A year ago, I ran my first marathon after a fairly long period of building up a good base of medium-distance running. I’ve long disliked running, don’t get the “runners high”, but I realized a couple of years ago, I needed to find a good way to shed some pounds. I had been getting heavy.

So I listen to podcasts and burn off the calories and relieve myself of any guilt that comes with the cheap calories of an old fashioned or a Shake Shack burger.

Two summers ago, I spent a good month in Calgary, a delightful city on the Bow River. They’ve done wonderful things with the waterfront, a paved path that runs the better part of 10 miles on either (and sometimes both) side(s) of the river. It was a good chance for me to stretch beyond 5 miles and see how my body would take 10-13 miles at a time. Better than I expected, honestly.

At some point that August, I decided to sign up for the Carlsbad Marathon for this past January, assuming it would be nice and flat along the Pacific coast. (You know what they say about people who assume…) If there were a headshake emoji, it would litter this post. It was hillier than expected and harder even than I’d expected, but I finished. Ah, better than that, honestly. I came in third in my age group, which was a total surprise. Who knew that they handed out medals for that?!

I hit my time target, finishing in 3:13:06, or 1:54 faster than the Boston Marathon qualifying standard for my age/gender group. Pretty good for an old man in his first marathon.

Not quite good enough, it turns out, to be accepted into the Boston, as they have to impose an additional cutoff to limit participants. Turns out, I needed to shave 4:34 from my qualifying standard.

And so now I’m thinking about signing up for the Carlsbad again a year later, with the goal to repeat that performance. I’m a year older now and will age into the next age group’s qualifying standard (3:20:00), buying me 5 minutes of cutoff. If I roll out the same 7:22 min/mile pace, I’ll beat the standard by 6:54, which I’d hope is enough for entry to the 2027 Patriots’ Day event.

I feel older, creakier, slower this year. All I can do is get out of bed early in the morning, do some half-hearted stretching (I know I need to take that part much more seriously!), and hit the road to put some miles on my legs.