Good day! When I first started drafting this edition of the newsletter a few days ago, I wrote that I didn’t feel the need to do the Boston Marathon ever again. It had been a goal of mine to qualify for and run it, and I achieved that. But now that I’m just about a week from the race and my body is mostly healed, I want more!!
It is a very hard course, one that I suspect benefits those who have run it multiple times and know all of its literal ups and downs. My plan was to be conservative in the first half, which is almost all downhill, in order to preserve my quads and take on the hills in the second half, then crush it to the finish. I was conservative pretty much the whole way. In retrospect, I think I could’ve gone a tad faster in the first half and pushed myself more in the last five miles but I was scared of being more uncomfortable than I already was. This is an important lesson if you plan to run a marathon: It will get very uncomfortable and having a good race is about sitting with the discomfort and pushing yourself further into its hold. I don’t think I pushed myself that much further into the discomfort, even if I felt my nail separate from my big toe at mile 25.
I made a concerted effort during the race to keep looking up. This was a definite mood-booster; because the Boston Marathon is a rolling course, whenever you look ahead of you, you see a wave of people either running up or down the next hill. There were a few times during the first half when I thought about stopping and dropping out, for no reason other than that I was bored. I was running at a comfortably hard pace and trying to be patient for the eventual Newton hills. Whenever a glimmer of a thought like “let’s just call it a day” crossed my mind, I imagined batting it away with a fly swatter. It worked, I guess.
The only other thing you should know (just kidding, you really don’t need to know—but this is my newsletter and I share what I want) is that I got my period the day before. What a fucking drag! As I was waiting in line for the plebeian porta-potties before the race, I thought about how women really can’t have it all and decided to fight my way into a roped-off VIP section by waving a tampon in the security volunteer’s face. I still had to use a porta-potty but it was extremely clean. I’m sharing this with you because it was one of my proudest moments of the day. Speak up!
I hope all of this doesn’t scare you away from running your first or next marathon. Training for and running 26.2 miles is extremely fulfilling and one of my favorite things to do; I can’t recommend it enough, toenail drama and all.
Elaheh
Proud of you for finishing. Even better that you did not use the subway as another had done.