15 Trial Lawyer • Spring 2022 of completing a half marathon, we found great joy in pursuing new goals. For several years, Santha and I ran half marathons, trying new races and aiming to improve our time. We joined a women’s running club that organized weekly track workouts. We started trail running, spending our Saturday mornings exploring Forest Park. We ran the Hood to Coast Relay. And then we decided to train for a marathon. Training for a marathon is a lot like preparing for trial. You start with a goal and then you need to plan how you will make the best use of the time you have to prepare. Most marathon training plans span a period of 16 to 20 weeks, during which you spend roughly 10 to 20 hours per week running and cross-training. Just as a trial lawyer has to block out time to prepare the different components of a trial — voir dire, opening and witness examinations — a marathon runner needs to devise a training plan that incorporates speed work, strength training and long runs. If you put the time in, the goal is attainable. Running a marathon is a lot like being in trial. The feeling of excitement and anticipation you feel in the pit of your stomach in the starting corral before a race is just like the feeling of sitting at counsel table waiting for the judge to take the bench. No matter how well prepared you are, there is inevitably at least one unexpected challenge. The weather can be hotter or colder than anticipated, you might get a blister at mile 18, or you might start too fast and experience a crash in your energy toward the end of the race. You have to remain calm and focus on putting one foot in front of the other and you have to dig deep at mile 19 when exhaustion sets in and you have to silence the voices in your head that are telling you that running another 7.2 miles is an impossibility. After a positive experience running the Portland Marathon, Santha and I decided to run it again with the aim of qualifying for the 2013 Boston Marathon. For me, at the age of 46, that required a marathon finish time of 3:50, i.e. an average pace of 8:47 minutes per mile. We completed the Portland Marathon together in 2012, just a hair’s breadth under the qualifying time. We travelled together to Boston the following April and ran our first Boston Marathon the year of the bombing, a story for another time. Thankfully, we and those who had come to cheer us on were all unharmed, as were the numerous other runners we knew from the Portland runSee Running 16 Sullivan’s family cheered her on at Mile 19 of the 2013 Boston Marathon.
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