Hartford Marathon Recap: A Glimpse into "Elite" Marathoning

Let me begin by making something clear: I am not an elite marathoner. Shalane Flanagan is an elite marathoner. Desiree Linden is an elite marathoner. Me? I’m sub-elite at best, and even saying that, I cannot help but think of at least ten women whom I know on a first-name-basis, who live within a few miles of me, and who could kick my ass at a footrace of literally any distance tomorrow morning.

However, according the Hartford Marathon's standards, I was “elite” enough for them. And if they wanted to give me free entry into a race I was already intending to run, I certainly wasn't going to say no.

Of course, as I was applying for “elite” status, I quickly discovered that the race had an even higher tier than elite, which they called “New England’s Finest.” If you, as a woman, ran a 2:55 marathon or better and lived in New England or New York, you could apply to receive travel reimbursement of up to $150, a free hotel room, and the opportunity to win considerably more prize money than the rest of the elites. (Take, for example, first place: the NEF runner would receive $6,000, while the regular elite could only earn $1,000.*)

I think this is the finish. But I'm honestly not sure.

Alas, while I did run a sub-2:55 marathon last year, and while I can literally see the World Trade Center from my apartment window (and spend more time running in New York than I do in New Jersey), I do not actually live in New England or New York. Therefore, despite my beseeching email to the race director, I was relegated to elite status. (Yes, yes, poor me. Merely elite.)

What I did get as part of the elite program was access to a tented area beside the finish line where I and the other NEF/elites could put our gear. The morning of the race, my friend and wonderful weekend host A___ and my fiancé R___ escorted me to that tent, which turned out to be not so much a clean, heated haven, as I had envisioned, but instead consisted of two rows of folding chairs and a folding table laden with safety pins, a case of water, and a box of bananas, all set up atop some already-soggy grass. (But hey, we had a tent, which was a lot nicer than standing out in the rain!)

After quick hugs and mutual wishes of “good luck,” A___ and R___ departed, leaving me feeling incredibly out of place as I hunched over my folding chair and watched all of the svelte runners arrive, looking like they knew exactly what they were doing and wearing matching warmup kits to boot. I, meanwhile, was wearing men’s sweatpants from Marshall’s and a free jacket I got at a race in Massachusetts last year. (I had meant for them to be my throwaway clothes, but apparently a volunteer was assigned to collect the NEF/elite runners’ warmup clothes at the starting line and take them back to the tent for us. Who knew?) Just as I checked my watch for the twelve-hundredth time and decided that 7:02am seemed like the perfect time to start tucking gel packets into my shorts, a woman in the next row of folding chairs made eye contact with me and smiled. After we exchanged a few pleasantries (yes, the weather was a little gloomy, and the grass beneath these chairs was awfully soggy, but hey, at least we wouldn’t be too hot!), she asked what I was going to do to warm up and would I mind the company? This was her first marathon, so “she didn’t know what marathoners did to warm up.” I invited her along on my one-mile warm-up jog, and as we trotted away, she asked what time I was hoping to run. I said anything under 2:55 would be a success. When I returned the question, she said she was hoping to OTQ (which is short for "Olympic Trials Qualify," meaning running under 2:45:00). Hmm, I thought. That’s a bit ambitious for a first marathon. But when she followed that up by saying she had recently run a 1:16 half marathon, my skepticism vanished.**

After finishing our jog, we parted ways. I had been told we’d be “escorted” to the starting line, but as I started seeing more and more runners leave the tent on their own, I decided that I must have been misinformed and jogged out toward the throngs of runners. When I finally found the starting line, I simultaneously ran into C___, a friend of a friend whom I’d met once before on a run in Connecticut. We hugged, at which point she said that since it was her first marathon, she just wanted to break three hours. (Just!) Then she inevitably asked what I wanted to run, and when I told her I was aiming for 2:55, she declared, “Perfect! We can run together, then.”

As the gun went off, my competitive brain got hostile. She’s totally crashing my marathon. Now I’m going to feel like I have to stick with her, instead of running my own race. What if she goes out too hard? What if she feels good? What if I feel good? I tried to reason with myself that if she started throwing down 6:15s in the first half, I’d just let her go and try not to let it bother me. On the other hand, if I felt good and she was flagging, I could leave her at mile 20. She’d better be flagging, warned the competitive voice. It’s her first marathon. You aren’t going to get beat by a first-timer are you?

