try at that race and it did not go well. I ran 1:04:15. It was quite a bit off of my 1:00:30 out there back in 2013 but it was good to get out at race pace for a little bit. I ran well for the first half and I thought it was going to be a repeat of my strong performance two years ago but GI issues slowed the second half to a jog.

Photo from Facebook. Taken by Thomas Cole of SRR. Despite the snow, I was probably over-dressed for this one.

On February 25th I got back on another flight back to Korea. This time my route was Boston to San Francisco, San Francisco to Beijing and Beijing to Seoul. My flight out of San Francisco was delayed so I missed my connection in Beijing. This causes a bit of a stir because I found a connection to Seoul that went out later that night but it was on Korean Air which flew out of another terminal. Normally this would be no problem but my China visa expired last November and I didn't have any papers to show that I had a connecting flight in the next 72 hours to go through the temporary transfer visa line.

Fortunately, the kind folks at United were able to print out some papers that got me through the temporary visa line rather than going all "No Ticket" on me. I made it through no worse for wear but it cost me half a page of stamps in my passport so I'm going to need to add a pack of extra pages before Sarah and I go to France in September for the Marathon du Medoc.

With work, sickness, snow and missed connections, my mileage was down in February. I logged only 161.34 miles in February but at least this was more than I'd ever run in a previous February (previous high was 152.66 miles in 2010).

This trip to Korea was back to Cheongju which is one of my favorite places to run. Here are a few pictures I took one day when I took my phone out on my run to capture some of the scenery.

My run starts with a stone path by a small brook near the Ramada Plaza in Cheongju.

After about 1.5 miles on the stone path, I cross a low concrete bridge and come to a rubber track that goes farther than I've explored in both directions.

Here is the track heading off to the east on my morning run.

And here it goes to the west that same morning.

I've gone 7 miles out to the west and 3.5 miles out to the east and never found any sign of the end. There is a 144km marker on the bike path next to the track a few miles out to the west of where I pick up the track. This was also where my cell battery went flat so I don't have any more pictures from this loop. When I'm feeling adventurous I run up into the hills east of the hotel:

Run to the hills. Run for your lives.

With all the great running routes around Cheongju, I've logged 129.53 miles in the 14 days that I've been here. I'm exhausted from the miles and the hours at work but I have 498.79 miles on my legs this year and I have Sunday off to run the Donga Seoul International Marathon. I am training through it to make a run at sub-3 at Boston this year so my goal will be to finish somewhere between 3:00:00 and 3:10:00. Basically, I'm going to warm up easy for the first few kilometers and then run at marathon pace through around the 40th kilometer then cool down for the last 2km.

I'll update again about the race on Sunday and then about recovery to get ready for Boston in the middle of next week.

Cheers from Cheongju!