About me
Like so many other baby boomers, my life was shaped by the social waves of my youth. In 1964, days before my 10th birthday, I was on vacation with my family. We were very likely on our way from Albuquerque to the annual parental family get-togethers in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa. We were in a motel somewhere watching televised images from the moon. The images were transmitted from Ranger 7 as it hurtled toward its planned demise on the surface of the moon. Each image was displayed with a caption: “Live from the Moon.” Interspersed with the images of the moon were shots of buzz-cut engineers in white shirts at Mission Control. The caption for these shots said “Live from JPL.” They were obviously really cool – they were at Mission Control and they were on TV! I announced that I wanted to be one of those guys at JPL. My Dad told me a bit about JPL and informed me that Caltech was a mighty and awesome place to study science and engineering, and that it would be the school of choice for me on my quest to be on TV at JPL. I immediately vowed to make it to Caltech. The space race had decided my future.
I did, in fact, enroll at Caltech eight years later in 1972. Unfortunately I had never stopped to find out what scientists and engineers really did or how they did it. In my heart of hearts I was an artist and this fact was confirmed by teacher comments from report cards prior to the summer of 1964. At Caltech I got a whiff of science, and found it was not my scent. It was clearly not going to get me on TV as I had imagined back in 1964.
I stumbled along at Caltech for a while before realizing I really should be somewhere else doing something else. I eventually ended up back in my hometown of Albuquerque studying computers and software at the University of New Mexico. Back then software was the perfect place for an artistically inclined, semi-technical, somewhat lost person. I grew a beard and a pony tail and wore sandals. I did not, however, wear suspenders.
I dabbled in classes of all kinds looking for the sense of purpose I’d enjoyed between 1964 and 1972. But nothing quite filled the void until I fell in with a bunch of runners at a summer job in 1976. That group ran for fitness and would never have thought of racing. At another summer job in 1978 I was introduced to another group of runners with more specific ambitions. The American running craze was going full tilt, and it swept me up. I got in my head that the Boston Marathon was the must-do event of a lifetime. I had a goal.
I bought some Nike Waffle Trainers and picked a marathon to run in Albuquerque in October 1978. My training was pretty wrong-headed. There wasn’t much good advice out there back then or, if it was available, I didn’t find it. I ran 20 miles every Saturday and ran as fast as I could all the time. And I didn’t carry water with me. I broke down big time just before the planned event and lost interest in running for a while. A long while
I resumed running ten years later. By this time I was living in Bend, Oregon. I started thinking about a marathon again. And I had the good fortune to meet an amazingly wonderful woman who had recently run a 3:30 at the California International Marathon. She became my running buddy and helped me train with more intelligence than I’d had in my prior effort. Her guidance got me to and through the Portland Marathon in 1991. I ran a 3:17:47. I needed a 3:15:59 or better to qualify for Boston. I’d missed it by less than 2 minutes. I could have been excited that I was so close to my goal. Instead I was bummed out that all my effort had failed to deliver the prize.
Work and other demands took priority for a few years and I fell out of the running habit again. But I was lucky enough to marry my running buddy and coach. As I approached 50, I realized I needed to get back in shape. I ran Portland again in 2003 (3:54) and in 2004 (3:54 again) – and started fantasizing about Boston again. I’d need to run a 3:35:59 or better. Portland is very convenient and has always allowed registration at the last minute, but I don’t like the current course (it’s quite foul compared to the route I enjoyed in Portland in 1991). So I signed up for New York City in 2006. New York was incredibly fun! I ended up with a 3:43, but I had a ball.
I was within 8 minutes of my coveted Boston Qualifier so I really applied myself in 2006 with the idea that it would be “the year.” I picked Chicago because it’s supposed to be fast. Chicago has start corrals with required qualifying times, so it is much more orderly at the start than is New York. And my wife’s best friend from half-a-lifetime-ago lives in Chicago, so it seemed like the place to go. I chugged across the line in 3:14:48 and finally had my Boston Qualifying time.
So, of course, I went to Boston in 2007. I was curious what would happen to my motivation after Boston. Would I feel as if I’d accomplished the mission and want to move on or would I be motivated to see if I could continue to improve? It turns out I’ve felt a little of both.
And I guess that’s what this blog is about.