Within the first few miles, all the OTQ women were long gone. Sure, there were a few men around, but otherwise it was frankly just me and C___. She seemed fine, and I seemed fine, and so we carried on, with her informing me at every mile marker exactly how fast her watch said we were running. (She was using the GPS auto-lap, while I was manually lapping my watch, so her announcements came earlier and earlier as the miles clicked away—exactly the reason I'd chosen not to use auto-lap.) We ran on a narrow park path and up along a highway. We ran beneath a bridge underpass where her family was screaming her name, and through a downtown stretch where R___ was screaming mine. On the uphills, she forged ahead, and on the downhills I sped past, but for the most part we ran stride for stride, taking turns going ahead of one another at water stops. (That is, except at three water stops where there were “elite runner” water tables. At those, she grabbed her pre-placed water bottle, and I ran straight past to grab a regular Dixie cup from a volunteer. Nothing new on race day, right?)

A rare photo with the "Dalai Lama" of running.

Now, my “ideal day race plan” had been to run 6:35-40 per mile for the first 10 miles, 6:30-35 for the next 7, 6:30s for the next 5, and anything sub-6:30 for the last 4+. However, the terrain was so uneven throughout the race and, quite frankly, I was so caught up in the fact that this girl was sticking to me like glue, that somewhere around mile 15, I abandoned that plan. My reasoning was as follows: (1) Nothing in my training indicated that I’d be able to negative split with this kind of precision. (2) If I picked up the pace significantly, C___ might not come with me, which would mean two things. First, I’d have to run the rest of the race literally by myself (because the annoying man who decided to sit on our heels starting at mile 8 was clearly not going to run beside me), and second, if my "wheels came off," I would have to watch C___ fly right past me. And call me a wimp, call me a coward, but I just did not want that to happen. Better to outkick her at the very end, I thought. After all: you know the kind of fatigue that’s coming. She doesn’t.

In fact somewhere right around where fatigue was starting to set in, we reached the second “elite” water bottle table, and C___ dropped her bottle. I saw her do it, and immediately thought Now what do I do? I could pick up my pace and try to drop her. I could simply keep going and see what she would do. Or I could slow down a little and look over my shoulder to try and encourage her to join me again.

You don’t know this girl, my competitive brain said. You don’t owe her anything.

Yeah, but if that were you, you’d want the other person to wait for you, said my rational brain. And what’s a few extra seconds? It’s not going to make a difference in the ultimate outcome of your race.

So I slowed down a beat and kept looking over my shoulder until I heard her footsteps again.

Around mile 19, we passed one of the OTQ girls. She looked absolutely miserable. “Come with us!” I tried to shout, but I was getting cold and my lips weren’t really functioning, so I doubt she heard me. And speaking of things not functioning, I spent all of miles 20 and 21 trying to get a gel out of my shorts pocket with fingers that absolutely would not cooperate. By the time we hit mile 22, my shorts were twisted, my shoulders were tired, and I had completely given up hope of getting that gel out—at which point C___ asked, “Do you want a gummy?”

See, this is why you were right to wait for her, my rational brain said as she handed over one of her shot blocks (which is basically a giant cube-shaped gummy bear). My competitive brain had absolutely no comeback to that one.

However, it had plenty to say when, a few hundred meters later, the man who had been running one step behind us the entire time finally started taking off.

Go with him! screamed my competitive brain. You can’t just let him beat you after he used you all that way!

But we were still four miles out from the finish line, and I just did not feel spry enough to match the move.

It’s okay, said my rational brain. Another time, another guy. You can go next time. This time, in this race, just hang on until 25.

And so I did. At mile 25, I saw what looked like an old man up ahead of us, near what looked like a gas station. He didn’t seem to be moving particularly quickly, and some guy C___ knew had just jumped onto the course to help her out. Neither he nor she said a word to me, so I figured all bets were off.

Time to go.

I pushed as hard as I could up the highway ramp that led back into downtown Hartford. I suffered through the downhill that came next. I tried to turn a wince into a smile when I passed by A___ and R___, all without turning my head, because I had to focus. I couldn’t let up, and I didn’t dare look back. C___ might be there, and I needed all of my energy to move forward. If I got out-kicked by the first-time marathoner who “just wanted to break three hours,” I’d never, ever forgive myself.

