nine years these two forces—experience propelling me forward and age pushing me backward—stayed in balance. i ran marathon after marathon in roughly the same time, sometimes a bit faster, sometimes a bit slower.
but when i turned 39, i finally started to slow: each marathon got worse. last year, at age 42, i did a little better than the year before, but the trend line did not look good.
this year, i set a slightly fuzzy goal of two hours plus my age in minutes, a barrier i had never quite broken. i would turn 43 in the summer, which meant i wanted to run a fall marathon in 2:43. as i 