This was obviously never going to end well.
But I think I’ve gotten Boston out of my system now. At least until I stop being such a fat slow useless shit, and since that’s never going to happen, I’m done. I had one decent Boston already, and I should have quit while I was ahead.
It doesn’t matter if I manage to do everything right — it still just blows up in my face. There were some other contributing factors, sure, but the main problem is that I am me, I suck, and nobody can tell me why or how to fix it.
The plan was to start out “slow,” with no miles under 7:30. It’s downhill, which means that pace shouldn’t be too difficult, but when you add in the hordes of people running, it’s kind of hard to run faster. 2021 was incredible with the reduced field size… this was just ridiculous. It becomes even more important later on…
Warm temperatures were expected. I wasn’t overly worried about this, since it’s not like it was going to be 90°, and I generally handle the heat better than most. (Or I used to, anyway. These days I don’t handle anything well.)
The problem is that when there are a bunch of people descending upon fluid stations at once, some of whom decide to come to a dead stop and enjoy their beverage instead of grabbing on the go, it turns things into a bit of a clusterfuck. I lost like ten seconds at each fluid station because of this — sometimes twice, because in attempting to do everything right, I was going for both Gatorade and water. Some of those cups had about a tablespoon of liquid in them. It was hard to get the cups, and once you did, there was hardly anything drinkable. I got very thirsty, very fast.
The first eight or nine miles were okay, from there to about the halfway point were a huge struggle, and then I decided to just give up. It was going to be a shit show anyway, and I didn’t see any point in making myself suffer more for no good reason.
I don’t think there has ever been a marathon in which I was so repeatedly tempted to quit. Not even Boston 2018. It was frustrating to keep running into people every time I tried getting water (sometimes to no avail), it was frustrating to not be able to move away from the people hurling their sweat all over me, it was frustrating to be running yet another crappy race, and I just don’t want to do this anymore.
Speaking of Boston 2018, this was my slowest marathon since then, and my fourth-slowest ever. I’d say I don’t think I’ve ever blown up so spectacularly before, except that I didn’t blow up so much as I gave up. There is no point. My body just won’t do it, and nothing I do or don’t do makes a shred of difference.
Garmin recorded 26.42 miles (aided by pointlessly weaving for water) in 3:27:21, 7:51/mi. Officially, 26.2 miles in 3:27:18, 7:55/mi. 8786/25528 OA, 2083/10912 F, and 1556/4649 F18-39. Odd that I managed to beat my bib number, but since I qualified for this when I was already incapable of running fast, my bib number wasn’t that low anyway. (Yes, I am aware that for some people, 3:27 is an amazing result. Please don’t throw that toxic positivity in my face: I am not those people, and those people are not me, and comparing us is ridiculous.)
Physically, it was surprising how not awful I felt afterwards; I was fully expecting my knees to give up the ghost, since I didn’t get to do quite as many long runs as I’d have liked to get them accustomed to it, but they were more or less fine. My quads were a bit sore, but that’s it. This means I didn’t fall apart because I went out too fast on the downhill start: my legs would have let me know about it if that happened, and loudly.
Mentally, well, that’s another story. The self-disgust and self-loathing is just my everyday state now and so not even worthy of mention, but I am also very sad. I’m especially sad that I ran over 24 miles to get to where NJR was, and I went right past them in my invisibility cloak. I saw them, but they did not see me. This doesn’t really surprise me because I apparently go invisible a lot during races, but it still makes me sad.
All I know how to do these days is be sad. That’s it.
Running Break 