See Me Squeegee

What I’m about to write shouldn’t matter.  Terrorist attacks are terrorist attacks and, actually, tragedies are tragedies.  Whether it’s a mall or a bus or the World Trade Center or the finish line of the Boston Marathon; whether it’s a bomb or an electrical problem or a heart attack…tragedies are tragedies.  But…Boston.  Boston sticks with me two weeks later and it will for years.

Boston was an attack on Boston, of course.  And David Ortiz and Paul Pierce and even Neil Diamond stood up.  And Boston was an attack on America, and Barack Obama attended the funerals and we sat riveted as a country as the bombers were apprehended.  Boston hit me for both reasons – I love the city, I obviously love America – but it hits another of my communities deeply.  The Boston bombings hit the Boston Marathon, my favorite race, my most prized accomplishment, and somewhat ironically the Mecca of running.  And since I’ve relived Boston dozens of times in the last two weeks, here are a few stories about what Boston means.

Boston

Boston is the oldest and most prestigious marathon in the U.S.  It’s the oldest continually-run marathon in the world (Athens took about a 2,450-year break).  And you need to either qualify or raise a bunch of money for charity.  It’s the gold standard for amateur runners – if you’re wearing a Boston Marathon jacket in the running community you’re big-time.  You wear Boston on your sleeve; if you’re trying to qualify, everyone knows because you’re going nuts trying to do it.  If you’re qualified, you’re bona fide (rhyme intentional) – every local running store or track club has a “Boston Bound” group, a sendoff meeting or team photo or t-shirt.  I’ve run a lot of big-city marathons – Chicago, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit, Los Angeles – and none compares to Boston.  Boston is…it’s Boston.

Dad

When I was a kid, my dad really got into running.  He ran the New York City Marathon, the Chicago Marathon, the Detroit Marathon… I’d ride my bike next to him while he ran on Saturdays in the summer; in the winter, my brother and I would jump around on the high jump mats at the Track & Tennis Building at U of M while he ran laps, and then we’d hold his feet down while he did situps.  And every April we watched the Boston Marathon on tape – he’d record it while he worked on Patriots Day (only a New England holiday) and we’d watch it that weekend.  That course was magic…I knew the Hopkinton start, the Wellelsey Scream Tunnel, the Newton Hills, the Boylston finish.

And so when I was a senior in high school and my dad finally qualified for Boston I understood – I thought I was a legit athlete, captain of the swim  team and such – and it was a huge accomplishment for Dad.  But I didn’t really know.

He qualified in November, and around New Year’s we took a family ski trip.  On the last day, on the last run, Dad took a spill.  We made it to the lift in time for one more but he  called it quits – a huge sign in retrospect – and we took one more run while he settled in.  He drove home with ice on his leg and got back to Boston training.  The race was in April, after all.  And so he ran into February – Tuesday night speedwork, weekend long runs into the 14-15 mile range  – for a full six weeks before he finally figured the enduring pain in his leg was something worth talking to a doctor about.

So he went to the doctor, got an x-ray and…it was broken.

Yep, broken.

That’s the power of Boston.  My father ran – and ran hard: speedwork, distance runs – for six weeks on a broken leg, all because nothing was keeping him from Boston.  That’s Boston.

Dad didn’t run Boston that year; he wrote a letter to the Boston Athletic Association and they gave him a deferral.  When he did run it I was in college and tracked him online while the race was broadcast on ESPN.  When he returned home, his friends had toilet-papered the house and planted a sign in the yard with his name and finishing time.   Grownups.  That’s Boston.

Me

I hit the 20-mile mark of the Toledo (Ohio) Glass City Marathon about ten seconds ahead of my Boston Qualifier pace.  The only problem – a mile earlier I was closer to 25 seconds ahead of pace.  It was all falling down.  This was my sixth marathon, the first time I had ever seriously thought I’d qualify for Boston.  I had been putting in epic work – the South Beach Diet had gotten me down to 140 pounds, I had been getting 11-12 mile track workouts in every Tuesday night to add to my 15-20s on weekends, I was all over crosstraining with situps and pushups and biking and whatever else.  Boston was an obsession – once I got within 9 minutes of the qualifying time that was all I thought about.

