Looking before the Leap

I'm at a precipice, peering over the edge. It's steep, a straight drop down the side of the cliff, and I'm keenly aware of my the parachute strapped to my back, separated from my skin by a thin layer of sweat-soaked cotton. I'm not sure what this parachute looks like. I imagine it is faded in color, maybe a red bleached nearly pink by the sun, and threadbare from rubbing inside the pack for so many miles. I finger the rip cord dangling at my side and pray it works, because I've never tried this before, never launched myself into free fall and the mercy of the wind.

A breeze brushes my cheek. Swallowing, I close my eyes. I can picture the trail behind me, the soft earth path, the green billowing trees. My heart is beating a racket in my chest, a warning, a plea. I clench my fists and feel the nails bite into the creases of my palms. I came here for a reason. I will not turn back. My heart is beating in my chest. I step forward. One foot. Two. I open my eyes. And my heart is beating.

Running Sub-3: The Boston Marathon Race Recap

My Boston Marathon story actually starts six years ago, the first time I qualified. But that would take forever to tell, so I’ll fast forward—zip!—to Saturday, April 20^th. Then, so as not to make this recap longer than that it already is, I’ll summarize those two days leading up to the big race with some quick bullet points.

Saturday, April 18^th

Boarded Megabus to Boston at 10:30am. Ate, read, slept, and drooled intermittently on my boyfriend’s shoulder until we arrived in South Station at 3:45pm—nearly an hour later than scheduled. The reason for the delay? A bus ahead of us had burst into flames on the side of the road. We passed its blackened smoldering carcass in wide-eyed disbelief.

Hurried through the Hynes Convention Center to grab my race bib and snap a photo or two. We however manage to pause at a sunglasses kiosk long enough for Ryan to buy me a snazzy new pair!
Checked the weather on my phone. Wind and rain predicted for Monday. Shit.

Caught a ride with Marython and her husband out to suburbia where my coach’s parents were holding a festive dinner for the GCR ladies at their house. Petted their two enormous dogs, ate copious amounts of chicken/pasta/bread/orzo salad and accepted their generous offer to stay the night.

Sunday, April 19^th

Casual morning shakeout run with Coach Sasquatch, his wife, Randizzle, and Chloebullets. They all dressed in shorts and tank tops while I wore leggings, long sleeves, and gloves. Endured Sasquatch’s teasing and sweated my way through the run. Made a mental note not to make the same mistake on Monday.

Missed the train back to Boston by literally seconds. (We watched it pull out of the station.) Caught a bus instead. Crisis averted.

Spent the afternoon and evening with Ryan and my friend A___, eating an arbitrary assortment of foods. Pre-race edibles included chips and salsa, pineapple juice, bruschetta, cheese-less pizza, breadsticks, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and not one, not two, but three bowls of Honey Bunches of Oats. And of course water.  A lot of water.

Checked the weather my phone again. Now showing 100% chance of rain and wind still predicted to come from the east. Shit.

Finished off the evening by winning two rounds of Euchre and worrying that my coach had forgotten about me (he had a lot of runners racing in Boston and was staying with several of them). My worrying was needless, of course. He texted and basically told me that I was ready to go. 3:00 was the goal, and he sounded sure I could do it—or at least as sure as someone can “sound” over text message. Time to lock in and do it.

Morning of Monday, April 20^th

5:40am wakeup—miraculously not the earliest I’ve had to get up for one of these races!

Polished off the box of Honey Bunches of Oats and packed a banana and 2 granola bars for what I knew would be a long morning of waiting to run.

Donned the same race outfit I wore at the 2014 Chicago Marathon (blue Nike sports bra, Patagonia GCR singlet, Brooks split shorts, Puma ankle socks, and Brooks Pureflow sneakers), plus arm sleeves and thin gloves. Then I added my “homeless person” clothes on top, which included sweatpants from Marshalls, an long sleeve T-shirt from my lifeguarding days, a men’s windbreaker I picked up from a lost-and-found several years back, and my 2013 NYC poncho, which I have to say was absolutely the most awesome pre-race garment ever. I am almost tempted to run the NYC Marathon again just to score another poncho. Almost.