When the finish line finally came into sight, I couldn’t hear anything but my own footfalls, and there was nothing in front of me except that big, unforgiving clock. Suddenly it was all very real: if I didn’t push for these last 200 meters, I was going to finish with a 2:54 to my name, and damn it, I might have traveled a long way to get here, but I was better than 2:54. So I kicked as hard as my weary, beaten legs could kick.

And, as it turned out, those legs didn't let me down.

2018 Hartford Marathon Race Results

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place
26.2 mi	2:53:58	6:39/mile	27 / 1,560	5 / 635

* Not that I had any dreams of winning, the race, mind you, but prize money extended down through eighth place, and given the previous years’ finishing times, finishing somewhere in the top eight seemed possible.

** This woman went on to not only OTQ—by nearly 4 minutes, I should add—but she also won the entire race. Guess my warmup routine was sufficient....

Pre-Hartford: 2018 Year-Long Recap

Pro tip: pretend you're actually exercising by doing your PT at a gym.

They say "don't take things for granted," but we inevitably do. So let me start this off by saying how grateful I am to even be writing a pre-marathon season recap. Just getting to the starting line this year is a triumph on its own.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's start back in January. As of the first of the year, I was sidelined with an "overuse" injury called patellofemoral syndrome. If you happen to be a physical therapist, you'll recognize that this isn't a break, or a strain, or even anything specific; it basically means I was having pain around my knee, mostly likely caused by inflammation. The trick—and what my physical therapist and I worked on over the next several months—was to determine why I was having pain and to train my body to move in a way that would stop causing said pain. For everyone who's not a physical therapist, all you really need to know is that bending my knee hurt. So running was out, along with biking, erging (rowing), elliptical-ing . . . it even hurt to walk. Also, stairs were especially painful, which, as anyone who lives in or around New York City knows, was especially problematic in terms of getting anywhere. However, luckily for me, my fiance and I had moved to a building with an elevator in late 2017, so at least I no longer faced three sets of stairs anytime I wanted to leave the apartment. That was one silver lining, and the fact that I could still swim freestyle without pain was another. So from January until April, I went to the pool 4-5 times a week and spent the rest of the time dutifully practicing PT exercises and trying not to feel too much FOMO as I watched everyone else get fitter and faster.

During this four-month span, I was faced with a hard choice. At the end of 2017, I was accepted to attend Wilder, an all-women's running-writing retreat hosted by retired professional runner Lauren Fleshman. Anyone who knows me knows how excited I was to be accepted—this retreat was practically made for me!—but given that the event was scheduled for Memorial Day weekend, I was now faced with a tough choice. Should I pay the rest of the deposit and buy a plane ticket, gambling on the fact that I'd be healthy enough to run by the end of May? Or should I save my money, give up my spot, and hope to be accepted into a future retreat?

With the encouragement of my physical therapist (who also happens to be my coach), I took the gamble, and lo and behold, by the end of May, I was finally running again. (Albeit very low mileage and with a lot of huffing and puffing . . . but I was putting one foot in front of the other with minimal pain!) Suffice it to say, that weekend in Sisters, OR, remains a highlight of my year. I met amazing women, communed with nature, and basked in a sense of security and freedom that I rarely, if ever, feel. It's hard to summarize the experience in a few short sentences, but the whole weekend was an important reminder that I don't always need to have an agenda. Every word I write does not need to be an act of performance, and every run I go on does not need to be in service to larger goal.

That said, I was still eager to get back to training for my "larger goal," so when I returned to New York (okay, okay, New Jersey), that's what I did. And man, was it humbling.

Fast-forward to the end of July, when I ran my first race of the year. It was a low-key 5k in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and I knew I wasn't in shape to do anything impressive. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to come in under 19 minutes, and, thanks to very few other women showing up for the race, I won. Two weeks later, I ran the exact same race . . . almost 30 seconds slower. This was yet one more slice of humble pie, but, to take this metaphor much farther than it needs to go, I got a scoop of ice cream with it this time: at mile 2, a man-woman duo started to pass me. I huffed something along the lines of "good job, go" and then the woman turned and invited me to "come with us." This was somehow exactly what I needed to hear, because I kept pace and wound up out-kicking her and another woman at the end, for second place. All of a sudden, I could feel that old love of competing nudging me. That was exciting. Can we do that again?

