Boston: The Aftermath

Boston wrecked me, body and mind. I didn't get as sick after the race as I did after Houston 2020, but the difference was that when I ran Houston sick I was at the very beginning of the illness (became sick the day before the race) whereas with this one I was in the middle of it. I keep coming back to beating myself up about running so much worse this time being sick than I did in Houston, especially because I wasn't wheezing this time and I was in Houston, but I think it was just timing. In Houston I hadn't lost my strength yet and this time I had. I took 5 days off running post-marathon, tying my PR for days off that I set after Houston. On day 6 I woke up itching to run so I did - though slowly. Right now I feel like it's going to take me forever to feel normal again, but that is probably dramatic and I am vowing to be patient.

I had a great training cycle and I know the fitness will help me in the future, though currently I feel too weak to believe it. I am thankful that I had two solid [but not perfect] races this season with my 50k and 20k, plus five for-fun training races that were really enjoyable. I wish I could celebrate my performance in Boston, but I can still celebrate the training cycle. Pre-race someone said something like, "You don't have to wait to celebrate your race; celebrate the successful training that brought you here!" That is hard for someone who is performance-oriented to swallow but I really did love the training, every crap weather bit of it!

It's also hard to swallow the end of my sub-3 streak; I hadn't run over 3 hours since I broke it for the first time in 2016. I am sure no one but me cares that I've run 14 (and counting, hopefully!) sub-3s instead of 14 consecutive sub-3s, but it saddens me. However, the streak was not worth a Boston DNF to me so I don't regret that part. [Although this solved my dilemma on whether or not to count my 50k marathon splits as sub-3s, with Frisco being sub-3 but Prairie Spirit being 3:00. I can say they both go into the count without changing the streak, meaning that the streak actually ended at Prairie Spirit and that Frisco counts into the 14 total!

It's going to take awhile for me to come back from this, but I really do love running every day, so I will focus on that privilege. During the race I heard the song "The Dance" playing, which is an odd song to be playing at a race, but it really resonated with me. I could have missed the pain of a sickly much-slower-than-goal marathon, but then I'd had to miss the thrills of the training cycle and the racecation memories that will last forever.

“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.” - G.K. Chesterton