Walked out the door without consulting my phone, confident I’d be able to get to the Porter T station without any trouble. Wandered around for five minutes before finally locating a woman carrying grocery bags and asked for directions.

Arrived at the Davis T station ready to flash my bib and get a free ride . . . but I couldn’t find an attendant to let me in! Luckily, Ryan had given me our Charlie ticket the night before “just in case.” Crisis averted.

My teammates and I hadn’t made solid plans to meet and ride to the race start together, so after milling about looking for—and not seeing—familiar faces, I finally just got on one of the many yellow school buses that would transport us to the start. In an effort to amuse myself, I struck up a conversation with the man sitting beside me; he was from Melbourne and this was his first Boston marathon. I replied in kind, saying that I was originally from Pittsburgh but now lived outside New York City, and this was also my first Boston marathon.

Suddenly, the man seated across the aisle rom us piped up. “Did you say you’re from Pittsburgh?” As it turns out, this guy was not only from Pittsburgh (Penn Hills, specifically, which his a community adjacent to the one where I grew up), but he also worked for the construction company that had renovated the Wolvarena (my high school football stadium), sent his 28-year-old son to St. Maurice (the Catholic school where I attended grades 4, 5, and 6), and personally founded the Collins-Wardle Double Gobble, which is what they call the combo race of 5k + 5 miles at the Pittsburgh YMCA Turkey Trot—a combo which I ran for the first time just last Thanksgiving!

Then, as if the universe hadn’t already impressed me enough, after a cold, rainy , increasingly muddy walk from the buses to the giant Athlete Village tents, I wiggled in and found a small 2x2 square patch of dry ground to huddle on . . . only to discover that the man sitting beside me had moved to Pittsburgh from London a year-and-a-half ago! Talk about a small world.

I was a little bit disappointed not to get to hang out with my teammates before the race, but meeting these men made it totally worthwhile, especially this last one: he was in the first wave of runners, meaning that he was scheduled to start running at 10am (whereas my start time wasn’t until wave 2, at 10:25). At about 9:20, when the Wave 1 runners were getting ready to leave the Athlete Village tents go to the starting corrals, I noticed him putting on latex surgical gloves over his cotton gloves. I remarked what a good idea that was, because I had been silently worrying about how my hands would fare in the cold wet weather. Well, what do you know he had an extra pair with him and gave them to me! I wore them literally the entire race, and while they didn’t make for the classiest marathon photos, and my hands were not cold..

Now, for the race:

The first 1-2 miles made me nervous because 1) there was literally no way to go any faster inside such a packed mass of runners, 2) because I could not run any faster and because the first several miles are on a downhill, I worried that I might be modifying my natural gait to keep from stepping on the people in front of me, and 3) if I did try to go any faster and tripped, there was so little space between runners that I’d be trampled!

Also, within those first two miles, one of my Gu packets managed to work itself out of the loop in my shorts and fall into the frothing sea of sneakers. Fortunately, a fellow runner had recently been telling me about their tendency to accidentally drop Gu packets, and on a whim I had decided to pack an extra. Yet another crisis averted!

Around miles 3-4, things finally opened up a bit. My instructions were to start out “slow” and ratchet up the pace with each 5k. The first 5k was supposed to clock in around 7:30/mile, and then I would drop 10-15 seconds per mile with each subsequent 5k with some slower 7min miles around the hills. However, by mile 4—the start of the 2^nd 5k—I realized that I had had not stuck to my 7:30  pace for those first 3 miles. Concern and doubt bubbled up in my mind. “What if you went out too fast?” my brain worried. “What if you can’t keep cutting down the pace?”  At that point, though, I knew it was too late to do anything about it, so I just tried to focus on the 5k I was presently running. While most runners would probably have done the logical thing and paid closer attention to the pace on their watch, I instead chanted the pace in my head and hoped my legs would follow. 7:15, 7:15, 7:15. Then, 7, 7, 7. And so on, and so forth.

