THE
LAST SESSION
When a race goes really well, we look back on the training cycle with a unique perspective. Workouts that challenged us, and made us doubt ourselves, are recast as character building. Workouts we crushed become signs of what was to come. Perhaps no workout holds more weight in the lead up to a major race than the last one. It’s the final opportunity to push our limits before the jitter (and doubts) of the taper sets in. It feels portentous, even if it shouldn’t. To better understand the meaning and psychology of the last session, we asked a few Boston Marathon champions to dig through their training logs and share their memories from their final workout in the lead up to their victory.
Amby Burfoot
1968 Boston Marathon Champion
2:22:17
The Workout
I recently dug out my training log and put it on my desk for easy reference. Here's what I found.
Boston Marathon day was April 19, 1968. On April 12, I ran a collegiate track meet, Wesleyan vs. Springfield, with a mile in 4:19 and a 2 mile in 9:11. Log says I 'felt very strong.' That evening there was apparently a lunar eclipse. I scrambled to the top of the nearest big forest-hill in Mystic, CT, to see the eclipse. Next three days I ran singles of 18, 16, and 15, all at about 6:30 pace. Then I ran 9, 7, 2 the last three days before Boston.
On Training In The 60s
I always seemed to thrive on a training diet of long runs at a relaxed pace. When things were going well, these runs seemed to build my endurance without tearing me down. I almost never did tempo runs - didn't know about them in the 1960s - or 'fast finish' long runs, which seem popular today. I just ran long and steady, and it seemed to work well for me.
I didn't overthink my training. I ran long because that's what you have to do to be good at the marathon. And I ran easy, because that's what I had to do to get in all the long runs I wanted to do. When my long runs felt easy, that gave me the confidence that I was ready. It's worth remembering that I was still a college track athlete who often ran mile and 2-mile races once or twice a week. I would usually lose the mile, and maybe come back to win the 2 mile. I truly had no speed. But I was getting in more than enough 'speed work' for the marathon.'
On The Lead Up
What I remember from the last several weeks before Boston 1968 is that every run felt better and easier than running had ever felt before, and my paces, barely manageable on a sweep-second-hand Timex clunker, were faster than normal. I knew something was going on.
I even told a few friends that I thought I might win Boston, though I wouldn't have dreamed to say anything so outrageous publicly. That would have been stupid and outrageous.
Still, I knew I was 'in the groove,' and the marathon itself felt easy. I remember that I felt almost like I was jogging the first half, even though I was with the lead pack. The hills were tough, because I was trying desperately hard to drop Bill Clark, since I knew he had a better finish. The effort failed, and I really sagged at the top of Heartbreak Hill, as he was still clinging to me. I felt depressed and despondent. I won only because Clark cramped on the downhill ('Cemetery Mile') coming off Heartbreak. I'm a lousy downhill runner myself, but on April 19, 1968, I was a little smoother than the other guy.
Uta Pipping
1996 Boston Marathon Champion
2:27:12
Photo credit: www.PhotoRun.net
The Workout
11 or 12 days before the marathon I usually ran a 25K to 30K. It started at moderate pace and moved up to marathon pace for roughly the last third of the way. It was in gentle rolling hills simulating the B.A.A. marathon course.
I liked this test run because it simulated the Boston course, I also had my own little Heartbreak Hill in there.
On Feeling Prepared
Let me check my journal…Oh, here it is: 1996 Boston. I ran a 30K that year. I remember it being a great test run, I had a low pulse, felt exceptionally good. I ran the 30K in 1:52. And since I was so excited, I ran the last K in 3:01. In the setting of this longer, faster run I enjoyed one more time hitting the alternating up and downhills.
This workout sharpened my mind. It helped me gain positive memories for the course and gave me one more chance to practice my focus on specifics for the uphill and downhill running technique.
On What It Signaled
I felt a lot of joy in getting through it without problems. I had a few hiccups with dehydration the weeks before. And I was pleased with my low pulse—it was 138, and one minute after I finished the run it was 108.
Bill Rodgers
4x Boston Marathon Champion
'75 2:09:55, '78 2:10:13,
'79 2:09:27, '80 2:12:11
The Workout
In my final week before Boston I’d try 8 or 10x 400m on the roads at a safe not too hard pace. Everything was geared towards getting to the start line injury free. The most repeat miles I ever did was 7 x a mile. One of my favorite track workouts was 8x 800m with my middle effort a bit faster. Most runners can benefit by change of pace or change of distance efforts.
