Thread by @JaneLindholm

20 years ago, I wanted to write my senior thesis on the @BAA Boston marathon. I thought it was an interesting example of Emile Durkheim’s theory of collective effervescence. (Yes, that was some haircut. I had buzzed it the previous fall for a class, but that’s a different story.)

Problem was, no one in Harvard’s social anthropology department would advise me. They said I should have gone to B.U. if I had wanted to study sports anthropology. (Maybe I would have liked college if I had!)

And they said my idea was more sociology than anthropology. (I’m still not sure where the line is really drawn.) So I gave up. On the thesis, but not on the idea. I decided instead of writing a senior thesis, I would use that same amount of time to train to run the marathon.

As a kid who spent several years of my youth in Wellesley, I had watched the race as a spectator with amazement (and frequency—I think I’d watched it more than a dozen times by then). The proximity between spectators and the greatest distance runners in the world was so cool.

But more than that, it was all the “regular people” running the grueling race intrigued me. I would stay and watch, cheering people on for hours, long after my family was ready to walk back home. I clapped until my palms were numb. It felt like the least I could do.

What compelled them to do it? Why was it so important? Some of them were in a lot of pain by the halfway mark, where I usually watched from. And yet they kept going.

And many of them high-fived and interacted with the spectators in such energetic displays of fun and camaraderie. It felt like the barrier between athlete and spectator was punctured in a fascinating way, different from most professional and even amateur sporting events.

So in my last year of college I decided my ethnographic research would be to experience the marathon from the participant side. I started training in November, running along the banks of the Charles River, listening to Harry Potter books on tape on my Walkman Sport.

And then on Patriots Day 2001, I took the bus to Hopkinton and did it.

It was a great experience. Which is not to say easy. Or fun. At least, not the whole time. But I did it! I felt the high of people cheering me on by name. (Pro tip: if you make a t-shirt, be sure it says something you won’t mind hearing shouted at you by hundreds of people.)

I felt the swell of achievement—I, a regular person, was running the same route as Catherine Ndereba, Lee Bong-ju, Moses Tanui, and the legendary Ernst Van Dyk. (Check out Lee Bong-ju’s comment about the crowd. And his dad.)

Two of my parents were living in China, but my dad drove down from VT, dragging along my aging great aunt and my 18yo brother. He waited for me at mile 16, just before the Wellesley hills, and when he saw me he said I looked tired and it was okay if I wanted to quit. Thanks, Dad.

I didn’t quit. Though I also didn’t run all those hills. Turns out training on the flat flat banks of the Charles River was NOT the smartest strategy. But I was 22, and you can power through 26.2 miles when you’re young (and stupid).

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that experience a lot this year, as my 20th college reunion approaches (virtually), and as I’ve picked up running again. I’ve run since I was 14, but not seriously, not every day, for 20 years.

This past pandemic year has been a revelation. I didn’t bake any bread, but I learned about how far I can push my 42yo body. I started doing speed work for the first time ever. Bear in mind, speed is a relative term. I’ve never been fast and never will. But I’m going fast for ME!

And this morning, in honor of the 20th anniversary of my turn as a bandit in the Boston, I ran a half marathon.

I struggled on the mile-long hill in the 10th mile. But I did it. And I’m proud of myself—then and now.

And tonight I found the JANE shirt I made for my original race and I put it on. I’ve got 20 years and close to 20 pounds on that young’un from 2001. But it turns out we have the same determination and curiosity about what it’s like to push hard.

So, happy Patriots Day. Here’s to finding our strength no matter how old we are, and to letting our younger selves inspire us and our older selves continue to shine.