While I was in Chicago for the marathon in October, Jessica, a running coach, remarked how lucky I was to have a body that can go from marathon to marathon with hardly any recovery time. I agreed but offered that, much like with running, there is a mental aspect to recovery. As in any effort, if the mind is game, the body will follow along.
That probably sounded boastful as if the preoccupation with weeks to months of recovery time was for sissies.
Dangerous talk. The irony gods listening in were primed for an easy smackdown.
Eleven days before my next race, the New York City Marathon, as I bent down to pick up my shoes for the day’s training run, I felt that familiar spasm in my lower back that heralds pain and incapacitation, and collapsed to the floor.
Shit.
Each of the World Marathon Majors (WMM) is unique. However, common to all is millions of spectators lining the course cheering the runners on.
In Tokyo, the spectators are unfailingly polite and on the quieter side. The course is unspectacular but with several out-and-back spurs, mid-pack runners sometimes get a glimpse of the elite pack flying past them in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. The crowds lining Boston’s course are considerably more boisterous than in Tokyo as runners make their way through eight Massachusetts cities and towns between Hopkinton and the finish on Boylston Street.
London does perhaps the best job of all the Majors of incorporating numerous city landmarks including Tower Bridge, the Cutty Sark, Buckingham Palace, among others. Berlin features some city landmarks most notably the finishing stretch with runners passing under the imposing Brandenburg Gate.
Chicago’s course is compact with many right angle turns designed to allow the runners to sample 29 of the city’s neighborhoods. The downside of that layout is the temptation it presents to supporters bent on crossing through the runners’ path in hopes of gaining multiple sightings of their favorite runners. Collisions between runners and spectators are common.
In New York City, for me, suggests transformation. I grew up on Long Island in the 1960’s and 1970’s and the city was a scary place back then. Now though, on marathon day, it is like Disneyland, the happiest place on earth. The entire city empties out of skyscrapers and tenements to give a warm and thunderous show of support.
In its first year, the course was four plus loops around Central Park. In 1976, in celebration of the country’s bicentennial, the race adopted the tour of the city’s five boroughs format that has been used since.
The course is distributed unevenly among the boroughs. Staten Island is prominent only in that the Start Villages are there, which means a lot of milling around time waiting for each wave’s starting gun (really, a very loud howitzer) to go off. Virtually no mileage is accumulated as runners immediately leave Staten Island for Brooklyn via the Verrazzano Bridge. Almost half of the race takes place in Brooklyn. Queens gets a touch more than two miles and other than a brief mile plus change interlude in the Bronx, the balance and climactic finish take place in Manhattan, as is appropriate.
Other than the finish in Central Park, the most famous part of the route is the entry to Manhattan from the Queensborough bridge at about mile 16. There are no spectators on the bridge. Hence, coming off it, runners are greeted with a thunderous wall of noise as they stride into the city’s most populous borough.
This was to be my third consecutive New York City Marathon and a record number of runners was to partake. I anticipated a raucous conclusion to my quest to complete all the majors in 2023.
Assuming, of course, that I could get my back to cooperate.
After the Chicago race, which went very well, I spent a lot of time with the data from my Garmin watch and ran mini-experiments on my behavior and training tactics to figure out how best to optimize my body’s readiness for New York.
This work gave me some ideas. It also pointed out how to deal with the back injury eleven days before the race.
The Garmin data — primarily resting heart rate, body battery, sleep data, and resting heart rate — all pointed to the one thing that I should do about my back spasm: nothing.
And that is what I did.
For two days, I lay in bed doing little more than sleeping, reading, and eating. By the third day, I felt good enough to have a normal day. I didn’t run but I walked the dog and went grocery shopping.
On the fourth day I felt fully recovered and ran a brisk four miles. All good. The day after that I put in 10.4 miles.
Who knew that idleness could be so recuperative?
In September, my son, Aidan, moved from Seattle to Brooklyn. Friday morning, my wife, Lynn, and I got together with him for lunch and some strolling about Times Square. Afterwards I headed to the Expo at the Jacob Javitz Center to get my race bib. Bib handout was very efficient; I had my race packet within 15 minutes of entering the Expo.
