The biggest concern I really had about running Boston on so little training was actually whether I might just stop caring at a certain point. This was Boston, a big deal, a race I have always loved. however you know the race is going to hurt, that is part of the experience, feeling that pain, but if you are untrained and you are going to run a personal worst, is it still worth the pain? A visiting friend advised me to set a shiny new goal - ie just finishing, but even that seemed a bit hollow. Then after a Friday practice with the distance runners on the track team I had a more interesting revelation.
I had resurrected a workout I had heard of from Laurence's Middle School Coach back in Pennsylvania. Coach Bialka was a young enthusiastic collegiate runner who was teaching English and keen to connect the kids to effort over result. He had let them run 'unlimited 400's' they would begin with one and run at a pre-determined pace solely based on their race times until they added time, although they each had to do 5, they could easily tank the 6th one and be out of the workout, Several of them did just that, but many went on. I got an excited email from the Coach that evening telling me that Laurence and another boy had amazed him with their tenacity as they ran 7 seconds ahead of pace for a total of 16 laps, with only a short rest interval. He actually had to pull them in from the rain as practice should have been over half an hour ago and the rest of the watching team was anxious to leave. He wondered if he had been right to stop them, but he was worried about the backlash if parents came to pick up kids and he still had them out on the track running in the rain in 7th grade.
So five years on I decided to try the same workout. I had all the runners commit to doing 8 laps at their goal 2 mile pace, which was 15 - 30 seconds faster than their current two mile race time. After that if they were 5 seconds off pace they would have to stop but would stay to cheer on their team mates. As the workout went on, my expectations kept shifting like quicksand. I had produced charts to record the splits that had 16 boxes as a maximum - soon the volunteers were adding boxes within boxes as the team continued far beyond the 16 required. Suddenly I realized beating 16 was going to be possible for many of them. A few younger runners started to drop off, some that had been injured decided sensibly to bow out. A freshman girl said she felt unwell so we dramatically dragged over a giant trash can and asked her if she had one more repeat; turns out she had 7 more One boy fell to the ground in sheer disappointment and punched the ground in frustration as at 19 he was out and he had desperately wanted to get to 20. The track got quieter as the sprinters and jumpers and hurdlers headed out for their Friday night entertainment. Still we had 3 girls and 7 varsity boys still keeping pace, the other runners started to take bets on who would be victorious and win the gatorade for the last man or woman standing. At 25 we started dropping the pace for the boys as we were worried this could go all night; they now had to run 2 seconds below their average pace for the workout, which was in some cases already ahead of pace. At 20 we did the same for the girls and at 25 laps the girls jointly ground to a halt having completed an impressive 10k of 400m. At 27 we dropped pace for the boys again by another 2 seconds, still they hung on. Finally at 31 we told the boys they were done; they did not drop out we had to stop them. Many of those runners reported feeling levels of exhaustion and effort they had never felt before, but they were proud of their accomplishment and felt that they would always remember how tough they had been that day. Perhaps prouder than they had been of any race.
When I asked the team the next day what they would have done if I had told them they were going to run 31 X 400m at an average of 70 seconds per lap getting increasingly fast they said they would have either thought it was Aprils Fools and laughed, or turned and fled the track. Not one of them thought they would be capable of such a feat. So why was it they all achieved such dizzying greatness on the track that night. They had not considered further than one lap at a time. They had moved as one large group, in a pack, with the same order repeated almost every time. They were running not thinking in a hypnotizing, mesmeric moving meditation, without fear of how many more they would have to do. At any point they could have dropped out or ran so slowly they were eliminated, but they chose to run each time. There were occasions when one might end the quarter and say they were 'done' and but after the recovery jog of 200m they were back in it again. Without being aware at the time it turns out they totaled over 13 miles on the track that day.They had eaten the elephant one bite at a time but they had no idea how enormous that elephant would turn out to be.
It made me realize that as runners we often pysch our selves out of races. We consider too far ahead how much pain we might be in down the road; trying to project ahead instead of focusing on the here and the now. I decided that was how I would run my most untrained Boston - one mile at a time, not considering what might come next, nor worrying about how many miles I might or might not get to. Who knows maybe at 26.2 I might throw in a few cool down miles back to the hotel this time for a celebratory glass of cherry juice.
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