This is a dream. It’s surreal, it’s silly, it’s insane. I’m in Hopkinton toeing the line to the 2021 Boston Marathon. I’m halfway through my quest of running all six of the World Marathon Majors this year and my adrenaline is pumping so wildly that I can’t help from stumbling into elite runners alongside me. Most are gracious though. Des Linden is smiling at me with an expression that says, “Buddy, you know you don’t belong here with us but enjoy it before Security hauls your ass away.” Conveys a lot with just a glance that lady; so talented. I get an urge for one last cup of coffee before the start but I am distracted by the sight of a runner I met in Chicago yesterday. Today she’s in a wheelchair. Strange. Then I hear the gun go off and a frothing wave of muscular humanity sweeps me forward.
We’ll get back to that dream in a bit but first a few words about Parkinson’s Disease. It’s a relevant digression.
Parkinson’s Disease is mysterious. What is known is that neurons in an area of the brain called the substantia nigra become impaired and die. As the neurons degrade, they lose their ability to produce dopamine, a chemical that is essential for proper movement and motor functions. As of yet there is no cure. There isn’t even a well understood cause.
Diagnosis is murky as well. A tell-tale sign is a tremor which may affect your fingers, hands, and/or limbs but early on tremors may be subtle or non-existent. Absent of tremors, a PD sufferer may notice balance difficulties, loss of strength, loss of coordination, and rigidity of movement.
One might dismiss these symptoms, as I did, as nothing more than age taking its course. But a skilled neurologist will take in these observations, ask some probing questions, push and poke at you a bit to assess your motor functions, and then likely prescribe meds (typically Sinemet, the trade name for a combination of levodopa and carbidopa, although there are others that may be prescribed). Often the acid test is that if the meds help then you have it.
But there’s this thing about PD: even as the meds help, the disease continues to progress. Levodopa addresses the symptoms but not the cause. Nerve cells use levodopa to make dopamine thus replenishing the supply but levodopa can’t fix your brain’s malfunction. Over time, a PD patient needs to increase dosage as the substantia nigra further degrades until such time as levodopa no longer helps.
As the meds become less effective the tremors increase in severity and the movement, balance, and coordination difficulties can become difficult to bear. No one can tell you when you will reach that point. Could be a year, 5 years, maybe 10. But you can be certain that it will happen before you are ready for it. To be sure, you don’t die of PD; you live with it. That life, though, is so very different in that you’ve lost the ability to do some of the things you love.
I received my diagnosis in early 2018 just shy of turning 57 and my feelings were mixed. I’m an analytical type so knowing that there was a reason for my stiff gate, the rapid decline in my soccer skills, the debilitating leg and toe cramps, and my maddening tendency to stumble and to fall down was strangely comforting. It’s not because I’m getting old! Whew!
Notwithstanding, the clock ticks more urgently now. Not wanting to waste what quality time I had left doing the same old, I retired from my Silicon Valley career and moved with my wife, Lynn, to Seattle. Lynn had grown up near Seattle and we thought this was a good opportunity to set up camp there, relax, and relish the damp grandeur of the Pacific Northwest.
And here’s another thing about PD: besides medication one of the most effective therapies is vigorous activity. Seriously?! Fantastic! That’s what I do!!
All my life I’ve worked out: running, bicycling, soccer, triathlons, ultimate frisbee, swimming, etc. And choosing a go-to exercise routine came serendipitously with my new home. Turns out that of all my favorite sports, if it had to be done in the rain then running it would be.
Until recently, I would never run much more than 6 or so miles at a crack. Almost as a whim, I tried running longer distances and, well, it had me. I set a goal to run my first half marathon in 2019 and later that year I also ran my first marathon.
Since then, I have found that the combination of medication and ample exercise keeps my PD symptoms diminished. I still have moments of poor balance and spontaneous cramps in my hands and feet but these are manageable. There’s no cure for PD but for me running is the balm (see what I did there?).
Runners are much like everyone else; we often set new more aggressive goals than the last one. Near the end of 2019 as I gained confidence that I’d complete my first marathon, I somehow latched onto the Abbott World Marathon Majors. Abbott WMM celebrates runners of all stripes who complete all six of the Marathon Majors: Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City.
According to the Abbott WMM website, as of today, there are 6639 runners who have finished all six of these races at some point in their lives. Far fewer (less than 30, I believe) have managed to achieve this feat in a single calendar year.
So there it is, an objective that aligns perfectly with both the sense of urgency thrust upon me by PD and the therapy that PD spawned: run all six of the World Marathon Majors in 2021.
My blog documents the journey to achieve this goal set two years ago.
In normal times this would mean I’d have to run Tokyo, Boston, and London in the spring and the rest in the fall. But these are not normal times and the Global Pandemic disrupted the WMM along with everything else. The massive scale of the WMM did not happen in 2020 as four of the races were cancelled outright and the other two were severely restricted in size. Similarly, WMM 2021 will be unlike any other year with a schedule that compresses all of the races into a span of six weeks. More on this in next week’s post.
If you choose to follow me, you’ll meet several players on this journey. The art, science, and practice of running, of course, has the lead. You may have guessed that Parkinson’s has a role as well. I’ll be sharing the lessons I’ve learned from these actors over the coming weeks.
If all goes well, I’ll also be describing the scene as large-scale marathon races return after a year’s hiatus.
But there are also stories of the heroes I’ve met along the way who’ve helped to make this the second greatest adventure of my life*.
This is the first of a planned twenty weekly posts that concludes with the last Marathon Major of 2021 in New York City. But who knows? The journey has hardly begun and at any time COVID-19, or some other bad actor, could rear up and throw us off course. (As, in fact, has already happened. Yes, I’m looking at you Tokyo.)
In these uncertain times, one can’t fully anticipate where we’ll go or the path we’ll take to get there but I hope, dear reader, that you will come along nevertheless.
*Curious? Well, my greatest adventure is, and always will be, the one I share with my wife and the children she gave me. But you knew that.