The highlights of the Expo came afterwards. First, I came upon Aaron Burros sitting at a table and stopped to introduce myself. Aaron and I were both recognized for our inspiring stories in 2021, the 50th anniversary of New York’s race. In 2015, Aaron took five bullets in the process of saving the lives of three of his coworkers in a workplace shooting incident. He was an accomplished ultramarathoner at the time but the injuries have compromised his ability to run. Nonetheless, in 2021, he was on a mission to run 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 weeks.
I think Aaron was impressed that I knew all this about him. We spent a few minutes chatting about the turns our lives have taken and our plans going forward. He gave me a copy of his book and signed it for me. When I get back home I will send him a copy of mine.
Next, I fulfilled a promise I made to April Bertram when I met her before the Berlin Marathon in September. She would be getting her sixth WMM star in that race and was hoping to see her name on the big wall of Six Star Finishers that Abbott displays at all the WMM Expos.
I told her that she had to run the marathon first before her name would appear. I knew that the updated board would be ready for New York City and I offered to send her a photo of her name displayed on it come November. This interaction was very brief, five minutes at most, with very little conversation.
At the Expo, I went to the Six Star Wall, took the photos, and sent them to her.
Meanwhile, April found an online article about me and my 2021 WMM exploits. That prompted her to buy a copy of my book and to share her story with me. Hers is like that of many other runners I have met recently involving the combination of a life-changing medical condition and marathons.
Her disease is Pulmonary Sarcoidosis and she took up running the Majors as a way to stay healthy. Earlier, in London, she ran for the British Lung Foundation. Hopefully our paths will cross again at another race sometime and we will have that conversation we should have had in Berlin.
Aidan and Lynn hung out together while I was at the Expo. Afterwards, we all went to Brooklyn to check out Aidan’s new apartment and neighborhood, meet up with his girlfriend, Corina, and some other friends of his.
Brooklyn had not been memorable during my previous New York City Marathons. That would change this year. Aidan planned to get a number of his friends together to cheer for me at McCarren Park. We went over the plan in detail so as to avoid the possibility — given the sheer volume of runners and spectators — of missing each other.
On Saturday, my priority was to rest up for the race. But before that Lynn and I went to the Team Fox pre-race lunch. There we met up with many of the Michael J. Fox Foundation friends I have made over the past two years as well as some of the other Team Fox runners.
Team Fox had 138 runners in the marathon. Nearly all were running in honor of a friend or family member stricken with Parkinson’s disease and I met a few of those honorees. It is one of the things I like about these Team Fox events — I get the chance to be useful.
I have been very lucky with this disease. I caught it fairly early and it has responded well to medication and exercise. Also, my cognitive skills have not yet been affected thus allowing me to assimilate the current science regarding the disease. I have given guidance, based on my experience and knowledge base, to many others living with PD. It is a scary disease, yet, I am able to demonstrate how one can thrive in spite of it.
After the lunch, Lynn met up with Aidan and Corina for some sight-seeing while I went back to our hotel to charge my body battery.
Upon reviewing data from my other six marathons this year, I committed to a going all-in on having a high body battery level before Sunday’s race. Higher body battery levels were strongly correlated to stronger race performance. Again, doing nothing seemed to be the best method for getting to a high body battery.
That worked. On Sunday morning at 6:00 am by battery was at 79%, significantly higher than on any other race morning this year.
But start time was five hours later. My battery would discharge in the meantime as I traveled by subway, ferry, and bus to get from midtown Manhattan to the Start Villages on Staten Island. By the time my wave was sent off, my battery level had fallen to 43%, which would be tolerable on a cool day but troublesome if the weather turned warm.
It did warm up. Whereas the forecasts leading up to the race promised lows in the 40’s, the temperature climbed to the high 50’s as I waited for my start. Temperature, clearly, was going to be a problem and the low body battery made it worse.
In previous posts, I discussed my time goal for this year’s races. I failed in all my more aggressive goals leaving only one still attainable: get a personal best course time for each of the six Majors. For New York City that meant running it faster than 4:30:21, the time I achieved in 2021.
As is usually the case, I started out well at a pace that would easily meet that mark. But soon the temperature rose above 60 and that spelled trouble.
