Boston Marathon 2023 Recap
Signing up for races is typically a result of peer pressure, FoMo, or a little voice in my brain saying, “I bet I could do that.” Signing up for a marathon in the summer of 2022 in order to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2023 was a little of all three. Actually getting to run Boston felt like a celebration of all the joy (and pain), people, and experiences running has afforded my life so far, and it was amazing.
When my friend Victor mentioned to me that he and several of our friends from across the country were all planning to try to qualify for Boston 2023 and asked if I wanted to try too, it took me zero minutes to agree. Had I ever run a road marathon before? No. Was I confident that I could qualify? Also, no. Did I want to give up four months of my life in order to try? Absolutely, yes.
Victor helped me come up with a 16-week plan that would work with my time goals and existing travel plans. I wanted to be able to help crew Vic at Western States in June and I also had a work trip in Colorado scheduled for that same month. We looked around for Boston-eligible qualifying races and found one in Oregon in July.
Victor crushed Western out in Tahoe and it was an incredible experience being there.
Following Western, I flew to Oregon where I could stay with friends and run the Sauvie Island Foot Traffic Flat Marathon on the 4th of July. The Flat boasts an elevation gain of 246-ish feet and I qualified for Boston in this race with a time of 3:27:57.
Over the next few months after Sauvie Island, I took some time to recover but tried to maintain a solid fitness foundation. I raced a trail half marathon in August and a trail 10-miler in September, but I otherwise took it easy. All of October, I dedicated to strength training through a free online program called Squatober (its emphasis is what one might imagine given the name), and then I restarted my 16-week training plan in December.
By the time February rolled around, I was becoming depressed by the training program and thought I might cry if I had to set foot on a track again. I decided to start doing all of my speed work on trails and made use of the GPS functionality in my watch to beep at me when I needed to change speeds or when I’d sprinted a certain distance. I also signed up for the Everest Challenge for the month of March through Wild Trails in Chattanooga, so that I could focus on a new running goal while still completing my marathon training. I hit the goal of running the elevation gain of Mt. Everest in the month of March and looked forward to tapering for Boston at the start of April.
On Thursday, April 13, 2023, four days before Boston, I had one final speed ladder planned and was again avoiding running on the track. Instead of trails, I opted for the sidewalk, as the group of us who’d participated in the Everest Challenge were planning to celebrate our achievement at a brewery in town, and I thought I’d be efficient by finishing my workout at the brewery. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice how uneven the sidewalks were, and as they say in Boston, I fell wicked hard. I fully tore one ligament and partially tore another ligament in my left ankle. I skinned the palms of both hands, busted my right knee, hand, and elbow, and I ended up with some odd lump in the middle of my right forearm. I didn’t want to know the extent of my damages officially, so I didn’t go to the doctor until a month later to find out about the ligament tears. I limped home that night (obviously stopping at the brewery first) in so much pain that I thought I’d be sick, and I held it together emotionally until I FaceTimed my mom and told her what happened. My sadness turned into determination though and I made the decision that if my foot could fit in a shoe, I would do the Boston Marathon even if it meant I had to crawl.
I took Friday and Saturday off of running and spent most of my time with my ankle under ice. I flew to Boston on Saturday, two days before the race, meeting up with the group of eight other runners who had agreed to try to qualify for Boston ’23 and had rented a house together for the weekend. We kicked off the festivities with a pasta dinner on Saturday night, at which point I was able to do the alphabet with my ankle and fit my foot into a running shoe (small victories). On Sunday morning, we did a short 3-mile shakeout run, which made me feel confident that I could at least run part of the race on Monday. After our jog, we went to the pre-race Expo. I wish I’d known more about what to expect there: more free samples of health foods and drinks than I could count, free massages, and even salon setups with folks willing to curl hair for free. I limited what sample food I ate, just to make sure my body didn’t react in an unexpected way to anything come race time. We picked up our race packets, snapped a few pictures, and headed to our home for the weekend.
