#34 Faithful

"Semper Fidelis"
"Semper Fi"
Latin for "Always faithful".

In early 2005, a 59 year old father, former U.S. Navy/ fleet marine hospital corpsman emails his daughter and former U.S. Marine: "want to run the MCM (Marine Corps Marathon) with me?"

She responds: "You've been sampling too many of your anesthesia drugs! I'll come and watch."

Eventually I shamed her into saying yes, but she immediately called her mother to see how she could back out. They proposed to have my daughter's boyfriend substitute for her, and he grudgingly agreed. Mind you now, Josh was/ is a runner, I was not.

With eight months 'til race day, and never having run more than a mile, I went to my favorite book store, Amazon.com to find a book to guide my training. After reviewing a half dozen books on marathon running I settle on Jeff Galloway's book Marathon. Therein he advocates a run/walk technique. He developed this technique primarily for older runners such as myself, but advocates it for marathoners of all ages.

Having smoked cigarettes for thirty plus years (50+ pack year history), quitting at age fifty, here I was approaching age sixty and preparing to run a 26.2 mile race. In fact on the 30th of October, 2005 with the running of the thirtieth MCM, I would, in fact, be sixty years old.

Not to say that I was starting completely from scratch, because I've been a life-long exerciser; mostly strength training but have also been a consistent walker, especially since I quit smoking. Walking 3 to 4 miles a day 5 or 6 days a week with a few 100 ft. jogs was not going get me to the finish line.

Following Jeff's recommendation, I chose and followed the beginner's program titled "to finish." I followed the plan faithfully to the letter.

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Serendipitously, I met Mr. Galloway at the Expo where we'd gone to pick up our race packets. While browsing around the various merchandise booths we happened upon a table staffed by two ladies and they were offering Jeff Galloway books for sale. While pointing out to Josh the book that I had used as my training guide, a well tanned, thin man wearing a ball cap, and standing off to the side of the table interjected, asking if I found the book helpful. I told him that I'd said at the start of my training that I would follow faithfully the plan outlined therein as long as it worked. If the projected results were not forthcoming, I'd trash can the book.
The man introduced himself as Jeff Galloway! Holy smokes! I'd not recognized him because in all the photos I'd seen of him he was not wearing a hat and is distinguished by male pattern baldness.

He asked me the fate of his book. I told him that the book was still on the kitchen table with well worn pages, and that I doubted if I'd be there if it hadn't been for his book.

As we chatted, he asked me how far my longest run had been prior to arriving in Washington, and at what run/walk interval I'd run. I told him I'd run/walked 23 miles two weeks prior and at a 8 and 2 interval (run 8 minutes, walk 2 min.). He said, "if I were you, just sayin', I'd run tomorrow at a 3 - 1 interval and at a pace 2 minutes per mile slower than your 1 mile test run.

The next day was MCM day and I again faithfully followed Jeff Galloway's advice.

I finished the 26.2 miles in 5 hrs. 50 min.