“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” – Chili Davis.

Going skydiving would’ve been easier…..

Aaron! My eyes widened. I pinched a strand of hair and dashed into the kitchen. Look!

Aaron flashed the alarmed look of someone who had just been overrun by squirrels. What am I looking at?

My hair! It’s grey! I cradled the curled specimen in my palm and offered it to him like a child. Tears streamed down my cheeks.

Aaron stammered, aware of the landmines hidden beneath any conversation that touches on a woman’s looks. Wise beyond his years, he said nothing.

Of course I was graying. Motherhood, the COVID-19 pandemic, turning 40, losing my job, dealing with Washington politics….over the last few years I had suffered enough stress to turn my whole body gray. Rationally, I knew that in my 40s I would hit middle age, go through menopause, turn gray, and lose my speed. But that didn’t mean I was ready for it. I now understood why men panic-buy sports cars in their 40s. Anything to stop the downward skid. But my mid-life crisis package would not include convertibles, motorcycles, skydives, or breast implants. I stared in the mirror and realized there was only one way to turn back the clock. It was time to lace up and run another sub-3 hour marathon.

There were just a few problems. One, I was already 43 years old, well into the Masters runner category where the wheels come off. Two, I was a mom, with limited time to train or perform self-care. Three, my last sub-3 marathon was 8 years ago at the DC Rock n Roll Marathon in March 2016, where I paced my friend Trevor to his first sub-3 hour finish, and also went on to win the race myself. Shortly after, I got married and welcomed my son Bjorn, and then my marathon times floated above 3 hours for the first time in 13 years. I was more than dismayed, I was in existential crisis, realizing after decades of getting stronger and faster, I was now in decline. My friend Sean welcomed me as the newest member of the “old and slow” club.

Now I know how Greg Lemond felt at the beginning of the EPO era in cycling…..

The arrival of super-shoes at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics poured salt on the wound. Just as my speed was fading, everyone else was buying it for $250. Nearly everyone at the 2021 Boston Marathon wore the Nike Vaporfly. The sudden change in pace of people around me threw off my race instincts and seeded more self-doubt. “Cheater shoes” Aaron called them, referring to their enhanced biomechanics. When Aaron finally bit the bullet this year and bought super-shoes, the advantage was pretty dramatic: about 15 seconds per mile, which adds up to a 6-to-7 minute bonus in a marathon. That was enough to turn my 3:04 Boston Marathon from 2021 into a sub-3 performance. The prospect of going under 3 again without changing anything but my shoes was tempting, but I knew that when race day came and I tried to go toe-to-toe with my 27 year old self, I would feel like I was cheating her.

Super-shoes soured road running for me, as I could no longer compete with other runners on even footing, but the technology had not become popular yet among trail runners. So I took an 18-month break from the marathon to focus on trail adventures. I ran Hellgate a second time, I recruited Nora to ride-n-tie, and I learned to mountain bike on single-track in West Virginia. I revived the WUS Tuesday night trail run, which had stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and joined a new Friday morning women trail running group organized by Barry (who is not a woman, but appears to attract them in droves, for reasons that are still up for discussion). For the ultimate summer trail adventure, I headed out to Silverton, Colorado, to pace Trevor at Hardrock.

“Teamwork Makes the Dream Work!” – Aaron Schwartzbard

I had paced Trevor at Fat Dog 120 in 2016 and Aaron at Cascade Crest 100 in 2011, but these were solo acts and I’d never been part of large crew/pace team before. It was eye-opening to be part of a well-oiled team where Anthony, PJ, Ellen, and I each served a different role. Ellen was the point guard, sheering the ship and always having exactly the gear and food Trevor needed. Anthony’s youthful energy was called on to pace the hardest mountain sections. I brought verbosity and comic relief when Trevor was at his low points. PJ, fresh off surgery, was the only one who could rightly claim to be suffering more than Trevor. Together, the Dream Team got Trevor through the toughest race of his life.

