(And What | Learned From It) BY ELLEN LYONS

race, the Super Bowl held in my backyard every year. Boston was my first

marathon—I was a charity runner with a back story, seeking redemption through glycogen depletion, like many others around me. Boston was my first foil blanket, my first salty taste of personal victory. I’ve lined up in Hopkinton every April since 2000, and for the past three years I have qualified at Boston for Boston—the running equivalent of winning the World Series in the home park. I have run 17 marathons to date. I’m not fast, but I’m steady—my best times and my worst times were run in Boston.

Bs. MASSACHUSETTS, April 20, 20092—Boston is my hometown

Boston, April 17, 2000: The author (center) runs her first marathon. Friends Renee LaPlume (left) and Denise Donovan (right) talked her into it.

Photo courtesy of Ellen Lyons

I hate crowds and love smaller marathons, but Boston is different. I like to say that I run the length of my attention span, which these days is about four hours, and Hopkinton to Boston, on a preferably cold and overcast day, is my idea of a satisfying rock-and-roll show, with me playing lead guitar.

So it’s not surprising that I feel possessive about the race, entitled even. Every year I get a police escort to Hopkinton on race day with my running club, the Boston Police Runners Club, motorcycles shutting down on-ramps on the Mass. Pike as we wave to puzzled motorists from luxury coach buses. I wait inside the Hopkinton Fire Station for the start of the race, breakfast included. My family has front-row seats inside the Hereford Street Fire Station at the 26-mile mark every year. My husband is the lighting director for the B.A.A. press conferences. I went to Boston College and lived in Cleveland Circle. It may be the Boston Marathon to the masses, but to me it is my marathon. Every year an unsuspecting acquaintance will ask, “Are you going to do the marathon this year?” (In this neighborhood, “the marathon” is always Boston.) “Knock on wood,” I say, “God willing,” (smiling modestly). “That’s the plan.”

This is the story of what happens when the plan goes awry. My most unforgettable marathon is the one I didn’t run, Boston 2009—a saga including Friday the 13th, a leprechaun, denial, acceptance, electric shock, and water aerobics, wherein our heroine learns that not training is grueling, that race support is a contact sport, and that running is a gift, no matter who is doing the running.

Little did she know . .. training commences

Christmas 2008: The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is the official start of Boston Marathon training for me. My pretraining mileage averages about 36 to 40 miles per week. I peak at about 56 miles per week when I am training for a marathon, so it’s not a big change for me. The only differences between ordinary time running and marathon training are that there are more runs over 16 miles and I do organized speed work. My husband says that he can tell when I’m training for a marathon because he sees me more often. My secret shame is that T love to run what my coach calls “dead-zone runs,” day after day of easy six- to eight-mile runs accomplishing nothing except reinforcement of a placid plod. So Christmas is time to dust off the striders, to start jumping and plyometrics, to put my watch back on, and to find a stretch of road or track without snow and ice. For the past few years, I have used a coach, the patient and talented Joe McConkey of the Boston Running Center. This year, I think, I can do it myself. We have a daughter getting ready to go to college. Why spend the money on coaching? I know the drill. What can go wrong? I send in my marathon application to the B.A.A. and sign up to ride the bus with my running club.

Iam a devotee of a certain kind of outdoor adventure-disaster genre—usually kayak rescue stories that start with the phrase, “Little did they know when they started out from Deception Point on that sunny day that things would soon turn dark and stormy!” Off they go, without a lifejacket, a snack, a compass, or a check of the weather. You know that no good will come of this story. Boston ’09 started off that way for me. Overtired, overtrained, overworked, and underinspired, I started to log training miles, trudging off blithely into the frigid night: no stretching, the occasional push-up or squat, no warming up, and fudging on my speed work. Without a coach, my plan was to run fast, run hills, and run long three days a week and placidly plod for three days. On the seventh day, I would watch Weather Channel disaster shows.

| encounter my nemesis

Traditionally, my Boston Marathon goals have been short and specific: break four hours and beat “Lucky,” the Celtics leprechaun mascot, who runs in full costume most years. Over the years, Lucky has become my nemesis, and my proudest moments have come in picking off his little leprechaun ass somewhere around Coolidge Corner. It’s a good year when I can beat the leprechaun. Everyone needs a nemesis, and Lucky has served me well.

