A Bus Ride I Will Never Forget and Pre-Peak Week Thoughts

I don’t know what’s currently crazier: the fact that it’s snowing in Illinois in April or the fact that I’m one week away from my taper for the Illinois Marathon. Within the last three weeks since my last blog post, I have put up some serious good volume by closing out the month of March with 288.23 miles. Some of the key workouts I have put up in the last 3 weeks include a 3-2-1 tempo ladder workout, an 8 mile progression working down to tempo pace before Spring Break (graduate researchers don’t take time off though), 10 mile tempo at 6:38 pace, treadmill intervals working down to 6:15 pace, and a 14 miler at sub-marathon goal pace. These have all been in the past three weeks (and I’m still not listing some key workouts)! Since my last blog post, I have ran with the newest Brooks Adrenaline GTS model, and I will actually break in another pair starting tomorrow to give myself the opportunity to use either of the shoes for the actual Illinois Marathon race. I have had a lot of skepticism regarding the chance for myself to even attempt a Boston qualifier, but now I am steadfast in trying to put up a legitimate race to qualify to run on Patriot’s Day in Boston.

Logarun summary of the last 5 weeks of running

Splits from 3-30-18 14 mile marathon-pace run

I am 22 years old and fall under the 18-34 age qualifying bracket given under the Boston Athletic Association. The Boston qualifying standard is 3 hours and 5 minutes, which is roughly between 7:03 and 7:04 pace for 26.2 mile. For perspective, the Wolf of Wall Street is 3 hours through the credits. This time is not a minimum cutoff; it’s just the standard. Due to space limitations of 30,000 people for the race, the actual qualifying time is slightly faster. For the upcoming race in 15 days, runners had to be 3 minutes and 23 seconds below the standard to even qualify. This means the slowest time that somebody between the age of 18 and 34 could run to qualify for the Boston would be 3:01:37, which is a 6:56 minute/mile pace for the marathon. This just shows how competitive it is to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

If you have friends or family that have run the Boston Marathon or consistently qualify, they are incredibly talented. This margin under the qualifying standard fluctuates between the years, but from my best guess I believe it might actually continue to increase due to the growing popularity of the marathon. Below is a screenshot of the margin of time under the qualifying standard necessary to run the race between 2012 and 2017. Last September, seeing the crazy 3 minute, 23 second margin terrified me initially when Boston acceptances came out. Now with less than 4 weeks remaining until the big day, I embrace the challenge. I really do feel like I am applying to graduate school again, but this time it’s a lot more competitive. I feel like the odds are stacked against me, but that’s why I want to do it. I know I can do it. That is why I have to shoot for a finish time around 3 hours flat to 3 hours and 2 minutes.  There is a likely chance I fail miserably and won’t even PR, but it’s the only shot I got to chase Boston.

Margins under the Boston qualifying standards from 20012-2017

I’ll share a personal anecdote in this blog now. This story really holds strong lessons that I carry with me everyday not just as a runner but also a person.

The Greyhound Ride to Indianapolis

On November 4^th, 2016, I was waiting at the Illinois terminal waiting to take my bus to Indianapolis the night before the Indianapolis Monumental Half Marathon. Although Indianapolis is only 2 hours away from Urbana, I didn’t want to drive due to parking issues. We were supposed to depart at 2:00 PM that day, but the bus didn’t arrive at the specified time. “It’ll just be 10-15 minutes late,” I thought. No big deal. Ten minutes turned into twenty minutes, which eventually turned into an hour. This hour turned into two hours. I anxiously pestered the Greyhound attendant for any information, but she said she hadn’t heard anything from the driver. This was surely going to screw up my race plan. I was going to get my pre-race dinner in very late. I wouldn’t have enough time to stretch and go through my pre-race routine. There was going to be no way I PR. All my work that season was going to crumble away due to this late bus.

4:45 PM, the bus arrives. I get on the bus, and it’s full of pretty rowdy people who were connecting from Colorado. These people had been on the bus for a super long time and were restless. A couple men in the back threatened to kill the bus driver due to how she treated them during the earlier part of the trip. They complained that they were dehydrated and that the bus driver didn’t do enough to take care of how they were feeling. I subtly drank away at the meager amount of water I had that I needed to hydrate myself before the race.

A scraggly-looking man across the aisle from me asked me for the time. I politely checked my phone and told him it was 6:00 PM. I continued to stress about how much later I was going to get into Indianapolis than I expected, especially due to the time difference. The man asked me about myself: who I was and what my aspirations were. I told him that I aspired to be a scientist and was currently applying to PhD programs in Electrical Engineering. The man, who was pretty vulgar but all together pretty nice, said I had great ambitions. I was a little hesitant to talk to him at first since he had called the bus driver some pretty vulgar and sexist names over the first hour of the ride, but he was nice to me.

The man asked me if I listened strongly to my parents and if I respected them well. I responded yes, and he immediately cited that it was due to my Asian heritage. I laughed, and he started telling me about himself. The man said he came from a very rich family that was tied into the United Airlines Business (I guess they are probably not that rich anymore though due to some recent mishaps…) and that disputes between him and his parents caused dissent between them. He really wanted to be an engineer, but couldn’t afford school by himself. He eventually fell into a life of drug addiction (heroin and cocaine) and struggled to make ends meat. He couldn’t find a job, and his family stopped supporting him financially and emotionally. I started to notice in the dark of the bus how untidy the man was and how bad he smelled; he really did look homeless. I didn’t know what to say to the man, but he told me not to feel bad for him as he made many mistakes in his life.

The man told me he had a myriad of health problems due to a drug-filled lifestyle and that he had neglected seeking medical treatment for some of his issues due to a lack of health insurance. He said it wasn’t until the past three of four years where he really started to notice strong pains in his stomach and in his mouth, so he inevitably sought out whatever medical help he could seek. This man found out he had stomach cancer and that the verdict didn’t look good; he was terminally ill. He said he full under a deep depression after he had found out about his terminal illness. Dealing with his sadness, he came across National Geographic magazines that cheered him up with sights of nature across the United States. That’s when he told me why he was on the bus: he wanted to use his remaining months left to tour the United States. This was his final stage of life. He told me that if you wanted to achieve something in life, you have to commit to it. He told me that chances in life are rare and that you needed to take every opportunity you had.

Greeted by an old high school friend working in Indianapolis, I got dinner at Noodles and Company that night around 9 PM (the lines were super long from other marathon runners) and was able to get into bed by 10:30 PM on my friend’s couch. I couldn’t fall asleep that night. All I could do was think about the death sentence that life had given that man and how his decisions in life led to his ultimate demise. Without about 2-3 hours of sleep from that night, I ran easily what was the best race of my entire life: a 1:23:16 half marathon. I credit that race to the man I met on the bus. I never even asked for his name.

The final stretch of the 1:23:16 half marathon

There isn’t a day where I don’t think about that man and the lessons he shared with me. That’s why with less than four weeks left in this training cycle, I’m ready to give it my all. This following week will be my peak week with my final 20+ mile long run before the marathon. It will be the height of my training in terms of overall volume (I might shoot for 70 miles this week depending on how things go) and intensity. This week will test me both physically and mentally, but it will serve as the apex of my training before I hit this final 3 week taper. I’m ready for what this final segment of training has for me. I’m ready to give it my all to give a legitimate and potentially foolish attempt for the Boston Marathon. 

27 days remain.