Qualifying for Boston

Finishing the Honolulu Marathon in 2004.

In a Facebook status update on Friday, April 19, I noted the following:

“An eerie realization hit me this morning as pain from the surgery finally started to heal: 10 years ago, I wrote an essay that Runners World and subsequently Island Scene (an HMSA publication in Honolulu) ran about a dream to qualify for the Boston Marathon by age 50. The dream didn’t materialize. It strikes me that if it had, this past Monday’s tragic Boston would have been the one I would have run. It also strikes me that I am on track to run my first successful marathon this fall in several years. It feels as if divine intervention works in many ways. So my marathon this fall will be dedicated to those who were at this year’s Boston and the courage and passion they showed in the face of a horrible tragedy. May there be many more Boston marathons to come. May I qualify to run one of them.”

Because of the wisdom-tooth removal and resulting fog I have been in for the past several days, the events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon have been coming at me as if it were a dream. The clarity sharpened as I visited the oral surgeon this morning and got some relief for the pain I’ve been feeling.

If I had followed through with my dream, to qualify for the Boston Marathon by age fifty, this very well might have been the Boston I would have run. It’s a marathon that had some very tragic consequences, consequences that took me back to my second Honolulu Marathon, when a man who finished just in front of me suffered a heart attack and died at the finish line. He had met his goal of finishing in five hours.

It’s odd that as this marathon was occurring — Boston in 2013 — I was not running but consumed by a surgery and the recovery from it. It feels equally odd that this Boston occurs as I once again find myself feeling good physically and eager to train for and run a good marathon. I have been grateful for the restoration of my own physical vigor: being able to finish a 5K in thirty-two minutes, running six miles in seventy minutes, finally being on what feels like the winning side of a lifelong battle for good health, personal and emotional strength, and spiritual peace. It feels interesting that I will complete a successful marathon this year, the year that I had dreamt of qualifying for Boston.After I wrote the words “I will complete a successful marathon this year” I felt as if I had set an intention. That setting of intention seems like the link that was missing in all of the marathons I completed in my forties, the marathons that didn’t get me closer to Boston. While all of the marathons were meaningful in their own way, it struck me that I really did not set an intention with any of them. Not like I did with my first marathon and my second one.
For my first marathon, the intention was to train to build self-confidence and self-discipline. To stick to a program and to compete for good health. For my second marathon, the intention was to see the marathon through, even though the training had started late, even though other desires and goals were competing for my attention — a new interest in romance, my PhD exams, a suddenly kindled desire to call myself a creative writer.
The idea of embarking on a training program with an intention in mind came from Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.” I first encountered Covey’s ideas as a reporter for The Seattle Times; my friend Grace Alvaro Caligtan suggested I revisit them in 2000 at a time when I felt as if my career, life, and health were floundering. Covey suggested setting an intention and writing a personal mission statement tied to that intention. I followed his lead for the first two marathons. Then, the idea got lost in the thicket of life.
It might have looked as if qualifying for Boston was my intention. But was it? Literally?

Looking back, I think the answer is no. I always wanted to run and train for good exercise and good health. I was competitive about keeping to my training schedule, but I didn’t care that much about going fast. Plus, I knew dozens of runners who were far faster than me. I wanted to run with them in community; not run against them to win races and compete.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think what I was defining with Boston was a symbolic achievement. The ability to be fit for life. Fit enough to be able to complete marathons, not just the races (which are the icing on the cake) but the regime of training, upon which the icing is placed.
In my forties, I completed seven marathons. At age 40, I scored a PR (or personal record) of 4:29:30. After that, the times got progressively slower, first because of injuries and then because I lost my focus on self-discipline and confidence building and just kind of shuffled up to the start line, hoping to do my best. Problems mushroomed around me in terms of my health: my blood pressure and cholesterol levels soared; my weight started to climb into obesity ranges; I was diagnosed with hyper-tension and at a possible risk for diabetes; I was drinking too much wine and other alcoholic beverages on the pretense that I, as an athlete, could take it.
I began a slow rehabilitation 2-1/2 years ago, after joining Empire State College and crossing the country in a rented SUV with my husband and four cats. When I left Seattle, with the words from the unofficial state song “Louie, Louie”, “hey gotta go now” as my Facebook status update, I promised myself to leave the negativity in my life at the shores of the Pacific. I’m not sure I succeeded, but I did began a turnaround in my health and fitness, buying a weight scale, establishing a regular time for exercise, agreeing to take medications to control blood pressure and cholesterol rates, and eating more healthy foods. I lost weight in increments of ounces — not pounds — over two years and slowly regained my health. One month after I turned fifty, I did not run the marathon that would qualify me for Boston, but I did face up to the fact that my drinking had become more of a personal liability than an asset and gave it up. With that sacrifice, I feel I effected a kind of truce between the demands of work; the economic circumstances that have seemed to act as obstacles to achieving real goals; and the determination to make those goals the center of my life once and forever.
So with the intention set for Marathon #10, the Adirondack Marathon set for September 21 at Schroon Lake, NY, my goal is to complete a successful marathon, by qualifying for Boston. I know I will have qualified for Boston if:
1. I stay off alcohol for the duration of the training and beyond.
2. I continue to eat healthy foods.
3. I continue to meet my short, mid, and long-range writing goals.
4. I stay committed to a spiritual practice.
5. I serve my students as well as I can.
6. I wake up each morning with eight full hours of refreshing sleep in my body, and embark on each day of training with happiness, eagerness, and resolve.
7. I cross the finish line on September 21, feeling satisfied with myself, my accomplishment, and wanting to do another one.

Call these the seven habits of a lifelong athlete.

To qualify for Boston literally, I would have to complete a marathon in 4 hours and 15 minutes.   To qualify for Boston symbolically, I will have to achieve a far more difficult task, which is to remember the real reasons I run and why the training to get to the starting line is far more meaningful than the medal and t-shirt handed out at the finish line.
I will let you know on September 21, if I qualified for Boston.