The foreshadowing to disaster begins: on an icy, subfreezing January night, I’m out for a tempo run, coming back up Northern Avenue from South Boston. I literally run into Lucky himself, hanging out in front of the Seaport Hotel with a guy in a bear costume. It’s a gritty scene, trucks lumbering by in the gray slush and two sports mascots huddled in a doorway. The time is right to finally come face to face with Lucky. I stop, introduce myself, and remind him that we have been locked in a death struggle for marathon supremacy for several years. He looks at me blankly and decides to humor me. “Thanks for letting me know!” he says brightly, backing away. “Thanks for your support! Good luck this year—I’m not running.” The bear looks away, clearly unwilling to become involved in yet another great sports rivalry. I finish the run and go back to my office downtown, eager to share my encounter with Lucky. I’m blessed with supportive coworkers, well aware that Lucky is one of my reasons to run every year. “You met your nemesis! No!” It’s a satisfying night.

Two days later, an article appears in the local paper, the Boston Globe: Lucky has been fired or, in press agent-speak, “Lucky and the Celtics have agreed to go separate ways.” I’m nemesisless. My husband and I discuss my options: Do you think the bear has a marathon in him?

Training plugs along. I do an 18-mile run, all hills. I do seven-day weeks, skipping that day on the couch with the Weather Channel. I’m in the gym only once a week. I bag an interval training session in favor of eight slow miles on

the Charles. Again. Am I getting faster? No. I notice that I appear to be running a little bowlegged and a little stiff. I apply ice: I sit in the snow. I devise a pantsuit made of Velcro “McDavid” ice packs. I try to focus on my form. Get those knees up!

Very superstitious—writing on the wall

I register for my premarathon training races, the Martha’s Vineyard 20-Miler on Valentine’s Day and the New Bedford Half-Marathon the following month—March 15, the Ides of March. The Martha’s Vineyard 20-Miler is my favorite race. Boston may be “my” race, but 500 runners and 20 miles of spectacular ocean and scrub pine forest are heaven in February. For the last six years, my husband and I have made this our Valentine’s Day tradition—20 miles and a weekend on Martha’s Vineyard at the Mansion House spa.

February 13, 2009: Disaster! I’m scheduled to do an easy three miles with four striders the day before the 20-mile race. I’m cocky, feeling good. I have the day off from work; we’re leaving for the ferry in a couple of hours. It’s a cold and windy day. I’m running late. I’ve packed my perfectly broken-in shoes. I strap on an old worn-out pair of shoes (hey, it’s a short run) and dash out the door. Half a mile in, [ hit a stretch of dry pavement and go for stride number one. Midacceleration, I feel a pull, a sharp pain, and though it is silent, it reminds me of the crack of a bat on a baseball—the uh-oh sound of a walk-off home run hit by the other team. I stop. I stretch. I start to accelerate again—same thing. I jog slowly for a half mile. The pain remains. I do something I have never had to do before—I walk back home.

At home, I don my McDavid pantsuit and take several ibuprofen. I pray to St. Servatus, who is the patron saint of leg problems. I bargain: help me out here and I promise to warm up correctly from now on—to no avail. Will I be able to race tomorrow? My goal is a three-hour race. I decide to abandon goals, ice heavily, and hope for the best tomorrow.

Starting lines are always hopeful places. It’s a beautiful, windy winter day on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts. There is even a tail wind. I start with a 9:20 mile, easing my way up a few seconds each mile. I feel good (meaning I don’t feel terrible pain, just an “awareness” that all is not well with the upper right thigh and hip area). By mile 10, I am at 1:26 and feeling that I dodged another bullet. The race turns into the wind, and my gait turns into a Frankensteinian lurch toward the finish. I can run without pain only by using a complicated hip-thrusting motion. Every so often, I throw in a high-knee drill. I finish in 3:17, but I claim victory nonetheless. I finished, I’m walking (I use that term loosely), and I’ll take tomorrow off.

Photo courtesy of Ellen Lyons

A Martha’s Vineyard 20-Miler, February 14, 2009: The author at mile 7, deep in denial, with the wind at her back.

