I have never been very good at knowing what I want to do with my life. Thank God I now know what I want to do with my running life: I have recently settled on a specific life-time goal.
In each remaining decade of my life, I want to run a marathon no more than a half hour slower than I did the previous decade. That is, since I managed to run a few sub-three hour marathons into my early fifties, I have as a goal running a sub 3:30 marathon in my sixties. It won’t be easy – I’ve failed two times already, and am not getting any younger. But why stop there? I’ll go for sub four hours when seventy, sub four-thirty, when I turn eighty. I better start training now, since I’ll be turning 80 in a mere 19 years.
Soon after turning 50, I managed to place 25th in my division in Boston. When I run my sub-four marathon after turning seventy I should make it into the top-ten. I’ll likely win my age group with my 4:30 as an octogenarian. And as things currently stand, when I run my five hour marathon at age 90 I’ll be setting the world record. As far as I know, no one over 100 has ever completed a marathon; all I have to do is finish for the record, but I’ll be gunning for under five and a half hours.
Yes – life, not to mention death— will intervene. But as I have sketched out this goal, my enthusiasm for running has revived. For the last several years as I confronted slower times I was stuck in the first two stages of Aging Runner Rage: anger and denial. With my goal, I have moved on to bargaining and the acceptance of my diminishing running powers.
I have a reached a point in my life from which I can look at past goals, achievements and bucket list items and be confident my new goal is a good one. My target should be motivating and rewarding because:
It is not a stunt. I won’t be doing something essentially meaningless that is notable only because it is a rare, like run the New York marathon in a gorilla suit. If I can meet my goal, it will speak to my abilities as a runner.
It won’t be done to impress the man on the street. People will probably only be impressed that I still run marathons; they won’t give a hoot about my time. I, however, will have the deep satisfaction of knowing it was a job well done, assuming I make or come close to my goal.
It is not a streak. I am not trying to run a certain number of races on consecutive days, months or even years. I am not trying to keep a string of marathons going under a particularly good time. I can blow a race for whatever reason, and still try to make my goal. Streaks are dangerous because they pressure you to do something you probably shouldn’t just to keep it going.
It has some flexibility. It is a goal with breathing room. I can take time off for whatever reason and still have a shot at it: I do not have to train every waking moment of every day I am conscious. If it becomes necessary I can even take years off from serious training, then come back to it.
It is not a bucket list item that I am simply buying. I know what it is like to spend a lot of money for the honor of being dragged up a mountain that I had little business being on, solely for the reward of being able to tell people I had been on it. This goal will speak to my achievements as a runner, it won’t be something I bought off the shelf.
So far what pleases me most about my goal is that it is long term. It could conceivably keep me motivated to run for the rest of my life. What could be better?
Author’s note, August 22, 2021 – It ain’t gonna happen; sub 3:30 has become a fantasy time. So what now? Take aging as it comes and try to run the Boston Marathon fifty years after my first one, but that won’t be until 2029.