from the running site (fueledbylolz):

**How did you choose Philly Marathon? Do you live close by? **

I grew up outside of Philadelphia and moved to West Philly in 1999, living there ever since. So I have participated in the Broad Street Run (10 miler), the Philly Half Marathon, and several other races in the area since my first race with my brother in 2011. He had taken up running as a distraction from some personal events, and I joined him to help distract. During the race, we ran together for 9+ miles until my competitive side took over and I sprinted the last quarter mile. He didn’t like that! 

In the years that followed, I considered myself a casual runner with periods of discipline until COVID hit. Both the need to get outdoors to save my sanity, and the extra-hour-a-day-because-I-wasn’t-commuting, allowed me to run five or six times a week. I stopped running with headphones and music and used the time to be inside my own head, to meditate and soak in the world. And I realized I liked running WAY more than I thought I did. It helps that the work I put in was immediately noticeable in my body composition (also aided by intermittent fasting, I have dropped ~40 pounds since my 2017 peak weight) and objectively in my race time for the first COVID-era race, October 2021. I shaved over a minute off my 10-miler pace – shocking myself when I saw a 7 as the first number in my pace: I had thought that was way beyond my capability. The trend continued the next month when I shaved ~22 minutes from my half marathon time.

~16 mile hurricane training run, drenched

At this point, my amazing and very fast friend Lauren Barlow noticed. “I want to train you.” Lauren is a career coach, and recently became a high school girls’ track coach, but I keep telling her that she also needs to do more one-on-one running coaching. Because she is phenomenal. (Shameless plug for her: Lauren Barlow Career Coaching)

For years I always said to myself, “nah, 26.2 is unnecessary. I like 13.1 as my max.” But the day after my Philly Half, riding the high of my new PR and watching some friends dominate the Philly Marathon (two as first-timers)… something clicked. “Dammit. I need to do the full. Just ONE full.” And I wanted to run it on my home turf. When sign-ups rolled around, I almost reverted to the more comfortable half-marathon again. Muscle memory, I guess. But I saw the price was only $10 more for the Full, and you could downgrade if you were unprepared. “Let’s do this!” Click. Sent. Text Lauren… “Ok, I’m ready. Train me up!” 

She started the training program early this year for the May 10-miler. Due to a softball collision at home plate, I was getting blood drained from my knees 3 days before that race day. I was still able to take ~3.5 minutes off my 10-mile PR time, finishing around a 7:30 pace. She then used that race as a guide for training me up for the full marathon in November.

**What do you do for work? How can you balance work, running, and social life? **

I write software for oncology, and I support the IT operations at a practice just outside of the city. Having flexibility to work from home frees up an hour of commuting. I definitely started taking more advantage of that, especially when I had to knock out a quality session mid-week and the weather was going to be crappy at night. I play softball on Mondays, so Lauren worked my training around that. I have to say that I did a pretty good job of maintaining my social life while still getting my runs in. The Phillies tried to ruin that for me by having a very long postseason in which I went to over 90% of the games. There were only a couple of times where I told someone “no, I can’t” to an event because I had to wake up early to run. It was more likely, “I’m coming, but I’m not drinking.” And it does help a lot not having any kids (yet); my brother is jealous I can drop anything to pop on the shoes and take off on a whim. (And I’m jealous of his family life, so we are even!)

What was your goal?

My coach’s goal for me was a 7:40 pace. My goal was “oh geez, man, I’d be thrilled to keep it under an 8 minute pace,” expecting sub 4-hour, but with my reach being 7:40/mile. Leading up to the marathon, though, I felt very strong. My legs felt amazing. My last 20 mile run was just over an 8-minute pace and I felt I had it in the tank to do 6 more if I had to at that pace. Come race week, I thought I could probably surprise her and myself with something in the mid-7:30s. I had it figured out in my head how I could try to run that on the course, where I would pick up speed without disobeying her order to be SLLLLOOOWWWW for the first 7 or 8 miles. (“It might feel like you’re walking… but stick to it. I promise.”) But as the day approached, I saw the weather forecast. 26 to 33 degrees (I was fine with that, I like it cold). 20 degree wind chill (ehh, not ideal but I can deal).  With 15-18 mph winds (eek!) and gusts up to 34 mph (oh crap!). 

my view from my mom’s condo when i woke up - it just looooooks cold.