It had already dawned on me at Hellgate that support crew was my secret sauce, but I didn’t think crew mattered for a marathon. But I did need new buddies to train with. For years, Aaron was my running buddy, but since Bjorn was born one of us always stays home to watch the kid. So I struck a deal with Trevor: after pacing him at Hardrock in July, he would train with me for a fall marathon and pace me to a sub-3 finish. We settled on the Richmond Marathon in November, which I’d never run before but where Trevor set his PR in 2016. My training plan would be simple: five long runs during September and October sprinkled with a weekly dose of light speed work. With four children under the age of 6, Trevor would train with me when he could.

The Fellowship of the Run

Two other Wussies, Mike and Anthony, also signed up for Coach Aaron’s Richmond Marathon training plan. As soon as our training began in September, Trevor was downed by illness (four kids is TOO MANY kids), making the addition of Mike and Anthony as marathon training buddies crucial to me sticking to the plan. Amazingly, I never had to run a single long run alone in the lead-up to Richmond. Each training run included different combinations of Trevor, Anthony, Mike, and Anthony’s Pacer’s friend Duy. We were the Breakfast Club of marathon training. Anthony was the pot-smoking hippie, Trevor was the Mr Perfect prep school golfer, Duy was the fun gay Asian (which was not in Breakfast Club, to the detriment of the movie), and Mike was the quiet guy in the corner who was silently trolling everyone.

Mike, Anthony, Trevor, and Duy made up my marathon training Dream Team. They laughed at my stories, followed my routes, kept a spirited but conversational pace, and never made me do anything un-marmot like pick-ups at marathon race pace. One evening in October, Mike completed my marathon training by taking me out clubbing until 3AM on U Street. After all, running a sub-3 hour marathon meant learning how to be 27 again. After years of refusing to train for marathons, my enthusiasm for road running shot through the roof.

Why did I refuse to train for marathons? For many years, “training,” “road running,” and “the track” were all bad words that Aaron and I rarely used in our home. I came of age in high school and college running environments where eating disorders and over-training were rampant and caused long-term health problems. My father was always pushing me to train, and I always resisted. Aaron spent years trying to convince my younger self that my marathon PR of 2:55 was soft and with the slimmest amount of training I could break 2:50. My brain knew Aaron was not my father, but I still couldn’t control the reflex. I was honestly scared of training. I knew too many women over the years who lost their periods, under-ate, and damaged their bodies. Besides, Why fix what isn’t broken? Having sub-3 marathons dialed in was good enough for me. But by age 43 (and with some intensive therapy), I was finally getting over some of these hang-ups. Being young and beautiful in your 20s is fun, but being comfortable in your own skin in your 40s is better.

My second victory was even bigger: saving WUS. During the COVID-19 pandemic our Tuesday night trail running group runs stopped like everything else. When everyone was vaccinated by the fall of 2021, I tried to restart the runs. But I kept finding myself standing alone on the curb in front of Cleveland Park Bar and Grill because no one else showed up. Only Aaron knows how despondent the marmot became on those nights. We had bought our house in Cleveland Park partly for its proximity to the WUS bar. Some of my most cherished friends — including Aaron — I met at WUS. Trevor does not recall, but he made a couple of clutch WUS showings during October of 2021 that kept WUS going on life support until others began to show. Puff does not show up often, but when he does, it counts.

But DC is by nature a highly transient city and WUS goes through boom-and-bust cycles as crops of young runners arrive and depart, temporarily joining the old guard of regulars. Trevor and I were barely keeping WUS on life support, just the two of us, when a new crop of youngsters emerged. Suddenly we were having beer miles again and bucket brigades.

