In chapter 16 of my book Run Tall, Run Easy, the Ultimate Guide to Better Running Mechanics, I discuss the concept of sequential, progressive development of the runner through systematic training, as opposed to rudderless exercise that all too often produces frustration and underachievement.

As a professional coach interviewing new athletes, I have a key objective of determining the content of their running programs. I find with few exceptions that the structure of the programs is dangerously close to overtraining from too-high mileage and/or intensity and density (recovery setup) or undertraining resulting in little training effect (training effect meaning optimal stress followed by optimal recovery, which equals optimal performance).

While the abilities of individual athletes vary greatly, increased fitness, speed, or combinations thereof are at the heart of most runners’ motivations. Whatever the motivation, whether the runner be a professional or an amateur, competitive or recreational, a common objective remains present at all time—the desire to avoid injury.

Injury is to runners what kryptonite is to Superman—the archenemy! It is the biggest hindrance to development for the fitness enthusiast or aspiring Olympian alike. Each day, week, and month have only a certain number of training sessions that can be completed. During the course of a 31-day month, a runner who runs four times per week has 19 to 20 opportunities to create change and establish progress in fitness. If two of these runs are for 30 minutes and the other two are 40 minutes and 60 minutes, respectively, total goal running time for that week is two hours and 40 minutes. Add to this two resistance strength-training sessions of 60 minutes each plus one alternative strength session such as Pilates or yoga in addition to a 60-minute cross-training session, and we have almost six hours of training that needs to be managed each week.

DO THE MATH There are 168 hours in a week. Allowing for eight hours sleep per day leaves 112 hours. Take out eight hours a day for five days of work and this number is

reduced to 72 hours. Another five hours per week of driving to and from work leaves 68 hours. Each day you need time to eat and to socialize; take out four hours per evening and one hour per morning; your available time is now 33 hours. Now, achieving six hours of training within an available 33 hours may seem fairly easy, but my time lines have not allowed for extraneous distractions such as visits to the grocery store, getting the car serviced, shuttling the kids to soccer practice, and so forth.

While my data are generic and simplistic, they do highlight that effective, sequential training is paramount if we are to manage our time effectively and above all remain injury free. I realize, of course, that even with the best of intentions and the most superior of programs, injuries are bound to occur.

My point is that we simply do not need to add to the risk by random acts of exercising without direction and management, at best struggling to fit everything around our already very busy lives and limited available time.

The answer is methodical training, known in coaching circles as “periodization.” This is a term that means separating your training into different periods of time such as sessions, microcycles, mesocycles, and macrocycles, terminologies that cover training from a single daily session up to an annual plan.

Choosing short-term (seven to 30 days), midterm (30 to 60 days), and longterm (60 days and beyond) goals is essential to our success. In addition, the goals must be intrinsic, not extrinsic, to ensure long-term adherence and consistency. The desire to engender change must come from internal fortitude. Seeking the approval of others, wishing to please someone else in the way we look, and wanting ourselves to lose weight are all too often doomed to failure.

Training Periods Session: A singular or individual training session. Microcycle: A shorter segment of your training program, typically seven days.

Mesocycle: An intermediate segment of your training program, often allowing enough time for one adaptation period (the length of time required, physiologically speaking, to benefit from a given workout), typically 14 to 21 days.

Macrocycle: A longer period of time often described as your training season, for example, cross-country season or summer time racing season for 5K/10K races or, very often, the overall training period leading up to an including a half-marathon or marathon race. Typically two to three months and sometimes longer.

In training, it is key to pick a tangible focal point, such as the desire to walk or run around your block, to complete a local 5K race, to be able to join your friends on their regular midweek run, or, like many runners these days, to complete a marathon—a goal, by the way, that I strongly recommend be positioned under the long-term category of periodization.

THINK LIKE AN ATHLETE Once you’ve determined your goals, the next change to be made is to alter your view of yourself. The title “athlete” is not exclusive to those competing in the classic 16 days of summer every four years. You are an athlete if you put the chips and beer down, get off the couch, lace up your shoes, and head out the door to compete with yourself and your demons against a measured course for time or distance. If you think of yourself as an athlete, you increase your chances of making better decisions throughout the day in terms of nutrition, hydration, rest, and even the company you keep. These better decisions help reduce the risk of injury!

Time is key, so establish the best time of day for you to train, and keep to the routine. If you plan on strength training but are pinched for time, join a health club that is within your daily running distance and run to the club, train, and then run home. This is an excellent way to make sure you train for strength and increases adherence to your program.

ad

The great former Stanford University track and field coach and age-group world-class sprinter Payton Jordan once told me how he managed to run a 30second 200-meter interval at age 82. “G.P., remember these five principles that you must always incorporate into your program: • “Have fun. • “

Continue to develop your breathing capacity by taking in long, slow breaths through your nose and longer out breaths through your mouth. • “Continue to develop your strength. • “Continue to develop your flexibility. • “

Continue to develop your speed and never stop working on it!” These are great principles to remember, and Payton Jordan gives you a great deal to think about. It is essential that you train with a hard

day/easy day method and allow for a recovKey Training Principles ery week every third or fourth week to make progress in your fitness. Training at varying • Follow hard day/easy day method paces one or two days a week will help improve your mechanics and your strength and • Take a recovery week evwill allow your base pace (the pace that you ery third or fourth week

can run comfortably at for long periods of • Train at varying paces one time) to become faster—tangible proof that or two days a week you are developing as an athlete. • Allow one to two weeks Be sure to allow one to two weeks a

per year as an off-season year as a transition (an off-season) to allow for restoration. Some serious athletes take a whole month off during the winter. Remember, optimal stress followed by optimal recovery equals optimal performance. Optimal performance is achieved only when you are not injured. Systematic, progressive training in the image of an athlete will significantly reduce your risk of injury.

Above all, never forget that you are an athlete! Run tall, run easy.

Give It That Good Old College Try People Run Marathons for All Sorts of Reasons, but for College Credit? BY DAVID R. JENNYS

PART 1 OF 2 It was Thursday afternoon, much like many other Thursday afternoons over the past few months. I had been meeting with a group of students at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, on Tuesdays and Thursdays to do training runs after our class for the last three and a half months. This Thursday, however, was different. The class did not meet today; in fact the class was now over, memorialized in part by our run together.

The run was different also because it was shorter than usual and run at a distinctly slower pace then we had run in the past. The loop we ran around the neighborhood near campus was a recovery run after the race we had run the previous Saturday. The run was a memorial to what we had accomplished together; it also was a farewell. Our run was the celebration of our participation in the Sports Physiology and Marathon Training class and our participation—our graduation, of sorts—in the 2004 Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon.

As we ran and told our war stories, I found myself reflecting on the events of the past week and, indeed, of the last several months. Though our recovery run was short, it was long enough for me to replay in my mind many of the events I had experienced during the spring and previous winter. How had I, a 43-year-old United Methodist pastor, gotten involved with a group of college-age students half my age in a sports physiology class? The answer to that question was in some ways the description of an adventure for me.

PE 590 M I learned of the new class offered at Purdue University by Professor Michael G. Flynn, Ph.D., in the autumn of 2003 from a flyer someone gave me and decided to investigate it a bit further. I had recently completed the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon and had finished just short of a Boston Marathon qualifying time. Though I was in the recovery phase after my last marathon effort, I was already looking ahead to the spring training season. Would I train for the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon held in May and run near where I live, or should I train for a spring marathon?

The course flyer advertised a spring semester class in sports physiology that would involve lab work with . V O2max and lactate-threshold testing and culminate in the class “final” of participating in the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon [April 24, 2004]. This sounded like it would be an awesome class! Since I was not planning to run Boston in the spring, this class looked to offer a great training challenge.

To get into the class, the prospective students had to be interviewed by the professor, who granted—or

denied—them permission to enter. The professor was mainly interested in determining whether those interested in the class were healthy enough to begin the training. My question to Professor Flynn was whether he would mind having a student in his class who had already run a marathon. (When I met with Professor Flynn, I was about to complete my sixth marathon.) His question to me was why I wanted to take the class since a lot of the material on training would already be familiar to me. The interview revealed that though some of the class would concern things I was already familiar with (such as the parts of training), other parts would be new (such as the parts dealing with physiology). What appealed to me most was the opportunity to be tested in the university’s human performance laboratory.1

Professor Flynn agreed to let me be a part of the class, so I made the necessary arrangements. I registered as a nondegreed student and drew from my continuing-education money.2 The class participants were expected to be running at a base of 25 miles per week by mid-January. This provided me with enough time to recover from Chicago and build back up to begin training again.

WHAT THE COURSE COVERS Though his course was inspired by D. A. Whitsett’s course at the University of Northern Iowa, Professor Flynn designed his class in his own unique way. The course objective stated that it was “ . . . to provide students with a working knowledge of sports physiology topics that will include: physiological responses and adaptations to training and overtraining, sports nutrition, psychology of marathon running, environmental adaptations to training, efficacy of ergogenic aids and training principles. The class will also provide the unique opportunity to apply these principles in a laboratory setting by performing standard physiological tests and by training for a competitive marathon.” The two main texts were Better Training for Distance Runners by D. E. Martin and P. N. Coe (Champaign, Ill: Human Kinetics, 1997) and The Non-Runners Marathon Trainer by D. A. Whitsett, F. A. Dolgener, and T. M. Kole (Lincolnwood, Ill: Master’s Press, 1998).3 The course requirements included two written exams, a short research paper, lab work, and the proper preparation to get to the starting line of the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon.

The lab portion of the class involved a series of tests at the beginning of the semester to determine our . V O2max and lactate threshold and to run a 5K time trial. These three tests were scheduled to be repeated at the end of the semester. A fourth test was also taken of our body mass index (BMI). This last test was not repeated. Our training runs were also a part of our lab grade. We were required to keep a log of our training. The training log the class provided included information on our daily mileage and training activity and on our physical and psychological state; we were then required to turn the log sheet in each week.

I thought I knew what I was getting into, but the first day’s class still held some surprises. My first impression when I walked into the classroom and saw my classmates for the first time was “They’re so young!” Indeed, all of the people taking the class were under 25, and the graduate students working in the lab were all under 30.4 Feeling on the old side was a serious confidence downer, but I comforted myself with the thought that I was

bringing experience to the class mix. I not only had more experience in running in general, I also had experience in running a marathon. Having the younger crowd to run with turned out to be a good change to my running experience.

MORE THAN I BARGAINED FOR The second surprise came when we looked at the class syllabus. As the professor explained the class requirements, I realized that this class was going to be more work than I had expected. Instead of focusing solely on marathon training, this class was going to cover some heavy-duty physiology, including quizzes, written exams, and a research paper (this had not come up in the initial interview).

Yet, despite all that, the class promised to teach me a lot about the incredible creation that the human body is and how it performs and adapts. The professor expressed some inspiring words on the goal of finishing a marathon, reminding the class that if we trained properly, we would be able to finish. He also gave some reasons why he developed the course. One was that he needed more running companions. In fact, for our class alone, he said that we should call him “Mick” and not Doctor Flynn; there were only two ways to flunk his class, he said: fail to do the work and training, and call him Doctor Flynn!

But the main reason for developing the class was to share with us the great feeling you can experience when finishing a marathon. At this point, he showed us a picture on the PowerPoint of his finish at the Columbus Marathon. By the end of the class hour, I thought, “This class is going to be great fun!” I was excited about the possibilities of both learning more about my sport and gaining some tools to improve my running performance.

At the end of the first hour of the first day, we went on a training run. This began a pattern that was to repeat every Tuesday and Thursday: be in the class between 3:30 and 4:30, then train (generally) between 4:30 and 5:30. We were given a training schedule for the entire week, and arrangements were made to meet on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons for the long runs.

Running on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons was an interesting change for me because I usually run in the morning and I usually run alone. Running with other people at a different time of the day was a refreshing change.

SETTLING INTO A REASONABLE PACE These two days were good in that I had more time in the morning, and the class and training run became my escape from the office. Training with younger people who were inexperienced with marathon training was also interesting. Some of the class members were experienced track and cross-country runners. The guys I generally trained with at the beginning of the semester tended to push the pace faster than I wanted to go. As the semester progressed, however, we all fell into a rhythm of training more sensibly and within groups that had similar abilities and finishing-time goals.

During these runs, I began to learn the names and majors of members of the class. Most were from Indiana. There were Chris, Scott, Bart, Sam, and Ty from towns like Wheeler, Mishawaka, Rochester, and Indianapolis,

and Anderson from Chicago. Another guy I ran with a few times was Paul, who was a graduate student working for Mick in the human performance lab and was from Dublin, Ireland.5 Later in the semester, I came to know some of the women in the class, such as Kelly, Amy, Julie, Karen, and a grad student named Jenny. The majors represented were equally diverse, including sports physiology, chemistry, premedicine, forestry, education, and engineering.

My fellow classmates thought that it was intriguing that I was a pastor who was taking the class simply for self-enrichment. As people began finding out that I had already run a marathon, I was asked questions about training and what the overall marathon experience was like.

At the end of the class period that first Thursday, we were given the opportunity to begin our careers as lab rats. One of the postgraduate students working as an assistant to the class was working on a doctoral dissertation on sports psychology. We were given instructions on how to fill out a form each week that asked questions concerning our mood state and physical condition. This was fun at first, but halfway through the class I was pretty sick of filling out the form, because the questions were always the same. Toward the end of the whole experience, I was tempted to give random answers to the survey or to insert wild and crazy answers to see if anyone would notice. After polling some of my classmates, I discovered that they were equally tired of filling out the forms and had the same temptations as I had.

THE FIRST MONTH The first few weeks of class set the stage for the rest of the training and the physical adaptations that would be taking place. In the first few lectures, I learned several things that I was somewhat aware of but had never really considered before. Let me explain a few of the more interesting things.

Risk Factors Running a marathon contains a degree of risk, Mick said. A person who is apparently healthy is not considered to be in a health-risk category. The risks are increased for men who are 45 years and older and women who are 55 and older. Also at risk are people who have a history in their family of sudden death of a parent (such as from a heart attack), who currently smoke, suffer from hypertension, have diabetes, have a high cholesterol level (a total of 200 mg/35 HDL), or those who have been living a sedentary lifestyle prior to starting a training program.

Definition of Training Mick told us the basics of training are defined as (1) building a base of mileage, (2) stimulating adaptations, (3) setting goals, (4) mental preparation, and (5) teaching the body to do a new thing.

