You want to qualify for the
Boston Marathon. What a wonderful and invigorating desire! Now is time to face reality. To
paraphrase John Lennon, reality is what happens when you’re busy trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon.
Reality represents the second R in the
DREAMS Cycle ™. Reality reflects what is happening in your life that will impact the achievement of your dreams. Two dimensions of reality need to be considered: The Dice of Life and the 5 L’s of Life.
The Dice of Life
The Dice of Life is just a metaphor for what life throws at you. More importantly, just like a dice, it has six facets that represent the six elements that will allow you to reach your dreams and desires. The six elements are: money, time, energy, opportunity, skills and support, in no particular order. In your lifetime, and at any particular time, these elements will be available to you in a certain quantity. How much of each you have and how much you need to achieve your dreams will determine where you need to spend your efforts to succeed and how successful you will be. Each of these elements will be explained in the context of qualifying for the Boston Marathon with personal examples related to my own attempt. You should explore how these relate to your own reality.
Money
Money makes the world go round. It is also something you will need in order to qualify for Boston. In order to run, you need shoes and clothing. You will also need money to register for a qualifying race. If you plan on traveling away from your home town to race, then you will need to spend additional funds.
Fortunately, running is not that expensive of a sport. I normally run in $80 running shoes, and simple shorts and shirts. Although race fees are getting expensive with most marathons above $100, this is still within my budget. Based on my current public service job, money should not be a major impediment for trying to qualify for Boston, unless of course I attempt to qualify in an exotic location like Hawaii.
Time
Training to qualify for the Boston Marathon takes time. You have to put in the distance; you have to log those long runs. You will need to dedicate at last
four solid months to train properly. Unfortunately, the amount of hours in a day and in a week is limited, and you have other priorities in life besides running. Here is a video on time management that is worth spending time on:
Ted Talks.
I am employed in a full time job. I also have a wonderful wife and three wonderful kids under 15. I also like to spend time writing stories, books and blogs. I figure that out of the 168 hours we each have in a week, I need to sleep, work and commute, pursue family obligations, take personal care like eating and grooming; I can thus only dedicate about 6-8 hours per week to running. Hopefully that will provide sufficient time to train (read this
article on mileage people run for a Boston Qualifier). What I found over the years however, is that time will find itself for the important things in life. What defines the priorities in your life will be covered below in the 5 L’s of Life.
Energy
Energy will determine the amount of effort you can put into your training. The available energy you have depends on a few factors with the main ones being health and fitness, diet, and sleep. Of course, this energy gets consumed by other activities besides training, such as by work, chasing kids around, and doing household chores. Interesting enough, exercising takes energy, but
it gives back even more in the long term.
My energy is divided between a few priorities. A major part is dedicated to my work where I can sometimes feel drained at the end of the day. Some of my energy is spent assisting the kids with their homework. I also find that dealing with simple daily demands of keeping up a household sucks up energy. During the week, I usually don’t start running until 7:30 pm when I am often tired. This leaves a limited amount of energy to put into the training runs. The fact that I am now over 50 years-old does not have as much of an impact as I thought it might as I have stayed healthy and fit for most of my life. I have had some injuries in the past that have curtailed my running, but right now I am injury free.
Skills
Skills relate to your innate abilities, as well as your developed abilities. Some people are born runners, while others are made. My firm belief is that with a bit of practice, most of us can become decent runners.
Personally, I am more of the made kind of runner having shown little promise when I was young. However, over the years, my running abilities have improved. I have been running for over 30 years. Throughout that time, I have gained experience and knowledge. I have complete 12 marathons, two 50K ultramarathons and a couple of Ironman Distance races. I qualified for Boston in 1996 when I was in my 30s. My last marathon was six years ago when I ran a 3:48. I believe I have the skills to qualify for Boston again.
Opportunity
Opportunity refers to the doors that open to you in your journey to qualifying for the Boston Marathon. These can be nurtured or more importantly grasped when they come up. To grasp these opportunities, you need to keep your eyes open and take action when you encounter them. Opportunities could be related to being invited to a running camp, or as simple as having a world class marathon in your home town.
For me, one of the opportunities is that in Ottawa where I live, we have a world-class marathon, the
Ottawa Marathon. This race provides an opportunity to run a Boston Qualifier with few travel hassles. I also happen to work downtown and I have a parking spot in my building which makes the travel to the race site even simpler.
Support
Support for your dreams and desires comes for other people. These are your family, friends and co-workers. These are the people you can count on when you need help. They can provide moral support, financial support, and even liberate some time for you by taking care of some of your time-consuming activities.
I am fortunate enough to be married to my wonderful wife who not only supports me fully, but she is a great runner. We train together as much as we can and this inspires, motivates and pushes me to train at a higher level. My sister has also always provided encouragement for my crazy endeavors, encouraging me at many races.
The 5 L’s of Life
Life is comprised of more than just running. Other aspects of your life include work and family. These other priorities need to be examined to determine how they fit with your desire to qualify for the Boston Marathon. In order to determine how much of the Dice of Life you want to dedicate to qualifying, you will need to identify the other priorities in your life and how much they mean to you. This exercise starts with identifying your 5 L’s of Life: Labor, Love, Learning, Lifestyle and Leisure, again in no particular order.
Labor
Labor represents the activities that earn an income. This relates to being employed, self-employed or even retired. Work creates various demands on people related to, for example, available time, income, stress, and even opportunities. For me, my public servant job is generally restricted to normal weekday working hours. Only occasionally do I travel or work on weekends. This provides time to run before work, after work and on the weekends.
Love
Love refers to family and friends. Relationships must be nurtured to be meaningful and lasting. Depending on where you are in your life, you might have to make a bigger commitment to your loved ones. One of the most demanding times can be around the birth of a child and the first few years after. My children are growing up and getting more independent. However, during the school year, there are so many demands related to school and activities that it can become all consuming. This means that I often only get to run after the school work is done and the house chores like cleaning up after dinner are done. During the weekends, it is sometimes challenging to schedule the long runs around family and kid activities.
Learning
Since a large portion of people’s lives is spent at school or in learning situations, this will affect the time you have for training. Studying for an exam or taking courses nightly would impact your available time. Moreover, depending on your knowledge and experience with running, you might also want to learn more about running and training. Personally I have had my share of school time (21 years of formal schooling) so any learning I decide to do is focused on the task at hand. Related to running, I have been running for over 30 years, I am a certified Level 1 coach, I wrote a manual on training (
Plan on Running Your Best), and I even taught a course on running through the local school board. The learning I need is more around new products and staying on top of new developments which I do through reading magazines such as
Runner’s World.
Lifestyle
The area identified as lifestyle refers to how you decide to live and what you have, such as health and wealth. I am not much of a material guy so the gathering of wealth is not critical. Of course, we still need to take care of the house which takes time and energy. Health, however, is a critical component in my life and I am dedicated to staying fit. In addition, I love to compete in races. Qualifying for the Boston Marathon fits in this Lifestyle category.
Leisure
Leisure encompasses the activities you do for fun and relaxation. This includes simple activities such as going out to dinner or watching television, to exciting hiking adventures in the Amazon. Although I love to relax and enjoy a good book or movie, some people say I rarely take it easy. There is some validity to this, but my projects keep me very occupied and satisfied.
Now Picture Reality
Through exploring the Dice of Life and the 5L’s of Life, a better sense of what is your reality should emerge. This will assist in determining the right goal for qualifying for the Boston Marathon.