Brooklyn, however, was delightful.
At about mile 11, I thought I heard someone calling my name. Disbelieving, I continued on but heard it again repeatedly. Turns out a former neighbor of ours from Palo Alto, California, Ari Brownlee, was running alongside the course trying to get my attention. I eventually clued in and stopped long enough to thank them and get a selfie. I was overjoyed that they made the effort to track me down and cheer me on.
Ari stayed with me for about a block. Later, just short of mile 12, I came upon where Lynn and Aidan assembled their cheer team in McCarren Park.
All the Majors create tracking apps with the intent of allowing spectators to follow the progress of their favorite runners. When the app works well, it facilitates joyful meetups on the sidelines of the course. But the apps often fail due to the shear number of people accessing them and it did so on Sunday.
We anticipated this while planning the cheer station the day on Friday. I told Lynn and Aidan to expect me to run at a 9 to 10 minute mile pace. Given a 10:55 am start time, I should reach McCarren Park somewhere around 12:41 to 12:53 pm. They also knew to keep their eyes peeled for my trademark bright pink knee-high compression socks.
Worked like a charm. I arrived at McCarren at about 12:52 pm to a hero’s welcome.
It was the absolute highlight of the race for me not only for the joy they gave me at the time but also for the contrast with how things were about to go south as I headed north.
Aidan had assembled a large crew. Besides Lynn, Aidan, and Corina he managed to get six other of his friends to come along. Plus, my nephew Thomas and his fiance, Sydney, who have been living in Brooklyn for years, also joined in. I was thrilled and gave them all sweaty hugs, planted a kiss on Lynn, then trotted off teary-eyed.
This year, a new borough became the most thunderous. The wall of noise I expected coming off the Queensborough Bridge was subdued in comparison to the enthusiasm I felt throughout Brooklyn. The crowds there were off the charts this year.
I reached the halfway mark at about 2 hours and 6 minutes. Keeping to that pace would mean I would easily achieve my finish time goal. But the 60+ temperature was starting to drain me. I am quite sensitive to the heat as is common to those living with PD.
By contrast, Chicago stayed in the 40’s throughout the race and I ran its second half faster than the first. In fact, I realized at mile 17 in Chicago that I was hardly sweating meaning I could be cavalier about hydration.
Not so in New York City. After about mile 16 my legs were constantly on the verge of all out cramps that I held at bay by swallowing a SaltStick electrolyte tablet nearly every mile. My pace plummeted and I frequently updated my finish time estimate. By mile 20, as my mile pace became slower than 11 minutes, I was seriously concerned that I wouldn’t hit even my least aggressive finish time goal.
Many coaches and coaching guides advocate that runners ought to “listen to their body” for signs that it is time to back off. My body, much like its owner, is more inclined towards action than words. If it could speak, at this point in the race, it would have said, simply, “Stop!”
This may be the real reason why I am able to run multiple marathons with short recovery times between them. Whether it be back spasms during seemingly innocuous activities or leg muscle cramping during a race, my body finds a way to put the brakes on thus limiting the damage and presumably shortening the recovery time.
Beyond mile 20, it had become very hard to move my legs. At one point on Fifth Avenue, I heard someone yell, “Bend your knees!” and thought for sure it was directed at me. My calculations indicated that my 4:30:21 finish time goal was drifting out of reach.
But it was very close. I decided to push hard. I found that if I stopped a few seconds for water at the aid stations, I could leave the station at better than an 11 minute pace, keep that going up to the next station, then repeat the process. I did that through the end of the race while popping a SaltStick tablet at each stop.
It was just barely enough. I felt crappy during all of the final three miles in Central Park and, wobbling, nearly fell down after crossing the finish line but I managed 4:28:49 a scant 92 seconds ahead of my goal.
And here is why I wanted to achieve a course personal best on each of this year’s majors:
The Abbott WMM portal displaying Six Star Finishers only reports the fastest time for each of the Majors that a given runner has achieved in the event that they have run any of them more than once. I wanted to be able to demonstrate to any casual observer that I had run all six of the races in 2023 and one way was for the Abbott WMM Six Star portal to display only my 2023 races. To do that, I had to run each of them faster than when I ran them in 2021 and/or 2022.