Still can't quite believe this trip was real. That's Lauren Fleshman, in the flesh!

I had just started searching for more upcoming races when, the next week in August, disaster hit. I got the call that my sister had been rushed to the hospital, and since both of my parents had just left on a cruise to Alaska, I was the family member left in charge. Without getting into the details, my attempt to "get to Cleveland ASAP" involved two separate trips to La Guardia airport and half a night spent in the Port Authority. To make matters worse, cruise lines still apparently communicate using smoke signals and carrier pigeons, so by the time I arrived at the hospital, two days had passed since I first got the call, and I had only just reached my parents to tell them what had happened. I spent the rest of the week in and out of the hospital, so needless to say, not much running took place. 

The good news is that by the time I was able to leave my sister's bedside, I had an excellent distraction lined up: the 2018 Hood to Coast relay! It was a dirty, smelly, stressful race . . . with really awesome people. If you want more details than that, you can get them here.

September thankfully calmed down, although it was still not smooth sailing: I tweaked my neck, and as soon as that was fixed, I got sick, and on top of all of that, a lower back problem I'd been trying to manage since springtime finally insisted that it would no longer be ignored, so I grudgingly went back to PT (although thankfully I was still able to run).

Also, it was during this month that I ran the second-worst half marathon of my life. This pattern is apparently pretty standard for me: before my each of my last two marathons (Berlin and Portland), I had an "all is lost" moment when I seriously questioned whether I'd be able to run the upcoming marathon at all, let alone as well as I wanted to. This year's "buildup" race was no different, complete with bitter tears of self-rage and utterly shaken confidence. But this is also my year of attempting to re-frame what happens to me, so I did my best to take away some positives: I did not drop out of the race (despite an overwhelming desire starting at mile six), I (miraculously) did not walk, and I got lots and lots of practice with my various mental strategies (ignoring my watch, remembering to be grateful, listening to my breathing, telling the doom and gloom voice in my head to "STOP").

If you look up "anguished emoji face," this is what you'll find.

And here's the thing about reframing: it doesn't always work in the short term (as can be deduced from conversations like, "Allison, you'll come back from this mandatory rest stronger!" STFU. You try not running and see how strong you get), but in the longer term, I think it is helping. I really am grateful to run again. I'm grateful to my training partners (both new and old) for their constant enthusiasm, and to my coach for his limitless patience and optimism. I also focused on one of the few controllables in my life this year, my diet, and while it's hard to say if it has helped in any measurable way, experimenting with a farmshare has been fun, and eating more fruits and vegetables can never hurt!

All told, I wouldn't say I'm any sort of "new athlete." I didn't come away from this year's challenges with stronger muscles, a leaner frame, or an ironclad mindset. But I'm working on that much-lauded "process" mindset, and one thing I can say for sure: I really did enjoy putting in the work.

We'll see what that's worth on Saturday.

Hood To Coast Recap: Teamwork and Traffic Jams

Almost exactly one month ago, I ran the Hood to Coast relay as the twelfth member of the North Queens Runners (NQR) team. Whenever I tell anyone about this, the number one question I get is, "Was it fun?"

Honestly, I'm not sure.

Carly & Garen, Leg 6

For those of you who don't know what Hood to Coast is, let me summarize: on the second-to-last weekend of August, 1,000 teams of 12 runners each (split into two vans of six) start at the top of Mount Hood in northern Oregon and run 199 miles across the state to Seaside, i.e., the Pacific coast of Oregon. Each of the twelve runners runs ~15-18 miles, split across three legs of the relay, which are run in rotation, equalling 36 legs in total. If your team is walking (or running very slowly), your first runner starts at the crack of dawn on Friday, with each subsequent sendoff containing progressively faster teams. If your team wins, you will finish in about 17 hours. If not, the cutoff time to complete the relay is 36 hours. There are very few rules: you can eat and drink whatever you want, drive (almost) whatever you want, and wear whatever you want (unless you are running at night, in which case you are required to wear an LED light vest and a headlamp).