Training Adaptations In the realm of stimulating adaptations, we learned a cool new word: supercompensation, the adaptation the body makes when it is worked in training. Training will tear the body down a little, and during a rest period it

will supercompensate. That is, it will become stronger and/or more adapted to the training stimulus. Some of the adaptations include (1) improving the stroke volume and cardiac output of the heart; (2) increasing the amount of hemoglobin in the blood, meaning more red blood cells, higher oxygen content, and an increase in the level of blood plasma; (3) increasing the diffusion capacity in the lungs; and (4) improvement in the muscles, such as increased tolerance for acid buildup, increase in the amount of mitochondria and aerobic enzymes, increase in the ability to store glycogen and fats, and the ability to use fats more efficiently.

Training Principles We were told that there are certain important principles of training. 1. Overload. Body systems must be overloaded (worked harder) to induce adaptations (that is, to bring about change in the body systems). If you increase the intensity, frequency, and duration of a training

activity, the desired adaptation will result. 2. Specificity. We gain the desired result in our training by performing that specific activity. For example, if . we wish to increase our V O2max, we need to include workouts that increase maximal oxygen consumption.

3. Cross-Training. Though our training needs to be specific to our desired outcome, too much of the same thing can be detrimental, so training in another way can help to prevent injury or be effective as a way of

recovering from an injury and maintaining our aerobic capacity. Examples of cross-training include weight training, walking, swimming, and cycling. 4. Reversibility or Detraining. After a goal race, rest and recovery are needed, and often the result is a loss

of ability. To prevent loss of aerobic ability, an athlete can train in a minimal way to maintain ability. During training, we manipulate various aspects of our training activity to obtain a goal result. These involve:

1. frequency, referring to how often an activity is employed; 2. duration, referring to how long an activity will last; 3. intensity, referring to how hard the activity is to be engaged in; and 4. density, referring to how much recovery time will be used in between the training activities.

We were given a useful chart of the training cycle (see figure 1):

Periodization This is a measured and documented long-term training program that involves a macrocycle, a mesocycle, and a microcycle. The macrocycle refers to the whole program over a time of months or years. A mesocycle refers to the overall training goals and lasts over a period of weeks or months. A microcycle refers to the short-term goals

and lasts over a period of days or weeks. The concept of periodization is a way to break down training into a structured form. A training schedule may look something like this (see figure 2):

We were told, however, that in some ways periodization is just something to call what many of us do intuitively. In the course of a year, for instance, many of us would be training for a goal race with a goal time. We train for that goal (or goals) over a period of several months, run the race, and then go into a recovery stage. During the postrace stage, we evaluate how well we met our goals, make new ones, and then make plans for the next event.

During the first month of class, I also learned some interesting definitions: 1. Training: a sequence of activities to promote sports improvement. 2. Endurance: the ability to sustain submaximal activity for prolonged periods.

3. Aerobic Training: the ability to cope with fatigue while performing aerobically (that is, with oxygen). 4. Anaerobic Training: the ability to tolerate fatigue and maintain pace and form while performing at or

above maximal intensity for short distances. A guest speaker came to the class the second week. The owner of a store called Sports Etc. spoke to us about running shoes. Much of what he had to say about types of shoes, arch support, different shoe lasts, and shoe construction were things I already knew, but it was valuable information for many of my classmates. It was interesting to learn more about the athletic-shoe industry, though. In particular, I enjoyed hearing more about what various shoe companies are up to in shoe design and research.6 Over the semester, other guests were to follow. In mid-February, Dr. Alan L. Smith was a guest lecturer on the subject of running psychology. In April, a class period was devoted to a panel of four Boston Marathon qualifiers. These were friends of Mick’s who were all professors at Purdue. Another guest was a local high school cross-country coach who talked from the perspective of coaching long-distance running.

LAB REQUIREMENTS . Our second chance to be lab rats came at the end of January when we were scheduled to take our first V O2max

test. This was a unique experience, to say the least. Imagine what it would be like to run to exhaustion on a treadmill with a heart rate monitor strapped to your chest and an oxygen tube in your mouth, and that is basically . the V O2max testing experience.

The testing began with a blood sample, then we were connected to all the gadgetry. The run on the treadmill began at a comfortable pace for a warm-up, then the speed was increased in incremental stages. The first three stages were with no incline. I was started out at 6 miles per hour for four minutes, and at the next stage the speed was increased 1 mile per hour for three minutes. At stage four, a 2 percent incline was added. At this stage, I was running at 9 miles per hour at a 2 percent grade; I was working hard, but I felt that I could hold it.

After two minutes, the incline was increased to 4 percent, and it was then that I was done! Suddenly the combined effects of a fast pace, steep incline, and a snorkel in my mouth were more than I could handle. The technicians had told me to hit a red button if I wanted to stop the treadmill. One minute into this last stage, I felt that it was either bail out or fall flat on my face. With all the stuff attached to me, that didn’t sound like a good . idea, so I hit the panic button and ended the test. The results showed that I had a V O2max of 48.8 ml/kg/min. . This was disappointing despite the lab techs telling me that I had a higher V O2max than the average male college student. I didn’t expect to get a super-high rating, but I was hoping for a number higher than that.

TESTING FOR LACTATE THRESHOLD A week later, we were scheduled to take the lactate-threshold test. This test involved multiple blood samples at various stages during the time on the treadmill. A similar approach was used in the running stage of the test as in . the V O2max test: starting out at a comfortable pace, then increasing the speed at timed intervals. The major . difference was that we did not have to use the breathing tube as in the V O2max test.

At the end of each timed stage, the treadmill was stopped and a blood sample was taken. The goal of this test is to have the test subject run to exhaustion; the blood samples are used to track the buildup of acidosis in the blood. I wasn’t sure whether it was worse having my finger stuck several times or running with a breathing tube. I had to take this test a second time because the desired results were not achieved.

The first time I took the test, I wasn’t running fast enough in the later states to get the high buildup of acidosis. So I had to do the test a second time. Paul told me that this time they were going to run me into the wall! The second time, they ran me faster in the beginning, and the desired results of acid buildup occurred. .

The information from the V O2max and lactate-threshold tests determined that I had a high lactate

threshold—in the 85 percent range. This was good news, because it meant that despite not having a high . V O2max, my body was well adapted to use the available blood oxygen efficiently. The third test, a 5K time trial, came a week later. I didn’t do very well on this test because I didn’t feel well that day. I was suffering from a mild cold that had occurred over the days prior to the test. I finished the 5K in 21:09, which would have been a great marathon race pace, but a 5K time trial is supposed to be run faster than race pace. I should have been able to run much faster than seven minutes per mile. A 21-minute time trial predicts that I would finish a marathon in roughly 3:45. I had finished the Chicago Marathon the previous October

in

3:21:14, so this test seemed wasted as a predictor of a marathon finishing time.

TOWARD PREDICTING OUR MARATHON TIMES These three tests helped us predict a potential marathon finish time. This was helpful in some ways and confusing in others. I am not particularly gifted in mathematics, so doing the calculations was challenging and the results were difficult for me to understand. Yet the combined results helped to show a range of potential that I was capable of doing. The predicted marathon range was a helpful way for us to manage our training.

The last test came in mid-February and involved our BMI. Three methods were used for this test: the BIA (bioelectric impedance analysis), a skinfold thickness measurement, and a body mass index comparison to our weight.

The BIA device sends an electrical charge through the left hand and arm, through the chest and back, through the right arm and hand, and into the measuring device. The length of time it takes the electrical pulse to travel this distance determines your body fat. Fat-free mass has less impedance than fat, so the more fat, the slower the return current to the device.

The skinfold thickness test is a measurement of the amount of skin that can be pinched, then measured by a caliper device. The chest, abdomen, and thigh were measured this way for the men, while the triceps, suprailium, and thigh were measured for the women. The sum of the three measurements was taken to get a total.

The third method was a height-to-weight ratio calculation. Each of these measurements was used to figure an overall body mass index. With this information, we determined what category of fitness we were in based on our degree of body fat. This test did not help us predict a race finishing time; however, understanding BMI gave us a possible training goal. Since more weight translates into greater effort in running, excess weight means a slower finish time. If it was determined that we had extra weight, then the loss of that excess weight could result in a faster time.

In addition to these tests, we were required to give blood samples (larger amounts than before, a whole test tube rather than just enough for a slide) and saliva samples. This was yet another opportunity to be a lab rat! These samples were used in the lab team’s research on the effects of marathon training on the immune system.

Part 2 of this classroom-to-course story will appear in the next issue.

NOTES 1. We would be tested in the Wastl Human Performance Laboratory on the Purdue University campus. 2. I found out later that my use of continuing-education money for a sports physiology class raised some eyebrows in

the church finance committee. I was asked to submit a statement to explain how the class benefited my ministry as a pastor. Writing the statement turned out to be an enjoyable task. 3. I purchased the first book but not the second. I had read Whitsett’s book before; it is an interesting book with a

horrible title. I didn’t want to buy the book because, after all, what self-respecting, six-time marathoner would want a book for “non-runners” lying around his house? 4. Later I realized that my reaction was not so strange, since my last academic experience was in seminary, where in

my late 30s I was on the young side of the student body. Plus, my professor told me that Purdue’s average age is much younger than at other universities where he had taught. 5. I found out later than even though they were not taking the class that required running a marathon, Mick highly

suggested that his lab technicians also train with us and run the marathon at the end of the semester. 6. Saucony, for instance, has done a lot of research on the particular running needs of women.

When You Can’t Run Need a Break From Running? There Are Plenty of Reasonable Options. BY JOE OAKES

It happens. Most of the time it happens because you have been assailed by an injury, maybe serious and lasting, or maybe just one that needs a few weeks to heal. Or maybe you just can’t run anymore, can’t find motivation. It could be that you are stale or bored. And there is nothing wrong with thinking about the grass on the other side of the fence, as in, “Maybe there is a world beyond running.” No maybe about it: there are other worlds out there, lots of them, and you ought to take a peek over the fence.

Running is addictive. Putting one foot in front of the other 10,000 times a day—that’s about what it takes to run 3,000 miles a year—can’t be anything but addictive. I know; I’ve been running since 1948, some years putting in well over 3,000 miles. If there were a 12-step program for runners, I would be at the meeting ’fessin’ up, “My name is Joe and I’m a run-aholic,” to a supportive chorus of fellow addicts. “Hi, Joe.” In that crowd, I could be confident that they had walked in my Nikes, they understood my problem. But I’m not really sure that I would want the full cure. Maybe I could just settle for a little variety, some strange stuff, or maybe some time off from my obsession.

At the awards ceremony of the Western States 100-Mile Trail Run in 1979, among the limpers, crawlers, snoozers, and moaners, one large, hairy man made an announcement that got my attention. Understand that our brand new T-shirts told us that we had just completed The Ultimate Running Challenge. After ultimate, what the hell else can there be? But Cowman C. Cowman removed his left foot from his right knee (he had been fussing with a huge blister that he had worn since before Michigan Bluff) and repeated, “Yeah, that’s what I said. There are things harder than running 100 miles. Over in Hawaii, there is this event that they call the Ironman. If you can finish that, maybe you really are tough.”

WE’RE HOOKED ON ANOTHER “TOUGH” THING Cowman always was a bit of a shit disturber, and this time he had shoveled up a load. My running buddy, Ron Kovacs, one of the great ultrarunners of the 1970s and ’80s, gave me a look as if to say, “Did he say tough?” I knew then and there that we were going on a quest. But this article is not about triathlons or Ron and me kicking butt in Hawaii; we kicked and got kicked. It is about the times when your running mistress may not be there for you. It’s about broadening your horizons, making your athletic life a bit more interesting, staying fit while healing, and maybe even looking better—getting a life, for crying out loud.

“OK, Joe, I’m listening. What do I do? What do I do now?” Here’s what you do first: nothing. Never jump into any life-changing undertaking without giving it due consideration. What Ron and I did was rather impetuous, even if the results turned out well. We were runners, ultradistance runners. We didn’t know diddly squat about swimming or riding on two-wheel torture machines. OK, Ron could ride a bike and I could swim, so we were able to help each other. The point is this: you may be a fine runner, but when you set foot on the hallowed ground of another person’s sport, you instantly become a neophyte, a 3-year-old. There are many things that you will have to learn, and you had better find a competent coach who can teach you the lingo of the sport, proper form, and good training technique.

Before we go there, here is one thing that I am not going to tell you to do: “Go to the gym!” You should already be doing that. If you do not by now recognize that you look like a run-geek, with 10-inch biceps and ribs and a spine that could be used for a chiropractor’s dummy, I will not be the first to tell you. ’Nuff said.

WHAT YOU BRING WITH YOU Let’s start by looking at the assets that you can transfer from one sport to another. Of immense value is your attitude toward training: you know how to work hard, and that mind-set is completely transferable. And you understand what training is all about. You are aware that good results follow proper training, and that it takes time. Runners seem to believe that training is for their legs; the real gifts that you have been giving to yourself all this time are a great heart, liver, and lungs, an internal operating system that will cross sports borders easily. I suspect that you are not going to enter any endeavor that will consume a significant amount of your time without enough of both commitment and desire, which are not strangers to you.

Here is what you had better leave behind: the attitude that you are a hotshot runner. That will get you nowhere. Park your 2:35 marathon at the door. You need a measure of humility. You are the new guy on the block (or in the pool or in the saddle), and you have to recognize that you don’t know very much. If you want to be offered the help that you know you need, put yourself at the mercy of the coaches and the athletes around you. I know from long experience that most people love to help a newbie. But they won’t lift a finger if you come in with a chip on your shoulder. And there is no point in being resentful about being treated like the slowest swimmer in the pool when you probably are.

I’m going to make some specific suggestions as to where your new life may lie. There are lots of places to look; these are some of my favorites. Let’s start with walking, maybe racewalking, but why not just walk? Some of the most valuable time of my week is when my wife, Sylvia, and I walk together for a half hour or so. We do it three or four times weekly. We never push the pace, because the thing that is most important to us is a word that rhymes with walking: talking. When you are walking around the neighborhood or in the park, leave the cell phone home. Use the time to listen to what is important. You might learn something. For us, this is high-quality time. Walking is good exercise and won’t pound your joints, but it will not give you the aerobic workout you are used to.

