Finding a Finish Line
I felt the cold gel spreading across my hamstring, and the lower part of my ass and I fell silent listening to the doctor comment as she studied the ultrasound of my leg. I tried to stay still as I lay on my stomach, trying to keep from rustling the thin paper on the medical bed. I couldn’t see what she was doing or what she was seeing. I just listened to her discuss the size of my apparently inflamed and enormous right hamstring with the nurse as they prepared the syringe. Eventually, she found the right place to go in and she sunk the needle in, first the lidocaine, and then the cortisone sprayed against muscles. She injected me twice but the lidocaine ensured I didn’t feel much.
Right before this all happened, the good doctor had a discussion with me about whether or not I should take the shot. Better runners and wiser people warned me that the downside of cortisone was that it could seriously set me back after the initial positive effects. The doctor said that while I had some small tearing in my hamstring, there was a minimal risk that I could further tear it during the marathon. But ultimately, I could take the shot, run the marathon and the only way to ensure that I would heal was to take off at least two weeks after the marathon. I cringed slightly that the thought of the two weeks but it seemed like a fair trade off if it were only two weeks.
The question that lingered with me was- “How important is the marathon for you?”. This led to me stumbling over my words because I hadn’t thought about it like that. I didn’t want to do anything that would put me out of commission for an extended period, but I wanted this marathon. There is no such thing as a pain-free marathon. I had thought this would just help me tolerate the marathon better. I had never asked myself how important the New York City Marathon was to me. After I had done it the first time, I just felt like this was something I would do every year for as long as I could do it. I wanted to be one of those people who said I had been running it for two decades straight. And it that moment, when she was giving me the path to bail on it, I couldn’t do it.
I have been dealing with this injury and it has hampered my training. All of my runs have been slower and in the frustrating way that I can tolerate it, but I know the results are suffering. In the end, the cortisone shot will not help back any of the training miles I had lost. All it would do is help reduce some of the pain that I had already agreed to endure. And so at that moment, I had to weigh my love of the marathon, my ability to continue to run and my performance in the marathon. The easy part was the last one. I still maintain and I always say it to everyone who asks me about running. The races and the personal records are just icing on the cake. The most important thing was running every day. Take away the bibs and the finish lines and I would still be out there every moring. But I realized I can live with whatever number is next to my name (to some degree), I love that day that race.
[T]here is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you’re waiting for an organ. You can’t buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind. This is the most horrible truth, and I so resent it.
Running can often be a reminder of the need to improve everything inside of us. It is an intimate process for most of us, time on our own at random hours of the day, listening to our breathing, our footsteps and the thoughts rattling around in our heads. The New York City Marathon bridges the gap between the daily runner and the rest of the world. This is the day I get to share what running has made me. I share it with people running next to me, with the thousands of people who line the streets to cheer for strangers. I even look forward to waiting in the cold on Staten Island to be herded into caged corrals and eventually up to a base of the Bridge to hear those cannons signal the start. The New York City Marathon will always be a test of my endurance but unlike any other run and probably any other race, I feel like it is the one day I get tap into something outside of me. The New York City Marathon is the kind of public display of hope that drives me to train for sixteens weeks and lay there in a small medical room while doctors inject things into my ass. And maybe it all goes back to what Anne said above. I spend 364 days a year making myself strong in a lasting way, but the marathon gives me that insane temporary boost that may be fleeting but man is it worth it.
After a couple of days off after the cortisone, I went out for a quick 10-K to test how it felt. I am not perfect, but suddenly my leg was moving the way it was meant to move. That full range of motion helps drop fifteen seconds per mile off my pace on what was an easy run. The hope now is that maybe the combination of the inner strength I have since I started running and the adrenaline of November 5th will get me to that next finish line.
