Runner's Words

Usually the build up to a big race, especially a marathon, would be the most productive time for my blog. A combination of feeling like I have a story to tell, allied to a lot of time out there training alone with only my brain for company usually means a healthy slew of content to bore you all senseless with.

For some reason this time around it hasn’t really happened, despite this being probably the biggest running adventure of my entire life. I’m a week out from THE BOSTON BLOODY MARATHON and yet we haven’t had a single blog post in 2023, and none at all since the initial “I’m running the Boston Marathon lads” post just before Christmas.

I’m not quite sure why it’s ended up like this. There’s a lot to tell! A full on, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to run the oldest annual marathon in the entire world. Proper bucket list stuff, and something I never, ever thought I’d ever get a chance to do. The BOSTON BLOODY MARATHON BABY. And yet I’ve churned out fewer blogs than I did for a virtual marathon in 2020 where I literally just left my flat for a few hours and then came straight back.

So where to even start with this one? It’ll be my eighth marathon, but one quite unlike any I’ve ever done before. I mentioned in my last blog the challenges posed by the race itself – basically the hilliest marathon I’ve ever done, coupled with the unpredictable weather – but there’s so, so much more to it than that. It’s been a journey to get to this point.

I suppose it makes sense to start right at the very beginning. Once I’d had my place confirmed, the first job was to pick a suitable training plan and map out the next few months of my life, and knowing the unique course profile of Boston with the various undulations I began to wonder if the Hansons plan which had served me so well over recent years was suitable this time around. Boston is probably the hilliest of the six majors, taking in nearly 900 feet of climbing, with a lot of that in the latter stages of the race where it’ll hurt the most. A bit of hill training sounded like A Really Good Idea – an additional challenge living in such a flat area of the UK – so I did something I’ve never done before and took a couple of plans from the official organiser’s website, tweaking them to fit in with the life events that would crop up between now and then, and that was that. I had a plan in place and I was all ready to roll.

Then I got injured.

Touchwood, I’ve been pretty lucky over the years with injury, with nothing major causing a chunk of time away from running. Don’t get me wrong, there’s been a few niggles here and there, and yes the aftermath of having COVID messed me up a bit last year (2022 as a whole was a bit shit, to be honest), but to date I’ve never had an injury that’s made me think “this is actually properly serious” before. Until a couple of weeks before the expected start of my 20-week training plan for the 2023 Boston Marathon anyway.

It started with a tiny “feeling” in my achilles, before becoming a bit more than a niggle, before finally becoming a pretty big issue and actually forcing me to stop running for a bit. I was struggling to even walk up and down stairs, and if I caught it the wrong way, it was agony, a feeling of a fiery poker being jabbed in the back of my heel. For the first time since falling out of a shopping trolley and fracturing my shoulder in 2003, I had to go and see a physio. My marathon could be on the line.

I was told my balance was “shit” (it is) and that one of my two legs is “tight” (I didn’t realise it was), meaning my achilles was carrying all the load and starting to complain about it. A lot. It all sounded – and felt – pretty serious but as soon as I did what I was told, it started to get a little better and gradually the pain receded, the mileage increased, and I’m sitting here typing this off the back of a nearly-complete 20-week training plan with almost every session of substance in the bank. Sometimes, you just have to listen to the experts.

Those early weeks were hard though, especially before I’d officially started the training plan. Trying to stay motivated to head out for a run in the dark and pissing rain while coming back from injury, and without the drive of having a weekly structure behind me, wasn’t easy. I love the times in my life when I slip into “running when I want to” mode, rather than when a training plan is telling me to, but sometimes after doing it for a while the motivation to actually head out the door can start wane a little. Give me a target and a plan though and it all usually starts to come back to me. Lo and behold, as soon as I started to get stuck into the first couple of weeks of my brand-new routine, the motivation began to come flooding back to me, especially as my injury started to clear and I had more confidence to push myself a bit.

I also did what any self-confessed running shoe geek would do in this situation to get the old motivation back and duly refreshed my rotation, chucking out a few older lads over the 500 mile mark and bringing in some suitably lairy ones to take me through the journey, and in the case of the orange lads at the back left, probably the race itself.

