Lessons? Maybe.

It’s funny how the mind works. How, if you let it empty, it sometimes fills up with just what you need.  

As I started my run yesterday, I couldn’t help but recall the first time I ran parts of yesterday’s route. It was winter 2001. I was with my friend – I’ll call her Cheryl --  and two of her friends, men who had a few decades on us and were battle-scarred marathon pros.  We parked one car behind the shops at the corner of Centre Street and Commonwealth Ave., near the Boston Marathon 20-mile mark. 

The four of us piled into another car and drove the marathon route backwards: up and down the Newton Hills, left at the fire station, over Route 128, up through the heart of Wellesley and its pricey boutiques and coffee shops, past the pretty buildings of Wellesley College and through the red brick expanse of downtown Natick. We stopped a couple of times to hide gallons of water in bushes along the road.  I remember just one drop-off place with any accuracy: the big stone church in Wellesley near Marathon Sports. During the annual BAA charity training run at the end of March, Dana Farber always has a huge water stop there.  Whenever I see the DF stop, I always remember the first time I stopped there. 

We ended our drive in the parking lot of an industrial park near the Natick-Framingham line. I’m guessing this was around the eight-mile mark. Then we ran the course to mile 21 in Newton, which is where the Boston College campus begins.

When we were done, we walked back to the car for a mile or so I think. It’s all a little vague now. I don’t remember exactly where we started or ended. I don’t remember if it hurt or not, I don’t remember whether the air was cold or warm. I do remember chatting with Cheryl for most of the run and being so grateful for her company. I can recall this with some accuracy because we always chatted when we ran and I was always grateful for her company. I remember after the run we all ate Oreo cookies once we got into the car. I remember it was the first time the reality of it all hit me. After years of dreaming about doing it, I was really truly training for Boston. 

Thoughts of Cheryl and our first run on the course brought me to the more recent past, specifically April 18, 2012, Patriot’s Day . The Boston Marathon is run on Patriot’s Day and Cheryl’s son – I’ll call him Anthony – was running his first Boston Marathon, his first marathon ever. Anthony lives with an illness that lands him in the hospital every now and then. The illness is a dangerous one and the hospital stays are not pleasant. (Are illnesses ever pleasant? Are hospital stays?) Last year, 2011, he was in the hospital a lot. Still, he found the strength to train for Boston. 

Normally, mid-April temperatures in Massachusetts tend to stay in the fifties and sixties.  Most marathoners, me included,  consider temps in the sixties to be a little on the warm side. A few years ago, when I ran the Vermont City Marathon, the temps hovered close to seventy. I wanted to die.This year, Patriot’s Day was a sweat bath. Temperatures hit ninety by mid-morning. The sky was cloudless. There was no shade anywhere; no escape from the sun. 

I was captaining the mile thirteen hydration stop, which is on Route 135 in front of the Wellesley Public Library. We were dying just handing out water and Gatorade. One of our volunteers had to drop out. She was simply overcome by the heat. We passed out over 30,000 cups that day. How the assembled herd, nearly 25,000 runners, made it through those 26.2 miles still blows my mind.  

When Anthony showed up at the stop, he looked so fresh I couldn’t believe he’d just run 13 miles. His breathing was good, his form was flawless. He had enough energy to give me a hug and a huge smile. When he waved good-bye, I couldn't help but notice the easy bounce in his step. That day, I saw many runners shuffling and ready to keel over. Anthony was not one of them. I thought of him as I sweated yesterday. I was only at mile two and I was falling apart. I don’t know how he found the strength inside him. I wished yesterday that I had a little bit of it.  

Once I thought of Anthony and his brave run on that killer of an April day, the floodgates opened and before I knew it, there was orange everywhere. In my brain I mean, not on the pavement or lawns. As I plodded along so slowly, up and down my little hills, I pictured all the great runners I’ve gotten to know over the years. Most of them I picture in orange Run for Research singlets because I got to know them through the American Liver Foundation’s RFR charity running team.  

I pictured S, who ran her tenth straight Boston in 2012, for the same little guy I’ve run for only six times. I pictured B, the woman I was meeting for lunch soon. She’s vanquished more medical demons than any person should ever have to battle. My pesky tendinitis? My perpetually blistered foot? Mosquito bites in comparison to the scary stuff she's had to cope with. And yet, she runs Boston every year for our charity. 

And when I thought of B, and the great strength she always manages to muster every Patriot’s Day, I couldn’t help but call up the memory of D. At the same time as I was running my insignificant little course, she was attempting a feat accomplished by just a handful in history: a round-trip swim through the English Channel. A champion swimmer back in college, D ran for Liver for many years before returning to her home sport, distance swimming. Yesterday was her second attempt to swim the English Channel both ways, forty-two miles total, on behalf of Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s charity.  

What would make someone attempt such a robustly crazy feat? Well, she’s quite the athlete to begin with, and she’s already swum the English Channel once. I can see wanting more. Wanting to overcome new obstacles; maybe crush old records. But also, her mother has Parkinson’s. 

Two years ago, when D first attempted her round-trip swim, she had to drop out halfway through the last leg. She started having shoulder problems. Yesterday, she made it all the way to the five kilometer mark. She could see the lights of Dover in the distance. She swam in place for two whole hours, doing her best to overcome the relentless tides that wouldn’t let her move forward. Her crew finally pulled her out of the water.

When I started writing this today, I wasn’t sure how it would end up. I had a lot of false starts. Cut out one whole page and then another. I was trying to figure out the lesson from yesterday's run, because I have found that every long run, good or bad, teaches me something. I ended up here. 

Huh. 

Interesting.