Around mile 5 was where it really started raining in earnest. I tried to dodge puddles but eventually gave up. I also tried to find a suitable man to serve as my human windshield (also known as "drafting"), because there were some serious gusts blowing at us, but I eventually gave up on that, as well, since every time I found a man large enough, I eventually got so close that my options were to slow down or start stepping on his heels—and I wasn't slowing down.

It’s funny to look back and see my half marathon split, because at the time, I literally had no idea. I was entirely focused on each mile and trying to keep track of which 5k I was running. (It’s shockingly hard to count to 3 over and over again while moving your legs. Thankfully I wasn’t chewing any gum, because things could have gotten really complicated then!) Of course, I wasn’t so focused as to miss the “Wall of Sound” at Wellesley, although you’d have had to be deaf and blind to miss that. (Best sighting there? A girl with bare shoulders holding a sign that covered her entire torso. The sign read, “If you run fast enough, I’ll drop the sign!”) After Wellesley, though, the cheering sections and high-fives all began to smear together in the way that Charlie Brown hears his teacher but can’t quite make out what she’s saying. I was thrilled to see so many people out there cheering so ardently in spite of the terrible weather. However, at a certain point, I just stopped seeing and hearing specifics.

Apart from paces, the other idea I was turning over and over in my head was that  all I had to do was get through Mile 21. After that, by all accounts, the course would literally be all downhill. What I did not take into account (but should have, considering my still-vivid memories of the Pittsburgh Marathon), was how utterly painful downhill running can be when your legs are already fried. At Mile 21, we’d summited Heartbreak Hill and I was ready for the course to feel easier again. After all, my body likes to run downhill! I’ve never been good going up hills, but often I can make up the time I’ve lost on the corresponding downhill. Here, though, at Mile 21, I started to wonder if something was wrong with my quads. They hurt So Much. Was I really going to do this for five more miles?

At this point, I had essentially thrown my pace plan out the window. On paper, I’d worked it out that if I started at a pace of 7:30/mi and dropped 10-15 seconds off my pace each 5k, I’d wind up running the last 5k at 6:10/mile. Of course, all things look great on paper. And in my head, I figured if I could finish the Philadelphia Love Run—which was 13.1 miles—at a sub-6min/mile pace, this might be doable. But as things panned out, I was running nowhere near 6:10/mile by the last 10k. However, I knew that because my first miles were faster than what I’d predicted, if I could average anything at or below 6:30/mi, I’d be in pretty good shape to hit or break the three-hour mark. Unfortunately, determining whether I was hitting that 6:30 pace proved tricky, because somewhere around Mile 20, my watch had lost satellite signal . . . and never regained it. As a substitute, the next time I saw a mile marker, I fumbled with my cold, stiff fingers to press the “lap” button on my watch, and continued to do that for the last 6 miles of the race. Thanks a lot, Garmin.

About three miles from the finish, I made a deal with myself. At the starting line, I had set my watch to show “lap” time. This meant that at each mile—or, as was now the case, each time I pressed the “lap” button—the face of the watch would clock back to 00:00 and start counting up again. Therefore, at this point in the race, I had no idea what my total running time was. (I have tried to use the clock times, but they started at zero with Wave 1, and my wave, Wave 2, had started 25 minutes later, and as I mentioned before, me and mental math while running . . . not so good.) The deal I made was, I could only change my watch over to the “total time” display once I hit Mile 25. Whether this was smart or stupid, I have no idea. I just knew that if I checked earlier and it looked like I was going to miss the 3-hour mark, I might freak out, and if it looked like it would be close, I might freak out . . . and I basically wanted to avoid freaking out out. It was already a hard enough run, with rain and wind and screaming thighs; I didn’t need stressful thoughts to make things harder. And at Mile 25, it would essentially be too late—I’d just have to live with whatever race I had already run.