Running a relay like this was an entirely new experience for me, and I think when we have new experiences, rare experiences, or experiences we've invested a lot of time and money into, we expect (and others expect us) to "have fun." No matter how we feel during the event itself, we tend to revise our story afterward in order to make it seem like it was a total blast. After all, our audience probably didn't have this experience, so the least we can do is give them the best highlights, right?

Well, this is going to be the best and worst highlights.

First I want to say that I am very glad to have had this experience. I really enjoy new challenges, and  I've certainly never run what amounted to approximately three 10k races in 24 hours, nor have I spent 24 hours with the same seven people in one van. I also love contributing to a team, and this team was especially great; everyone on NQR was enthusiastic and supportive, while also intent on giving their best effort toward our goal of winning the mixed division (i.e., teams with at least six women). Finally, I love competing, and I was surrounded by competitors, and we were working together toward a shared goal. That was really fun.

Literally stretching my legs

However, there were a lot of parts that were not so fun. There were things I expected to be unpleasant, like wearing perpetually sweaty, smelly clothes; eating room-temperature sandwiches that have been squashed into unrecognizable shapes; "sleeping" for a grand total of one hour in a cramped van seat; and squatting in not one, not two, but three different leafy roadside "bathrooms." But then there were other elements I did not expect. For instance, I discovered I really do not enjoy running in the dark. Where I live (right outside Manhattan), it's never truly dark; there are always so many street lights and car lights and lit-up storefront displays that visibility is never a problem. However, on the uneven, poorly lit sidewalks of suburban Portland, curbs drop off without warning and you never know when a tree root will emerge. And that was only my first leg; during my second (at about 3am), I spent five miles running through a pitch-black valley of fog. (Dinky headlamp + zero streetlights + fog = unabated terror of falling in an invisible potholes.) Fear is very stressful, and apparently when I'm running, I'm scared of the dark.

The other unexpectedly stressful element had nothing to do with running at all.

When I was initially envisioning this race, I pictured running through hill and over dale. I saw trees and grass and dirt and even a few inevitable highways. What I did not picture was how 1,000 teams--meaning 2,000 vans--would get from point A to point B (and then to point C, and then point D . . . ). As it turns out, while the athletes are running through the wilderness, their vans are winding through narrow, rickety back roads that were absolutely not designed to accommodate 2,000 vehicles at once.

Driving--or, rather sitting--in standstill traffic was unquestionably the most stressful part of the whole relay. Here we were, trying to test our physical limits, to see if we could prove ourselves to be faster and grittier than our competitors, and we being hamstrung by . . . what amounted to rush-hour traffic. We left one of our runners stranded at a checkpoint, out in the cold, for over twenty minutes. And on top of that, there was no cell service, so we had no way of telling our other van (i.e., our six other teammates) that we were way, way behind schedule.

Team NQR! Clearly a photogenic bunch.

The upshot is that we lost the mixed division title by one minute. That's five seconds per runner. Less than two seconds a leg. Yet, I felt robbed of what would otherwise have been disappointment, because it didn't feel like a real loss. There was no way to know if we actually ran slower than the team that beat us, because they left in the very last sendoff, fifteen minutes behind us. Maybe, as a result of their later departure, they had less traffic, and "drove" their way to victory. (Or, alternatively, maybe we would have lost by a wider margin if they'd been in our sendoff.) Without going "head to head" with them, there was no way of knowing if we could have closed that sixty-second gap. As a result, most of what I felt, upon reaching the beach, was fatigue, and most of what I remembered was glaring helplessly at endless red brake lights.

Of course, that's not the end of the story. At the awards ceremony, there was some insane drama involving the winning women's team, but we weren't there for it, because we had rented a beach house! For the rest of the weekend, the twelve of us sat in the hot tub, ate ridiculous quantities of food, drank equally ridiculous quantities of alcohol, and slept. A lot.

Now that was fun.

If I Could Just

If I could just wake up without pain

...walk without limping

...take the stairs this time

I swear I'd be grateful.


If I could just run

...for more than five minutes

...without paralyzing fear

I'd be appreciative beyond belief.


If I could just catch my breath

...keep up with the others

...go faster than this

I wouldn't complain, I promise.


If I could just finish the workout

...add more miles

...run the way I used to

I'd feel more confident, I know it.


If I could just hit that time

...and then go a little faster

...and then a little bit faster

Then I'd be satisfied.


Wouldn't I?

