How I qualified for the Boston Marathon (twice) during residency

After reading this article’s title, you may assume I’m writing this to show off. And yes, perhaps there is a small part of me that wants to tell my colleagues, “I am a sub 3:30 marathoner!” But mostly, I am writing this because I want to show others that you can do hard things, even in residency.

Medical residency is hard, harder than what most people will go through in their professional life. But so is training for a marathon. They are both journeys that require extreme dedication and show you what you are really made of. They are long hauls. No shortcuts here. But in many ways, they are complimentary.

For starters, I do want to share a disclaimer that I am not married, and I do not have children or other dependents, so in many ways, besides a demanding career, my schedule is still my own outside of the long hours tied to the hospital. And like most physicians, I am goal-oriented and thrive when I have a purpose that is well-defined ahead of me.

But to be honest, this time around my goal was to get through the training (running, not medical) and get to the starting line knowing I would make it to the end of the race. In the back of my mind, the goal to Boston Qualify (BQ) was always there. I had done it before, and despite the 5-minute additional cutoff since the last time I qualified, I knew that if I put in the training and miles, I could get there again. And let’s be real: I am as competitive as they come. Below are some tips I learned along the way.

Rest is required

One thing that marathon training taught me through residency was that rest is crucial. I used to not respect the other things going on in my life outside of running. In college, I was balancing premed coursework, working in a lab, multiple side jobs and running collegiately. I tried to do it all and hammer out 50-plus-mile weeks. I would get frustrated when I felt sluggish or emotional during runs. Looking back, I realized I didn’t respect the stress and anxiety of balancing my academics, work and running. I did not appreciate the fatigue it all placed on my mind and body.

I approached my running in residency differently. If I needed more than one day off in a week from running, I took it. I often took two days off from marathon training during the week, not only so my body could rest up for my workouts or long runs, but also so my brain could heal from the challenging and emotional cases on the floors. Although I try my hardest to leave my work at the hospital, my patients often follow me home in my thoughts and on my runs.

Keep your goals close

I also learned to keep my goal close to the chest. I decided I wanted to run a marathon around December or January but knew that getting in adequate shape would be hard. I didn’t sign up for the marathon until I had proved to myself that I could run 15 miles straight without getting injured. Once I had gotten through that goal, I signed up for a marathon two months out. I didn’t tell many friends or family members I was running until the race was about one month out. That’s not to say I wasn’t training hard until a month out; I just kept it to myself for a bit, knowing that doing so would keep the pressure low for me.

And lastly, I learned to focus on my internal motivation. I wanted to show myself that I am strong and that I don’t have to give up running even though I’m a resident. I have listened to way too many physicians, med students and residents state that once they started residency, they gave up on exercise, hobbies or other activities they used to do that made them happy.

While I agree there is not a lot of time for all the hobbies one used to do, I do think that everyone can have their “non-negotiable.” While it may stink sometimes to get home after a 12-hour shift, throw on running clothes and run on the treadmill at the gym, I know I am better for it. And I rarely, if ever, feel worse afterwards.

Fill your cup

There is both discipline and joy in committing to the things that you love, and while I fully believe that movement should be a part of all our lives, I understand that we’re not all going to get out there and start running marathons. So, if you find joy in reading a few pages of a book, or spending quality time with loved ones, these are the little things in residency or other challenging parts of our lives that will keep us as whole as we can be.

Filling your cup to fill others is real. I fill the cup by running. I enjoy the fresh air and the flow state that comes with the forward momentum. Feeling my heart pumping fast and picking up the pace to hurdle myself along the pavement makes me feel alive. And after a long day stuck in the hospital, running is the simple reminder to me that I am not only very much alive, but that there is more to my life than just my job.

So, while yes, I trained for and ran two marathons in under three hours and 30 minutes (Gettysburg Marathon and Scranton Marathon) during my second and third year of residency, I also learned so much more about myself in the process.

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