The last 1.2 miles of the race were . . . memorable. I looked at my watch and saw that I was going to make it. I was running 6:30/mile, and even if I slowed by a full minute-per-mile in that last mile, I’d still break three hours. Emerging from beneath Massachusetts Ave, I looked toward the crowds and there was the teal umbrella, with Ryan holding it! I smiled. I waved. I blew him a kiss. And then I turned back to tackle the only turns on the course: a right, and then a left, and then there was the finish. But wait, there was a woman! In front of me! I could hear T-Pain’s voice, “Killllll!” in my head as I dug into my legs and found the will to turn them over faster. I was going to catch her. And I did.

Crossing the finish line and realizing I’d done it—I’d broken 3 hours—felt truly shocking. In spite of the rain, in spite of the headwind, in spite of my  squishing sneakers and squeaking surgical gloves. In spite of the fact that all I’d wanted out of this race all season was to run faster than I had in Chicago. It was glorious. It was surreal. It was the first time I cried after finishing a race. So much for decent race photos. But it was worth it.

2015 Boston Marathon Results:

Boston Marathon Training: A Season in Review

Well, we're down to the wire, but at the 11th hour, before foot meets pavement, here are some quick recaps of my Boston Marathon training season. It's the journey that matters, right?

Biggest triumph: Philadelphia Love Run. Went into the race without any real expectations, and wound up smashing my last half marathon PR. I haven’t felt so elated about a run in a long time. Well, probably since Chicago, so I guess it hasn’t been that long....

Biggest obstacle: Getting sick not one, not two, but three times during training. With a close second being all the ice we had this winter. (I really hate treadmills.) And a closer third being the fact that I started a brand new job, with a longer commute and longer hours, right at the beginning of the season.

Best workout: I’m not sure that I had a “best workout” this time around. Instead, I had an awful lot of runs where I felt terrible or underperformed, but a number of good races. There honestly weren’t many workouts that felt effortless, never mind fun. I suppose if I can treat the Night at the Races as a workout, then those 800 and 5k runs at the indoor Armory comprised my best workout. In spite of nerves, I had a lot of fun that night, in no small part due to my awesome teammates and also the fact that I’d never run on an indoor track before. The experience was only sullied by the disastrous timing snafu whereby they forced me to run an extra 200m lap at the end of the 5k and totally misrecorded my time. But hey, I still had fun running it.

Worst workout: The long run at the end of my vacation snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park. We came back to Salt Lake City, and instead of sightseeing, I went for my long run. It was 7 miles out and 7 miles back, with paces on the way back, and I don’t know if it was the altitude change or dehydration or what, but two miles into the run back my stomach was churning so badly that I threw up and jog/walked the rest of the way back to the hotel. It’s the first long run I actually did not finish.

Biggest Inspiration: I have this teammate who has such incredible drive. She wants to get faster so terribly badly, and I know—in spite of how down she gets on herself sometimes—that she really believes she can get faster. Heck, she is getting faster, and she knows it. It’s just never enough. “What else can I do?” she constantly asks our coach. “Why am I not getting better? Fix me!” And while it isn’t on the official record yet, how much faster and stronger she’s gotten, I know it’s only a matter of time. At which point, that won’t be enough, either. And then she’ll be on to the next one.

Favorite moments: This superlative has to be plural, because it’s impossible to choose just one.

