A huge personal success. In 2018, I ran the St. George Marathon in three hours, three minutes, and thirty-four seconds (3:04:34). I smashed my previous personal record, and because I finished under three hours and five minutes (one minute and 26 seconds under to be precise), I qualified in my age group for the Boston Marathon. What this really means is that I could sign up for this historic race and be considered by the Boston Athletic Association as a potential racer. The 2018 St. George Marathon was my fourteenth marathon. I’ve been trying to break into Boston for over a decade now, so I felt an awesome sense of accomplishment. Of all the compliments I received, the one that perhaps meant the most came from a friend on social media: “Holy cow!!! 3:03:34???!!! That’s freaking awesome!!! HUGE congratulations!!! RESPECT! … Even more respect since you did it with small children! That’s my current excuse for being obese.”
I had trained hard for this marathon while juggling a fulltime job and 4 young children, between ages 2 and 8, along with all of life’s other responsibilities. Many times, I took my young kids on runs with me, pushing them in the jogger or encouraging them to ride along my side. Other times, I ran early before they had even woken up, or I ran late after they had gone to bed. I felt I had—overall—kept my kids, wife, job, life, and pursuit of Boston in balance—and I achieved my Boston goal. This was huge to me!
A huge disappointment. Because the St. George Marathon falls just beyond the deadline for registering for the Boston Marathon, I had to wait for almost a year to apply for the 2020 Boston Marathon. So, my St. George Marathon would have been a year and a half before my Boston Marathon. However, a few months ago, after I applied to run at Boston, I received the following email from the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.):
Thank you for submitting your application for entry into the 2020 Boston Marathon. Regrettably, we are unable to accept your application due to field size limitations and the large number of applications received from qualified participants.
. . .
Entries in all age groups were accepted through and including those who ran 1 minute and 39 seconds (1:39) or faster than their respective qualifying standard.
. . .
We appreciate your dedication to running and our sport, as evidenced by achieving your qualifying time and submitting an application for entry. We encourage you to continue your pursuit of running in a future Boston Marathon, and wish you the best of luck in future running endeavors.
I missed the accepted time by 13 seconds. 13 seconds. For a race that took over three hours, this is nothing. That is about .5 seconds per mile over 26.2 miles. It is the time needed to take a single, long breath. I had run for 11,014 seconds but needed to run it in 11,001 seconds. This isn’t even 1% faster. It is just 0.118031597% faster—or just over a tenth of a percent faster. I had been aiming at this goal for over a decade and had trained for months (and really years), dedicating hours and hours of early mornings and physical sacrifice and pain to this goal—and I failed by just 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… 9… 10… 11… 12… 13 seconds.
My wife had also dedicated hours and hours of time to this goal. She put together my training and nutrition plan, and she took care of our small family on many runs where I couldn’t or didn’t take any kids along. She had scheduled trips and family events around my training. It was a family goal that required many sacrifices, so I felt as if I had failed my family and especially my wife.
I’ve looked back at this race often. If I hadn’t been a little sick, I surely would have been 13 seconds faster. Also, I ran too fast in the last 10K, trying to break three hours, which I should haven’t done. I paid for it on the last two miles, trudging slowly across the finish line and losing lots of time, much more than 13 seconds overall. Months later, I kicked myself for this move. So many little things that would have surely cut 13 seconds….
Will I ever try to qualify for Boston? I’ll probably have to break three hours (at my current age, at least). It is physically possible? Can I make the time to train again (and harder)? Will it be good for my family—my wife and kids? Should I retire from marathon running? Is it worth it? A lot has gone through my head over the past few months, and I’ve compiled some thoughts about my failed attempt, as a father of young kids, to qualify and be accepted to run the Boston Marathon.
Getting to Know the Beast
“Anyone can run 20 miles. It’s the next six that count.” –Barry Magee
I ran my first marathon in 2007 with the naïve goal of running under three hours so that I could qualify for the Boston Marathon, a big and special race I had recently heard about. I had trained a fair amount, but I was a newbie in the world of long-distance running and had not built the proper base. I had, however, just run a 1-hour-and-25-minute half marathon, so I figured a slightly slower pace would get me across the finish line under three hours. I stayed on pace for the first half with relative ease, but I then became harshly acquainted with the monstrous beast known as the marathon—and the physical phenomenon of hitting the wall. Running a full marathon isn’t just a half marathon times two. It’s probably a half marathon times five. It’s a completely different race. The first 13.1 is a piece of cake in comparison to the second 13.1. I fell apart on the second 13.1 somewhere near the 20-mile mark, and of what I remember in my depleted mental state, I walked in shame for the last three miles. That’s all I believed I could do physically. I crossed the finish line at 3 hours and 37 minutes. Although a respectable time, I felt failure, and a monster within me awoke, determined to conquer the monster of a marathon, finishing under three hours and qualifying for Boston.
