I ran my first marathon in 1993 at age 33 and hobbled around for weeks afterward. Friends and doctors suggested it be my last. Two years later, when I finished my second, I told my boyfriend at the time to “cut off my legs” if I ever threatened to run another.

In 2008, when I finished my 18th, I thought, Now you really can stop. It wasn’t that the thrill was gone; I cried after every one. But I had been at it for 15 years. I’d run some of them relatively fast (sub-3:30), at least for my age. I’d conquered the bridges and canyons of New York and Heartbreak Hill in Boston . I’d run one in nor’easter-like conditions and one in 85-degree heat. I’d run them as far afield as Berlin and Sydney . I went to more than one high-school reunion and heard lines like, “Didn’t you used to be a large person?” Now I could scale down my running and maybe finish my novel, learn Italian, write songs.

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But I found it hard to quit. Marathon running had become an inexorable part of my identity. I was often introduced to people as “Rob, who runs marathons.” At one point in the mid-2000s I realized that more than half of my closest friends were marathoners. And I liked being skinny. So in early 2009, I found myself re-upping for my 19th.

My body had other ideas, though. Every time I started to get back into marathon shape, a new injury would sideline me. I had hernia surgery. There was recalcitrant heel pain . I developed asthma . The members of my running team, Front Runners New York, kept getting younger and faster. I turned 50, meanwhile, and kept getting slower.

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But the signal event of this period was the death of my mother, Virginia . She never had much to say about my running. Her reaction on one hand was not surprising, as she was not the kind of parent to get overly involved in her children’s lives. But she was a jock in her youth in 1930s Brooklyn , and in adulthood continued to play golf and tennis. When I was growing up, she was forever exhorting me to “go out for the team” or to “get into the game,” long after it became apparent that the team and the game had little use for an overweight, bookish kid who would rather stay in and listen to his Dionne Warwick records.

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