Being of Irish descent, I was hopeful that the road would rise to meet me with the winds at my back the whole way, pushing me to the finish. We all know that’s not how it works! I kept to Lauren’s suggested pace for the first 8 miles, which was mostly throughout Center City with the buildings blocking the wind. After the biggest hill on the course, I felt good and started speeding up to an average ~7:25 pace for a few miles. And then I turn to go up Kelly Drive, a somewhat winding road flanking the wind tunnel that is the Schuylkill River basin.

WHAM! Wind right in the face. There were times I looked at my watch and saw a 7:10 pace but felt like I wasn’t moving at all. “Well, at least Kelly Drive is basically an up-and-back. The wind will be at my back on the way home!”  Unless the wind shifts… or rather… until the wind shifted. Wind in our faces both ways! I realized I wasn’t going to hit 7:40, but there was no way I was letting “sub-8” slip my grasp.  And I didn’t. I finished in 3:27:45 (7:55 pace). I was thrilled to hit my goal… but the first thing I texted Lauren was also “I can do that faster.” (Oops, looks like I may in fact do a second marathon after all??)

**What did your training look like?  **

After the Broad Street Run in May, I went to Ireland for what was supposed to be cross-training or pre-training (ha!): a 386 mile solo-hike and wild-camp across Ireland. I only made it about 105 miles into the trip before I had to come home with a bacterial infection in my leg. I didn’t want to take any chances of race-ending damage, as it wasn’t getting any better as I waited 3 days in Dublin for it to heal (that trip has a semi-complete diary if anyone is interested: go with b-flow  ). 

Starting in July, I mostly did 2 quality sessions a week (intervals, threshold, repeats, etc) and a long run on Sundays (race day). I started at the mileage I was running (25 to 30 miles per week) and worked my way up to ~49/50 miles at peak). I had a 2 week taper at the end before the big day. I was pretty disciplined in keeping the schedule Lauren set, and we would discuss any changes or issues as they came up. I very rarely missed a run that I had to do. I did take a couple days off early on to rest my knees after sliding in softball (re-aggravated the injury from April). And I took 3 days off after tweaking a hamstring on wet street-paint while running in the rain, more out of caution than anything else.

Surprisingly, this did NOT happen during the long run in the torrential downpour that was Hurricane Ian’s aftermath. I had to run 18 miles, and I texted Lauren, “Can I just do this on a treadmill today? Not feeling this rain.”  The quickest reply I ever got: “NO! NO! NO! Get outside now. It might be raining like this on race day.” I did, and I even enjoyed it – ya know, after it was done. “You have to build that mental strength and stamina!”

My typical week looked like:

Monday: softball
Tuesday: quality session
Wednesday: recovery easy run with West Philly Runners
Thursday: quality session - or easy run / rest (later in training)
Friday: recovery easy run
Saturday: easy run
Sunday: long run

**What time did you start running? What did your fuel look like? Was it different because of the weather? How did the weather affect you? **

I woke up at 4 am to eat a bagel with peanut butter and drink some coffee to encourage use of the bathroom before leaving. As I was walking to the event, I ate a gu espresso energy gel (I like the caffeine).

I originally signed up for the Green corral (#4) before I knew my (or Lauren’s) goal for me. (The goal kept dropping on the spreadsheet that she made for me as my VDOT was improving. She would try to sneak the new time in there so I didn’t see it… but I did).

After I picked up my bib, I realized I needed to move up to the Black corral (#3). That was kind of cool to move up, but also intimidating when I saw how close I was to the starting line. This was new territory for me. The race began at 6:55am with the wheelchair participants, 7am for the elites. And my corral started at around 7:09am. 

The wind chill was about 20 degrees. I debated for a while about what I wanted to wear, knowing that I overheat easily but also cautious about the very cold and windy conditions. I opted for a tank top up top and shorts down below... but with arm sleeves and calf sleeves that I could pull down or remove, and running gloves (which I kept on all race). I wore a zip-up hoodie that didn’t fit anymore but was in really good condition, to the corral (my deceased brother, Billy’s). I warmed up in it and ditched it to the side to be collected for donations a minute before I took off on foot.

at the manayunk turn (~mile 20)

For some reason the closest entrance to where I spent the night was closed to runners, so I had to wait in a 5 block line that kept getting longer as I finally made it through security. I can only think that there were a LOT of people that didn’t make it to their corral in time for the gun. Luckily, after they abruptly opened a “no-bags” pat down line, the line started moving a little faster and I was in my starting place with 15 minutes to spare. After standing mostly still in the bitter cold line for 35 minutes, it was just barely enough time in the corral to get warmed up with some stretches and jumping. 