Get wet. There is hardly a town in the United States that doesn’t have a swimming pool. Lurking inside those

walls and fences is a group known as “masters swimmers.” U.S. Masters Swimming is the wet equivalent of our Road Runners Club of America. It is the elephant graveyard where swimmers go after their competitive days in college are over. Masters swim sessions are set up so you can swim in a lane with others of comparable ability. My masters club has coached sessions in the early morning, at noon, and in the evening. Give masters swimming a try. Stay away from the Speedo freaks who swim so fast they don’t seem to even touch the water. The world according to U.S. Masters is divided into those who race (usually no more than a few hundred yards; they inhabit the fast lanes) and the rest of us (triathletes, injured runners, and people who swim for fun or fitness), who are collectively called “fitness swimmers.” You might find a 90-year-old great-grandmother in your lane, and she can probably show you a thing or two. Remember your humility!

GET THEE A COACH My advice to you is to use the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Avoid the fancy strokes until you become proficient at freestyle. Like Ron, you may have a fear of sinking to the bottom like a rock. Confidence takes time and work. If you are a really bad swimmer, get private lessons. Ask the masters coach or the lifeguard to put you in contact with a good teacher. I have been hanging around swimming pools for as long as I have been running, and I have never met a person who wanted to learn to swim who couldn’t. Keep in mind that swimming is more technique than brute strength. Be patient.

Maybe you will learn to love swimming enough to take it outside of the pool. In good weather, you can go to the beach, the river, or a lake and do some open-water swimming, which is much more fun than Ping-Ponging back and forth in a 25-yard pool. Open-water swimming is to pool swimming as trail running is to running on an indoor track. If you really get into it, you can do some interesting swims. Swim from Alcatraz. Don’t laugh. More than 2,000 people will make that “impossible” one-and-a-half-mile crossing this year. I am planning to be on relay teams in Crater Lake (13 miles) and eight miles into Boston Harbor this summer. To titillate you further, think about Lake Titicaca, a relay across Lake Tahoe, a swim from Lanai to Maui, the Brrrrrrrrring Strait. Three-quarters of the earth’s surface is waiting for you.

Here’s another thought for the pool: use a flotation belt to run in deep water. It is good therapy. For the mathematically inclined, swimming is only about a quarter as fast as running, so the distances covered are much less in a given period of time.

Want to cover a lot of ground? Get a bicycle. You will go much faster and cover greater distances than you could by running. There is a wide array of bike types, just as there are many kinds of running shoes. Bike riders tend to be real tech heads. Their sport is gear centric. Until you have several years of time and thousands of dollars invested, stay with the KISS principle. Before you buy a bike, lurk in the shops for a bit. The store owner wants to sell you a brand new ultra-lightweight Mangofangoni with lots of bells and whistles for only $4,500. Talk to the trolls locked up in the back room, the mechanics. They will give you the straight scoop and might even tell you where to find a great used bike. (Be careful: have your cousin Marvin the maven look it over before you buy.)

In general, the bike world is divided into road bikes and mountain bikes. I will tell you straight up that about 95 percent of the actual mileage on mountain bikes happens on roads. Like those monstrous SUVs, they are more status symbol than useful sports equipment. Riding trails takes a lot of skill, and you probably have not yet earned the broken bone and road rash merit badges. Stick to road bikes, and while you are at it, go for one with touring tires. They are more comfortable and don’t get as many time-consuming flats.

TAKE A TOUR You may never dream of being in the Tour de France, but the Tour isn’t the only show in town. There are plenty of bicycle “centuries” that are comparable to running a marathon. Of more interest are the long road tours like RAGBRAE, a ride across Iowa with thousands of cyclists and every community en route serving up fresh apple pies. The backroom trolls know all about bike tours and centuries. Buy panniers, set aside a month, and ride from California to New York, with the wind at your back all the way.

Be forewarned about bicycling: you will be moving fast and unprotected. Wearing a helmet helps, but your fragile bike and bones are no match for a drunken driver, an inattentive sober one, or an oak tree. Learn to ride 10 times more defensively than in your car. I have had three fairly serious bike/car interfaces, and in every one I could have acted more defensively. The car always wins.

Once you have added swimming and cycling to your repertoire, you might start dreaming about triathlons. A season or two of shorter ones will hone you up for the Big Daddy of them all, the (ta-DA!) Ironman! After you have navigated Kona’s 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling, with a full marathon for dessert, you can go back to your running club sporting the mystical air of an (ahem) Ironman. Don’t hold your breath, though, because you probably won’t get picked in the lottery to get into the race in the first place.

Maybe you have a taste for something different. The variety is limited only by your imagination. Cross-country skiing is probably the most aerobic exercise on this planet. At the opposite end of the scale is sailing. Several years ago I sailed across the Atlantic. Do you know how many laps it takes to do a mile on a 90-foot sailboat? What about taking up with beasts, the four-legged variety? You can combine your running with a horse in a ride and tie or let old Dobbin do most of the work. Or maybe you want to try dog-sled racing. In 1996 I put my trust in a dog team on the Iditarod Trail. I cannot begin to tell you what it feels like, hour after hour, on the open ice at 40 below with a wind roaring down from the north.

Let me leave you with this: be confident that you can take a break from running, forced or voluntary, and not abandon your mind or your cherished aerobic conditioning. All you have to do is gaze into the windows of all those bakery shops out there and pick out the goody that you want to chew on. Then you have to pay for it. It’s that easy.

On the Hardrock Board Maybe It’s Not As Hard As Running the Race, but Sometimes It Comes Close. BY MARC WITKES

I first attempted the Hardrock 100-Mile Endurance Run in 1998. I was miserably underprepared, naive, and weak. I dropped out, embarrassed, with my tail between my legs, at the 30-mile mark. I came back two years later to complete the race in 45 hours. I may never start or finish another Hardrock (HR), but now I’ve got more interesting Hardrock things to do.

Last summer, race director Dale Garland asked whether I would serve on the HR board of directors. Having lived in Durango 50 miles from the race start for 13 years and served as president of Durango Motorless Transit Running Club for four years, I suppose that Garland figured I was qualified and sensible enough to help out with policy decisions, planning, race application selection, and other administrative duties. “

We meet three or four times a year,” Garland said. “We also discuss a lot of things through e-mail, and you’ll learn the finer points of the race.” What the heck, I figured. Garland announced at the HR race in 2003 that I was the newest board member. He gave me a colorful deluxe travel bag with the HR logo and “Race Committee” emblazoned on the side. I felt really good toting around my race supplies and travel wear in the beautiful black, red, and gray bag.

Planning for HR starts even before the current year’s run has finished in July. We need to announce a race date for the following year and start putting together an application that will be ready for publication in December. On that application is a strict qualifying standard.

HR is 100 miles of mountains, river crossings, and substandard footing. We need to be careful in how we select applicants.

ONLY EXPERIENCED HARD-CORE RUNNERS NEED APPLY Last July, we discussed this year’s selection procedure and the entry form. There wouldn’t be many changes. Successful applicants had to have completed a mountain 100-mile race such as Leadville, Western States, The Bear, or Wasatch. There was one possible way to get around this requirement. Those applicants with previously demonstrated mountain experience would also be eligible to apply for race entry.

After we completed the entry for this year, things seemed to quiet down a little with our e-mail discussions. During October, our ramblings turned to proposed course changes. I have been over the course twice as a racer and several times as a pacer. During most of the discussion among John Cappis, HR board member, and Lance Goss and Arden Anderson, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) employees, I still had no clue where they

were proposing racecourse changes. Cappis said, “Our proposal for change of route centered on going up the west side of the Lake Fork of the Gunnison on an old mining road. Once the road ends, we were to pick up a game trail back down to the river and either work our way up the left bank (my preferred way), cross the river, and get on Cinnamon Pass road about 1.5 to two miles below Burrows Park (a route suggested by Gordon Hardman). A concern here is crossing the river at high-water time.”

Cappis and board member Blake Wood are scientists, and many times I needed a translator to understand what the heck they were talking about. I mostly steered clear of this discussion. I wondered whether I was being a useful board member.

I joined the Hardrock board meeting for my first time on October 12. I drove over Coal Bank Hill and Molas Pass with the big kahuna, race director Dale Garland. It’s an hour’s drive to Silverton, and Dale and I caught up on the good gossip of Durango, the news on a budding romance with my future wife, Cathy Tibbetts, and his upcoming city council election. Dale is a former president of Durango Motorless Transit Running Club, and he has been a mentor and friend for several years.

SOMETIMES SILENCE IS GOLDEN The board and several other stakeholders met for three hours over breakfast at the Grand Imperial Hotel in Silverton. I met lots of new people and tried to act intelligently. I went by the childhood adage, “Speak only if you’re spoken to.” Hardrock has been going on for 10 years, and I was definitely the new kid on the block.

During October, we talked about the notion of team entries. Could a husband and wife or two friends apply to the race together so that both of them or neither of them was selected like Western States? The board tabled this discussion for next year since our entry procedures were already established.

In December, there were some rumblings among the ultra community about the potentially unfair selection process for entrants. I myself was confused. We have a modified lottery. First, you need to qualify. Then you are assigned a certain number of “tickets” for finishing Hardrock, starting Hardrock, and service to the race.

One question also arose in December about people who start Hardrock and have no intention of finishing. A certain competitor didn’t think it was fair that one of “those” people should take one of the limited entry slots and shut out a possible bona fide finisher. “

I’m just planning to go halfway so I can see some scenery and get a workout in,” someone might plan. This issue was far too trite for the board to even take up for more than a one- or two-line discussion. “

It’s a free world and you can run as you’d like,” Charlie Thorn opined, like a Supreme Court justice. Thorn, also a scientist, devised an extensive algorithm showing probabilities, standard deviations, and a fair selection procedure. I have trouble figuring the probability of a quarter landing on heads or tails, so once again I remained silent on this discussion.

Weather is always a primary concern with the Hardrock race. Hardrock was canceled once because of too much snow and canceled once for lack of snow and too much fire. Thorn tracks snowfall in Silverton and kept

everybody informed throughout the continuing drought. The board was trying to set up its next meeting, and this was a trying process too.

THE POLITICS OF PICKING MEETING DATES Wood wanted to know whether the first weekend in February is January 31-February 1 or February 7-8. Garland wanted to keep February 14 out of the discussion for romantic pursuits. This was probably in Garland’s best interest. He has been in the dog house for 10 years with his wife, Mary-Beth, because Hardrock always falls on or near her birthday.

In January, we discussed many of the finer points of the entry procedure. What exactly is “previous mountain experience”? The race selection procedure took place at the Pagosa Lodge in Pagosa Springs on February 8. I like to eat, and the lodge had a wonderful buffet with fruit, cinnamon rolls, and scrambled eggs.

Garland had screened all of the applicants and separated them into three piles: qualified and automatically entered into the race based on number of finishes; qualified but must go through the lottery process; not qualified and has little chance of finishing Hardrock anyway. A 5K race run a few years ago was determined not to fall into the category of previous mountain experience.

After extensive discussion about qualifications, foreign applicants, and the thought of putting entries on e-Bay for open-market bidding, we cut hundreds of little pieces of paper and put them into the famed “Hopes and Dreams” HR cookie jar.

Cappis drew past winner Karl Metzler for the first lottery selection. Around the table of nine members of the board, the cookie jar was passed. My now-wife, Cathy Tibbetts’s name, was among those inside the cookie jar. I thought about her ultimatum last night. “

If my name isn’t drawn, you’ll be shut down for a year,” Cathy joked. I hoped it was really a joke, but as the cookie jar made the rounds, I hoped that her name would be drawn anyway. Two more cycles and Cappis drew the magical name: Cathy Tibbetts. “

That’s Tibbetts-Witkes,” I said. Wood rushed home to Los Alamos and posted all 115 accepted applicants on the HR Web site. He also posted, in order, those applicants who were on the wait list.

THE DREADED MONDAY AFTER Monday morning brought the usual moaning and groaning. “Why wasn’t I drawn?” “Weren’t my qualifications good enough?” “Take me off the wait list and please return my check.” “Why was my application late in arriving to you?” No one really knew who I was, so all complaints were logged to other board members.

Besides the grunts and rumbling from those who were not selected, there was some time for humor and contemplation. Steve Pattillo, a Hardrock veteran and chosen again to compete in this year’s race, wrote this note to the Yahoo group’s Hardrock news forum after the lottery results were posted: “

Looks like the roster for some day-out program conducted by a community-based mental health organization.” Thorn, also a multiple Hardrock finisher and board member, replied, “Steve has half-wittingly hit on one of the key features of the selection process. The salient selection criterion used by the Run Committee was, and I quote directly from the minutes, ‘

Selection shall be inversely proportional to mental stability.’ “The combination day care and marmot herding activities will be based from my house in Silverton.” After the selection process was completed, the Hardrock board of directors, race participants, sponsors, pacers, volunteers, and wannabes settled down for a while.

While the annual Memorial Day meeting came into focus, only a few loose ends remained. Scholarships from the proceeds of last year’s race were given to several Silverton High School students headed to college in the fall. Some trail work on the Nute Chute was performed, and retaining walls were built to help keep the trail in good shape after last year’s rock slides. Cappis rallied the troops around this project. “

It is almost like putting in a bridge, so bring trail-building knowledge and a strong back. In addition, there are some rockslides that need to be cleared, and if we have enough people to do it, small retaining walls to be built. The walls that were built in previous years are doing a good job of keeping the trail useable. Would appreciate all the help we can get,” Cappis said.

WHERE THE FUNDS GO On May 9, Andi Kron, Thorn’s wife, and the rest of the Joel Zucker scholarship committee got together in Silverton to choose next year’s Silverton High School senior recipients. Joel Zucker participated in Hardrock for several years, and this fund was started in Zucker’s name after he died of a brain aneurysm following the race in 1998.

While all the dust and dirt settled around the 2004 race start, many would-be participants were already wondering about next year. What weekend will the race be in 2005—the first weekend after July 4 or the second weekend in July? I hadn’t checked my calendar yet, but apparently there was some sort of fluke in the 2005 calendar. “

We start on Friday so we can finish on Sunday, due to our long 48-hour cutoff,” Wood said. “As to which weekend, we choose the weekend after the Fourth of July. This year that was cut and dried, since July 4 is on a weekend. In years where the fourth falls in the middle of the week, we play it by ear. For instance, in 2000 the fourth was on a Tuesday and we held it the next weekend, July 7, but in 2001 the fourth was on a Wednesday and we held it the weekend after the next weekend, July 13. This is sometimes dictated by when we can get the

facilities we need in town.” I missed the Memorial Day weekend meeting and felt even a little further behind the curve. I wondered whether I would soon be kicked off the board.