The Obstacle is the Way, and Other Impossible Mindsets

Every year, usually at least twice a year, my fiance R___ goes on a self-improvement binge. Now, I'm not complaining, because these endeavors usually benefit me in some way. Maybe he wants to get fit (hey sexy guy!). Maybe he wants to learn a new skill (cooking, anyone?). Maybe he wants to be a better partner (helloooo date nights . . . and swiffering!). However, his most recent episode has involved a "get tough and get Buddhist" attitude that, for reasons I will explain, makes me want to scream and punch things on a daily basis.

Decidedly NOT running.

What irritates me isn't the attitude itself, because honestly I admire it and wish I could adopt it myself. What irritates me is that he somewhat arbitrarily "decided" to adopt this mentality and, seemingly overnight, is now cruising along with the serenity and can-do mindset of a monk. I, on the other hand get to watch him fast, meditate, and walk around without a coat while simultaneously seething and/or trying not to cry at my own shortcomings. Not that this is a competition; I understand perfectly well that we can all be better versions of ourselves at the same time, and that this is not a zero-sum game. But he seems to be making all of these personal strides while I sit on the couch eating Chex Mix, feeling like a sub-optimal version of myself.

So here's why I'm such a mess: on December 31st, my right knee started hurting when I went up and down stairs. Thinking it was just some arbitrary tightness left over from my snowy run that weekend, I foam rolled and went running the next day . . . and came back hobbled. Ever since then, my sneakers have been gathering dust, and the only running I've been doing is running up a credit bill for physical therapy visits.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love running, and the longer I go without it, the clearer it becomes that I have woven this sport into the fabric of my life. Without it, I no longer have a weekly schedule (because my runs dictated that); I no longer have a daily social life (because seeing my friends on runs pretty much was my social life); and I no longer have any desire to look at social media (because if I see one more person post their weekly mileage or daily workout paces, I actually have a psychotic episode).

Now, I must acknowledge that R___ is perfectly sympathetic about all of this. Just because he's zen about life doesn't mean he expects me to be. The problem is that I expect myself to chill out and take this in stride. Practically every runner I know has been injured in some way, at some point. And despite how important it is to me, running is not my whole life. I have a partner who love me whether I run or not. I have a business that is independent of the sport. I have friends who barely remember I run, and friends who are willing to hang out even if we can't run together. So why can't I just accept that this "is what it is" and try to make the best of it? Or, even better, "How can I take [shitty thing that has happened] and turn it into the best thing that has ever happened to me?" (Thanks for sharing that nugget of wisdom, R___.)

After weeks of stewing, I have come to the conclusion that there's no way I'm going to feel like this is "the best thing," or even a remotely good thing, until I'm safely on the other side. So for now, I'm trying to come at the issue from an academic angle. In no particular order, here are the potential silver linings:

I've lost the compulsion to run, but retained the desire. For the two weeks after my last marathon, when I was supposed to be "resting," all I could think about was the fitness I was losing--fitness I would need to build upon if I wanted to run any faster in my next race. All I could think was, Why am I not running? I should be running! Well here I am now, stripped of my fitness, with no sign of getting it back anytime soon. After two weeks of panic and a few weeks of sadness, I'm stuck with a big cold dose of reality: those time barriers I was so anxious to break? They're gone, gone gone. I won't be seeing them, if at all, for quite some time. Yet I still want to run. It sounds cliche, but I dream about running at least once a week. I miss the feeling of power and control over my body. I miss the freedom of stepping outside and just going. So the love of running is still there, and despite the trials of the moment, that simple fact is comforting.

I'm swimming more than I have in almost a decade. Inherently, this is not a good or bad thing; it is just a fact. What's lucky is that I enjoy swimming. Also, it reminds me of the self who persevered for years, despite being the worst on the team, and still found satisfaction in working hard and seeing incremental progress. I like that self. Plus, these days, I mostly swim alone, so I have no one to compare myself against. I follow virtually no swimmers on social media, so it's sort of this pure thing, with no pressure or expectations. I know I'll never be a top-level swimmer, no matter how many hours I put into the pool . . . but that's okay. That's not why I do it.