Things were back on track, and now with most of it all behind me I can say that the training itself was a real challenge at times, but overall a good one. First of all it’s nice just to be doing something a bit different, as mixing it up a bit from what I’ve been used to has been great in terms of helping to stay on top of the mental battle if things became too repetitive though those dark, winter months. Variety is the spice of life and all that, although I’ll be very glad to never have to do another 800 metre hill repetition in my life if I can help it. One of my favourite pubs in the world sits on the particular ramp I’ve been up and down more times than I care to remember on Tuesday evenings, and I strongly suspect I’ll be experiencing a mild form of PTSD in there for years to come.

There’s been the usual challenges as well with trying to fit all the sessions around LIFE and all that. The first big obstacle was a 14 mile run on New Years Day to pick the car up, and it didn’t get much easier from there with some major family events falling in amongst it all. Without putting too much pressure on myself for any sort of time for this one though it’s been more than doable to shift a few things around here and there to make it all work as best I could. It’s generally gone well I think, and as someone who has spent well over a decade as a marathon runner avoiding hills where and when I can, I can safely say those Tuesday repetitions felt a darn site easier at the end of the plan than they did the beginning.

Finally, there’s the logistics of the bloody thing. My last two marathons have been on my doorstep (quite literally in the case of 2020’s virtual effort). Here I have to plan for everything about a week in advance and factor that into my packing, with the additional layer of uncertainity with Boston’s famously unpredictable weather thrown in. I know I shouldn’t check this far out, but in the last two days alone the forecast has veered from high 20s, sunshine and no wind, to showers with a 20mph headwind, then to chillier and sunnier, and now currently it’s saying rain with a 20mph tailwind. I’ve seen people say 2018’s freezing cold washout with 40mph headwinds wasn’t even forecasted THE DAY BEFORE THE RACE so I have no idea how to plan at this stage. The general advice seems to be: pack everything. And hope for the best.

There’s also a LOT of planning for the day itself. It’s a quirky race Boston with its own traditions, part and parcel of being the world’s oldest annual marathon. Unlike the other five majors which more or less circle around the city they’re run in, it’s point to point from a little town 26.2 miles down the road from the finish line. To get there for the 10am start time I need to leave my hotel about 5am, travel into Boston, and get a shuttle bus all the way out to the start. I’m a man of routine at the best of times, but even more so on a marathon weekend, so I have no idea at this stage where to eat, where to poo, where to get my morning coffee, or anything really. And then on top of that, even the stuff I should be able to control, like my taper period, has gone out the window as I sit here typing this with a stinking cold, which might mean sacking off any runs at all between now and raceday to give my body time to recover. Last time around my taper week was over 50 miles. There’s a very real chance this one could be zero.

Everything is so far outside my regular comfort zone for a marathon that I haven’t quite got my head around it all yet, but what helps all these doubts and anxieties is the fact that for me, the 127th Boston Marathon is the victory lap, not the race with any pressure on it, at all. I’m calm about it all. There’s no time target for the day. My last marathon I needed everything to run like clockwork to hit that sub-three to qualify for this one, and even then I only just made it. Here, who cares? Yes, I could go all in and try and get a time to qualify for the next one (Chicago?) but it feels like such a waste of the occasion, not to mention all the stress of trying to do it with all the things that could go wrong. Just enjoy the day man, as best you can while running 26.2 miles anyway.

The similarities to London 2017 are stark, and the long and short of it is exactly the same: I’ve done the work to get here, so drink it all in. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to run one of the most famous races on earth. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to get to the end. If I need the loo, I’ll stop for one. If I see my wife on the way round, I’ll stop for her. If anyone is offering beers like the lads at mile 10 of the Great North Run, maybe I’ll stop for that. And then all being well, in around a week’s time from now, almost to the minute, I’ll stop for one last time just after that famous finish line on Boylston Street to claim my second marathon major star, nearly five years to the day since my first. At this rate I’ll have that six-star medal in 2043. No more marathons, and all that.