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Boston Bound: A 7-Year Journey to Overcome Mental Barriers and Qualify for the Boston Marathon

Elizabeth Clor

Start date: July 15, 2016

Finish date: August 19, 2016

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Dec 04, 2016 Sara rated it liked it

Shelves: running, kindle

One of the greatest challenges of the marathon is accepting that an extraordinary amount of hard work and preparation seems to all boil down to something that happens within just a few hours. -Elizabeth Clor

This - in a nutshell - is my constant struggle with marathon training. Hours and hours of up-at-dawn workouts, time away from family, painful foam rolling, experimentation with the right nutrition/hydration combos with absolutely no guarantee of a payoff in the end. It's terrifying.

But ugh yo One of the greatest challenges of the marathon is accepting that an extraordinary amount of hard work and preparation seems to all boil down to something that happens within just a few hours. -Elizabeth Clor

This - in a nutshell - is my constant struggle with marathon training. Hours and hours of up-at-dawn workouts, time away from family, painful foam rolling, experimentation with the right nutrition/hydration combos with absolutely no guarantee of a payoff in the end. It's terrifying.

But ugh you guys, I really wanted to love this book. There's so much I have in common with the author (perfectionist nature, hard on myself when I don't accomplish something I know I'm capable of, desire to quit if things start to derail from perfection - to name a few). It was nice to know I'm not alone in this thinking, but where my issues are wholly within me and what I can achieve, the author had a tendency to feel entitlement to achieve her BQ, which is just not something I an relate to.

She does acknowledge this quirk:
And now, with 60 congratulatory comments, I realize how many people supported me throughout my journey, while I might have been too consumed with self-pity to reciprocate.

This was hard to read actually, and I know this is the type of thinking that she ultimately works through to get to the other side, but it was quite a turnoff how entitled she felt just because she followed a training plan.

The essays that captured her conversations with her therapist were eye opening and I can see the transformation she went through to get to where she is. Things I can relate to, like nerves if the weather isn't perfect, if I have GI distress and other external factors were captured quite well.

Quitting is not my best effort
I was so happy to see this in one of her race reports because there have been so many times I have struggled with this, and I'm finally at a place where I can reevaluate goals and not psych myself out when things aren't going 100% to plan (though not quite perfectly there yet, ha).

One of the things that the author says she's conquered, but I don't totally believe, is that she's done comparing herself to other people. As I mentioned above, there was an entitlement - which she acknowledged - that she did all the training that her running partners did, but they qualified and she didn't, and she had a hard time accepting that. And while that's no longer so blatant, she during her post breakthrough races, she keeps talking about how she is passing this person or that person - or someone passed her. While she might not care as much as before, it's not the best way to convey true growth.

Other minor quibbles include a bit of redundant points, and some behavior I thought was kind of rude (drafting off other runners without offering to return the favor, bashing a race volunteer for taking too long to refill her water bottle at an aid station, when that's not really his job and took him away from refilling actual water cups to share with other runners).

Overall, I did get some good ideas to cope with some of the mental challenges I face during races, but there's a lot that rubbed me the wrong way. Oh well! ...more

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May 25, 2016 Wendy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: running-and-fitness

Read my complete review and interview with Elizabeth Clor on the blog! http://www.takinglongwayhome.com/2016... ...more

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Aug 19, 2016 Taryn rated it liked it

There was a lot of good advice in this book, but at times it felt like reading a long string of race recaps, since a lot of it is reprinted from her blog. I actually liked the parts where she veered from running a bit and talked about her personal life. Overall it was a good, quick read, but I guess I like running books that tell more of a story.

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Jul 31, 2016 Kelly Lamb rated it liked it

Shelves: biography-memoir, nonfiction, running

May 22, 2016 Pounds2Miles Brandy Windham marked it as to-read

May 20, 2016 Elizabeth Clor rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author) · review of another edition

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