AS I WROTE last month, I am embarking on a personal “moonshot” to qualify for the 2018 Boston Marathon by running 26.2 in under 3:30, improving my most recent time by, gulp, nine minutes. I’ve been trying to BQ for a decade, but this time, I hope, will be different. This time, I’ll do everything right—with help from a team of coaches, scientists, and product designers at Nike who are working feverishly to break the two-hour marathon barrier. I will train harder and, more important, smarter than ever before. But here’s the thing about moonshots: They come loaded with both promise and peril.
My quest began in November with a treadmill test at Nike HQ near Portland, Oregon, to gauge my aerobic fitness. Then, a few meetings and Skype calls…