1. In Marython's car, driving from the finish of one of the Boston Buildup races to the train station with three of my teammates. I’m always a little out of touch with pop culture, but in this case I was really late to the party: T-Pain was DJ’ing from the passenger seat, and she turned on “Bad Girlz” by MIA. Now, is that a great song? Depends who you ask. But sitting in that car with three other sweaty, energetic girls, with the music up, bopping along . . . it was just a great feeling. (And of course now I love the song.) So that definitely qualifies as a favorite moment.
2. Walking through the finishing corral at the end of the Philadelphia Love Run. All of a sudden, my boyfriend’s mother and sister ran up to me with these enormous grins on their faces. His whole family was in Philadelphia for the weekend, and they had asked the night before what my goal time for the race was. I had just beaten it by a considerable margin, and they clearly knew. “You’re so awesome!” they gushed. “You beat your time! We saw!” In that moment I felt so much love, the kind you can only feel from family. The kind where other people’s happiness for you is just overwhelming. I am still overwhelmed thinking about it. Definitely a favorite moment.
3. Last but not least, at the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler last weekend: I had started out the race with my teammates and then kind of run off alone because I felt pretty good and it was a nice day and it seemed like the right thing to do. Around mile 7 I heard a familiar voice and suddenly my coach Sasquatch and his wife ran up next to me. We carried along at a clip that was ever-increasing, until I was quite literally panting and straining to keep up underneath a canopy of pink and white blossoms. Sasquatch’s wife wasn’t actually registered to run the race, so she dropped out about a mile before the finish, and he and I finished essentially side by side. Spontaneously—and to my utter surprise—he reached over and gave me a hug. It felt like the kind of hug that said, “I’m proud of you.” And that’s all I really want, I guess: for people I love and respect to be proud of me. So of course it felt awesome. A great way to end my last race before Boston. And thus my third favorite moment.

A Little LOVE in Philly

It's a funny thing when success takes you by surprise. You work and work and work toward this one goal, and then, sometimes, if you're lucky and the stars align, some other totally unexpected wonderful thing happens.

I wasn't trying to PR a half marathon this marathon cycle. I felt tired coming out of the Chicago Marathon and, realistically, I was doing considerably less speed work to prepare for the Boston Marathon than I'd done for Chicago. Honestly, I'd only signed up for the Philadelphia Love Run as a sort of "fitness test," and also because my teammate T-Pain wanted some company. (That's a nickname for an actual teammate, not me pretending I run with a hip-hop artist. Although in New York, I suppose it's possible.) At practice the week before, I'd asked my coach Squatch, "Am I racing this?" His response: "Why not?"

Even up until the night before the race, however, I wasn't totally sure how much I had to give to this race. "You have two choices," Squatch told me on the phone. "You can either see what you've got here, or do it at Cherry Blossom." The Cherry Blossom race was two weeks later and three miles shorter--a 10-mile race rather than 13.1. However, the prospect of waiting in suspense for two weeks to see what my body was going to do didn't sound good for someone as obsessive as I am. So I said, "I think I want to race tomorrow." And that's what I did.

You know when you have those blissed-out races where you feel 100% amazing from start to finish? (Okay, I think I've only had maybe one or two of those in my life, but still. They do happen.) Well this race was not like that.

Standing at the starting line, I was shivering wishing I had brought better gloves, and T-Pain was crunching around in her throwaway mylar suit. When the gun went off I opened the first 5k at an average pace of 6:44/mile, somehow still ending up behind the 7min/mi pacer by the end of that third mile. (I'm now convinced that he was running entirely too fast. But at the time, I was seriously concerned.)

I knew that to hit my coach's "conservative" expectation (1:27:00), I had to average 6:38/mile, so I set about doing my pickups: running the first 90 seconds of each mile hard and then settling back into an easier pace until I reached the next mile marker. There was wind hitting me squarely in the face, and my legs did not feel effortless in the slightest, especially when we came to the main hill of the race. T-Pain had told me about this hill, and while not a mountain, it was certainly still an obstacle. My pace increased--because I stink at running hills--but I tried to talk myself down by reassuring my brain that my legs would go faster on the downhill, just like they always did. And lo and behold, they did.

There was one more pesky, shallower hill to conquer, and then, after a nice gradual downhill, we were suddenly coming into the last 5k stretch. My legs finally felt pretty decent, and I recognized a man in a blue shirt who had been jockeying with me earlier in the race. He seemed to be running a pretty even pace, so I decided, "Okay, if I can keep up with him for a while, let's see how that goes." So I settled in beside him.

Mile 11 clicked in at 6:15/mile. "Wow," I thought, "this is really working!" Almost simultaneously, the guy looked my way. "Nice pace," he told me. "Thanks," I replied. "But don't fall back. I'm counting on you!" He shook his head. "I think that was my fastest mile ever." We could already see the marker for Mile 12. "Well," I told him, "get ready for one even faster!" We clocked mile 12 at 6:13/mile. And my legs--they still had more to give! "Here we go," I announced and took off.