I assume no one from Dojo reads my blog

Aaron and I are in many way opposites. He’s an introvert, I’m an extrovert. He’s methodical, I’m whimsical. He’s vegetarian, I’m a carnivore. He trains diligently for marathons, while I do one confidence-boosting long run (at least 13 miles) a couple weeks before the race and declare myself fit to go. But Aaron and I align conceptually in our world view and core beliefs. When it came to course-correcting Anthony’s rookie marathon training mistakes, we offered the exact same advice. At first, Anthony was running all his training runs at his expected marathon pace (6:30). He ran every day on the same stretch of Beach Drive, at the same 6:30 pace. After a couple weeks, he was so burned out and bored he vowed never to train for a marathon again. Aaron and I impressed on him that he did not need to run marathon pace every day. He especially did not need to run marathon pace on long runs. Nor did he need to run roads every day. Here we spell out the “Marthon” Cardinal Rules for Marathon Training:

(a) Long runs should be a comfortable clip, neither excessively slow nor fast, maybe 60-90 seconds slower than expected race pace. You should be able to converse comfortably. If you’re feeling very comfortable towards the end of the run and wish to pick up the last 4-5 miles, that’s okay, just don’t do anything that is going to require more than a day or two recovery. Because later in the week….

(b) You should do a session of speed work. Again, this does not need to be arduous. You don’t need to do mile repeats. The purpose of these is to improve running economy and improve your biomechanics and efficiency of stride. If you’re having difficulty getting the right body conformation during these pick-ups, you might need to include some pliometrics (if you don’t know what these are, there are many instruction videos on YouTube). I typically do not wear a watch or record my runs, but for Anthony’s sake I began to wear one and post my activities on Strava, so he could see that light speed work could be as simple as three or four 800m repeats.

(c) The long run and the speed work are the two pillars of your training week that are going to give you the most benefit. Focus on nailing those two days, and the other days are just recovery and endurance building. As we emphasized to Anthony, it is perfectly fine to mix in some trail runs on those days. If you enjoy partying, you can do that any night of the week EXCEPT the two important nights before the long run and speed work.

(d) If possible, try not to lose weight during marathon training. Certainly, do not diet during marathon training. It may be tempting to believe that you’ll be faster if you can shed a couple pounds, but I’m afraid that ship has sailed by the time marathon training begins. Your body cannot handle the load of marathon training without full fueling.

(e) If you want to compete against others for prizes/BQs/OTs, you’re going to need to get super-shoes. If you’re going to wear super-shoes in the race, make sure you do at least one long run in them prior to race day.

(f) Many marathoners take a training approach that focuses on being able to run hard for longer. If they can run their desired marathon pace (say 6:30) for 12 miles, they try to extend the distance they can maintain that effort from 12 to 15 to 18 to 20 miles. This may seem logical and sequential, but this approach does not work well for marathon distances where people face the infamous wall around miles 20-22. Even the pros cannot run at threshold for 26.2 miles. If you spend enough time on Strava, you may notice that killer times posted from training sessions are not necessarily predictive of race performance. A better approach is to run easy faster. Rather than building strength, build economy. Unfortunately, Strava tends to reward impressive training times more than simply running effortlessly. This is one way that the social media age does not necessarily steer people in the right direction. One reason I generally don’t record my training on Strava is because to an outside eye my training would be very unimpressive unless you looked in detail at my low heart rate. Even though marmots try very hard not to compare themselves to others and feel inferior, social media sometimes makes that difficult.

(g) Haine’s Point is where marathon dreams go to die. Many marathoners swear by flat, fast training runs. But Aaron and I both add hills to our long runs, designing routes through the hills of Arlington and Georgetown to build strength. We don’t do hill repeats or do out of our way to find big climbs, we just sprinkle some longer hills into the run. Be prepared, your effort on a hilly course will look less impressive on Strava, but you’ll find you have more strength in the final miles of the marathon where you need it most.

