Ah Brooklyn….

I always talk about finding running but I really didn’t find racing until about a year after I started running consistently. I did a couple of races during that first year, and despite the smiles, I thought the racing would be something I would never really love. I didn’t get it, and whether it was the introvert in me or my insecurities, I had moments where it went further than discomfot, I actually hated a couple of those first races. In March 2013, at urging of certain friends, I ran a half marathon. When I finished that first half marathon, I felt a feeling of elation and a distinct feeling that I would never do this again. In fact, I turned to one of my friends who had run the race and stated emphatically “This was cool, but man is this stupid. I am never doing it again.” Moments after this finish line I was shivering in the cold trying to find a cab and feeling the desperate cramps of my stomach urging me to get to a bathroom before the imminent apocalypse that was coming from my bowels. I was tired, cold and all I wanted was a shower, not the pictures and recaps that followed the finish line.

But something happened a couple of weeks later. In 2013, New York Road Runners decided to expand the size of the Brooklyn Half Marathon, so I was able to sign up at the end of March. I am not quite sure why I decided to do it, despite my complaints from the first half marathon. I convinced myself that I should at least try one more. Maybe part of me enjoyed it and I didn’t want to admit it back then. I think back now that I wanted to be like some of the other people I had seen, who could run the half marathon effortlessly.

So I ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon in May of 2013. It was warm and completely unfamiliar. I hadn't run in Brooklyn very often and I hadn’t been to Coney Island in years. I finished the race, under a cloudy sky covered in sweat and remnants of salt littering my arms and face. But I was now in love. My legs were tired but that good kind of tired. It has now been five years, and it’s safe to say Brooklyn is now an annual ritual for me and that races like these are a must for me. There is something about Brooklyn that makes me feel at home. It could be because it looks a lot more like Queens than Central Park does. Between the Brooklyn Half and the first leg of the New York City Marathon, the steps I take there are therapeutic every year. The Brooklyn Half is something that is inclusive. There is no lottery, no qualifiers, just first come first serve so it gives a real taste of New York. And because of that it might be the simplest, most fun race I do every year.

It starts with the pre-party, which takes place at one of the piers at Brooklyn Bridge Park. I found out a couple of years ago that there is a ferry that leaves a couple of blocks away from my office that heads across the East River and makes stops along the coast of Queens and Brooklyn. This year it was ninety-degree day, so leaving the humidity and muck of Midtown-Manhattan for the top deck of a boat was the perfect recipe to induce a smile. I decided to ask a pretty girl and runner I know to come with me. She wasn’t running the race but, since she is a runner, she enjoys a good bib-pickup (not the easiest type to find). We arrived in DUMBO and walked along the river in Brooklyn Bridge Park. I grabbed my bib and she convinced me to take the obligatory photo holding my bib and the picture of my name that was printed on a big plastic canvas with all the other runners. We had drinks while standing by the railing on the edge of the pier looking at downtown Manhattan. As the sunset, we walked back over toward the Brooklyn Bridge and the Carousel that sits underneath it. She turned to me smiling and said: “Don’t you love New York!”. I peaked around at the skyline of downtown lighting the sky, and I grinned and said “yeaaaaah.” We jumped in an Uber and decided to get some pizza. As we were driving she spotted a place, so we cut the trip off, stopped the car and jumped out and walked into this semi-empty place in Clinton Hill that had a small balcony on a second floor. A couple of glasses of Spanish wine to wash down some wood-oven pizza was more than perfect if that is possible. And see that is the difference with Brooklyn, it is hard to replicate that kind of night with any other races or bib-pick up (also not the best idea if you are earnestly training).

Two days later, on Saturday morning, I woke up early drank my coffee, ate a banana with some honey drizzled on top and then went through my morning stretching routine. The Uber dropped me off a block away from Eastern Parkway. It was drizzling a little as I lightly jogged up to the corrals in front of the Brooklyn Art Museum. It was gray out, but it still had the smell and feel of a spring race. I met up with a friend, and we went into the corrals together, she was running this for the first time and was struck by how many people were there.

The Brooklyn Half has progressively grown since I started. By the end of the day, there would 27,440 finishers, so we were packed in tight before we get started. They went through the pre-race ceremonies and after a couple of starts for the pros, the crowd starts moving in earnest towards the start, which is immediately after an awkward turn that the crowd must take before we see those big blue arches.

The race is relatively straight forward. The first half is essentially a tour of Prospect Park, the majority of the second half takes you down Ocean Parkway and finally you reach Coney Island, where you finish on the Boardwalk. Five years has made me familiar with the course. I know where to expect crowds; I know when the road will suddenly elevate and where it will feel like it’s a perpetual flat straightaway, like a New York City black tar treadmill. It is as if I get a reunion with an old girlfriend, somewhat familiar but based purely on the memories of what feel like fleeting moments. And it is fleeting because no matter what your pace, every race will become a blur with a few distinct moments and feelings that stand out. So coming back year after year helps crystallize the experiences from the prior races.

I reminded myself that I need to look around. I need to pay attention to the people who are standing on the side of the road. I need to make sure I notice the lake in the middle of Prospect Park, and I need to pay attention to the neighborhoods we pass through when we pour down Ocean Parkway. And the key to Brooklyn is it is a “we”. For some reason, there seem to be a lot more smiles and sympathy during this race than some of the others.

This year I went through a couple of phases. My leg hasn’t completely healed so the IT band went through the roller coaster of tightness, looseness and sometimes a little pain. Knowing the course in front of me helped. I knew that I needed to leave something in the tank for those last five miles on Ocean Parkway. Ocean Parkway is nothing but a flat horizon covered in multi-colored runners. You look down and you see road and you look up and you see nothing but crowds of runners in front of you with uniform looking buildings framing each side of the wide road. Ocean Parkway gives you nothing except the alphabetic order streets. I first glanced up at “Avenue I” and I laughed myself, knowing that I had been premature in checking where I was at in the Avenue alphabet soup. I had a long way to go before I reached Avenue U and beaches of Coney Island.

There is something about running at less than 100%. It’s not like a race where I am depleted and finished at the end. The injury prevents me from leaving everything on the table. That feeling of tightness in my leg, that pain in my ass (literally), tells me to slow down. So by the time I get to the finish line I am not searching for the relief of stopping, I am wondering whether I should crank for those last two hundred meters because I know that isn’t that far and even if everything goes wrong, at least I would go out like a legend.

I crossed the finish line at 1:36:12. Far from my best result but oddly my best time in Brooklyn. As I walk, my legs feel okay, and there is no residual pain, which is a good sign. I snatch up my medal and grab some water as I smile at the women standing on the stilts greeting all the finishers. I look around and remember I am in Coney Island. The sun has just started breaking through the clouds. I saw the beach and then at the Cyclone behind me along the boardwalk. And it occurs at that moment that I will be back next year, maybe a little slower and maybe a little faster. But Brooklyn will always be a little warmer than all the other races and maybe that is why its a tradition..for me.