Denial is a run along the Charles

The next two weeks are a desperate attempt to maintain. St. Servatus has deserted me. I snarl, I lurch, I run hills, I run intervals, I run long. I stop every mile to “stretch”—that is, to futilely massage the painful area on my upper leg. Iconsume ibuprofen in M&M-bag-size servings. I think about ways to incorporate the McDavid pantsuit into my wardrobe. I cover myself in Arnica cream. I decide that all I need is a coach, and I beg Coach Joe for help. He e-mails me a schedule, and we try to salvage this marathon-training season. On February 28, Ido 22 miles on the Boston Marathon course. For the first time in my running career, I walk up Heartbreak Hill. Am I broken? Not yet. It takes one more week of head beating before I cave in and declare myself injured. March 7, 2009: I do a 16-mile run, with 10 miles at marathon pace, followed by high-heeled dancing at a Mardi Gras party. March 8: I head out for a short run. By Monday, March 9, 2009, I am not walking.

It’s nothing that two days off won’t cure. Two days later, I try to run. I get six miles in, and the pain is back. Two more days, then I try again. The Ides of March

looms. For the first time, I do not run the tune-up half-marathon on March 15. I’m avoiding the doctor; I’m avoiding PT. I don’t have time to schedule doctor appointments and PT. I’m practically an orthopedist, based on the amount of time I spend Googling my symptoms. I have hip bursitis. I have rectus femoralis tendinitis. I have iliotibial band syndrome. I have a stress fracture. It is this last self-diagnosis that sends me to a chiropractor. I don’t even know what a chiropractor is, but he looks like a runner so I am reassured. I am clearly past denial and into delusion. He tries amateur Active Relief Techniques on me. I can almost walk without pain. It’s the end of March. I try a six-mile run. I try heels. I’m now walking like Walter Brennan. I give up and go to my doctor to beg for an MRI.

A diagnosis and a new nickname

My MRI is on April 1, 2009. It’s an open tube and strangely restful. I lie still and wait for the technician to yell something like, “Oh, my God! Look at that!” Results should be up in 24 hours. My regular doctor is away, and the covering physician is uninterested in my running career—she can’t review my MRI results with me for at least a week. I call up favors. I persuade my mother’s psychiatrist to read my MRI. “High-grade tear in the gluteus medius . . . hip. Something hip . .. labral tear… maybe.” I persuade a well-known shoulder surgeon to refer me to a hip specialist, and he gets me an appointment in two days, not two weeks. The hip-doctor’s office is in Foxboro Stadium, so she must be a sports doctor. She says eight weeks without running. I “could” do Boston, but I risk a full muscle tear. She prescribes physical therapy. I cave in and throw myself at the feet of my physical therapist, Jake, and his entourage of trainers working under assumed names—Lemon, Shredder, and Delray—where every visit is a three-hour foray into the depths of the human musculoskeletal comedy. Jake runs Boston every year, and he presides serenely over the chaos of his physical therapy clinic, which resembles a cross between Lourdes and the trainer’s room in the Rocky movies. In desperation, I turn my life over to him. I’ve got the A-Rod injury. I become known as E-Rod. Every rational being I know—my husband, my coach, my mother’s doorman—tells me to defer my Boston entry until 2010. Jake says no—let’s see what happens. Hope springs up again. I dive into that purgatory known as “cross-training.”

Cross-training is just another word for nothing left to lose

I haunt gyms and pools in the downtown area. I do one-day trial memberships, one-week memberships. I beg for time on elliptical trainers. I find myself pretending to do water aerobics while surreptitiously pool running in a class full of older women who are bitterly discussing the reasons why they are not in Florida.

The pool has two words embedded in the tiles at each end: “SHALLOW” and “DEEP.” I adjust my thoughts accordingly. Two hours of pool running is making me a better person! I am shriveled and smell of chlorine.

Back in PT I am hooked up to an electrical-stimulus machine with four other patients—wires with pads snaking around us, as we play a version of Twister. The man below me, apparently a lawyer, starts reciting the details of his career representing electric companies, particularly the harrowing series of cases involving the accidental electrocution of several employees. I am straddling another older gentleman, who wants to discuss the dwindling number of Catholic parishes in Somerville. I consider upping the voltage. He looks familiar, and I realize that he was here the last time I was in PT—four years ago when I sprained my shoulder in a skiing accident. I am clearly in hell, not purgatory. The beep goes off, and I unentwine myself from the human pyramid on the stim machine. Four more weeks of PT and five days until the Boston Marathon.

