The Jacket

The last several (ok, seven) weeks have been very difficult for me. The thought of blogging about my trials and tribulations filled me with superstition, with paralyzing laziness, and as the weeks passed, with guilt for not blogging more.
Here's what happened. I had a crappy half-marathon in Hyannis--I had wanted to run a 2:30, which would have put me on track for a 5:20 marathon, but a combination of bad weather, fatigue, and cockiness left me at about a 2:36 or so (I never even checked my official time). That's about the same, or slower, than I ran my first half in Maine in 2007. Now, I know that in the grand scheme of things, 6 or 7 minutes doesn't make a whole lot of difference, and I've never been a competitive runner who cared about time. But somehow, that crappy, rainy Sunday, those 6 or 7 minutes meant to me that I hadn't improved at all since two summers ago. That all those miles, all that sweat, all that pain, really hadn't changed me at all. I got to the end, saw the time, and started to cry. The worst thing my friends could have done then would have been to say, "6 or 7 minutes really isn't that big a deal, so don't worry about it." Fortunately, my friends are runners. Instead, they said, "Sometimes, everybody has a bad run."

The week after that, we were scheduled for a 16 miler in Wellesley. As soon as I started, the nagging calf pain that I'd been having for weeks started up. Usually I acknowledge the pain, deal with it, and after 2 or 3 miles it leaves me alone. This time it got worse. At 5 miles, I was nervous. At 6 miles, I started stretching like mad. At 7 miles, I was scared. At 8 miles, I decided to stop. That was the first time ever, I think, that I quit a run due to injury. I was terrified that I was doomed, that Boston was a pipe dream. I got a ride back to the community center and found Coach Kelly, who told me that my muscle was probably way too tight, and that what I needed to do was ease off the running, cross train, and ice and stretch aggressively.

I felt like I was at a crossroads: not yet out of my reach, Boston would require all the careful, conservative diligence that I'm generally terrible at. Half an hour on the elliptical the following Monday killed my leg, so I was torn between wanting to rest up and wanting to push my cardiovascular fitness the way I knew I needed to. I saw my chiropractor that Friday and told him about my calf. He's always been really upfront with me about marathoning, and he told me that if I planned to get to the start line, I needed to get my butt in physical therapy ASAP.

I spent that day at work getting my new health insurance in order, so that I could find a doctor who would give me a quick referral to a PT (that's what they call a physio in the US). The first appointment I could get was a week later, so I took it, but I knew I needed to start PT way sooner than that. I remembered a PT named Erin that had spoken to our team a few times, and treated several of my friends--she was a marathon runner and had coached Team in Training before--but all I could remember was that her name was Erin and her practice was in Copley Square somewhere. After emailing all the runners I knew, I got her email address and sent her a desperate message. She got back to me over the weekend, telling me to come in on Monday, and not to worry about my referral. A good PT is a runner's totem: if all goes well we don't need them, but as soon as things take a turn for the worse, they're there to challenge us, heal us, and steer us back onto the right path. Marathon season is nuts for them: Erin comes early, stays late, and packs more patients into a tiny clinic than you could ever think possible, all because she knows we need her. She's amazing.

It was a week of exercises, icing, and electric shocks before she said I could run again--2 easy miles on the treadmill, with strict orders to stop if I felt any pain. I'd be lying if I said I felt no pain at all, but those 2 miles felt so good I could swear I was flying them. Erin cleared me to go back to practice, with strict orders to run SLOW, and 10 miles max (everyone else was doing 18). My leg was tight, really tight, but not painful, and I finished the ten miles feeling ok physically, but very nervous: how could I possibly run 26 miles if I was falling this far behind in my training? I ran the last 5 miles with Sarad, who's always excellent at talking sense into me--I'd run 12 with everybody else the following week, in the mini-taper leading up to the 20 miler, and then we'd see.