THE PERSONAL MARKING QUESTION May’s Internet discussions involved completing and getting approval for the Green Mountain course changes. One would-be participant realized that her navigational skills were not quite up to par even though the course is well marked. This woman wanted to go through and mark the course with her own markers.

The board discussed this issue at length. Cappis wrote, “We need to adhere to the ‘leave no trace’ philosophy. Ad hoc cairns tend to lead to what are called social trails through the high grasses and tundra. Social trails often become erosion paths and then need to be recovered.”

Thorn added some more relevant information to our discussion. “There is also a Hardrock historical note relevant to this. Some of you remember that for several years before, about 2001, we came down the Handies southwest ridge, aka Upchuck Ridge. One of the pacers for a runner perceived that we were tearing up the grassy slope on the steep section just above tree line [with course markers].”

Gordon Hardman, another board member, said, “To protect our permit, I would support applying the same sanctions to unofficial course markers as to those who place unofficial aid stations [stashes]. Same would apply to anyone who moves the markers already placed by Charlie [Thorn] and the other official markers—they might move them in such a way as to be noncompliant with the approved course. John [Cappis] does an incredible job of keeping BLM happy with our route. We cannot risk getting crosswise with them by having a lot of ad hoc course markings.”

Eventually a note was put up on the Hardrock Web site asking individuals not to assist in the trail marking with unapproved markers such as cairns and walls. After a year of planning, Hardrock finally came together on July 9. One hundred twenty-five started the race and 80 finished. This was a 64 percent finishing rate. By all accounts, the 2004 edition of Hardrock was a tremendous success.

September 26 in Lake City was set for the first meeting for the 2005 race. I have one year’s experience behind me, and I haven’t been kicked off the board yet. I’m getting a little bolder with my suggestions and comments.

With a dozen people showing up in Silverton on race day last year hoping for last-minute race entrance, I encouraged the board to stop this practice. “Our final selection should be completed, by the absolute latest, on the Thursday before race day,” I said. “And maybe we can use some rolling averages like Western States does to satisfy the Forest Service’s race entry limits.” Here we go again.

Benefits of Marathoning Preliminary Results Are Available. BY DR. BEA CARSON

Preliminary research is complete and the results are in—completing a marathon is great for you in many ways. The physical benefits of training for and completing a marathon are obvious. This research studied the psychological benefits. The results show the benefits beyond the physical are enormous. A more detailed study is in progress and the results will appear in a later issue of M&B.

Books such as John “the Penguin” Bingham’s The Courage to Start, Gail Kislevitz’s First Marathons: Personal Encounters With the 26.2 Mile Monster, Irene Reti’s Women Runners: Stories of Transformation, and Oprah’s Make the Connection all indicate that intense change takes place in individuals who complete a first marathon. This has become such an important interest of mine that I have focused my doctoral work around this phenomenon.

Recently, I did a preliminary study to try to understand what this change is. Everyone is quite comfortable with the fact that by doing a marathon, participants feel much more empowered after it. This study sought to understand the source of that newfound empowerment. As part of that research, I reflected on my own experience and talked to several individuals who had recently completed their first marathon.

The stories all had several common themes. Yes, everyone felt empowered, more able to take on the challenges that came their way. However, some significantly deeper revelations surfaced. The three most prevalent findings were •

an appreciation for pacing, as well as an ability to apply it to all aspects of life; • the sense of empowerment; and • the sense that the change was not related to finishing the race so much as to training for it. In fact, they all

felt an initial sense of emptiness when they first stepped across the finish line.

PRELIMINARY RESULTS Pacing The most prominent finding was the concept of pacing. When you decide to take on a marathon, it is just not possible to decide that “today I’m going to run a marathon.” Instead, you decide that four, six, or more months from now you will do a marathon. Then you train a little at a time. Each week as you prepare, you increase the distance only a little. By trying to take on too much all at once, you end up hurt. Each time you do a distance run, you need to maintain a steady pace or you don’t make the distance. If you know you run a 10-minute pace and you start out running with folks who run at a nine-minute pace, you’ll burn out long before you get to the finish.

If you start with your 10-minute pace and simply maintain it, you get to your final destination. So what does this mean outside of marathon training? Those who have completed their marathon come to realize how important pacing is in all aspects of life. As the expression goes, “Slow and steady wins the race.” Those whom I have talked to realize they now approach everything in life with this attitude, from driving a car to how they approach work. In driving, they realize that zipping along, bobbing in and out of traffic, doesn’t get them to the destination any sooner. However, it does get them there with increased stress levels. They have come to realize that by taking it easy, setting a steady pace, they get to their final destination in the same amount of time but without the stress.

When it comes to work, they have taken the same approach. When they have a major task to complete, they don’t jump in headfirst. They plan it out. They set their pace and complete the project, typically in less time and with much less stress. What they have learned is that planning a project—planning all the steps necessary to achieve success—then sticking with the plan, guarantees success. This isn’t to say that the plan is set in stone. As with marathon training, things happen along the way. When these things happen, you have to be willing to step back and revise the plan.

As part of this planning ability, everyone has come to understand the importance of turning to others. This comes in two forms: being able to turn to experts to design the plan and having a support network that will be there with you until the end. In both marathon training and life, having others whom you can lean on in both the good times and the rough times is a key element to successfully keeping the pace. This ability to pace and depend on others leads to the feeling of empowerment.

Empowerment What do people mean when they say they feel empowered? Simply put, they feel able to take on challenges that before seemed out of reach. By training for the marathon, they learn that with a little determination they can increase their ability to the point of taking on a challenge as daunting as a marathon. They no longer look at the size of the ultimate task they are trying to achieve; they look at manageable steps to get there. They have discovered that by breaking it into smaller, achievable steps they can accomplish almost anything.

They discover that empowerment doesn’t come from taking the final step to achieve the marathon but comes from training. It comes from setting out the baby-step goals and accomplishing those on their way to the ultimate goal. The true power of taking on a marathon happens gradually over the course of the training. The completion of the actual event brings mixed emotions.

Finish Line Consistently, each person expressed a sense of emptiness at crossing the finish line although they were all thrilled with the public validation. This emptiness stemmed from the fact that for months their life had revolved around training for the marathon. Now, in a matter of hours, it was over. So now what? This emptiness was short lived. As they joined with friends and family and celebrated the accomplishment,

their sense of empowerment swelled. They all realized that they had conquered this challenge, and now the door stood wide open to other challenges. There was an overwhelming sense that any challenge was now within reach. The key was to choose a new challenge to fill the void. For some, this was other athletic events, such as additional marathons, triathlons, or ultras. For others, it has meant taking on volunteer work to raise money for charity. Sometimes this work involved training others to complete a marathon. For still others, it has meant a change in the level of responsibility they chose to take on at work.

THE STORIES First-time marathon stories are plentiful. What follows are the stories of those who were part of this research.

Tom’s Story Tom had been a smoker all of his adult life. His idea of exercise was lifting beers at the bar. As he was approaching 50, he decided it was time to make a change in his life. He discovered running, bought a treadmill for the house, and enjoyed doing a couple of miles a day. It wasn’t long before his wife decided that he needed to relocate his running to the great outdoors. He was not sure where to run, but a quick search on the Internet led Tom to the North County Rail Trail Snails.

The Trail Snails are a group of slower runners who support and motivate each other. It wasn’t long after joining this group that the group’s coach asked him about his goals. Tom’s initial reaction was that he wanted to be able to run out a couple of miles, run back, and not keel over. Coach was not satisfied with that and told Tom that he had to have goals. So Tom started looking at 5Ks and soon had been talked into being part of a relay team for a marathon. The next thing he knew, he was signed up for a half-marathon and ultimately a marathon.

Tom also speaks of being a very different person from whom he was when he first started running, but he is unable to pinpoint when the change happened. He remembers a day when he was out training with the Snails and the coach reminded them to take it easy since they were distance runners. At that moment, Tom recalled that while he once was finished after running two miles, now it took two miles before he felt warmed up.

Tom felt a letdown when he crossed the finish line after his first marathon. Now that he had met this goal, how would he fill the void? Since then, he has made numerous changes in his life. He now runs a running clinic for women and thrives at working with people who are out of shape, training them to run their first 5K. Additionally, he has taken over one of the charity runs and thrills at being able to use running to give back to society.

As far as his work life goes, he has learned the importance of pacing. In the past, he rushed after each new task and constantly felt stressed, but now he plans his approach and paces himself. He has found that work and life are much more rewarding. He credits the marathon training for teaching him this new approach to life. Before the marathon, rushing was a way of life. Since the marathon, he takes everything in stride. Before, he ran hard and ran for the exercise. Now he runs to relax, enjoying the escape it affords him.

Mark’s Story Mark is considerably younger than the others I’ve spoken to. Additionally, he ran track in high school, so for him, speed was an important aspect of his training. After changing cities for work, he met a woman who had run about a dozen marathons. As they talked, he caught the fever and signed up for his first marathon but realized he really didn’t know how to train for it. He joined a local running group to find the support he was looking for. As with many running groups, there were quite a few first-timers. For him, this group became much more than his running network; it became his social network.

His major revelation was somewhat different from that expressed by the others. His came during a 5K race when he was nearing the finish line and realized he had a shot at placing. At that point, he picked up his pace, pushing as hard as he could until he passed the competition. As he came across the finish line, he heard his name announced over the loudspeaker. Through the cheers and congratulations, he realized that one of the great things about running is that what matters is your ability, not the color of your skin or your sex—just that you are out there doing it. Moreover, if you are skilled enough to be considered among the elite, you are held in a particular place of honor.

Completing his first marathon has lit a fire in Mark. He approaches work as a leader. He has come to realize how able he is and approaches work with newfound confidence. Additionally, he seeks out increasingly more challenging tasks. He no longer doubts that he is up to the task—he knows that he is.

Chris’s Story Chris talked to friends who had run the Marine Corps Marathon and caught the bug. He decided he needed a major goal, so he signed up for his marathon. He, too, could not decide when he had changed but realized he had become much more patient. By virtue of training for the marathon, he came to realize the need to break down a big task into smaller ones.

As he was training, he had a distinct fear of injury. He came to realize that he was physically able to do it, but the fear of injury always hung over his head. After completing the marathon, he realized that most of his fears were unfounded not just in terms of running but in all aspects of life. He realized that challenges are not to be feared, they are only to be mastered. With this understanding, he learned that the key was patience. Now when he is faced with a new challenge, he approaches it with patience, plans it out, and maintains his pace until the challenge is overcome. He is much more inclined to take a leadership role at work, understanding that with patience and pacing, all things are achievable.

My Story My story is several years in the past, but the change that occurred in me still persists. I was never an athlete. Growing up, I was always the last one selected for any team sport. I just didn’t have the talent for it nor the desire to develop the talent. I’m still not quite sure how I was persuaded to attempt a marathon, but I did and my life has been forever changed.

The first day I attempted to run, it was less than a tenth of a mile before I had to walk. I was crestfallen. I had been exercising—particularly distance walking—up until that point, but that was my first attempt at running. After a few attempts, I finally started getting the hang of it. Six months later, I completed the Marine Corps Marathon. So how did I go from being a nonrunner to a marathoner in just six months?

It was mostly perseverance, but it was primarily through pacing. I discovered early in my training that I couldn’t go very far because I was trying to go too fast. As soon as I slowed down, the miles climbed rapidly. I learned that by setting achievable goals along the way, I could increase my miles without hurting myself. Each week I would add only a single mile, which was achievable. It wasn’t until I crossed the finish line that I accepted that I was capable of transporting my body 26 miles.

However, reflecting back on it, I realized this was not what created the sense of empowerment but was simply the public validation that I was capable. Thinking back over the months of training, I couldn’t pinpoint a time that I had changed. There were times when I was more aware that I was becoming someone new, but no defining moments. The closest I came to a defining moment was the first day I ran eight miles. It was a beautiful spring day and I was running on a local trail. As I headed down the trail, I passed a runner going the other direction. He ran with the grace of a gazelle. We nodded as we passed each other but said nothing. As I was returning up the trail, we passed again. This time he simply said, “Nice run.” It was the first time since I had started training that I realized that I was a runner.

Since the first marathon four years ago, I’ve completed an additional eight marathons, but with each of these, my ultimate goal has changed. I no longer think about how long it will take. Instead, I look for someone who is struggling and pair up until we reach the finish line. There have been times that I think about achieving a time goal again, but sharing the moment with someone who ultimately completes the challenge is a feeling I’m not willing to give up.

CONTINUING RESEARCH As part of my doctoral program at George Washington University, I have received approval to study in more detail the nonphysical changes experienced by first-time marathoners. The study will involve measuring how a person approaches new challenges before training for a marathon, then after completing it. These results will appear in Marathon & Beyond in a future issue.

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times Charles Dickens Was on to Something When He Penned Those Words. Did He Have an Insider’s Take on the Vicissitudes That Are Inherent to the Marathon? BY PAUL CLERICI

When you think of your best and worst marathons, do you base the answer solely on your finish time? Your place? How you felt afterward? Do you cast it against all your marathons put together? Or is it the first one that comes to mind? And once you’ve decided, what did you learn from them?

Obviously, there are no wrong answers to these questions. It’s an individual choice based on the results of a myriad of variables such as your training, nutrition, clothing, and the weather during training and on race day.

For the majority of marathoners, their best 42K is rewarded with a sense of personal accomplishment and pride, and their worst most likely is accompanied with some pain and disappointment that can subside in good time. For elite athletes, however, the stakes are much higher. Their best marathon can elevate them into another class, while their worst can devastate their career.

Prior to the 2003 Boston Marathon (unless otherwise noted), these questions were posed to several elite athletes—veterans and newcomers, male and female, American and foreign. The responses were intriguing and the choices not entirely what someone else might have selected. But the reasoning behind their decisions and the lessons they learned are even more revealing when you consider the source.

PATTI (LYONS) (CATALANO) DILLON The four-time Honolulu Marathon champion and multicourse and world record holder was asked for her best and worst after the 2004 Boston Marathon, where she had come in second three times and set a course and American record. At first thought, the best choice for the Quincy, Massachusetts, native would perhaps be the 1980 New York City Marathon, where she became the first American woman to run a sub-2:30 with a time of 2:29:33. But the inaugural Montreal International Marathon in 1980 and her last Honolulu in 1981 came to mind for her as the best in an illustrious career.