Acceptance and beyond

The early spring roads of Massachusetts are swarming with happy, healthy runners wearing shorts, striding effortlessly along the Charles and through my neighborhood in Quincy. I grow homicidal. Time for a reality check: I have a soft-tissue injury, no surgery required. I don’t have cancer. I don’t even have arthritis. There are literally hundreds of other marathons. I stop Googling my symptoms and start feeling better.

I decide that the only way to survive not running is to give back to the running community that has given much to me. I e-mail the head of my running club and volunteer to be a support person on marathon day. The club hosts guest runners from the L.A. Police Department as well as buses to the start, bag check, and a postrace party. I love volunteering at races. Where else will government authorities allow me to direct traffic? I’m a born hall monitor and fire marshal. Just give me a whistle (or even better, a bullhorn), and I’m good to go.

On marathon Friday, I am sick with the kind of stomach flu that closes down nursing homes. I’m green, gray, and unable to hold my saltines, God’s way of insuring that I won’t make sudden plans to run. By Saturday morning, I am just a nice shade of chartreuse and able to breakfast on water and toast with friends and family, including Rhonda, who is here from California to run the marathon. She is a veteran marathoner, a champion of the sport, and a new and valued acquaintance. So I have someone to root for! We make plans to meet up at the expo on Sunday.

By Sunday afternoon, I am feeling better, even though I am still limping and lightheaded. My husband and I travel in town to the expo, where the moment of truth arrives—I pick up my number—20847—and head for the solutions desk to

defer my entry. Behind the curtain that separates this area from the main drag, it is quiet and subdued, quite a contrast from the hubbub outside. I am consoled by the fact that I am not the only person in line. A short form to fill out, a signature, and I am officially scratched from the race and good to go for 2010. I feel free—a month of uncertainty is behind me with the stroke of a pen. I finally feel hungry. It occurs to me that right next door is a bazaar of free food samples that have been forbidden to me for many years. I never vary my prerace diet, and I never sample the wares of the expo hucksters (Carolina rice excepted!). This is my chance to indulge in a free-sample frenzy of gels, bars, balls, and grains. Thit the expo. The jackpot is a roll-up sandwich sample of roast beef, cheddar cheese, and coleslaw. What sick mind decided this was a great prerace snack for marathoners? I decide it must be sabotage and dig in. The long rows of booths on concrete floors play havoc with my hip injury: my leg hurts, and I am reminded of exactly why I am not running this year. I meander over to the Marathon & Beyond booth for a visit before I head home. I say hello to Rich and meet Jan for the first time. I can’t believe she remembers everyone who subscribes to M&B. Rhonda arrives—teady to race. Lorraine Moller and Uta Pippig pass through—we are standing in a cubicle together! I’m feeling like a Trekkie in the presence of Shatner and Nimoy. I head home with a 2009 T-shirt—but no chip, no bib, and no starting line jitters.

The race not run

At 5:30 on marathon Monday, I am standing in a parking lot at the Boston Athletic Club in South Boston, wearing jeans with my 2009 Boston Marathon T-shirt. It’s dawn, and the sky is streaky pink with carbon-paper blue—looks like it is going to be a great day to run. Runners are starting to arrive to board buses to the start in Hopkinton. Surprisingly, I’m not second-guessing my decision not to run—the surest sign for me that it was the right decision. The buses lumber toward me, and we start to load them with supplies—newspapers, pretzels, animal crackers, cases of water. I’m stashing bags of ibuprofen and Vaseline on each bus. “I’ve got the drugs!” I announce. Dead silence—it’s probably not the best announcement to make on a bus full of police officers. At that point, Cecil, our club president, hands me a clipboard, and I start loading runners aboard.

I see friends, each with the talismanic double-stringed marathon bag emblazoned with their number. The 2009 color is neon yellow. (I always travel to the race with the bag from the previous year—makes it much easier to find my bag after the race!). No, I’m not running, I keep explaining. I should have made a sign to wear. My friend George is there; after two surgeries and three scratched marathons since the fall, he is attempting to make Boston ’09 his 25th marathon. Another person to root for!

