2023 CNO Financial Indianapolis Monumental Marathon

I finished with a personal best time of 3:33:48 on Saturday morning.

I’ll just come right out and say it: the marathon has never been my favorite distance.

I love running, and I love running races, but 26.2 miles has always struck me as a bit…excessive. Couldn’t Pheidippides have taken a shorter route between Marathon and Athens? 26 miles and 385 yards is a long way to run for a banana and a carton of chocolate milk.

The half marathon? Sure. Let me at it. Most days, I can run 13.1 miles after overindulging at the Cheesecake Factory. But the marathon, the evil mother of all distance races, is a different sort of experience altogether, which is exactly why it attracts over 1 million finishers around the globe each year.

For those who don’t know, legend has it that in 490 BCE, a Greek courier named Pheidippides noticed a Persian war ship suddenly change its course towards Athens as the Battle of Marathon was nearing a decisive and victorious end for the Greeks. Fearing that the Persians would try to either spuriously claim victory or launch an all-out raid on Athens (or perhaps some combination of the two), the messenger took it upon himself to run the entire distance to Athens without stopping, whereupon he entered the Athenian assembly and exclaimed, “We have won!” before dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes—dead from exertion.

The historical veracity of this legend has been disputed since its inception some 2,500 years ago, and, like many features of ancient history, we moderns have little to go on aside from the contemporaneous accounts of ancient historians.

Herodotus, for instance, who is sometimes called the “Father of all History” for his exhaustive accounts of the Greco-Persian Wars (499 BCE to 449 BCE), makes no mention of a messenger running the distance between Marathon and Athens, though he does write of a messenger running from Athens to Sparta (to ask for help) and then running that same distance back again—a trek of more than 150 miles. In some manuscripts, Herodotus calls the runner Philippides.

In the late nineteenth century, when neoclassicism was in full bloom in Europe, Robert Browning wrote the poem “Pheidippides” about the marathon, and the composite account therein became accepted as historical legend.

Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you,

"Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid!

Persia has come, we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed,

Ran and raced: like stubble, some field which a fire runs through,

Was the space between city and city: two days, two nights did I burn

Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks.

In modernity, starting in 1896 with the re-establishment of the Olympic games as a bid for Greek national identity, the marathon was revived and became the centerpiece of the quadrennial games. The Boston Marathon began one year later, in April 1897. It is the world’s oldest annual marathon, and is generally considered to be the granddaddy of all road races. Qualifying for Boston—or “getting a BQ”—is a coveted rite of passage for all serious marathoners and distance runners, and with the increase in the sports’ popularity, the qualifying times for Boston have become more and more difficult to achieve each year.

So with all that said, this year I finished the Monumental Marathon in 3:33:48, which is a PR (personal record) for me. My previous personal record was a 3:44:03 I set in 2016 at the Myrtle Beach Marathon, a fun, flat, and fast road race I have written about previously.

This year I trained my tail off. Starting in earnest in early summer, I was consistently hitting between 45 and 50 miles per week for 85% of this training block (roughly four and a half months), which is the highest weekly mileage I have ever sustained in the decade or so that I’ve been long distance running. My involvement with Indy Runners (first as the Saturday morning club run coordinator and more recently as a board member) has been a huge boon to my running practice, as there is a built-in sense of both accountability and camaraderie that I have come to see as really essential to the training habit.

I still do most of my runs solo, jamming out to Blind Melon or Smashing Pumpkins on the Monon, but it’s the weekly group runs that truly keep me sane—and happy. Every Saturday morning I carry the water—literally—as well as the gatorade for my friends and soon-to-friends in the club. There is something zen about it that I find difficult to translate into words.

Perhaps you have heard of the following Zen Buddhist koan:

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

The basic idea, as I understand it, is that true enlightenment (and true peace) can only be found in the mundanity of life’s daily monotonous grind, whether gardening, focusing on your breathing, practicing mindfulness while taking a walk in nature (or in a crowded city), or changing a baby’s diaper, or even mixing up a large cooler full of Gatorade at 5:45 on a pitch black Saturday morning with the mercury at around 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

A big part of this for me comes through serving others through my running practice, which has helped me immensely when it comes to various personal strifes and problems. I separated from my soon-to-be-ex-wife (STBXW) this year, as some of you may know, and the stress of that disentangling process has been intense.

Having a good support group has been helpful, too. Here’s some folks from the run club at the cheer zone tent.

Here’s a shot of me at the Indy Runners cheer zone tent. I tossed off my long-sleeve T-shirt around mile 2, and the only thing I had to keep me warm after the race was this dog blanket I keep in the backseat of my CR-V. (Note the tiny white hairs—this is Joni’s blanket.)

Here’s a pic from the finish line of our annual Run the Monon 22-miler:

In other news, I just started working part-time at the Runners’ Forum in Broad Ripple. I will be there in the evenings and most Saturdays and Sundays, so if you are looking for a new pair of running shoes, or maybe some good socks or a Garmin, come on down and let me outfit you. We are Indiana’s oldest running store, going all the way back to 1978. It would be my pleasure to serve you.