After the controversy of the 1980 Boston when Rosie Ruiz overshadowed winner Jacqueline Gareau and runner-up Dillon, Montreal was created with the Canadian and Bay Stater in mind. “I saw Jackie at all the races that summer with all the other runners, like Joanie [Benoit Samuelson] and Lorraine [Moller]; it was just like real heady stuff,” Dillon recalls. “And I was really kicking everybody’s butt,

including mine. And all I had on my mind was Jackie, and I felt all she had on her mind was me because we were going to have this duel, this duke-out after Boston.” The Montreal field was under a hundred in 1980, including less than a half-dozen elite women. But the competition was nevertheless fierce. And Dillon, then Patti Catalano, turned in a victorious, record-setting 2:30:58 at the age of 27. “

They put together the Montreal Marathon, this special race, for us, for Jackie and me, and for the elite,” Dillon says. “It was for Jackie and me to make up for Boston, to be fair. It was good and it was also hard, because the last six miles—I didn’t know, they knew but they didn’t tell me—is on a different part of an island [where] you have to cross the bridge. There weren’t any spectators, and I didn’t know where everybody was, and I was just running all by myself. It’s very lonely. But I worked so hard at Montreal, and I did another marathon record, and I wasn’t even running for the time. I was just so into running competitively and racing, just racing, and it was a great feeling. I was really focused. They were all focused, but this was different. This was really special.”

The week of the 1981 Honolulu Marathon for Dillon was filled with more emotional baggage than she had ever expected, as her marriage to Joe Catalano was over. An emotional wreck that week in Hawaii, she dealt with the pain with three two-hour runs prior to race day. “

I left Joe at the airport,” she says. “We broke up. But I knew I was in great shape because I was so emotionally upset. I wanted the American record and I wanted to do it there, and I was advised not to do it there because there was nothing in it [financially]. I took the edge off by running a two-hour run, and it felt easy and good. Couple of days later, I did it again and it felt real easy and good. And a couple of days later, well, I did it again that week. But I’ve done that before, so it wasn’t really anything. Not that I was pounding. I was just kind of going out, you know, it’s beautiful there. You do it early in the morning and it just ended up being two hours.”

The Honolulu Marathon Hall of Fame runner won her fourth consecutive Honolulu with her fourth straight course record at 2:33:24. “I was floating, I was really floating,” she describes. As for her worst marathon, Dillon picked another 42K. The 1985 Rio de Janeiro Marathon, after which she officially retired, was her worst in large part because of what that race took out of her. It was also around the time in her career when invitations disappeared after a string of injuries, bulimia, being overweight, and depression. “

I couldn’t get an invitation to a race if my life depended on it,” she says. “I would call people up and nobody would invite me. They’d say, ‘Oh, no, Patti. We hear you’re injured.’ And I’d say, ‘No, I’m doing really good.’”

She finally convinced Rio and was assured by the race director that no other elite women had been invited, that is, until Dillon arrived at the hotel lobby and locked eyes with England’s Joyce Smith, who had finished 16th among women in 2:46:17 in New York in 1984, and Sissel Grottenberg, the third-ranked Norwegian behind Grete Waitz and Ingrid Kristiansen. “

I almost choked, and they almost choked when they saw me, because he told them the same thing,” Dillon says with a chuckle. “We all choked when we saw each other. But mentally, I won that race in the lobby. I knew I won the race right in the lobby as soon as I saw Joyce Smith’s face when she saw me,” Dillon laughs. “I hid my surprise better than she hid hers. I was just like, ‘Be cool.’ And Sissel had never beaten me before, but she was

tough.” Before the start, Dillon made 17 trips to the bathroom. She was not only dehydrated in the heat and humidity of Brazil, but she cut it so close getting to the starting line that a motorcycle was dispatched to whisk her away from the hotel. “

I thought it was just prerace jitters, but I drank the water and I got diarrhea. I had the runs,” she recalls. “Physically, that was my worst. Fluids were a problem, and I couldn’t put any pressure on my stomach. My first 10K was 44 minutes. Just before that time, at 5K, we were all together and I’m running very stiff because I couldn’t put any pressure on my abdomen. I couldn’t bear down, and Sissel and Joyce are staying right with me. I want to tell them, ‘Please, don’t stay here.’ And I’m thinking I’m going to drop out at 10K by my hotel, that I’m just going to cut my losses and just drop out. But it comes down to this: I don’t think I’m going to get my way paid home if I drop out or something.”

Dillon maintained a steady, albeit slower, pace and was left behind by her two main competitors. However, she did not drop out. In fact, she steadily improved and reestablished her focus and energy. “

We’re out on a long bridge, and there’s a turnaround point, and they were just past the 10-mile mark, and they came back this way, and I made eye contact with Joyce,” Dillon describes. “And it was the same look that I saw at the lobby, and I knew I had her. I just had to get there. So I said, ‘OK. OK. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.’ I found a comfortable spot. I’m not bearing down on my stomach. Things are fine. I’m not getting crampy. I’ll just pick it up a little bit. And I’m cutting in close—11 miles and I’m getting close, 12 miles, it’s 20K, it’s almost half-marathon. And they’re over there with the lead car, and there are big lights, TV cameras, and motorcycles. And I’m way over here, and I’m just going to scoot by, and I’m not even going to let them see me, because I want the lead. And at the halfway mark, I have the lead. Yes!”

With the lead, Dillon began the mind games runners often play to pass the time or for motivation. She promised herself a beer for every mile she held the lead. After several miles with the lead, however, she turned her attention to a developing problem. Panic set in around 22 miles, and Dillon began to lose focus. She began to lose her grip. Even with a good lead, her body was beginning to fail, and her thoughts were full of Smith and Grottenberg. “

I’m tired and I’m having problems again,” she says. “And I’m panicking and I’m getting tight. My legs are crampy. I feel awful. I have them behind me and I’m thinking where they are behind me, but I don’t know. My hair is wet, and it’s hitting my shoulders, so I think they’re right there and I keep hearing it and keep turning. My energy’s going back instead of being in front. “

And so I say, OK, pray,” Dillon continues. “‘Oh, God! Oh, God! Please help me, please help me.’ I’m not kidding. I did this. ‘OK. Pick up my right foot. Good! Put it down. Thank you. OK. Now, pick up my left foot. Oh, good! Put it down. Thank you! Thank you! Do it again.’ I did that from 22 to the finish line.”

In her final competitive marathon, Dillon turned in a sub-2:40 win. And after she finished, the race director’s wife, who had watched from a race vehicle Dillon’s torturous latter miles, was struck by her transformation. “

She said afterwards, ‘Patti, I don’t know what you did, but all of a sudden you just went—voom! Your form

changed. You were like running a 5K,’” Dillon remembers. “The whole time I was praying. I could feel I was uplifted. I was smooth. I was tight. And I just kept focusing on picking up my feet.” Supported by two race officials in the medical tent, Dillon was drinking water for the drug test when she was advised to sit down so her shoes could be removed. A half hour later, still standing for fear of cramping, she finally sat. “

My legs are out, because I can’t really sit,” she notes. “One lady takes off one shoe, and I said to just take off my socks. She said, ‘I’m not taking off your socks.’ There was blood all over my shoes, blood all over my socks. It looks worse because it’s wet. So I take off my Pedz [socks] and all my toenails came off. Every one of them—10 for 10. I never felt it. They got infected. They couldn’t put anything on my feet. That was the worst. It was my best and my worst. I ended my career right there at that race. It took everything I could possibly get out of me. It was hot, humid, and I had competition for it.”

And what did the born-again Christian learn from this? “That God heard my prayers. That God is good. The whole running thing has been getting closer to God without even knowing that I wanted God. All I wanted when I started running was to have peace. All I wanted was peace.”

JILL GAITENBY It didn’t take long for the 1998 Bay State Marathon and 2002 U.S. national marathon champion to think of her best and worst, because, as she smiled at the thought, they were one and the same—the 2002 Boston Marathon, where she came in 13th in a time of 2:38:55. But for a slight heel problem that kept nagging her heading into the race, the Massachusetts native was physically fit. She had won the New Bedford Half-Marathon (1:15:23) a month before and was third in the Las Vegas Half-Marathon (1:15:35) two months earlier. But her heel and the 96 percent humidity made Boston one marathon she will never forget. “

The humidity sort of affects my breathing a bit, and right away I just didn’t feel good,” says the two-time U.S. representative at the world championship marathon [2001, 2003]. “My breathing was off, but I got through that whole section. Then at about mile 16, my heel started to bother me. I got to the hills and I was limping, and I made it over the hills and I didn’t even care about my time. I just wanted to make it to the end.”

The heel pain grew more agonizing as she passed Cemetery Mile, the stretch of Commonwealth Avenue that features a burial ground between miles 21 and 22 after the conclusion of the hills. It’s where many runners seem to

fade

and

drop

out. And shortly after she ran by Boston College, her alma mater, and headed toward the Beacon Street section of the course, the pain was unbearable to the point where the Northampton-born runner was forced to make some difficult decisions. “By mile 24, when I turned onto Beacon Street—and at that point I was the first American, so there was a video camera and motorcycle following me, so now I felt like the pressure was on—my heel was hurting so badly and I was limping and limping,” she describes. “When I got to mile 24, I actually stopped and started

crying, and said, ‘I can’t do it.’ “I walked over to the side and I couldn’t start going,” she continues. “The crowd started cheering me on, and I just said to myself, ‘I’m going to go to the finish line no matter how I get there.’ I started limping. I couldn’t walk, but I managed to limp, and something within me overcame [everything] and I made it. With one mile to go, I saw the clock and said, ‘Oh, my gosh! If I run a 7:30 mile, I’ll run under 2:40, which is the Olympic A standard.’ And so I just blocked out everything, and I just ran as hard as I could to the finish line. When I finished, I started crying.”

From the depths of a physical and emotional breakdown to the jubilation of finishing and becoming the first American woman for the second straight Boston, Gaitenby certainly experienced both ends of the spectrum in one 26.2-mile shot. And from that, perhaps not a realization while running the final miles, she grew as a marathoner. “

I look back on that and I don’t know how I did it or how I made it through, because it was so excruciating,” she says. “But in the end, I learned so much. Now I know I’m tough—I never knew I was before. I always thought I was a wimp, really. I just found something inside me that I never knew was there. And in anything in life, whether it’d be on a personal level, professional level as far as working goes, I pulled something out of me that I never knew I had. My time was slower, but I think in the end that was one of the best marathons I’ve had, because that’s what this sport’s all about—getting through any situation and learning about yourself. And I think I did that a lot.”

Had she quit, had Gaitenby decided to end the race at mile 24 when the pain forced her to stop, she never would have found that new level of ability she obviously possessed. No one, perhaps including herself, would have questioned her decision to quit. But on that April day, she raised the bar for herself without even knowing it at the time. “

You’re right, I did set the bar. I didn’t think about that, but [I thought then] I can’t drop out now. That was my best and worst. It wasn’t my worst time, but other than that, all my other marathons have gone relatively well. That one I tested myself,” she notes. “I learned a lot about myself that day, and I also learned physically that if anything is bothering you prior to a marathon, it’s going to come back in some way, shape, or form, and it’s not going to be fun. And I also learned that even though you go through a bad patch—mile 2, mile 5—it’s going to get better. Marathon’s a long road, and if you’ve done the training, mentally if you have faith in yourself and faith in your training that you’ve done it, you’re going to make it through. “

When I stopped, it was probably about a minute, maybe 30 seconds to a minute that I stopped, just based on my time that mile—that was a great experience for me,” she adds. “Right after that, I marked it all down in a journal, the entire experience, because I knew that I’ll read this again and it could get me going for the next race.”

In the 2003 Boston Marathon, Gaitenby improved to ninth place with a time of 2:38:19. That 2002 experience is still with her as a constant training tool, a constant reminder of what she can accomplish. “

The entire time [in 2002], there was a motorcycle with a camera on me, and I kept saying, ‘I have to get that tape,’ because that is pure marathoning,” she says. “I was crying. I didn’t think I could go. It’s just remarkable

what the body can do when the mind wants to go. That was a remarkable feeling.”

KATHRINE SWITZER The Syracuse University alum in 1975 was ranked third in the United States and sixth in the world. Eight years earlier, while running the Boston Marathon with an official bib number she had received when she registered as K. V. Switzer (women weren’t officially allowed to run Boston for another five years), she had a scuffle with a race official that was photographed and shown worldwide, forever freezing the moment in the struggle for women’s running rights. Also to her credit, the first women’s marathon in the Olympics in 1984 owes a great deal to Switzer’s efforts.

And while Gaitenby’s best and worst were the same marathon, Switzer says her best and worst were actually her worst and best. As the National Distance Running Hall of Fame inaugural class inductee and American Long Distance Running Hall of Famer explains, she won her worst and lost her best. “

My worst marathon, in terms of how much it hurt and how disastrously I ran, was when I won the New York City Marathon in 1974,” she says. “I had trained and trained and trained and trained for this. I really wanted to break three hours. I was ready to break three hours, because in those days, that separated the men from the boys. It was four laps of Central Park; it was horrifically difficult. But I was that prepared. I knew I could break three hours on that course.”

Despite the September heat, the heavy humidity, and the overall oppressiveness, Switzer was determined to succeed in her goal, so much so that despite the conditions, she maintained her goal pace for the first three laps of Central Park. (This was before the course moved to the city streets and boroughs.) And then the skies opened. “

It was ungodly,” she recalls of the weather for lap four. “I was so focused at running under three hours that I went out at my sub-3:00 pace, and I was right off the lead guys. And I held, and I held, and I held for three laps. [With] almost another loop, right around 20-21 miles . . . it was just like life was going out of you. The heavens started like it was an apocalypse with thunderstorms and crashing lightning. And then it just was a torrential, torrential cloudburst and huge shards of lightning and tree branches falling—it was horrible. I kept turning away—it was like being in a bad dream, and the whole west side of Central Park was under water. I’ll never forget. Even now when I’m training, coming down alongside the lake there, I imagine sloshing through that water. It was up to [the ankles]. That was the hardest physical effort I ever did in my life, and I was rewarded.”