I crossed the finish line essentially by myself. There was one guy in a florescent green jacket who I'd been gaining on in that last mile, but he dropped me handily in the final 800 meters. And there were no other women in sight. But as I rounded the bend and saw the finish line, I knew I had it: a PR. And a great one at that.

My half marathon before this one was my fastest to date: 1:27:21. And I was really proud of that race. I'd worked hard to break the 1:28 barrier. By comparison, though, this race was almost staggering. Dropping almost two minutes? Running the last mile of the race in 5:57? I couldn't have asked for more.

And then I got a medal in the mail. 3rd place Female 25-29.

Thank you Philadelphia. I love you too.

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place	Age Group Place (F25-29)
13.1 mi	1:25:29	6:31/mile	73 / 40,567	9 / 6,305	3 / 907

Smartphone "smart"-thoughts

The rumors are true: I've bitten the bullet. Taken the leap. Given in . . . and purchased my first smartphone.

I am now a true 21st century millennial. Or something like that.

The reason behind my big move is a little underwhelming. As a late adopter of pretty much every technology, I've determined that you can ask quite a bit of people. You can ask them for directions (because your phone doesn't have Google maps). You can ask ask them to email you pictures (because photos don't register visibly on your tiny phone screen). You can ask them not to send you emoticons (because they just show up as little squares).

Eventually, however, there will be one "ask" too much. And that "ask" came a few weeks ago, when my phone stopped receiving group messages. (Long story short, the "messages" all showed up blank.) I'd been asking for a lot of special treatment from my friends and family, and generally they'd complied, but this was one thing I simply could not ask: I could not ask to receive a special individual text every time they went to send a group message. I just couldn't.

After several days of feverishly reading online reviews and agonizing to my boyfriend over what phone to get (Apple or Android? Which version? Which size? I'd have to live with this decision!), I finally decided to go with the iPhone 5s. My reasoning was that it should sync nicely with my Macbook and iPad, and I already had some experience with the device, having borrowed an iPhone for my international business travels in Canada a few months ago. Also, the size was a big factor. I wanted something that would still fit into my pocket, and female pants are not made to accommodate electronics. Or wallets. Or anything, really.

Now that I've had the phone for a few weeks, I decided it was time to publicly evaluate my decision. Honestly, I'm not sure I made the right choice. In relation to my initial reasons for getting this particular phone, I did make the right choice. I was able start using it right away to do all of the things I wanted it to do: find directions, check my email, join Instagram (because yes, I was feeling left out.) I can fit the phone into (most of) my pants pockets. And it receives photos, emoticons, and group texts flawlessly.

However, the battery life is terrible. One of my reasons for staying off the smartphone bandwagon was their terribly short battery life. Several years ago, when Hurricane Sandy hit, all of the local smartphone owners were crawling around the floors of grocery stores and delis looking for outlets, and my little slide phone was going strong--its battery lasted 4 days without recharging! So I thought that if I waited long enough, limited battery life would no longer be an issue with smartphones.

I was wrong.

On a typical day, I probably text a handful of people a few times. I might check Facebook for a grand total of two minutes, and the weather for another thirty seconds. Once or twice a week, I might talk on the phone for an hour, max, or use the maps app to locate a street. No matter how little I use my phone, though, by the end of the day my battery is eighty percent drained.

Which leaves me with my four-year-old iPod to listen to podcasts on my mile-long walk between the subway station and my office, because I'm afraid that if I try to listen to them on my iPhone, the thing might die on me. How sad!

Instead of developing an electric car, Apple should direct its resources toward improving the battery life of mobile devices. Because now that gadgets can listen to you, talk to you, and give you advice, directions, updates, and reminders all around the world, the next real hurdle is eliminating consumer paranoia that their beloved device might run out of juice and leave them stranded, alone.

If we wanted to be alone, we wouldn't have a smartphone at all. We could go live in a cave. Or underwater.

And of course, if that's too extreme, there's always the Off button.