By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

A few months ago, I posted on Facebook that I had signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon, which will take place on October 29th. Up until a few days ago, I was training for it. Today I must announce that I am withdrawing from the race. It is a regrettable yet humbling experience that is currently forcing me to reassess where I am with my running, why I got here, and how to get out of it.

It is not a failure as long as you learn from it so it doesn’t happen again (Photo: Pexels)

It is more than safe for my readers to assume that training was not going as planned. It had become more of a suffer-fest than the enjoyable experience with its usual highs and lows. Things were not clicking. The efforts were mammoth-like. Recovery took too long. I began to dread the long runs. The speed work took so much out of me that I was unable to feel any progress. It was a death spiral.

Maybe I was overtrained or under-recovered. Maybe it was the heatwave currently affecting the entire Northern Hemisphere. Maybe the long runs at 86º temperatures (30ºC) with 100% humidity, where your sweat doesn’t evaporate, were overtaxing my body. Maybe, as running comes in cycles, I am amid a low instead of a high. Maybe, a month away from 58, I must accept that I am not what I was just a few years ago. Maybe the few extra pounds I haven’t been able to shed off were multiplying my effort. Maybe my body is not the same two years after my open-heart surgery. Maybe it is a combination of everything. Who knows?

It was a tough decision, as I was training with two committed runners I am also coaching. Seeing them thrive while the coach could not keep up was embarrassing. It was difficult when we set out for a long run, and I had to turn around earlier because I knew that I just didn’t have it that day, or the next, and the next, too. As if this wasn’t enough, my left knee, the weakest link in my running life (2 surgeries), started hurting again for the first time in years. Deep inside I believed that if I kept going, everything would eventually click. That my body would magically adapt. I know I hung on longer than I should have just because I felt obligated to my runners. But the time of reckoning was inevitable.

As I was suffering, plenty of friends told me that I shouldn’t worry because October in DC has wonderful weather. As much as I appreciate the thought and encouragement, I still needed to train in the hot and muggy South Florida so I could enjoy the good weather in DC, in October.

The updated version of this picture will have to wait.

And that’s the other thing. There is no doubt in my mind that I could have finished the race. But with 11 marathons under my belt, just finishing is no longer a worthy goal. I am not willing to suffer to cross the line in 5:30. I wanted to run a marathon at 58 so I could beat my dad’s age of 57 when he ran his last. I also wanted to run it in 4:30, to beat the 4:43 of his last 26.2. So, God willing, I still have plenty of time to achieve those two goals, hopefully while my dad is still alive, so I can brag about them.

The next steps are to reassess where I am at this point and how I got here. I will start by resting my body. I will keep running but won’t push too hard through the muggy days with longer or faster runs. I will work based on effort and run easily to regain the aerobic capacity I feel I have lost. I will focus on running the best half marathon I can next season. Hopefully, three or four of them until I can put together an effort I can be satisfied with. Maybe I’ll try to set new 55+ PRs in the 5K and 10K. Once I feel I am back, then I will figure out what is next and plan for my next marathon. I know I have at least one more in me.

The one thing I know is that I will keep running. Withdrawing from this marathon is a humbling experience that I must learn from. It is only a failure if you don’t learn anything from it and thus, you screw it up again.

I live by my motto: Always moving forward.