My Motivation: What Running Boston Means To Me

As a runner, by default, I’m a creature of habit. Before every marathon I’ve run so far, I often like to make a list of 26 names for whom I’m running. I do this so that for every single mile, I have someone to imagine a conversation with in case I get bored and need motivation to get through the rough patches. Some people use mantras, others hum songs, but this is what I do to inspire myself as I’m running the course. This time however, as I sat down to construct the list of names to be used on race day, my mind drew a complete blank, which was somewhat shocking. So I asked myself a simple question. For whom are you running the Boston Marathon? What does running Boston mean to you? I waited patiently for my mind to settle on an answer and this is what it’s telling me…

Boston is not just another marathon. The course, the crowd, the history, the tradition, and the athletes, combine in a powerful and magnificent way to create a magical experience that is unlike any other. No matter how many previous other marathons you’ve run before or how many others you will run, this marathon is and always will be a special race. It is your First Boston. You’ll be honored and cheered, celebrated and congratulated more than ever before as you run the course, for the simple act of receiving the privilege to toe the line in Hopkinton is already an accomplishment all onto itself.

So even though you’ve run other marathons in dedication to family and friends, both virtual and real, this one for all intents and purposes, is strictly on you. For the first time in a long time, they’ll be very few friends on the sidelines looking for you. There won’t be the usual personal cheering zones at assigned street corners scattered along the course as you’ve come to be used to. There won’t even be Flyers station handing out PowerGels at Mile 19. This is Boston, Lam, not New York, but you’ll be fine. You’ll be more than fine. You’ll run a spectacular race in a historic marathon and will love every second of it.

But if you should have trouble and feel out of sorts on the course, remember the long months of waiting and tedious hours of training it took to get to where you are today. Remember how you ran a 3:11:33 in 2006 and missed out on the BQ by 33 seconds. Remember how you finally qualified a year later in 2007 NYC and still couldn’t run the race the following year because you broke a collarbone and couldn’t run for months. Most of all, remember how hard you’ve trained this winter, out in the snow, out in the cold, when it’s dark and gloomy and slippery and wet, and all that pushed you out the door each day was the passion to run and the resolve to prove to everyone else around and most of all to you, that you are a decent marathoner and deserve to run Boston. Yeah, remember that, because this has been a long journey, and you’ve come so far in preparing your body to run with the very best out there that day. Laminator, you have a date with destiny. Seize the race, run your heart out, take no prisoners, and enjoy the ride!

This is what my mind is telling me as I’m packing my bags with race day now just four days away…