For the rest of the race, I relied on gu gel packs every 45 minutes or so. And I drank a sip of gatorade from the volunteers every 2nd or 3rd table. I felt bad throwing the majority of it out, but I was trying not to over-drink. I also had a wrist-held water bottle (with a pouch for my gus) that was filled with a nuun electrolyte drink tab. 

About 15 minutes after I finished the race and stopped moving, my body shut down. It wasn’t from the running, but from the cold. The blood drained out of my fingers (and were now bone-white and very painful). My body was visibly shaking from the violent shivers. I found my family and friends outside the finish line area, hugged my coach, my mom, siblings, relatives, friends – everyone that came to cheer me on, and draped myself in the most comfortable and welcoming fleece-lined blanket that my aunt brought for me. She was my savior as I forgot to tell anyone to bring me warm clothes! Luckily, my mom’s condo is a few hundred feet from the finish line. So we made our way there and I took a painfully delightful hot shower. I did not want to leave the shower, but everyone was waiting for me - so I relented.

**How did you get through the hard parts? How was the cheering through the race/finish line? Do you feel as though they cheer for everyone the same throughout the day? **

Knowing ahead of time that it was going to be cold and windy, I wanted a playlist that would try to help me out. I downloaded some YouTube motivational clips with angry men yelling at me, and chopped them up into short bursts of “RUNNNN… pick up your legs and RUNNNN.” and “If you thought you weren’t ready for this, THEN WHY DID YOU SHOW UP AT ALL?!”.

I put these at the points where I thought I would need it (having looked at the elevation maps). I threw in Chase Utley’s “World Effin’ Champions” speech from 2008 and Jason Kelce’s Super Bowl “Underdogs” speech from 2018. I started with slower songs to try to keep me at a slower pace in the first leg, and built up to high-BPM ragers and head-bangers. I had queued up Bing Crosby’s classic “Winter Wonderland” during the first mile of the race to help me avoid the cold mentally.

Hilariously, Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind” came on right as I turned onto the windiest section of the race and made me laugh out loud. The playlist definitely helped. And I just find that funny, as someone who doesn’t typically run with music. I like to be free for wandering thoughts. But during my long runs over 2 hours, I realized it was, perhaps, TOO much time in my own head. I got bored and needed mental stimulation. So I went out and bought some wireless headphones that could connect to my Apple Watch and used them on the longs.

My coach also had told me earlier in the week to come up with 6 or so “happy headspaces.” She told me to have them at the ready for when there was pain or doubt, or if I just needed a distraction. She said to repeat them until race day so I could recall them easily. I kind of took that to heart, and wore them on my sleeves (literally). I wrote clue words on my sleeves that I could glance down at quickly. And it worked great to take me away mentally for as long as I needed. The other thing she and her husband John (also a gifted runner) said was to trust my body, that I put in the work, and to have fun on race day!  

some happy headspaces

One of the biggest boosters is having people there cheering you on. (Makes home turf for my first marathon important!) Yes, those that don’t even know you and read your name on the bib help a ton: “COME ON BRIAN! YOU GOT THIS”. But even more so are the friends and family that shout one of your nicknames at the top of their lungs when they see you “BEEEEEEEEFFFFFFF!” I can’t thank everyone that came out to see me, specifically, enough. I told them all, multiple times, that every time I felt like I was slowing down or hurting, one of them would appear out of the ether, SHOUTING and CHEERING. And they all hit multiple spots along the route, many seeing me at 2 or 3 spots, many at the points RIGHT before the big hill or right before the turn-around 20 mile mark. My coach and her husband saw me at 5 or 6 spots, running 10 miles on the day to get to a viewing/cheering area before I passed. I tried playing a game in my head to beat them to the next spot, but I didn’t know which shortcuts they were taking. The spectators are incredible and honestly make the day what it is. Without it, it’s just another long run with extra steps. I never sensed a drop in their energy along the route. Even after I showered, I could hear the crowd’s cowbells and booming voices from my mom’s condo. Just incredible energy. 

**And the best part? **

Cheering for my friends in 2021 inspired ME to run in 2022… 

Cheering for me in 2022 inspired FIVE to sign up for races in 2023 

(including the re-emergence of my coach, who is going to train us both up real good). 

As my 2021 marathoner friend said when I told her of the daisy-chain effects of her running, “I love it! A never ending wave of inspiration.”

Oh, and running 3:27:45. Damn that felt good. But I can do faster.

FREEZING my ass off, with my very proud coach (and family and friends).

#fitness