On Six

Was it just two weeks ago that I broke my blogging silence? Answer: slightly more, but pretty much, yeah. And did I call that one, “Take Six”, whereas I’m calling this one “On Six”? Answer: yeah, but that is purely a convenient coincidence. And when you read this story, should you assume that the last episode was an intentional setup for this one? Answer: Not on your life. Really. It wasn’t.

Sure, I hadn’t published in ten months (nearly eleven, but who’s counting?). And sure, I said it was anyone’s guess as to whether I’d run the Virtual Boston Marathon, with the smart money resting on No. And yes, I did run it a few days later. But it wasn’t a setup. I didn’t know. Trust me on this.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that my previous post saw the light of day on the last day of August. Truth is, it came out under dark of night somewhat after midnight on the first day of September. Having failed to poke my head above water since last October, I felt a weird drive to publish earlier than the month before hitting a solid year of silence. And I came so close to getting it done, missing by about twenty minutes, that I backdated it into August. Call it cheating, and shame me. I know this sounds weird. It just mattered at the time. And this confession matters now, why?

Because that was Tuesday, the first of September, and so far as I knew, there was no way in purgatory (or lower) that I’d run Virtual Boston. Sure, there was a part of me that wanted to do it, but the event window was opening in mere days and I had run a grand total of nine laps around the track – two and a quarter miles – since swapping the running shoes for the bike shoes back in mid-May. And that was absolutely the truth. At that moment.

The very next day, my clubmate Dan turned things up-side-down. 

At noon on Wednesday – yes, the very day after posting that it’d be nearly unthinkable that I’d run a “VBM” – Dan pinged me: “Do you think you could run a half marathon? Would you join us for the first half of our Virtual Boston on Saturday morning? We’ll go slow! I promise!”

Game on.

Now, the idea of showing up and running any distance with a group that would have to figure out what to do when I crumpled into a ball by the side of the road after a few miles was simply ludicrous. But as I’ve said often before, the runner mentality doesn’t rule out ludicrous.

The idea that I’d join them only to run as a pacer or companion for the first half alone wasn’t so much ludicrous as it was a defiance of logic. What’s with this halfway stuff? Why suffer just for that? And me pace them? Seriously, don’t you have that a little backwards? Hey, if I’m in, I’m in.

But I was by no means in. At least, not yet. Not having run only nine laps three weeks earlier.

So I check my calendar and yup, I’ve got no meetings for the next hour. I lace up the shoes and go out the door and, well, let’s just see what happens.

Serendipity happens.

We all know that we run together not only because it’s socially enjoyable, but because in doing so we drive each other forward almost subconsciously. You stop thinking about everything that hurts and you focus on good conversation. But doing anything together of late has been fraught with risk; we all know that even seemingly healthy people can be asymptomatic carriers in the Age of COVID. So I certainly haven’t been calling people up to run or bike or hike with (though I’ve toyed with the idea a few times). But as I noted, serendipity happens.

Less than an hour from Dan’s ping, when I step out the door, a (different) friend I haven’t seen or chatted with in a while runs past my driveway. Like this was all planned. I call out, he holds up for me to waddle up to catch him, and we end up cruising a few miles, blissful chatter making me ignore the fact that my body hasn’t run since, when? Which, to be fair, it really didn’t seem to be minding. Rolling home a whopping four and a quarter miles later and feeling fine, I figured Saturday could happen. But I wasn’t going to commit. Not yet. Let’s at least pop in a few more miles on Thursday, and maybe even a loosen-up jaunt on Friday.

Here’s where I say, “Wait a minute, how old am I, and how long have I been doing this? And don’t I know what’s coming by this point?” Denial is powerful. I really thought I’d run a little more before Saturday. I should have known better. My body has been consistent since, oh, let’s say, forever. There’s a three-day recovery from these first-time-for-anything efforts. From the bodily insult on Day Zero, we move to Day One, where the muscles aren’t happy. Then we hit Day Two, also known as Max Burn Day, which is just that. Day Three brings the fire down to Day One level, and the next day we’re in the clear. This, for me, has always been. The weeks-prior track laps had been so slow, with breaks in-between, that they didn’t trigger the sequence. False confidence. But galivanting off with a friend at a real pace (not fast, but at least a pace in the neighborhood of what Dan had planned for Saturday), well, yeah, that pretty much did it. The clock was activated.

Now you’re doing the math and you’ve quickly realized that time may be flexible in the relativistic space, but not here in normal life, and there wasn’t enough of it. From that run on Wednesday, hmm, then Day One, muscles certainly hurt, I’d better rest. Then Day Two, Max Burn Day, landed on Friday and it was indeed quite the burn; running on them now would probably extend it so I’d better not. And yes, that puts Day Three on… Saturday. Mid-day, really. So no, we’re not out of the woods by early morning Saturday. Not even close.

