I ran my first marathon, the Baystate Marathon in Lowell Ma at the age of 41. My finishing time was 4 hours 35 minutes. My primary goal was to finish. My training plan was simple. I would keep extending the length of my training runs until I could finish 18 miles. I figured if I could finsh 18 miles in training, I could certainly do 8 more miles in the race. I did not do any speed work and I did not include any pace based runs in my training. Nutrition plan was to eat pasta and carbo load for a month, then bring a bottle of gatorade with me when I ran the marathon.
My first marathon was ugly. I think I hit the wall around mile 16. From there to the finish it was a mix of running and walking. After I finished there were some speed bumps in the parking lot. I had to walk around them because it was too painful to lift my legs.
A year later, I ran my second marathon, the Marine Corp Marathon in Washington DC. My primary goal was to finish in under 4 hours. I trained harder and did include some pace based runs, but no speed workouts. I was able to finish in 3 hours 58 minutes. I still hit the wall at about 18 miles and I did do some walking after that.
The 100th Boston Marathon was scheduled for April of 1996. In the beginning of 1995, I set a goal to qualify for the 100th Boston. I grew up the next town over and had always watched the Boston Marathon. Based on my age, I needed to finish a marathon in 3 hours and 25 minutes in order to qualify. That meant I needed to cut 33 minutes off by best finishing time. I joined a running club and started going to weekly track workouts. I pushed myself to keep up with faster runners. This gave me the confidence to start increasing my pace on training runs. My training program included a schedule of races at increasing distances. My goal for these races was to run each one at a 7 minute pace. I started with a 5K, then a 10K, then a 10 mile, and the last one was a 15 miler. I managed to complete each one at around a 7 minute pace. My longest traing run increased to 20 miles. In October of 1995, I completed the 1995 Baystate Marathon in 3 hours 12 minutes. I had cut 46 minutes off by best marathon time. More importantly, I had qualified for the 100th Boston Marathon.
Since then, I have qualified for and completed 7 more Boston Marathons. I did run the 2013 Boston Marathon. I was fortunate to finish the Marathon about 2 minutes before the bombs went off. My heart still goes out to everyone that was impacted. Three spectators were killed and over 100 people were injured. People that witnessed the bombings will never forget the sites they saw that day.
The next year, 2014, was the Boston Strong marathon. The support for that marathon was unbelievable. All along the 26.2 mile route the crowds were six plus deep. When I ran the marathon that year, I just kept giving people high fives and thanking them for their support. I did not care what my finishing time was, I just had to be there.
I have been lucky enough to run about 30 marathons in total.