As goals go, this is a silly one. But I think the result looks pretty cool.
Team Fox held a post race party for its runners and their supporters. Year after year they generously invite runners to invite an unlimited number of guests to the party. I took full advantage of this.
Thomas and Sydney had to bow out but otherwise my entire Brooklyn cheer station joined us at the Stout Penn Station restaurant for the party. It was a joy to see them again and to show off Aidan to my Team Fox friends. He towers more than six inches over me and that tends to spur all sorts of comments about the vagaries of genetics.
But perhaps the most astonishing attendees of the evening were Eric Jones and his fiance, Sybil Sha. I met Eric and his whole family — parents Inga and Rick and sister Julia — at the Team Fox 2021 Chicago Marathon pre-race party. I arrived late to that party and they invited me to their table and we spent the rest of the evening chatting. Eric was the Team Fox runner for the family and the rest came to support him. He was running in memory of Inga’s father who died after years of struggle with PD.
I was so impressed by the depth of love in the Jones family and we have kept in touch since then through social media. Eric was a med student at the time and since then graduated, met Sybil while both were working on their residency, and began practice in New York City. Recently, he and Sybil, who is also now practicing in NYC, became engaged.
I knew that they were in New York and suggested to Eric that they come to the party but realized that he may be too busy to do so. But he did come! And he brought along Sybil! It was so thoughtful of them to make the time to join us and it was wonderful to catch up and to meet Sybil.
Of course, I enjoyed seeing my Team Fox friends for what may be the last time for a while. They — Liz D., Katie, Liz B., Kristen, Jess, Maci, Gaby— have always treated me so well and played an enormous roll in my journey thus far. I hope that we will still cross paths from time to time.
And I now have a dozen or so new contacts in both the running and Parkinson’s community to follow.
I first came up with the goal of running all the Majors in a single calendar year way back in 2019 after finishing my first marathon. The original plan was to run them in 2021 and although I came close, completing five of the six, Tokyo cancelled its race that year leaving me with the pang of unfinished business.
That ache has now been relieved. Thus ends this chapter of my journey with my new partner, Parkinson’s disease.
Going forward, the World Marathon Majors won’t disappear completely from my agenda. I will run Tokyo again in 2024 to get a second Six Star Medal. And I will try to get into Boston every year mainly to keep in touch with the many friends I have made these past two years. But the WMM will no longer be an obsession.
It is time that I begin a fresh, new obsession.
Many of you have asked me what is next and some have offered suggestions. Thank you for that. As of now, I have not yet come up with anything that strikes my fancy.
Note that I started all this shortly after my PD diagnosis when I believed that the disease dictated urgency. I did not know how long I had left before PD would make such endeavors impossible.
My timeline, however, appears to be longer than I originally thought. Outrageous physical exploits have, for all intents and purposes, stopped Parkinson’s in its tracks. Such goals have transitioned from bucket list items to medicine.
And therein lies the rub.
The combination of Parkinson’s and marathoning, ironically, has been great medicine for me, and I dare say, for others who have been inspired by my journey.
Whatever it is that I choose to do next must be of similar or greater value to others.
You can still donate to my New York City Marathon campaign (click this link).
However, I have another campaign for you. I’m running with Team Synapse again in one of those crazy non-stop, around-the-clock relays like the one we did in the Blue Ridge Mountains last year. This December it will be in Florida (click this link). Again, we are raising money for Parkinson’s research. If you share the passion that I have for finding a Parkinson’s cure please consider contributing. All donations are meaningful and greatly appreciated.
Alternatively, if you would like something tangible in exchange for a contribution, consider purchasing my book Run With It: A True Story of Parkinson’s, Marathons, the Pandemic, and Love. It was named as a Finalist in the 2022 Wishing Shelf Book Awards. It also received an Honorable Mention in the Eric Hoffer Awards and was rated “RECOMMENDED” in the US Review of Books.
All profits from its sale are donated to MJFF. It can be found on my author’s website and Amazon. It’s cheaper on my author site (for domestic shipping), a larger percentage goes to MJFF than for Amazon sales, and you get the option of having it signed by the author.