The Many Painful Pursuits and Failures
“If you feel bad at 10 miles, you’re in trouble. If you feel bad at 20 miles, you’re normal. If you don’t feel bad at 26.2 miles, you’re abnormal.” –Rob de Castella
In pursuit of this goal, I have run at least one marathon a year for the past dozen years. Most years, I haven’t trained nearly enough to qualify for Boston, and I knew it, but this rarely stopped me from trying to qualify. I’ve run too hard and felt so terrible that I’ve been worried I might die. I’ve also felt so much pain that I was worried I wouldn’t die. I’ve laid at the finish line semi-conscious. I’ve been so depleted that even the thought of working to swallow food makes me want to throw up. I’ve seen how my mind begins to malfunction on the last 10K such that I can’t even formulate or read simply words and phrases, as if I am a four-year processing Dr. Seuss in preschool. I’ve wanted to punch bystanders at the 22-mile mark who cheer, “You can do it! You are almost there.” I’ve wanted to tell these well-intentioned folks that they have no clue what they are talking about and to shut their lousy little mouths. I’ve had family believe that I was hallucinating as they run the final miles to the finish line with me. I’ve crashed so hard that I was literally the last person running the race, in danger of being disqualified.
Some of these experiences and failures were expected and justified because I had not respected or properly trained for the marathon, but some of them simply weren’t fair. Some followed months of dedicated and proper training. I’ve failed epically, crossing the finish line an hour beyond the time I had earned through dedicated training. Sometimes, my body simply malfunctioned for whatever reason or I’ve been sick leading up to the race. Sometimes I ran a few seconds too fast per mile, and I paid for it harshly on the last 5K.
I have learned lessons about my body, my limits, pain, and frustration that would not have been possible without my many failed marathons. So in a strange kind of way, I love these failures.
Maturity, Discipline, Training, Success—and Another Failure
“The marathon is not really about the marathon, it’s about the shared struggle. And it’s not only the marathon, but the training.” –Bill Buffum
I have come to respect the marathon—and have begun to train for marathons properly. Many people can complete a marathon after simple but steady training (I’m probably in that group), and some people can even complete them without training (I’ve done this a time or two, but it wasn’t pretty). However, to truly master a marathon, you need to dedicate much, much more than a couple months of long weekend runs. You almost need to marry the marathon. It needs to become your life for several months leading up to the big race day.
Because she isn’t a jealous wife and because she is wonderful, my wife gave me permission to truly train for the 2018 St. George Marathon and attempt, again, to reach my ultimate goals: a 3-hour marathon and a Boston-qualifying time. The time and energy required for me to train put life somewhat out of balance, but I juggled everything as best I could, and the overflow often fell onto my wife and kids. It was a personal goal of course, but it was also a marital goal and a family goal. My wife and I were fully committed, and it affected our kids. Using her training in exercise science, she planned my runs, my eating, my recovery, and everything else I might use to succeed.
I stepped up my training. I knew—and my wife often told me—that I couldn’t succeed without mastering my nutrition, my long runs, my speed training, and my sleep and recovery. I didn’t have the natural ability that some runners have. So, I took salt baths. I ate strange things my wife ordered from obscure online stores. I cross-trained, biking and lifting weights. I over-trained. I fought through minor injuries. And I worked many failures out during training runs. One dark Saturday night, I crashed mentally and physically near a bar by my parents’ house, called for help, and laid down on the sidewalk in pain while my brother searched for me, people passing me by as if I were a drunk. I ran off months of fat and American lifestyle. I went to work late after long runs, and so I stayed late to make up for it. I saw my family less. I often woke up long before the sun came up, and I came home hours later as my family was just waking up. I was more inclined to yell at my kids when I was exhausted. I needed more sleep on Sunday mornings, and my wife let me sleep in while she took care of the kids. I pushed my mental and physical limits. I became frustrated. I saw success. I became a fine-tuned machine—more so than any other time I can remember in my life. I loved it. I hated it. I felt like I was becoming Superman at times, but at other times, I felt exhausted and as if my entire life was out of balance. Sometimes Dad wasn’t around when my kids wanted me. My family scheduled trips and life around my training runs, and I did many training runs as part of vacations. I doubted myself. I believed in myself. I kept working through successes and failures.
