The NYC Marathon Part V

If I want to be transparent, the honest reason for why it has taken me so long to write about the 2018 New York City Marathon is because I didn’t know how to write about this one. This marathon was by far my slowest 26.2 miles — 3:52. On my fifth tour of the five boroughs of New York City, I had one of my worst days both physically and time-wise. But the struggle about writing about this wasn’t about the disappointment in the result. That part is visible, fail to reach a goal and use that to drive me to do better the next time. What I couldn’t do is explain how content I am even in with the failure without making it sound like an excuse. I went into this year knowing that I was undertrained and therefore I wouldn’t get the result I wanted, but the potential of failure didn’t scare me off. And amazingly while I regret the result, I wouldn’t go back on the experience. I have read a million times about how to live a life without any regrets but whether its running or just growing older, I am starting to think life without regret is not worth living because that would be a life without participation.

I was talking to my brother about how my nephew was contemplating quitting baseball. My nephew loves baseball, but unfortunately, he has been slower in developing than some of his teammates. My brother is a doctor and probably a little more pedantic than me so he understands his frustration and desire to move on to something that he will be better at. I have been thinking about that because when I was thirteen, I didn’t run from something to find something I was better at, I ran from something because I hated the feeling of failure and maybe that carried on for me a little longer.

Running in my thirties has brought a different type of introspection. There is that shared human experience of once you have failed at something, once you have experienced that pain of loss, it is easier to shut down and avoid it all. Something has happened to me after all these miles where I stopped being scared of what is on the other side of trying. And it isn’t just racing results or striking out in little league. Life is a gamble, and nothing is ever guaranteed. It can be a relationship with another person or doing well at a job. Running broke something in me, and I think it was for the better. I learned how to fail by learning how to live.

I can have a great day, get a new PR, and I don’t relish in it for that long because the next thought is what is the next thing I want to do. Do I want to beat that PR or should I change up the distance to make this more of a challenge? For some reason, after a bad run, the last thought in my mind is I am never doing this again. The most painful part of 2017 wasn’t the grueling ten miles of the marathon on a busted up hamstring, but the weeks I had to take off because of whatever I had done to myself. Perhaps sadism is replacing cynicism, but I like caring about stuff rather than just walking away from the thing that didn’t come easy or was just plain hard. And therein lies the change in me caused or arising from running. The 2018 Marathon was me deciding that I knew that there would be joy and failure in this day but that in the end, both would make me better. And therein lies the hope.

Hope has a way of sneaking up on you. I know the saying is that it springs eternal but, especially lately, it seems like the hopelessness can be neverending. I am a born and bred New Yorker. I always thought that I with age I would become more hardened and grizzled and unfazed by the disappointments and cruelties of life. Somehow, this first weekend of November in New York, a weekend that previously had mattered because of my birthday, is now consumed by this day I share with 50,000 runners and a million spectators.

This year was slower and more reflective. I decided right from the start that my strategy would be to go out slower and hope that would pay dividends on the back half. Perhaps not real negative splits but hoping that my lack of conditioning could be tricked by calming myself through those first sixteen miles. I felt a tightness in my left hamstring in the first couple of steps in the shadow of the upper level of the Verrazano Bridge, but I smiled. The pleasure of now doing this for the fifth year in a row, I could control some of the adrenaline and try to glance at the faces that were around me. I was controlled at times and bursting at others. Brooklyn has this inescapable vibrancy that carries over from year to year but seems to be slightly different each time so you never truly prepare for it. When I crossed the Pulaski Bridge, a group of Scandinavians was next to me, and their pacer directed them to make sure they enjoyed the view of Manhattan. When I got into Queens, I finally realized that part of the route overlapped with one of my long run routes that I run from my apartment. All these years of running up and down Vernon Boulevard and on that day in November I had never recognized it until now. I was a little under 12 miles into the race and only about 5.5 miles from home.

The trouble came when I started coming down the Queensborough Bridge. My steady pace had worked all through Queens and up the incline of the bridge. I was taking shorter strides and staying within myself and my right leg, the oft-injured limb for the past year, actually felt good. But suddenly, as I was coming down the back half the Bridge I felt as though I had a flat tire. My left hamstring pulled tightly, and suddenly those easy short strides became more difficult and delicate. I managed to tune out the pain going down First Avenue and into the Bronx. It was at mile 20 when the cramps started setting in, and I was forced to walk. I did run across the finish line and then marched slowly out of Central Park to get my fifth blue cape. I exited Central Park West on 73rd Street, walked two avenues to my friend’s apartment building where I had stashed a bag with a change of clothes with his doorman. I swapped shirts, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and redraped the cape over my shoulders because it helps keep me warm but more importantly motivates people to get out of my way when I walk to the subway. After about half an hour on the train, a ten-minute walk home down Ditmars, I made it home around 3:00 pm, about nine hours from when my day started.

Of all the things running has done to me, it has fundamentally broken my cynicism. It is why when I run, I can always manage a smile for the most part. Even in those dark moments when I am struggling, I am never angry. There is something about the human experience that comes into focus when you get into distance running. There is a strength, weakness, compassion, and desire to better all blended together. It isn’t that I am any less angry or furious about walking in this marathon or whether I have this fear that my best results are behind me. The difference is that I haven’t let that anger or fear deprive of the experience, of the chance to participate. And I think cynism is a code word for cowardice nowadays because people use it as the reason not to care. If there is one thing I can say I took from running eight marathons, is that I found the courage to show up.

And maybe that is the silver lining of 2018. That despite all the cruelty, ignorance and indifference that occupy the news, it has been balanced in 2018 by those who wouldn’t stay silent, wouldn’t be cynics and wouldn’t be scared off. And yes I made you read all of this to get to this point because sometimes it’s just not just about running.