What My 100th Marathon Taught Me

I ran and walked my hundredth marathon on my fifty-seventh birthday, through a beautiful wooded park on the outskirts of Paris. I felt great during the first of four loops of the course, like I actually was a runner again. Reality quickly caught up to me, as I had started too fast, and the second half of the race took a half hour longer than the first half. My legs were leaden and painful on those last two laps, and I was on the…