At the age of 27, Switzer came within minutes of her goal with a winning 3:07:29 and the largest margin of victory in the history of New York at 28:49. While she feels this was her worst marathon, her best came just six months later at the 1975 Boston Marathon when she knocked off 16 minutes from her New York time. “

This is the race I thought I was going to win,” she says of the 1975 Boston. “I was totally prepared. I had a brilliant day. It was 51 degrees, tailwind. I’m a good downhill runner. The other contenders that year I knew: the only other one was going to be [1974 and 1977 Boston winner Michiko] ‘Miki’ Gorman, and she had just had a baby, so I didn’t have to worry about her. And [1972 Boston winner] Nina Kuscsik was injured. So it was going to be my year, right?”

Switzer was beside herself at how the stars had lined up for her when she ran on that Patriots’ Day Monday. There was no rain, no lightning, no thunder of her previous marathon, and she felt great throughout the entire run. For Switzer, it was, for all intents and purposes, the perfect race. “

The road came to me, it was unbelievable. I could have just gone and gone and gone. I just felt it. And I had my best time and a wonderful performance. I ran a 2:51 and just blew the hinges off my previous time, and I was positive I was going to win the race,” she notes.

But out of West Germany came Liane Winter, a world-best 2:42:24, and according to the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) the second-widest margin of victory at Boston when she beat Switzer’s 2:51:37 by 9:13. (Kuscsik’s 10:09 margin over Elaine Pederson in 1972 is the widest margin.) “

So here I was running the race of my life, the time of my life, and the perfect race, everything being wonderful, couldn’t have possibly done any better, and I got beat,” notes Switzer, who was still the first American woman. “Ever since that race, it’s been very hard for me to ever go back and run another marathon again, because it was perfect—everything!”

As she looks back on those two races, Switzer is struck by the irony of what she considers her best and worst. And because of her outlook on both marathons at that time, only now can the lessons emerge in abundance. “

It’s an interesting turn of that,” she remarks. “What have I learned from this? First of all, people say that marathoners run to find the perfect race, just like the surfers look for the perfect wave. And I was blessed to have one of those days, which was brilliant. Nothing hurt. It was just so wonderful. So that was a great plus. And yet it put me in my place in terms of humility, because I had the race of my life and somebody just ran a world record and I was in awe of them. I felt I could never have physically done what she did. And then New York, having everything in line and ready to go to do it, and then you’re a victim of the elements, you’re a victim of your time, you’re a victim of the weather and the circumstances that are totally beyond your control. You can only do your best.”

Taking it one step further in regard to lessons learned, Switzer realizes the smart thing to have done in New York would have been to adjust her strategy and her way of thinking in light of the weather conditions. Then again, she ponders, would she have won had she readjusted? “

When I look back,” she says, “if I had run with the effort that the 3:07 was, I wonder what that would have been on a perfect day? What I’ve learned is that you have to just go with what nature provides and take inspiration from it, whatever way you can. I was just so focused [in New York]. Any normal runner would say, ‘OK, listen. I’m going to change the plan. I’m going to crank it down. I’m going to be more conservative.’ I didn’t. That was my plan, and I was going to go with it. I was, like, tunnel focus. I was going as hard as I could go. I think I would have run slower [if adjusted]. In retrospect, I think I did the right thing.”

However, Switzer was faced with another marathon shortly after those New York and Boston races in which she had to make some similar decisions. And based on her best and worst, she took heed of her experience. “

My last marathon was the 1976 Boston in that terrible heat. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God. This is déjà vu all over again.’ And that’s when I did readjust it,” she explains of that 100-plus-degree race where over 40 percent

of the nearly 2,000 starters dropped out. “I just cranked it down, and said, ‘OK. Get out there and just finish this.’ I ran 3:15 or something like that. The end result was I was still beat up, I was still tired, and my feet were so blistered and so lacerated and bleeding that I couldn’t run another marathon. I mean, I could have said, ‘I’ve got it in the bank. I’ll just wait a couple of weeks and do another one.’ I was so beat up after it anyway.”

JOHN SENCE From Cincinnati, Sence (who was interviewed before the 2003 Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon) is a two-time Olympic Trials marathoner (1996, 2000). The two-time 25K U.S. national champion (1997, 1998) and U.S. representative in the World Half-Marathon Championship in Palermo, Italy (1999), points to the 1998 Chicago Marathon as his best. With his 2:15 in the Windy City that year, he came in 21st overall and was the third American finisher. He also chopped off six minutes from his previous PR. “

I was pretty much just 10K training,” he says of his workouts at the time. “I was running 28:30 consistently for 10K, and I knew my speed was good. In the last two months leading up to it, I just increased my mileage. I wasn’t doing anything dramatically different other than running long. That was great because I pretty much stuck to what worked for me.”

But after Chicago, a trend began when Sence drifted away from what had made him successful. He departed from his coach, with whom he regained contact for his goal of making the 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials (he did not), and his training session included various styles and regimens that ended up being counterproductive. “

I just tried picking and choosing things that I thought would work based off of other people’s performances. And that didn’t work,” he points out. “I mean, you can pick up some things that work well, but then I think you always have to fall back on what works for you, and you have to be consistent with that, because it’s nothing that’s going to happen overnight. Especially with marathon training, it takes a long time for your body sometimes to respond. “

I think sometimes you have to stick with what your body responds the best to and learn from that and use it,” Sence continues. “Because sometimes it’s easy to listen to what other guys are doing. You know, everybody says, ‘OK, what’s Khalid Khannouchi doing or whoever might be running hot at the time?’ But the big thing is, you’ve got to be consistent. Stick with what works for you. Don’t be thrown off course by listening to what other guys are doing. Sometimes going marathon specific and doing all the specific training for a marathon can be detrimental. For the right guy, it works. But I think every runner has to find the right recipe. You find what works for you. And that’s what I should have stuck to, because after [Chicago], I started thinking, ‘OK, now if I really trained for a marathon, who knows what I can do?’ And the best I’ve done since then is a 2:17.”

Two years after Chicago, Sence experienced his worst marathon at the Olympic Trials in 2000. The Trials were in Pittsburgh, and his 2:31 finish was well off his original goal of a sub-2:12. “I really felt going into that race that I had a very legitimate shot to make the team,” he says. “My running was going incredibly. I took a leave of absence from work and went out to Boulder, Colorado, and trained for three months. Got into great shape. Got injured a couple of weeks before the race, but I thought I’d still be OK.

Sometimes an injury is a blessing in disguise, because you’re rested.” Coupled with the stifling heat that day in Pittsburgh, Sence’s hamstring injury reappeared throughout the race and proved troublesome, eventually destroying his dreams of qualifying. The injury, however, as he points out, was avoidable and served as a lesson for Sence in future races. “

The heat was ridiculous. By 12 miles I knew I was done, which was disappointing, because I put so much effort into that,” he notes. “The one thing I think I learned from that is a lesson a lot of elite guys learn, that more is not always better. When I was in Boulder, the last day out there—I was leaving the next day and I wasn’t scheduled to do a workout for a couple of days—I thought, ‘I’m going to squeeze one more in while I’m out here.’ And that’s the day my hamstring just started really tightening up. And when I got home, it was done. I ran I think three times in the last two weeks to get ready for that race. I don’t think there was any problem with not running. It was the fact I damaged the hamstring. That’s always in the back of your mind, and when you start feeling something, you’re toast.”

During a marathon, especially an Olympic qualifier where much is riding on the result, a runner wants to start injury free and with a clear head to focus on the ensuing 26.2 miles. For Sence, a mistake weeks before came back to haunt him. “

I think more is definitely not always better,” repeats Sence, who was one of the youngest competitors in the 1996 Olympic Trials. “The mileage was good up to that point. But there was no need to throw in an extra workout. There’s so much to lose and very little to gain by doing that. Everybody’s got that experience. I just picked the worst race of all time to do it on. You don’t do that before the Olympic Trials. You work so hard to get there and so many other guys had worked hard to get there that didn’t get there, you don’t want to DNF in a race of that magnitude.”

So, Sence persevered in the Trials. “Unless you lay it out on the table, you don’t know if you’re going to have a chance either. You know, I finished. It was simply I didn’t want to drop out of a Trials race.”

After defending his team marathon-relay title at the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon in May 2003, Sence continues to appear ready while training for a possible third Olympic Marathon Trials. Back with his former coach and reestablishing consistency in his training, Sence has learned from his mistakes and plans not to repeat them. In addition, he has learned how to train better and with more success, despite not making the 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials. “

As I’m aging, my body’s breaking down with injuries. I find that I can’t run the mileage that I used to so I have to make the intense days very beneficial and I have to rest a little more going into the workouts. I have to make the most out of them,” he explains. “It’s not like I can do three of them a week now, I’ve got to do two and I’ve got to make them a little more ‘riding that red line a little tighter.’ It seems to be working. What used to be my problem was that I’d go for three or four months hard and then I’d break down. I’d take those steps back, and then you come back, and then you break down. Now, I’ve finally had a consistent six months where I finally feel like the body’s coming back. You just have to keep it that way and listen to what the head says to do instead of what others say.”

BILL RODGERS The American running boom’s own “Boston” Billy Rodgers—the American Long Distance Running Hall of Fame, National Distance Running Hall of Fame, and National Track & Field Hall of Fame member who was thrice ranked number one in the world (1975, 1977, 1979) by Track and Field News—has a plethora of marathons from which to choose. He won Boston four times, New York four times, the Fukuoka Marathon once, and competed in the Olympics.

Not a surprise choice for the best marathon was his 1975 Boston victory, the first of four wins in a six-year span (he skipped Boston to run the Trials in 1976 and DNF’d in 1977). His 2:09:55 in 1975 set an American and course record in Boston, both of which he broke by 28 seconds four years later. “

Everything came together in ’75,” he says. “I had done a lot of good track training. My teammates at the Greater Boston Track Club and [coach] Billy Squires, really helped me. [This was] the one that had the most impact in my life. It was a good day for running. It was a total surprise. Everything finally jelled.”

When Rodgers says “finally,” he means it. The 1975 win was his third try at Boston. The New England native registered

aDNF in 1973 and came in 14th at 2:19:34 in 1974. “It took me about two and a half to three years to run the marathon that I was capable of,” he says. “On top of my other running I had done earlier in high school and college, just focusing on the marathon took me about two and a half years. I think usually you need to run three or four marathons to get it down to the nitty-gritty where you really can hammer. I think it does. A few runners break through earlier, some of the Kenyans, Alberto Salazar did. But you have to get your time down. I think that’s usually how it works.”

Ironically, his best led Rodgers to his worst—the 1976 Olympic Marathon in Montreal, Canada, where fellow American Frank Shorter won the silver. It was less than a year after that Boston win for Rodgers, who admittedly entered the Games less than fit. “

Boston enabled me to aim for the Olympics, and suddenly I started thinking I could make the Olympic team and all these things that have never happened to me before,” Rodgers notes. “[But] that nailed me, the 1976 Olympics. I hadn’t trained well for the final four or five weeks, stopped doing speed work because of a foot problem. And I lost my sharpness, I lost my overall preparation. I was a sitting duck. If you’re not at your very best there, you’re a sitting duck, because there are a lot of people who are [at their best].”

It seemed the deck was stacked against Rodgers in Montreal with his injury, lack of proper training, warm weather, and Olympic pressure—all the elements that led to a 40th-place 2:25:14. “I was nervous because, you know, it was the Olympics and everything. It was big time. And I don’t like the heat and humidity either,” notes Rodgers. “The injury bothered me, it hurt, but I didn’t think it was going to be devastating. I had no idea. I tried to compete, but when you are taken by surprise, really by surprise, it’s hard to be objective of yourself. I had run well five weeks earlier. In May, I did a PR 10K and was fourth in the Trials, but by June, July, my foot was hurting me. Just an overuse injury, so I hit The Wall badly in the marathon. And

that was that.” Despite his Olympic experience and DNF in Boston, his career would be filled with numerous victories, due in no small part to the lessons he learned on the streets of Montreal that summer of ’76. “What I learned mainly was that your preparation has to be pretty well rounded. If it’s well rounded, you’re going to run well, and if you run carefully,” he says. “I didn’t run carefully in the Olympic marathon, that’s for sure. I made mistakes. I’ve had my share of bad marathons, and I’ve got some wins. I try to learn from whenever I’ve had a downfall type of marathon, because you can always come back. That’s one thing you learn—you can always come back.”

BRUCE DEACON Much like Rodgers, who was his idol as a youth and with whom he corresponded as a kid, the two-time Olympian’s worst marathon was also in the Olympics. Deacon said his worst was in the 2000 Sydney Games when he ran for his native Canada. Sydney turned out to be a collection of errors for the six-time number-one-ranked Canadian marathoner. “

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I got tripped at the start, I overdrank, and I got really bad muscle cramps,” he recalls. “I got tripped at about 25 meters into the race, and it did kind of break my focus. But I think I regained myself OK, but I never fell into a good rhythm. And the marathon’s all about rhythm. And the cramps started about nine or 10 miles, earlier than what you’d expect for cramping. If you’re going to get cramping, you expect it around 18 or 20 miles, but not that early.”

There are certain things for which you can train and prepare in a marathon, and then there are instances where something unexpected and out of your control arises. At the 2000 Olympics, Deacon faced both. While he chalked up getting tripped as happenstance, he did learn a few lessons about his liquid intake and cramping. “

I ran a few races where it was extremely hot, and I got used to drinking a lot of water during the race because you had to,” he explains. “You’re racing in Athens for a world championship, and it’s really hot weather, well in the 80s or 90s. So I just kept consuming the same volume of drinking for the cooler-weather races. The lesson I learned was I need to take liquids, but I don’t need to take as much as I thought I did. It wasn’t an obvious link. I guess the head scratcher was [asking] why is it that I’m not getting this kind of cramping in training and I am in some races? And so I looked at what am I doing different.”

Deacon, of Victoria, British Columbia, then came across what is known as hyponatremia, when drinking too much water lowers the level of sodium in the bloodstream. As evidenced in the 2002 Boston Marathon, it can be fatal. “[

Information has] become quite popular over the last year, and it’s causing the medical community to really reevaluate what their recommendations for fluid intake are,” he notes. “I just wished that they had those recommendations a few years earlier. That’s what I learned from the whole thing. It was a good experience.”

