Page 580 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
ington, D.C., and Peter had run the Vermont City Marathon in Burlington and the Boston Marathon. As a good and proud father, I would watch (except, sad to say, I did miss Peter’s great 3:26 run in Ver- mont). And when I watched, I was overwhelmed by the excitement of it all, not just to watch, say, Greta Waitz win at Tavern on the Green but also to root for the boys and, indeed, the people of all types who com- peted with the goal of finishing. (Stuart Schultz, a real athlete, indeed a former Princeton football player, whom I described earlier as totally “wired,” had competed twice, and each time he “hit the wall” at about twenty miles and dropped out, so finishing was not something to be taken for granted.) The boys always seemed to benefit from the races, and they always finished—in pretty good time, I might add. Why couldn’t I, fat old me (I was fifty-five when the idea came to me), run a marathon?
Well, why not? It will be simple; I will do it the Harvey Yaverbaum way. First, I will do what any other normal compulsive would do: I will order a ton of books on the subject. (From them, two emerged as espe- cially helpful: The first listed virtually all marathons that were held annually in the United States, Canada, and Europe and gave course descriptions and evaluations, entry requirements and fees, average tem- peratures experienced, and the like. The second purported to outline a training program that was guaranteed to work for any dedicated neo- phyte, even if he was Harvey Yaverbaum.) Next, I will get in my car and drive around Scarsdale, mentally fixing mile and half-mile markers that will be used in either out-and-back or circular training loops. Finally, I will impose the most effective control on me that I can think of: I will create an Excel spreadsheet in which to record my progress.
The information in the two books helped me to choose the best marathon available, given the constraints that I imposed. The marathon had to be easily entered and, if possible, not too far from New York. It had to permit me to have a minimum of four or five months—hopefully, six months—of preparation; the course had to be essentially flat and rated easier than “somewhat difficult”; and it had to be conducted in a temperature that was likely to be not greater than the low fifties. Pitts-
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