On Monday, April 17, 2023, the morning of the race, the forecast was rain. Everyone in the house had at least one other person in the group with whom they could share transportation given the different waves & heats in which we were running, but our wakeup times were all well before sunrise due to the various stages of transportation it takes to get to the race. Because of the weather, we hired a car instead of taking the T to get us to downtown for checkin. After checkin, we had to pile onto buses from the Boston Public Garden, which took us on an hour-long trip to Athletes’ Village, where the goal was to eat our last snacks and try to stay dry.
There’s no way to store gear that a runner leaves behind at Athletes’ Village, so everyone is encouraged to wear layers that can be discarded or donated. I had an old sweatshirt and multiple trash bags. At the Village, an announcer calls out heats over a loudspeaker, indicating to runners that it’s time to start the walk to the start line, which is a 0.7-mile distance. When I first arrived at the Village, I was standing in an open field walled by porta-potties listening to announcements, but the rain made it difficult for me to stop shivering, and I was nervous about the energy I was expending doing that. I moved under a tent, and I didn’t realize it until after I’d already missed my heat that I couldn’t hear announcements under there. The heats are organized by qualifying time, and I was supposed to be in Heat 2. I took off running when I realized what had happened and tried to make it to the start line as quickly as possible without overdoing it. By the time I made it to the start, Heat 5 was already racing, as was my adrenaline, and the street was the most crowded I’d ever experienced at any race.
The race volunteers waved me through, so I could start right away and didn’t have to wait in line or for a starting gun. I told myself beforehand that I wouldn’t do it, but I did some weaving and dodging to try to get around the crowds of other runners. I was extremely aware of my ankle and was careful not to trip over the grates, ditches, curbs, and other obstacles along the street. Even though the first mile was mostly downhill, it ended up being my slowest mile, because of the crowd of runners. Outside of trying to stay consistent, I didn’t really have a pacing plan. I didn’t want to get stuck behind anyone moving slower than I wanted to run and I wanted to listen to my body and if I felt good, go.
The first few miles were overwhelming and it took me a bit to calm my nerves after missing my heat. My eyes intermittently welled up with tears at the amount of support complete strangers were offering to all the runners, and I was glad in my decision to not wear headphones so that I could hear all of it. I did my best to high five every little kid holding a sign. I knew my manager from work and her family had come down from Maine to support and were posted somewhere after mile 7, so looking for them was my first milestone.
By mile 11, my shoes were completely soaked from the rain, but I was in a groove. Running past Wellesley College around mile 14 was wild. Those girls were so loud (and supportive!), and I actually did see a runner leave the course to go kiss one of the girls with a sign instructing runners to do so and then pop back into the race. By mile 16, my ankle was nagging, but I figured out that if I could maintain my current pace and maybe speed up just a tad, I could potentially qualify for Boston again while running Boston. I was dreading Heartbreak Hill, which is the spot runners hear about the most. When mile 21 finally rolled around though, I felt relieved that my training had been in Chattanooga with hills galore and the rolling hills of Boston didn’t break me as I feared they might.
The crowd stayed strong through the finish line, and I teared up when I received my medal and my space blanket (and qualified for Boston again!).
The post-race festivities were a dream, and I was able to meet up with the Denver and Charleston friends who had all decided to try to qualify for this race in the first place. Those friends and I also run in an ultramarathon in Georgia called FarmDaze, and we were able to meet up with our other friends from that race, “The New York Boys” (they’re from New York). Our mutual FarmDaze friends not running at Boston sent us money for post-race drinks on them, and I think we all maintained our runners’ highs until we fell asleep that night.
Boston was such a fun celebration of the power of running and the joys of reaching major life milestones, and it made my small running community world feel even smaller. My goal for Sauvie Island was to qualify for Boston, and my goals for Boston had to change but ultimately were to finish the race and enjoy every mile, and I feel lucky that I could hit all of these goals with friends and family supporting me along the way. I’m looking forward to the next time I get to train and race alongside some of my favorite people on the planet and will try to remain injury free until then. Here’s to goal setting in 2024, and if you haven’t signed up for FarmDaze yet, you probably should.