My upper body is getting stronger. With no real lower-body exercise options (except a few PT-approved movements), I've taken to doing push-ups and planks on a much more regular basis. That's not to say I neglected these things before, but I most certainly did not do them every day. As a result, I'm up to 3x15 push-ups and 3 pull-ups, which I fully acknowledge is no great feat, but it's more than I've done before, so I'll allow myself a smidgen of pride. And who knows--maybe it'll help my running down the line. Crazier things have happened.

Grateful

I'm trying really hard to be grateful.

Grateful I've stayed healthy for so long.

Grateful that my injury (if it had to happen) happened now, in the cold slippery winter, and not during a big summer training block.

Grateful I have a coach who is also a physical therapist (as well as one of the calmest humans beings on earth).

Grateful to have health insurance.

Grateful I can still swim.

Grateful to have so many friends who still care about me, even when I can't run.

Grateful I don't equate self-worth with running fast.

. . . but let's not fool ourselves. I still want to run fast.

Just have to heal, first. And then, I guess, we'll see.

Which Matters More: Talent or Hard Work?

So I have this friend, T___. He's a former professional triathlete who completes Ironmans in the time it takes me to explain what that race is. He also works as a firefighter—a physically demanding job that has an extremely erratic schedule requiring long hours and sleepless nights. Needless to say, I have a lot of respect for this guy. Therefore, when he asked for my input as he developed a podcast, and then when he asked me to be an early guest on the show, I was very flattered, but also a little nervous. As a writer, I've interviewed other people before, but I've never been the one in the hot seat!


Luckily, a few days before we were scheduled to record, T___ gave me a list of questions. There weren't many, so I decided to practice my answers with my fiance, R___.  Then, during the interview, T___ asked me nearly all of the questions on his list, but he did omit one . . . and of course it was the one for which I had prepared what I considered my best answer. The question has stuck with me ever since, so, I want to lay out my thoughts on the matter.

Which matters more, talent or hard work?

In a nutshell, I think the importance of talent compared to hard work depends upon where someone is in their pursuit of an activity. In the very beginning, I think talent matters more. After all, if you show no aptitude for an activity, why would you want to pursue it? The way I see it, once you realize that you're "actually pretty good" at something, that's when you start wanting to put in the hard work to get better.

Once you're past entry-level, however, that's when hard work increases in importance. Let me give you an example from my own life: I used to play the flute. I started in second grade, and by the time I joined the concert band in middle school, I was simply better than everyone else. By then I had stopped taking lessons, and although I rarely practiced the music, I was good enough at sight-reading to earn myself first chair and stay there all the way through junior high school. However, once I entered high school, I came up against a girl who was working a heck of a lot harder than I was. She took lessons, she practiced, and lo and behold: she was better than me.

Now, in this particular case, I could have risen to the challenge. I could have hired a teacher and taken my flute home every day and worked on my vibrato and double-tonguing and all of my other technical and artistic shortcomings. But I didn't. So she moved into first chair, I took second, and that was that. Hard work wins.

Now it should be pointed out: neither of us went on to be professional flautists. (I believe she's an English teacher somewhere, and I'm a freelance writer and editor; I would bet neither of us have picked up a flute in years.) But had we attempted that career path, I truly believe that talent would have elbowed its way back into premier "importance." Because look at how many professional musicians are out there. They're all working hard: practicing, fine-tuning their instruments, improving their skill and artistry. But the ones getting first chair in symphony orchestras? They're the ones who work their asses off and are still better than everyone else. Professional runners who win World Majors? Of course they're working hard, but so are all of their competitors; they win because they're talented. (And because they have a bit of luck, and a great support system, and all of those other factors that play into great single-day performances.)

So, to wrap up my opinion on this matter in a nice little bow, I think talent matters most at the very bottom and very top of the performance spectrum. But that huuuuuge space in between? That's where hard work comes into play. And that's where most of us live out our life passions. I love running. I love it for lots of reasons, but I found that love because I saw fairly rapid gains early on and wanted to see how fast I could get. Now I'm firmly planted in the "hard work" stage, and that's where I'll stay. I'm never going to be at the level of Shalane Flanagan, or Molly Huddle, or any other superstar who performs in the top 1% of the sport. But I can put in hard, smart work. And then, with a bit of luck and a lot of support, I will push my own limits just a little bit farther than ever seemed possible.

*If you want to hear Tim's and my actual discussion, you can listen here!
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