Conversely, the three-time California International Marathon champion [1991, 1995, 2001] counts as his best

marathon the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he came in 11th place after being ignored as someone to watch. “It was kind of a Cinderella story,” he notes. “I guess I just learned patience, because I just started out at a steady pace and worked my way through the field and just got outkicked for 10th. I looked at the winning times, the times that were top 20 before, and I just figured if I run a steady pace, then I should be able to work my way through the field. And it was such a motivator to be catching people all the time as opposed to just hanging with people and hoping you don’t drop off the pace. As the race progressed, I felt better and better and better. That’s what keeps everybody in the sport, that rush that you get from a good race. And that’s the kind of thing that helps you weather all the disappointing runs.”

ELANA MEYER The South African Olympian has become a fan favorite on the marathon circuit, especially in Boston, where she ranks her best and worst. Although two women finished ahead of her in the 1994 race—Meyer was third with a national record 2:25:15 in her first 26.2-miler—it was the new experience at the long distance that made this one her best. “

My first marathon was my best experience, because you don’t really know what to expect. It’s like a totally new challenge and something you’ve never done before,” she says. “So my first one was really my best experience, because it’s an untraveled road. I just loved the whole experience of coming [to Boston] the first time, because this is where I ran my first marathon. It was just so exciting. I’ve been a runner for many, many years, and then to step up to the marathon into untested ground . . . that was fantastic. For me, it was just such a big personal challenge, a personal test, and you go way beyond the comfort zone.”

Meyer’s worst marathon was six years later at the 2000 Boston when she came in 10th place and was nearly six minutes behind Catherine Ndereba’s winning 2:26:11. “The first time I was third, the second time I was second, the third time I was second, and the last time I ran [in 2000] I was 10th,” she says of her Boston runs. “I just had a little injury problem coming into the race, which I thought was OK. But I think anything in the marathon becomes a disaster if it’s not perfect. So that was definitely my worst experience.”

Throughout her early career, Meyer excelled as a track runner, specializing in the mile, 1,500, and the 10,000 meters, in the last of which she won Olympic silver in 1992. She also possesses a stellar half-marathon slate of wins and records and is more philosophical about her learning process. “

Obviously, you learn new things all the time,” she notes, “but there’s also things that it’s good and it’s working and you stick by it. You also try to improve on your training and your preparation. It’s a bit of both. You can’t perform out of yourself, and you can’t change the strategy of somebody else. So the best you can really do is the best that you can do. For me, that’s always to keep focusing and say, ‘Look, do the best you can do.’ That would be your possibly best outcome of the race, because at the end, it’s a race against other people but it’s also a race against yourself. If you win the race overall or if you win your own race, I think that’s the best you can be

on that day. I just try and do the best I can be. I think if you can do that, then you achieve your possible most-best outcome.”

MILENA GLUSAC According to the native Californian, she doesn’t really have a “worst” yet of her three marathons. In her 26.2-mile debut at the 2001 New York City Marathon and U.S. national championships, Glusac was the second American and 13th overall in a time of 2:34:46. The following year on the same course, she turned in a personal best 2:31:14 as the second American again and ninth overall. And at the 2003 Boston Marathon, the 27-year-old was eighth overall and once again the American runner-up in a time of 2:37:32. She is admittedly still in the early learning stages of marathoning. “

There’re going to be periods where you feel really good,” she points out, “and during those good periods, you really have to say, ‘Wait, wait. There’s more to come. I have money in my wallet but haven’t visited all the shops’—that type of thing. And there are times in the marathon when you don’t feel well and you just have to know that those pass, too.”

For six years from 1995 to 2000, Glusac suffered from a number of ailments, most notably the Epstein-Barr virus, “which is like mono but just wipes you out about a hundred times more,” she describes. “I was bedridden for a long time. But I started back racing in 2000 and training.”

The University of Oregon grad worked hard to get back in shape for a marathon. Among her achievements along the way are the best showing for an American at the World Half-Marathon Championships in Veracruz, Mexico, with her 10th-place finish. But one of her biggest problems is dehydration, which she suffered in the New York races. “

I stayed really focused [in 2001] and ran my own race, and the same in [2002], except I should have held back a little,” she says of her New York City Marathon runs. “In my first marathon, it was dehydration. My second marathon, it was dehydration during (the run) and also moving too fast too soon. I had all my bottles and I was grabbing cups at every station, but you grab it and there’s half of it (dumped) and by the time you drink it, there’s not enough. I learned that with that ratio, I need more sugars. “

I did run my race [in 2002, but] I got a little excited about mile 16. I just felt so darn good,” she continues. “But you learn a lot in terms of hills, transitioning from downhill to flat. The marathon’s totally different. You could go out the first mile and say, ‘This feels easy.’ I did learn that racing starts way later in the race.”

GIACOMO LEONE According to the Italian Olympian, his personal best 2:07:52 at the 2001 Lake Biwa Marathon in Otsu, Japan, rates as his best marathon—better than his 1996 New York City Marathon win (2:09:54)—as his strategy of speed paid off. Where some may hold back until the moment they make a decisive move, Leone decided to keep the pace a fast one in Japan.

“Go fast, because there are a lot of Japanese, that they start so fast,” he explains of his strategy, which resulted in second place and a national record. “I remember until half-marathon, I was in 10th position, and I saw I must follow the leader group. When we arrive to about 35K, there were only two runners—me and the winner. I tried to push for response.”

His sixth-place showing at the 2002 Dong-A Marathon in Seoul, Korea, was Leone’s worst. Asked what he learned from Korea, he quickly explained his out-of-sight, out-of-mind theory of keeping the negative thoughts away. “

I remember it was a no-good race for me, but I don’t remember,” he says. “I have canceled it from my mind, this race, and start for another marathon. It’s most important that your mind cancel the bad things for you next race.”

JOHN A. KELLEY The late legend—a member of the National Distance Running Hall of Fame, American Long Distance Running Hall of Fame, and National Track & Field Hall of Fame—was a three-time Olympian (1936, 1940, 1948) and two-time winner of the Boston Marathon (1935, 1945). He also holds the record for Boston starts (61), finishes (58), and was its Grand Marshal for several years. And it’s at this grande dame of footraces where he counted his best and worst. “

The 1935 Boston was the greatest marathon I ran. We had about a hundred starters, and about 12 men out of that hundred had a chance to win. And I was one of them. I learned to pace myself properly,” he said of his 2:32:07 victory. “When I won the marathon, my father and four brothers were at the finish line waiting for me. It so thrilled me.”

Kelley’s reference to pacing takes on more weight, since at Boston he came in second place seven times, most of which he admitted could possibly have been victories had he properly paced himself. His first runner-up finish was the year before his first win. Kelley had traded leads with eventual winner Dave Komonen of Canada, who made his move around Cleveland Circle.

On the international level at the Olympic Games, Kelley was 18th in the 1936 marathon and 21st (2:51:56) in the 1948 Games when he was 40 years old. (The 1940 Games were canceled because of the war.) While the Cape Cod resident didn’t specifically pick any of his nonwinning marathons as his overall worst, the cumulative record of his haste made the point. “

I was always a hurry-up guy. From my own particular case, I have always been a very impatient person, and it cost me dearly in a lot of marathons. In a marathon, you can’t be impatient,” he explained. “[In 1925] I was running a 15-mile race, and Joe Smith from Medford was a long way back with two runners, and they said, ‘That’s Kelley up there.’ And he said, ‘We’ll catch him.’ And they went right by. So I learned from that mistake. Ten years went by, and I went down here [Boston] and I paced myself and won.”

JOHN J. KELLEY

Known as Johnny “the Younger” Kelley, so as not to be confused with the aforementioned Johnny “the Elder” Kelley (no relation), the Connecticut native was a two-time Olympian (21st at 2:43:40 in 1956 and the first American in 1960 at 2:24:58) and eight-time winner of the U.S. National Marathon Championship in Yonkers, New York, from 1956 to 1963.

In the Boston Marathon from 1956 to 1959, Kelley came in second place three times and won in 1957 as a member of the B.A.A. Running Club, which hosts the marathon. And not surprising, the only B.A.A. member to win Boston points to his course record 2:20:05 win in 1957 as his most satisfying, if not best, marathon. “

Boston’s always the magnet. No matter where you go, you refer to Boston as your baseline,” he says. “Everybody wants to win Boston. And Boston quite often dashes expectations. Because everybody’s gunning for it, the chances that even someone qualified to win it will win it are probably less than five out of 10 on any given day. So you’re terrifically elated if your number comes up and you do win it. And you’re quite often disappointed in Boston. Would I consider it my best marathon? I don’t know. But it was the most satisfying marathon.”

Kelley trained well for ’57. He had turned in some successful Boston tune-ups and as a teacher, enjoyed the break of school vacation prior to the marathon. His slate was clear and his schedule was empty. In fact, the elder Kelley, who came in 13th at 2:53:00, lent him a hand as well. “

Johnny was very close to us, and he invited us up to his then-fiancée’s home on the Belmont-Watertown line and we stayed there overnight,” ‘the Younger’ notes. “In the morning, he tapped on my door and we got up and got out with the robins on the golf course that was right behind his house for a stretch. And everything was perfect.”

Kelley ran hard, yet conservatively, knowing resources in the latter stages of Boston are vital. The year before in 1956, he came in just 19 seconds behind Antti Viskari of Finland, who won with a 2:14:14. This time, Kelley wanted to remain with the leaders and not jump out too soon, a lesson he had learned from ’56 and other experiences. “

You’re in with very good runners, and you can’t do any heroics early,” he explains. “A big mistake would have been to take a lead. I’d done that in the Olympic race four months earlier in Melbourne and I finished 21st and just about collapsed. I led early and it was a great mistake, and I thought, ‘Don’t do that again.’ So what I did [in Boston] was run in the cluster of leaders, and then finally it just wore slowly away so that there were Pedro Peralta from Mexico, a very good runner from Korea [Chiang Lim], and [Veikko] Karvonen from Finland, who I thought was the man to beat.”

To plan his strategy and execute his eventual decisive move, Kelley kept a constant eye on Karvonen, who had

won

Boston

three

years

earlier

in

1954

(2:20:39). The New England native’s pace stayed steady until it was just the two of them in Newton. “We started up the first of the Newton hills, just toward the hospitals, and I just saw that he was sweating pretty profusely,” Kelley notices. “I was right behind him and his neck rivered with sweat, and I thought, ‘Geez, he’s sweating pretty hard. He’s probably exerting himself more than I am.’ I gave myself a boost, but you have to

do those little psychological things in a race. I thought I’ll wait a mile, and if we’re still right where we are now, I’m going to try and break him if I can as we go around the corner into the second of the hills.”

Kelley pushed it some, about 10 seconds a mile, and eventually broke free and led the race. He still wasn’t sure, however, because, as he pointed out, you never know until you cross the tape. But by Boston College after the hills, Kelley knew. “

By the time I came on the downside on the last Heartbreak Hill by B.C., [race official] Jock Semple came by in a bus and he says, ‘Oh, you’ve got 200 yards.’ So at that time, I said (to myself), ‘I can’t hear him anymore. I can’t hear his footsteps, can’t hear him breathing. I think I’m going to win today.’ That was when I felt confident, unless I screwed up bad,” Kelley notes. “I had already run Boston a few times, and I knew how anything can happen anywhere on this course. You have to be very respectful of it, the marathon, anyway. Boston is a race that’s kind of a setup course. It’s relatively easy looking for the first five or six miles, and then it keeps pitching curveballs after that. The hills come at the long part of the course, and before you get into the hills, you drop steeply down. Many people would think a downhill run is good, but that can knock the hell out of your quads. So you’re kind of respectful of those things all the way. “

I came down to Kenmore Square, and I was well in the lead,” he continues about the last mile. “People were cheering, and I felt quite elated. But even feeling good at that point in the marathon, you know you’ve taken so much out of yourself you’d hate to have to respond to a challenge there. But I knew I was well ahead. I had one more scare coming across Massachusetts Avenue with about three-quarters of a mile to go, my [leg] tightened up. I said, ‘Jeez, no. Not now.’ But I knew I had this safe lead, and I eased up maybe 20 seconds a mile for the next quarter mile and the cramp went away and I breezed home.”

In 1993, Kelley, a member of the National Long Distance Running Hall of Fame and American Long Distance Running Hall of Fame, experienced his worst marathon in terms of pain when he ran Boston. No longer on the competitive circuit, Kelley was training an athlete to run and then decided to toe the line himself. He was 62, and it turned out to be his second-to-last marathon. “

I didn’t intend to run the race, but I thought that since I was a coach of sorts I’d get into it, and I was going to be up there [in Boston],” he says. “But I hadn’t really put in the mileage, and my other commitments were such and I actually had burned out my competitive fires, too. I didn’t have the desire at that age to put in the real mileage you have to put in. As it turned out, I was doing some speed work about three weeks before the race, and I got a hamstring pull and it never quite came loose. So I got into the race with that tightness, and lo and behold at 10 miles, the other one went while this one was still [tight]. I was brought to a walk. I hobbled, limping, limping, and every once in a while trying a pitiful pace of running strides into the finish line. I was never in such real physical pain in a race in my life. My time—somebody said 3:28, but I think it was 4:28—doesn’t really matter, because it just felt so awful.”

It took one more marathon—the Big Sur International Marathon in California—for Kelley to confirm that his marathon days were over. Despite the pain, he had to face 26.2 miles one more time to hammer in that point. And Big Sur certainly did that for him.

“At that point [at Boston], I said, ‘You’re not training for this kind of thing. You’re not a competitor now. Don’t run these things unless you’ve trained for them.’ And I haven’t except for one. I fell off the wagon once and proved to myself that my previous judgment was right,” he says. “I did Big Sur and that race was a bear, too, and I said, ‘That proves what I said last year.’ And I haven’t gone back since. I wasn’t injured at Big Sur, but neither was I competitive. The race, as beautiful as it was, went on forever, it seems. And when I finished it, I said, ‘That’s just about it.’ It was a very scenic course, it was exotic, it was different, and I don’t need to do another marathon. So far.”

My Most Unforgettable Marathon (And What I Learned From It) BY RIVA GRAEME

CHICAGO, October 24, 1999—The marathon holding the most exciting memories for me was Chicago in 1999. To put the year in perspective, I had just finished medical school in San Francisco in May, run a PR at the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon San Diego less than 48 hours after my medical school graduation, and then run the Anchorage Marathon as my last hurrah, hours before I drove across the country to Dallas for my residency in internal medicine. I had trained for and run several marathons during medical school as a stress reliever and hoped to be able to continue to run during residency.