(h) Since Aaron and I wanted to leave no rock unturned for our neophytes, we also spelled out the 5 rules of marathon water stations. One, after you grab your dixie cup, pinch it at the top to avoid spillage. Two, do not drink on the side of the road where they are handing out water because this is a madhouse where runners are darting in and out. Instead, take a couple strides to the middle of the road before slowing to drink. Three, toss your cup to the opposite side of the road from the water station to avoid oncoming runners. Four, do not try to keep your pacing group intact during the water stations. There is plenty of time to regroup after the water station. Just stay to the opposite side of the road and be patient.

Trevor is mortal

While Aaron and I focused on guiding the rookie Anthony, Trevor slipped through the cracks. Trevor is not a marathon rookie; his PR is 2:53. Trevor is a WUS legend for winning every beer mile (in about 7 minutes on a non-traditional course) and miraculously finishing Hardrock last summer on no training. No one ever has to worry about SuperPuff. But he hadn’t done a marathon in a while. Lesson one: even the magically charmed Puff is human. Lesson two: you can pull yourself out of a hole in an ultra, but there is less margin for mistakes in a marathon. Trevor found a surefire way to self-destruct: hardly any training followed by pacing the 3:15 group at Marine Corps three weeks before Richmond. Trevor managed to pull off the double whammy of destroying his legs without building much fitness. Questioning whether he could still manage to pace me to a sub-3 marathon at Richmond, Trevor panic-bought super-shoes. With Aaron as shopping guide, Anthony and Mike followed suit. Trevor immediately noticed the bounce. I strongly supported everyone else’s decisions to buy super-shoes, while reasoning that I could not. I had to prove that, despite being in my 40s, despite being a mom, I could still go toe-to-toe with my 27-year-old self.

By the time Trevor and I drove down I-95 to Richmond, I declared that, without taking a step, I had already won. Coach Aaron certified that my 5 long road runs of at least 16 miles, sprinkled with a couple track workouts, counted as “training.” This may not sound like much, but, given my history, just training for a marathon was a victory in and of itself.

For my future self, it’s worth mentioning that my legs felt cruddy in the weeks leading up to the marathon. I barely finished the NIH 5k, a casual run at work, because my legs were shot after helping Trevor pace 20 miles of MCM (I knew better than to do the full 26.2). I hope my future self takes note of this experience and doesn’t freak out the next time my legs feel shot going into race day. “Race magic,” Aaron calls it.

Race magic was in full effect at Richmond. I was charmed by everything, from Anthony’s quirky AirBnB selection to outdoor packet pickup at the Richmond Roadway (a big step up from the ugly convention centers), to the perfect fall weather.

I knew the running gods were entirely in our favor when Anthony announced that his Pacer’s friends had a hotel room blocks from the race start, where on race morning we could stash our clothes and defile their bathrooms. I was downright giddy not to stand in port-o-potty lines.

As with any adventure, the real prize is not the end result, but the friends you make along the way. WUS is amazing and will always be my special pet. But I was also pumped to meet Katie. It probably wasn’t lost on the reader that my training buddies in this story were men. I love my male running buddies, but all of them hear me from time to time get wistful about my dream that some day I’ll find a female running buddy who is also a good match. Time is on my side, and the slower I get, the more potential women there will be to run with, so I’m confident the stars will align some day.

Just ask Mike what “ducks in a row” means.

It would be a miracle if I found a road running group that I ran consistently with. I haven’t run consistently with a road running group since grad school at Penn State. I sometimes join the Cardozo Crawlers for track workouts on Wednesday mornings, but the 6:15am start time means I only make rare appearances every few months. But in a shocking turn of events, I have liked Anthony’s Pacer’s friends so far and I announced I would join them on Monday evenings after my Georgetown teaching semester ends in December. Circle back to me in January to find out how that story develops…..

And finally, we are at the end of the story. Just one more dot to add to the plot. This dot is particularly satisfying, not just because I met my goal, but because I was able to experience the satisfaction of putting work into a race and then reaping the pay-off. Running races on no training is fine, but the result does not feel earned. This one I earned. This one goes out to all the women in their 40s sprouting gray hairs and creases under their eyes who refuse to step down. Not. Dead. Yet.