A few days later, on Erin's table, I shared my fears with her. She told me that there was not a doubt in her mind that I'd make it to the finish line. I told her that made one of us. Then I burst into tears. That explosion of anxiety somehow made it all better--she was the expert, after all, and if she said I could do it, then I had to quit worrying and just focus on getting better. I cross-trained like a madwoman, and ran the best 12 miles ever! I barely walked at all, and finished pretty strong. I felt great! I knew that I couldn't run 20 miles the following week: after all, the longest distance I had run was 15, four weeks earlier, and my calf was still not in top shape. I really wanted the confidence that would come from a 20, but I also knew that I'd rather run the marathon than the 20 miler. The next Wednesday I saw Erin--she hooked up the electrodes to my calf, and had me doing a calf-and-quad exercise against the wall. It hurt while I was doing it, but I thought the pain was strengthening my muscle. It hurt all day long, and all day Thursday--I skipped my Thursday evening run and got on a bike instead. Friday morning I went back to Erin, who stretched me, massaged me, iced me, and calmed me down. I promised I would do just under 18 miles, stopping at the fire station in Newton instead of at Center street with everyone else, skipping the strain that the Newton hills would put on my calf.

Saturday was early--I woke at 5:15 and met Karen and Katie in Davis at 6 for the ride to Wellesley. People that I'd never seen came out of the woodwork for the 20 miler. We got our singlets, heard a few great dedications, and piled onto buses to join the caravan out to Hopkinton. Every charity was doing their 20 miler yesterday, and we had perfect weather for it--cool but not cold, cloudy at the beginning, the sun came out about an hour into the run and it got warm, but not hot. Milling around in the town square by the start line, I got so excited that I had to remind myself to start slow--really slow. The first few miles of the race are downhill, and the biggest mistake runners make at Boston is to take the beginning too fast, leaving nothing left in the tank for the hills that start 17 miles later. There were so many people on the road that cops and cyclists had to keep us all in line (unlike Marathon Monday, the roads were still open to traffic!). I picked up the pace a little after about 4 miles, probably more than I should have, but I still felt great--a little tightness in my hamstring, but no pain at all in my calf. Every town we passed (Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton) got a cheer. Our waterstops were 2 miles apart, and my plan was just to run from one to the next, one to the next. After 7 miles, we got into familiar territory, and I really settled into the run. My plan worked out well until the 8 mile stop turned out to be at 9 miles, my hamstring was super-tight, and I was getting hot in my long-sleeved shirt. We finally got to the stop right by Lake Cochituate, and the fatigue that I had just started to feel left me entirely. I stretched my legs, ate a gel, stripped down to my purple singlet, took a walk, and kept going.

The hills up to Wellesley college at mile 13 are always a little tough, and I kept waiting for the fatigue, waiting for the pain, and it just never came! It wasn't until we passed the college and hit the worst two miles--between the college and the community center, where every intersection looks exactly the same--that I started to feel it. At mile 15, we reached our starting point--the Wellesley community center--but I had to keep going. The long downhill into Newton Lower Falls was ok, but at the bottom I realized that both my legs felt like bricks. I was dragging. I walked up the hill over route 128, down a little dip, and up and across the street to the Newton-Wellesley hospital--less than half a mile, I think. Then I started to jog again, just one foot in front of the other. At the Woodland T stop, I got back in the zone. All of a sudden, the fire station was just ahead of me. I had done it! We turned the corner, and I knew that I could keep going--I knew that I could make it up the hills. Fortunately, I also knew that I shouldn't push myself. I said goodbye to my running buddies and wished them well for their last two miles, and hopped up on the table of an infinitely kind and patient volunteer PT from Marathon Physical Therapy who stretched me out right there on the course. It was more than an hour before I could get a ride back to the community center, but I could have floated there, I felt so good.

The Jacket. It's bright blue, it has bright yellow stripes, it has the logo of the 113th Boston marathon on the back, and I finally feel like I earned the right to buy it (along with a pair of official Boston running tights and a cute yellow unicorn tshirt). I spent ages staring at myself wearing The Jacket in the mirror before I got into bed. I'm too superstitious to wear The Jacket outside until I've finished the race, but I'll tell you: it looks damn good.