2026 to date:
books read: nine
kilometres ran: a bunch
kilometres rode: a bunch more
It’s been over a month since I finished the Boston Marathon. It’s long past due time for a postmortem, so here it is. The short answer is, it didn’t go well, but I finished. The longer explanation, now with the benefit of a few dozen days of hindsight, still seems legit, actually. I had a really great training block with nearly 1,200 kilometres of total running, which is right within the vicinity of two of my previous best builds. The difference this time around was the Zwift Ride in my living room that added 1,700 km of cycling to the block. Heading into the taper I felt great. I conservatively pegged my fitness at around 3:12; with my goal to run 3:19 I was riding confidence high. But then about ten days out I got sick. At first I thought it was springtime allergies, but it soon developed into something much worse, and no amount of rest and home remedies could shake it. Just when I thought I was starting to feel better, the Friday travel day to Boston completely sucked the life out of me. So I went to the start line on that Monday morning hoping for a miracle but just wanting to finish with some pride intact. Some plagiarized notes from my Instagram post in the aftermath here. I adjusted my race plan: Go easy for 10 miles then pick it up if I felt okay. But I never felt okay. My breathing was short and shallow as I fought my cough. My heart rate was ten points higher than my normal. I got to 10 miles, lapped my watch and just held on. I look back at my splits through the first 28 km of the race and in spite of the rolling hills I paced like a metronome. One positive. There are full sections that I simply don’t recall at all.
I was a zombie in a singlet. I frequently have a come-to-god moment in the marathon at around 25 km, but somehow this time I even missed that. I remember waking up seeing the 30K marker and wondering how that was possible, and how I was going to make it another 12. But I did. It wasn’t the finish I have envisioned in my mind for weeks, months and years. I crossed the finish with a whimper, collected my medal, found Stephanie, and shuffled back to the hotel. Earlier on here I posted about multiple Boston finishers and how I think that they should get out of the way for first timers. Now I have some cognitive dissonance buzzing in my ear. Because I think I earned a mulligan. I am extremely proud to have earned my spot on that start line. It has been a long, humbling experience to get there, but I earned it. I don’t think I deserve another shot, but I demand one anyway. So I’m going to try again.
April was (is) Poetry Month so I took the gift certificate that had been burning a hole in my pocket since Christmas and went up Main Street to Pulp Fiction, and came away with Mercedes Eng’s Cop City Swagger and Playlist by Michael Turner. Eng’s work is a poetic companion to Alex Vitale’s The End of Policing with the Vancouver Police Department and swagger mayor Ken Sim as case study. Turner’s subtitle “a profligacy of your least-expected poems” is apt. Poems are introduced with autobiographical context and left me wishing the book included an equally contextual YouTubeMusic (because I don’t Spotify, though I’m not convinced one is more moral than the other) playlist. But one of the more interesting things I read during Poetry Month was a Forbes article entitled, How Poetry Is Diabolically Being Used In Everyday Prompts To Get AI To Do Things It Isn’t Supposed To Do. I quickly scanned to any reference to Roger Farr — that’s so inside baseball that only Roger and I might get it.