Having thus not gotten out the door again, that meant Saturday rolled around not only with legs still afire, but with a mere six and a half miles on my running odometer since May. Sweet.

And that brings us to the wordplay section of our story. Those of you who have ever done a track workout with me know that one of my old wisecracks is to tell the group that we’ll start (whatever interval we’re doing) on six. Then I’ll start counting, “One! Two! Six!” and bolt. My fellow runners get a humorous break during the workout, and they catch on after the first few times.

So it is. We go on six. And so it was on Saturday.

Now, Dan’s VBM course started at his home in Hudson, a few miles north of my home, and headed due south to the Boston Marathon starting line in Hopkinton, which happens to be exactly a half marathon (you really can’t make this up, the distance just works out; it’s eerie). This meant we’d be running through my town, bypassing my home by just a mile or so. Not knowing how this whole VBM would go, I told Dearest Spouse that I might be home within the hour.

The rest is almost a foregone conclusion. Quads, hamstrings, and at least one calf were angry by the very first block from our socially distanced start (which admittedly was virtually impossible to maintain for twenty six miles, though we tried – at least at times) at the chalk start/finish line Dan had laid down in front of his home. Everything north my waist was hunky-dory; the cycling had done it’s work for cardio health, and my brain was deluded enough to ignore the rest, a good thing since the southern half hurt early and just got worse as the day wore on. But chit-chat, ribbing, bad jokes, and even, late in the day, truly horrendous singing kept us going, the three of us who planned to go the distance, and a fourth (later joined by a fifth) along for camaraderie, plus the roadside assistance from Dan’s wife and other friends. I hand Dan a lot of credit for setting all this up – even getting the club’s show clock for the finish line – and for policing our pace to a fault. Riding a wave of adrenaline of stupidity, I cruised past the bail-out-for-home point and just ran. Slowly. Casually. Somewhat painfully. Yet enjoyably. This really was fun

In Hopkinton, we tossed in a loop around the traffic island in front of the common just to ensure we didn’t end up a hair short, which wouldn’t have mattered, since the Virtual Boston Marathon Official App failed miserably: it couldn’t measure distance (twelve-point-oh at the half marathon… cool!), so the results had to be submitted manually anyway. As the saying goes, you had One Job… But we knew the distance and we knew what we did. (The app also failed again later trying to submit results. OK, you had Two Jobs… but hey, it was very good at supplying meaningless rah-rah. Whatever.)

Somehow the Hopkinton cop who cheerfully stopped traffic and seemingly took six pictures of us on the starting line managed to never hit the shutter, so we settled for some disorganized selfies instead. And then we headed north, where, as you might expect, slow and painful became slow and painful at twenty-something miles, a different thing altogether. We’d swapped our southbound pacer companion in Hopkinton for another, so while Marathoner Things One and Two lumbered steadily on, pacer companion Charles dutifully stuck with me when I hit the inevitable walk break zone and dropped back a bit. But by that point it would have taken Jock Semple pulling me off the course to keep me from finishing this foolish folly, and even that might not have worked (it didn’t work for him many years ago, right?)

To add a bit of ironic circular closure to the feat, around mile twenty-three we passed the home of that very same friend who’d distracted me on Wednesday’s run and helped me convince myself that this was a potentially possible stupid thing to do. And there he was, out working on the lawn, getting a front row seat to my soon-to-be successful submission to stupidity, marveling at what he was mostly, but not entirely, not responsible for. A few miles later, it was in the books.

If you don’t count those nine laps around the track back in early August, this was pretty much zero to marathon in three days flat. Not to say I wasn’t in good shape from the cycling and hiking, but, well, they’re clearly different muscles. It was by far the slowest marathon I’ve ever run, even counting those uber-casual Groton Marathons. But that entirely casual approach made it fun, right up to the end.

And technically, I didn’t need to do it. The Boston Athletic Association had announced that not running this would not interrupt any Boston Marathon streak, though in generosity they simultaneously stated that doing it would count toward extending a streak. So call this a freebie, number fourteen, and since they’ve basically grandfathered qualifying times into the next edition, fifteen could be in the cards, if the event even happens and I’m able to move when it does. After that, the likelihood that I’ll requalify for future years is doubtful. Heck, in the few brief runs I’ve taken since that day, I can’t fathom how I managed twenty six at all.

But hey, you never know. I didn’t expect to run any marathon on six, either.