However, I knew that having “matched” at probably the most demanding internal medicine program in the country, I would be lucky only to have time to run easily a few days of the week. After I arrived at the end of June and received my schedule for the next 52 weeks, I quickly glanced at my days off—my reprieve. I had a few scattered days off over the first few months, but my first true weekend off—the “golden weekend”—was scheduled for the same October weekend as the Chicago Marathon. Previous talks of reuniting with Angela, my marathon buddy—she did San Diego, Anchorage, and others with me!—at a marathon that year became reality as luck afforded me the opportunity to combine my weekend off with the Chicago Marathon. After the insufficient four weeks between the San Diego and Anchorage marathons, the four months until Chicago seemed like an eternity.

I had moved to Dallas with only what I could fit into my car. I had only a single friend, a classmate from medical school who had also matched in my program at the University of Texas-Southwestern at Dallas. The 100-plus hours of work a week combined with the 100-plus degrees of heat outside made for interesting training. I quickly found a way to maintain my sanity and my fitness by running to and from work, about three miles each way and longer if I wanted. I had no organized training and had stopped by the SMU track a few evenings to see whether there were people with whom I could do intervals or tempo runs or just jog, but I never seemed to meet up with those who were training in Dallas. To sum up my first two months: I worked, slept, and ran—in that order. And I didn’t get to sleep much.

EARLY SIGNS OF FITNESS My first hint that all this work and Spartan lifestyle were helping me get into shape was a 5K cross-country race I did on grass, at the end of a 75-mile week. I ran an 18:40, about five seconds faster than the best I had run a 5K in the past four years, and this was on grass! I eventually went to the track three weeks before the marathon and did a workout of 4 x 1,600 meters. The cooler (think 80 degrees, not 100s) October weather and some other

people out on the track contributed to a workout that surprised me. After the first two 1,600s in under 6:00, I ran the last two in about 5:35! This was all the more impressive to me as my fastest mile in college was only 5:26.

I began my taper at three weeks out. Two weeks before the race, I agreed to go power walking with a friend, as I was taking the day off. Something about the different stride caused me to get a fairly significant blood blister on my left arch, so I took another day off. The blood blister was painful and probably infected, and I began to get red streaks up my foot. I had to take three more days off of running; thoughts of all the summer training and excitement for this race developed into apprehension as I worried that this blister would prevent me from running my best.

I had planned to run in the Race for the Cure eight days before the marathon as a tune-up race. The day before (and my first day back running in five days) I wasn’t sure whether I should race or use the day to get in a few extra miles instead. I decided to run the 5K, mainly because I thought the marathon might be spoiled so I might as well see what I could do for the 5K after a few days of rest. Nervously, I woke up that Saturday morning, nursed my foot, warmed up, and got ready to race. I had never run in an all-women’s race of this size (over 20,000 women!). The excitement of the helicopters overhead and my pent-up adrenaline catapulted me to an 18:10, which was my fastest 5K in six years and second fastest ever! Elated with my time and effort, I quickly cooled down and headed for the hospital to go see my patients.

I had to continue my taper, as I had two 36-hour shifts still to go before I left for Chicago. The extra tapering I did—inadvertently by way of the infected blood blister—seemed to pay off in the 5K and gave me the confidence that I might still be able to hold it together for the marathon the next week.

AH! THE RESTORATIVE POWER OF SLEEP I worked at the hospital from about 7:00 A.M. Thursday morning until 6:00 P.M. Friday evening, although I did get an uncommonly extravagant three hours of sleep during that time. Exhausted, I went home and packed, then immediately went to sleep. Saturday morning I flew to Chicago.

After flying into O’Hare, getting myself to the expo, and picking up my number, I headed over to meet my friend Deborah, who was hosting me for the weekend. Deborah was a second-year medical student at Northwestern, and we had run cross-country together in high school. Deborah joked that she would be happy to let me stay with her if I would be willing to help her with some pathophysiology!

We got together for dinner with my friend Angela and some other friends from San Francisco. After eating some eggplant parmesan and catching up with my friends, I made plans to meet in front of the hotel where Angela and her sister were staying at 6:45 A.M. to catch a cab to the starting line. Deborah and I headed back to her modest student housing quarters, and I laid out the futon in preparation for sleep—maybe my best night in a long time!

I got up early—around 5:00 A.M.—to eat my breakfast of Diet Snapple and a CLIF Bar. This is what I had eaten at San Diego for my PR of 3:02:12 a few months earlier. Deborah also got up, with her syllabus on the kidney, so I could make good on my promise to help teach her. After an hour and a half of renal pathophysiology,

I headed out the door to jog the four blocks to Angela’s hotel. She and her sister were ready and said some others had told them it might be hard to hail a cab because so many people would be hailing cabs at that hour. We decided to try our luck on another corner, away from the hotel, but every empty cab was apparently heading to a booked customer. The minutes ticked by, and eventually it was 7:20 and we still didn’t have a cab, the start was two miles away, and the race started in 40 minutes. The only decision seemed to be to start running south and hope to hail a cab before we ran the entire two miles. We ended up with a two-mile warm up.

We got to the starting line about 15 minutes before the start. After hurriedly stashing our sweats and gear bags and forgoing the final bathroom stop, we angled our way up to the start. Luckily, we had blue numbers, which qualified us to be up front with the first 2,000 runners, based on the past times we had submitted. Still, we had to hurdle some fences to get there. It was only about one minute after we had gotten in the corral that the gun went off. It was extremely packed, and we crossed the starting line only seven seconds after the official start.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTROLLING THE FIRST MILE Although the first mile (in 7:10) was a little faster than I had wanted, it felt really easy as we were running in a dense pack. I like to start out slower than my estimated pace; having run about 20 marathons, I knew too well the cost of one or two miles too fast, too early. The second mile in 7:05 felt equally smooth, although I lost contact with Angela. We hadn’t planned on running any of the race together, so I just settled into my rhythm and concentrated on trying to relax.

Because the pack was still so crowded, someone bumped my armband radio, and it turned off. I tried a few things to get it back on but finally acknowledged that it was merely going to be a form of arm decoration for the remainder of the race.

I had planned on trying to hit the halfway point at 1:30 or 1:31 with hopes of breaking my 3:02 PR. Each mile just flowed, and I went through the five-mile mark at 34:40. The 10K was 41:20, and I cautioned myself that I was going to blow up despite feeling really loose and relaxed. I tried to ease up, but I was in a rhythm and each mile seemed to be at least as easy as the preceding one, with equal or faster times! We made a few turns and suddenly were in the shade, where I was reminded that it was a fairly cool day. I passed a digital clock display that said that it was 31 degrees!

I continued to run miles in the 6:30-6:45 range, which was much faster than I had wanted, especially for the first half. I thought that if I could connect with a group of people and just latch onto them, I could stabilize my pace and take it a little easier. At this point, I was passing a lot of people who had either gone out faster than I had and were slowing down or had gone out faster than I had and were holding a steady pace. Either way, I was passing a lot of people. The 20K mark went by in 1:21:30, meaning that I had run 40:10 for my last 10K. This was faster than all but a few of the 10Ks I had ever run!

My time at the half-marathon was 1:26:03, and it was at this point that two thoughts passed through my mind. First, this was less than two minutes slower than my half-marathon PR, so I was going to have a slow, painful

second half because I had foolishly let my energy and excitement push my pace too much too early. Second, I thought that even if I blew up significantly in the second half, I might still have a decent time because of the first-half split. I had never really believed I could ever break 3:00, so as I began calculating what pace I would have to maintain to hit 3:00, I became energized.

PACING OFF OTHERS DOESN’T ALWAYS WORK From about mile 12 to mile 14, I noticed that I had been running about 20 yards behind two men who apparently were running the same pace as I was. Since the last several miles had been in the 6:20 range, I figured these guys knew what they were doing and I would be smart to try to stick with them. I came up right behind them and locked in for a few miles, then finally asked them what time they were aiming for. One said 2:55 and the other said, “Yeah, if you want to do that you’d better move on because I may not do that today.”

I guess they didn’t relish running with me, because within a half mile their pace slowed considerably, and I felt actually held back by them. I pulled ahead of them (and several others in the meantime) and got back into my rhythm.

Mile 18 may have been the highlight of my race. As soon as I abandoned those two men, I settled in alone and was rewarded with a 5:55 mile! At this point, I spent the greater part of the next mile calculating and recalculating my splits to make sure my oxygen-deprived brain was not playing tricks on me. I also made a firm effort to ease off the pace a bit, as there was still more than seven miles to go and I was in unfamiliar territory.

I hit 30K at 2:02:00, which was over 10 minutes faster than the fastest 30K I had ever run. I thought about the Clarksburg 30K I had run several times and how I had been in awe of the few women who could run the race that fast. Twenty miles came, and I was getting invigorated further, knowing that I was only 10K away from the finish. I continued to do what I had been doing all race, what I had done in many marathons in the past—reassess my goals at multiple points in the race, readjusting for variables that had occurred up until that time. In the past, however, it had always been a case of adding on a minute or two to what I would consider to be an OK finishing time, trying to minimize the mental anguish of training for so long and not attaining my goal. Most marathoners I know have frequently done the same thing, trying to do damage control to expectations as the race unfolds.

This time was different: I went from trying to get a PR, to thinking that I could possibly break 3:00, to being relatively sure that I could break 3:00 even if I blew up, to thinking that maybe I could run a 2:55 with the two men, to where I now wondered whether 2:50 wasn’t out of the question! I had known in the back of my mind that 2:50:00 was the qualifier for the women’s Olympic Marathon Trials and never dreamed in my wildest dreams that this was within reach—until now.

SAFELY BEYOND THE WALL Since I passed The Wall at about 2:10:00, I knew I had 40 minutes for the final 10K if I were to break 2:50. Suddenly, with a concrete (and mesmerizing!) goal, I really focused on what I needed to do. Each mile had to be about 6:25, which I thought should be relatively easy—as I had been running 6:20s for most of the second half

(with the 5:55 mile 18 thrown in for good measure!). I was starting to get tired, but I was still passing people frequently, even with the thinner crowds up in this time range. I felt almost guilty at breezing by people seemingly effortlessly (although not quite) while they were slowing, walking, or stopping with cramps, pure exhaustion, or both.

Between miles 22 and 23, I came up on the pace leader for the 2:50 group. He had a group of three or four people running with him, and I asked whether he was right on pace, slightly ahead, or behind. He replied that he was on pace, or maybe a few seconds ahead. Since I passed him, I reasoned that I must now be safe, on pace for my newly established goal of 2:50:00, and focused on holding it together for the final 5K.

As I got to mile 23, I recalculated yet again, and having passed it at 2:30, figured I had 20 minutes for the final 5K. At this point, a 20-minute 5K seemed absolutely possible, what 6:25 or 6:30 per mile? Mile 24 came in at 2:36:30, and as I assessed the situation, I realized that I somehow had miscalculated or forgotten to allow for the final 0.1 or maybe 0.2 miles. Reality sank in as I recognized that, taking into account about a minute and a half for the last 0.2 miles, I would have to run back-to-back 6:00-flat miles just to hit 2:50:00.

Somewhat crestfallen, I did and redid the math to be sure. At the very least, this occupied my time for another few hundred meters! I reconstructed my aspirations for the final time in this race as I resolved to run as strongly as I could for the final mile and a half and just savor the beautiful day and my accomplishment. Mile 25 was slightly

uphill,

so

Iwas

glad

that

Iwasn’t

counting

on

running

a6:00-flat mile! I truly enjoyed the final mile, and as I approached the finish line I was ecstatic. I saw the winner’s 2:05:47 stuck on the digital clock, which I correctly assumed represented a new world record. I watched my watch

tick

past

2:50:00 somewhere between 26 miles and the finish.

A FINISHING TIME UNDREAMED OF My final time was 2:50:53 (2:50:46 chip time), and for the first time ever in my racing career, I had absolutely no regrets or second thoughts about the race. I felt that I had run to my absolute fullest potential, and I found it strangely calming that I harbored no disappointment for not having broken 2:50:00. After all, I had a PR by nearly 12 minutes! I took everything in and was in my own little world as I sort of unconsciously picked up my gear bag, grabbed some water, and wandered toward the postrace area.

One of the cellular phone companies was offering free long-distance calls, so I immediately called my father in California to tell him about my race. I couldn’t imagine anyone who would share my joy as much. My father had encouraged and supported me during all my high school cross-country and track races, even at my very first meet when I finished dead last in the junior varsity race. Throughout my college years, he managed to make it out from California to several races a year, despite my competing for Rice University in Houston. During medical school, he was often my travel partner, getting up early to drive with me to races, cheering me on in all sorts of weather. It gave me a lot of satisfaction to be able to share my elation with him!

I had a brief conversation with him and then moved on to the family meeting areas, where I found Angela. I

was impressed that she was already finished and thrilled when I heard that she broke 3:00! She ran a 2:59:50, which was nearly 15 minutes better than her PR! As the remainder of our crew assembled and compared stories, we realized that each of us (except for one) had run a PR that day. It was one thing to revel in my delight but even more gratifying to be able to celebrate with all my friends who had been through the same experiences.

And What I Learned From It You can never taper too much. I was worried that my blood blister, which precluded my doing several workouts in the final two weeks of training, would ruin all my training efforts. Instead, it forced me to have a more

significant change in my volume and resulted in a more rested and ready body. Don’t let the little things bother you before the race. Because I had nothing to lose by racing in Chicago—it was like a reward for me in the middle of my internship—I didn’t let the little things like the blood blister, my relative

lack of sleep, the two-mile warm-up rushing to the start, or my broken radio distract me. I learned to prepare for the things I can control and let the others just roll off me. There are many opportunities for things to go wrong,

but focusing on the one task of running the marathon is all you need to do. You can never go out too slowly in a marathon. Ironically, despite thinking that perhaps I had gone out too fast in the first mile, it was my slowest mile of the entire race! An early mile a few seconds too fast can make you pay

many minutes later in a race, but conversely an early mile a few seconds slow will not influence your time more than those few seconds, and might even help you stay relaxed and prepared for all the miles ahead.

Last, I learned to truly enjoy a marathon. I was able to take in all the sights, emotions, and senses of the race, probably because I had not put any pressure on myself for any specific performance. While I don’t know whether

I will ever run another marathon in this time, I can hope that I will push myself and come away with such a complete sense of satisfaction.