What If I Don’t Make It Back?

 



I read a lot of stories about the motivated runner and the comeback runner. I have always been a self-motivated person who doesn’t look at the glass half-full or half-empty, it is simply a glass with liquid. My favorite line is I am not an optimist or a pessimist, I am an analyst, I just call it how I see it. 

I’ve gutted out way more races than I’ve strategically finished. There have been limping walks across the finish line. Cramps in sight of the finish line and escapes from ambulances en route to the finish line. The common denominator, I made it to the finish line. Realistically, I don’t ever consider not finishing once I cross the start line. Of course I’m going to finish. In the back of my mind, much to my wife’s chagrin, I know I’d rather die out here than not cross the finish line and get that medal.

But what if circumstances are beyond my control? For every boxer or team that is on the opposite side of the win, their intention was to give it all they had for as long as they could and of course “no way, we are losing this”. “That guy can’t beat me”, are the words spoken by most boxers before the match where someone just put them on the mat. Every single team that Tom Brady defeated on his way to 7 championships believed that Tom Brady was not going to beat them. I always believe I will finish what I started. Somehow, some way.

My last marathon was the Philly Marathon back in 2023. Since my very first marathon in 2003, I had not taken more than a year between marathons and by 2014 I ran at least one every 6 months and of course I ran 12 marathons in 2016. I had surgery in 2024 and my plan was to return to running seriously in 2025. My recovery was slower than expected. Then I set a goal to run my first marathon since Philly in August of 2026. I had run the Sri Chinmoy Marathon 4 times and this was a perfect, flat, close to home race to get me back to where I am used to being… a marathon finisher. I will not run that race this year.

What if… I don’t make it back? I can’t actually believe I just wrote that. The though of it sound ridiculous. I am a self-proclaimed tough guy, from a tough neighborhood, and I have gone through some tough things. How could I possibly be done doing this thing that I love so much? Literally, family first, then running. I ran 6 miles a few weeks ago and developed some other issue with my foot. My knee will hurt for the first mile of every run. It takes 3 days to recover. How could I train for a marathon? But how could I not train for a marathon? I’ve trained for marathons since 2002.

It’s hard to write this because I am looking out the window and all I want to do is go for a run. Today however, is not a day that I can go out and do that. I don’t want to think about not getting back to it because I just want to get back to it. Right? So I’ll just write these words in the hope that they become meaningless or as simple as the glass with water in it that some will call half-full or half-empty. These are just words that I am writing as a precursor to training for my next marathon. But, WHAT IF I DON’T MAKE IT BACK?

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