Interestingly, perhaps the most emotional run in this whole process was a long training run, well before the crowds and emotion of the big race day. I was alone on the streets of Salt Lake City on a Saturday morning. When I had started my training, I could hold a 7-minute pace for just a couple miles, but to achieve my goal, I needed to hold an even faster pace for must longer: 26.2 miles. I didn’t know if I could do it. Because I had failed so many times over the years, I asked my wife to schedule in more longer runs than most training programs require. Now, on this day, a couple months before my marathon, I woke up long before the sun and put my training to the test for 20 miles. A few weeks earlier, I had completely failed on a 20-mile run. I showed up at my friend’s house and laid on his kitchen floor while his wife nursed me back to health. On this day, however, a few more weeks into my training, my work paid off. I was on track. Nearly every mile of my 20-mile run was right on track with my training plan leading up to race day. I could feel my improvement and my ability to conquer my goal. I almost started crying. I could do it! I continued to improve after this run, doing a solid 21-miler at a 7:09 pace on extremely sore legs three weeks before the race. I had set myself up perfectly for a nice taper.
As luck would have it, I got sick just days before the big day. I knew that I would need the stars to align to run a 3-hour marathon, but obviously the stars hadn’t aligned, so I humbly decided with my wife to hold back and rely on my solid training to give me a shot at coming in below the 3:05:00 mark. I also was committed to running my first marathon ever at a negative split (running the first half of the marathon slower than the first, which is generally a formula for success). The race was awesome, largely because I held back for the first 13 miles. I think my average pace up to mile 13 (including the mile uphill that was a high-seven pace) was 7:05. From 13 to 20, I remember feeling tired, but I held strong, but in the 17, 18, and 19 range, during slight uphills, I wanted to give up on my strong pace—almost. But I never did mentally or physically. Once I reached 20 miles at almost exactly 2:20:00, I realized that I had 6.2 miles left and that if I ran an insane, superhuman pace (for me), I might be able to break 3 hours. The rest of the course was mostly downhill, and I decided to go for it, knowing that I probably wouldn’t be able to hold the pace but not wanting to have any regrets. When would I be in this position again, if ever? I had to go for it. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to crumble and lose the 3:05:00 mark, but after four awesome miles, I struggled for 2 miles and almost did. I pushed up to the 8-minute mark, which hurt my time (surely by more than 13 seconds). I was near the very, very dangerous zone but finished the race with enough consciousness to hear my wife yell from the crowd, “He is going to do it!” I crossed the finish line, completely happily drained, at a time of 3:03:34.
My emotions basked in the glory of this race for nearly a year. I knew I might not get into the Boston Marathon, but I felt confident I would and began planning the trip with my wife, telling family in the area I’d come visit them as part of the trip. Until the Boston Athletic Association informed me via an email on September 25, 2019 that, although I qualified, I had not been accepted. Because I ran 13 seconds too slow. I would close my eyes often and count to 13 slowly, marvelling at how quickly the 13 seconds passed. Such a small bit of time.
My pain and depression was eased slightly, but not much, about a week later when I learned that Kenenisa Bekele had missed the world record marathon time by two seconds. (He ran it in 2 hours, 1 minute, and 41 seconds.) Many great people fail by so little.
Hard Work and Learning to Overcome Failure
“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all face challenges that, for us, are unbearable. Some of my kids’ “unbearable” challenges make me want to smile (and maybe God smiles at me as I struggle through my own “unbearable” challenges). My eight-year-old struggles to keep his cool during his recreational league soccer games. He breaks into sobs sometimes because he can’t stand the fact that the eight-year-old goalie stopped paying attention, let the ball roll past him, and contributed to the team’s loss. This failure is too much for him. But I love it when he loses because I love what losing will teach him, so long as he keeps fighting onward. Those who can’t deal with failure won’t learn to earn success, I believe.
I believe that I am committed to overcoming my failures—ranging from physical (marathon running), family (repeatedly yelling at my kids), and work (losing a big case—I’m a lawyer)—in large part so that I better master tools that I can pass on to my kids. I want to teach my eight-your-old how to learn to forgo crying when he loses and instead become even more determined to practice. I want my seven-year-old to learn not to cry when he stubs his toe or feels his legs burn during an uphill bike ride. I want my five- and three-year-olds to have composure when I tell them they can’t have a chocolate treat for breakfast. Tantrums have no place in life. Yes, kids are young and can’t be expected to forgo all childish emotions and reactions (we as adults can’t even do this), but I think I have more ability to help them overcome failure based on my marathon experiences, and if I keep at my goal of conquering the marathon, I’ll be even more help to them.
With my wife’s blessing, I may just try to conquer Boston and the three-hour marathon this fall. Perhaps I am truly lucky that I was 13 seconds too slow, that I’ll have to keep pushing my limits, and that that I am not talented enough to crush the marathon with ease—that I will have to scratch and claw to place myself in a position where I might be able to reach my marathon goals.