I had Sam Adams and Boston Creme doughnuts in a cooler; my dad was there and so was the girl I thought was the greatest in the world at the time, all supporting me and there to share in the glory of a BQ (which every runner knows as the initials for Boston Qualifier).

And it didn’t happen.  I led the race at one point, which should have told me I was being dumb.  I needed a 3:10 – 7:15 miles – and I was on that pace for almost the whole thing, but I ran under pace too long…I left too much out there and when I lost about a minute per mile for the last six I still set my personal best time and placed in my age group.  But it was devastating.  I pouted through the awards ceremony and the next couple weeks.  In my mind you only got one shot every few months…the recovery from going all out on a marathon took a while.  But I had already planned to pace said world’s-most-wonderful-girl to her BQ a few weeks later, so when she bailed out of that race and I had one more shot at Boston I wouldn’t tell anyone and I wouldn’t admit it to myself, but by the time I toed the start line the dream of Boston consumed me.  I was ready to suffer.

My mom cried when I told her I had qualified.  My dad didn’t answer the call – when he called back ten minutes later he said something like “either things went horribly wrong or incredibly right, but this is too early for you to be calling me after this race”.  I ran 25.2 great miles and one excruciating one – not that it hurt (it didn’t) but that I knew I had it unless I cramped, pulled a muscle, fell down…  And, shoot, I’m a regular guy so the grandiosity isn’t really there, but I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier than crossing that finish line with a qualifying time.  Boston, man. Boston.

Boston

The cruel punishment of qualifying for Boston is that you, you know, have to run Boston.  It’s an epically tough course that only real runners understand. The net elevation is negative – how hard could it be?  But Boston ruins your legs.  It’s an amazing course – a slight downhill out of Hopkinton through Ashland and Natick into Wellesley.  The “Scream Tunnel” in Wellesley where the all-women’s college makes you feel like McCartney or Timberlake for a full mile and you have no choice but to lift your knees and push the pace.  But then you hit Newton, Hell’s Alley, and Heartbreak  Hill.  The downhills and the pace you tried to push just trash your legs; the crowd support is amazing but it makes you think you’re invincible when reality is you’re not…you pay for it in Newton and Brookline.  But you enjoy it too.

Before you get to that point you take the bus from Boston Common to Hopkinton – a 45-minute trek that reminds you just how long the race really is.  You bond with fellow runners, you hang out at Athlete’s Village, you hear war stories from everyone’s qualifier, you realize you’re running – to quote Big Papi – foocking Boston!!!!!.

So when you hit Boylston, that finish line that America now knows as synonymous with Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma City, World Trade – you’ve run 26 miles hoping to get to that point and you’re running .2 miles that you hope will never end.  That turn from Hereford Street to Boylston Street is a dream come true – you see the finish line, the Boston badging, the crowds…it’s everything you worked for.  After Boston I listen to that NCAA Tournament closing song “One Shining Moment” and, yeah, I tear up a little…”and all those years, no one knows, just how hard you worked, but now it shoooows….”.

The finish line at Boston isn’t the finish line of a marathon.  It’s the finish line of several marathons.  You have to have an epic marathon to even get to the start line of Boston.  The finish line of Boston is the finish line of your dreams if you’re a runner. And that’s why the Boston attacks hurt even more, that’s why the running community just keeps running to cope.  The Boston Marathon finish line , yes, is a mass collection of people and I guess a good target for terrorists.  But it’s more than that – it’s the culmination of dreams, a place you suffer over and over to get to.  And that’s why it’s that-much-more devastating to me that it’s a nightmare for so many, a place of real suffering and not self-inflicted “suffering”.

I don’t know how to close this.  I’m still shell-shocked from Boston.  The last time I was in Boston, a business trip last December, I had about four hours to kill before I had to get to Logan to catch my flight.  I walked a little Freedom Trail, got some chowdah at Fanieul Hall, strolled around Fenway, and made sure I walked the finish line.  That’s Boston to me.  That attack hit America, it hit Boston, and it hit athletes everywhere.  For runners, that’s not just one finish line, it’s the finish line.  It crushes me that it’s the not just the greatest finish line of my life, it’s the actual finish line of three people’s lives.