On Racing
I also always tried to race a lot in the the months before my Boston Marathons. I always felt I could run harder at a race than in training. Although both sorts of efforts are aimed at building marathon fitness they are also geared towards having positive attitudes after successful efforts. The psychological side is huge in sports, but is especially important in individual competitions like the marathon.
I think the Marathon, like all racing, is about strategy. Can you plan and stick to a conservative plan? At the Boston Marathon that’s hard to do!
Lisa Rainsberger
1985 Boston Marathon Champion
2:34:06
The Workout
I dug out and dusted off my training log from 1985 and found the last hard workout prior to Boston:
2.5 Mile Warm Up
2 x 200’s :35 each to wake up the legs
3 x ¼ mile :74 each controlled
3 x 2 mile intervals 800 jog between (10:44, 10:35, 10:32)
1 x 400 :74
1 x 200 :31.6
1.5 mile Cool Down
This workout was a hefty marathon type workout - with 13.5 total miles - but according to my notes it flowed well and I did not have to “force” the effort or the pace. Thankfully I kept a log book because this workout was done 32 years ago!
On Preparing Mentally
I don’t think any single workout prepares you for a marathon. I think what prepared me the most were the weeks upon weeks of uninterrupted training. It was the layering effect of these types of endurance of workouts that prepared me for the marathon.
I found that my mental preparation came from the small victories I experienced in training. The moment I started to hurt or when the workout started to get ahead of me and I had to dig deeper. There always seemed to be a tipping point in a workout where I either had to focus and fight or surrender. The last workout I did before Boston was a mental victory in the sense that I controlled the effort, the pace and the outcome. In other words, the workout did not control me but rather I controlled it. This gave me confidence that I could control the marathon on race day.
On Weather & Race Day
I did the last workout on the Harvard Track and I recall it being cold and windy (Editor’s note: When is Harvard’s track not windy?) and hoping that race day would be better conditions. Well . . . careful what you wish for because race day brought unseasonably warm weather. In fact, at the time it was the second warmest Boston Marathon in history!
Jack Fultz
1976 Boston Marathon Champion
2:20:19
The Workout
To the best of my recollection, I had an out and back 14 mile route that from about 3 – 7 miles had some substantial uphill climbs, which I’d work pretty hard. Then on that same section in reverse, I’d hammer the downhills and hold that effort for a mile or two on the final flatter section, easing off when I felt sufficiently tired but not exhausted. I believe I last did this workout about 10 days before the race.
It was a good simulation of the Boston course, running hard downhill when my legs were starting to fatigue. And at 14 miles, a good total distance for a lactate threshold run which has shown to be a valuable routine training run in preparation for any half marathon or full marathon.
On Mental Preparation
Similar to the physical preparation, it built my confidence to know I could do those workouts (that final one in particular) and still feel that I had plenty still left in the tank.
On Marathon Man
Five or six days before the race, I broke in the new Adidas marathon racing flats I’d just bought. I did a light track workout of 12 – 16 x 200 meters (200 recovery jog) after a good warm up, probably around 33 - 35 seconds each, just stretching out my legs. During my warm up, I also finally met a young woman who had frequented the Georgetown track for her own runs and with whom most of the guys on the team were quite enamored. After a few hours of us getting to know each other – I’d already skipped my afternoon class - she introduced me to the book she’s just read titled “Marathon Man” by William Goldman. I bought a copy and read it on the train from Washington D.C. to Boston on the following Saturday, escaping the heat which was descending on the east coast with an 8 hour comfortable train ride. I was completely identifying with the protagonist of the book – a grad student at Columbia who trained alone at night for some upcoming marathon (played by Dustin Hoffman in the movie version released soon after the Boston Marathon that year). In the book/movie, Hoffman’s character gets caught up in a web of espionage and is tortured by a Nazi dentist known for his torture tactics of drilling holes into his victim’s front teeth. Well, the Friday night before my train-ride to Boston, I inadvertently pulled the cap off my front tooth while flossing. I had some emergency dental work done early Saturday morning to have a temporary cap glued on before boarding the train – thank goodness for the Georgetown Dental grad doctor and the Georgetown AD who set me up.
Anyway, my complete emersion into this thrilling story that included marathoning – ergo the title as a double entendre – and my tooth experience identity with the story line – upon completing the book, I had an epiphany of sorts, a complete sense of “excited calm” that destiny was at play and that I was also going to run the “race of my life,” just as Dustin Hoffman’s character did in the book – and movie -which I saw as a guest of a D.C. radio station when it was released later that summer.