The buses pull away, surrounded by police motorcycles and flashing lights. It is an odd feeling to watch them disappear toward the Mass. Pike. It’s not quite 7:00 a.m. I head off for a couple of hours of pool running before the buses return with the drop bags. My pool-running technique involves picking a race and visualizing each step of each mile along the way. I’m pretty good at it. I can almost identify trees along the Hopkinton-Boston course. Today it is bittersweet—I’m waving to imaginary crowds as I slog through the empty pool.

At 10:30 I find a television, because I want to see exactly what happens at the start of wave two—the most anticlimactic starting line in road racing. Some guy in a white-and-green singlet charges ahead of the wave-two pack—his few seconds of glory. I watch the faces streaming by, waving as they pass the starting line cameras. I’m in an empty room in the gym, feeling like the last person on earth. On my way out, I meet someone in the elevator who notices my T-shirt. “Hey! How come you’re not running?” “Oh, my God!” I exclaim, “Has the race started yet?” My inquisitor looks nervous: “Um, it starts in Hopkinton.” (It’s the little things that are keeping me sane.)

At 11:30 I am back at our club’s meeting place, waiting for the buses to artive so we can unload the bags for pickup by the marathoners after the race. My partners are two members of the L.A. police force who are here to support their runners—Rob and TJ. I am thrilled to meet an LAPD guy named TJ—have I mentioned my William Shatner infatuation? I duck out to watch the women’s finish and catch some of the Red Sox game. The women’s finish is inspiring, even with Kara Goucher taking third place. I rarely have a chance to appreciate long-distance running as a sport, and the top women’s performances make me proud—I’m lucky to be a runner, an athlete.

Marathon Monday, April 20, 2009: The author behind the scenes at bag check. Yellow bag, anyone?

© Elizabeth Greenwood

Back in the bag room, a converted handball court, Rob, TJ, and I have a couple of hours to indulge our obsessive-compulsive tendencies. We line the bags up by number, face up along the walls of the court. The runners will be shuttled back here from the finish line in vans and buses. We swap stories as we work. Neither Rob nor TJ is a marathon runner. They run shorter, saner distances. I don’t get it, but we get along anyway. I explain Patriots’ Day to them: the midnight ride of Paul Revere, the Battle of Lexington and Concord—marathon Monday and an 11:00 a.m. Red Sox game. Runners start to arrive, ashy and salty, walking down the long hallway like newborn colts. We applaud each runner. Rob and TJ are shocked by their appearance. “What’s that all over their faces? That’s salt?” These guys are seasoned police officers who have seen the walking wounded. They are in awe. I can’t quite explain to them my sense of loss. I yearn for that salt tang, those glazed eyes and glassy quads.

One runner, wearing maple leaf insignia and a shirt from a police department in Canada, stumbles down the hallway. He collapses on the carpeted bleachers, unable to move. He tries to lie down. I put a gym mat down for him, and we get him into dry clothes. He has a pulse; he’s talking, but agitated. We debate whether we should get him further medical attention. He refuses offers of an ambulance but accepts towels, a cup of hot water, an orange, and some pretzels. “What’s your name?” I ask. “Brian,” he answers. Brian fumbles with his cell phone. I find a group in the bar, under a Canadian flag. “Do you guys have a friend named Brian?” I ask. “He needs you.” Brian’s wife and friends follow me down the hall. They soon have him up, smiling, laughing, and talking. It turns out that all you have to do to rescue a Canadian is surround him with other Canadians, preferably female. Before he gets up to go, he gives me a big, salty kiss. My marathon is complete. I would not change places with any of the runners now.

The waves of finishers continue to arrive, appreciative of our bag-check efforts. Weare frighteningly efficient. We have the van drivers radioing bag numbers to us from the road, so that bags are ready when the runner arrives. We are the FedEx of marathon volunteers. I foresee a second career in baggage claim for the three of us. It is clear that my work here is done and it’s time to go home. I bid good-bye to Rob and TJ and head off to the airport, where I am picking up my mother.

Much later, it is getting dark—the sky now reversed, carbon-paper clouds and pink streaks waning. I am parking the car, walking across my lawn to my door, limping a little, sore and proud—feeling very much as though I had participated in the Boston Marathon, despite my lack of tinfoil blanket and medal. My neighbor Al yells to me: “Hey, Ellen! How did you do?” I call back to him, explaining that I didn’t run. He doesn’t hear me. “Congratulations!” he yells. “You’ll sleep well tonight!” I decide not to explain any further. Al is right: I will sleep well tonight.