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| Great South Bay, 2019: Look how happy running makes me when it's going well. |
Fifteen years ago, I decided to become a marathon runner.
I had never before participated willingly in athletics of any kind, unless you count Chinese jump rope in sixth grade in the yard outside PS 101. (Which you should. Because I could jump waist-high.)
I didn’t have a Garmin, or even Google Maps. I measured my training routes by the distance it took me in my car to drive from Brandeis to the Watertown Target.
On the morning of the marathon, I reasoned that because I had always eaten one PowerBar before a long training run, and this was the day of the race, I should eat two PowerBars. I promptly threw up.
When I crossed the finish line of the Cape Cod Marathon in 5:01:49, it felt like all my dreams —
dreams I hadn’t even dreamed I could have — had come true.
My first marathon taught me that I could be a marathon runner.
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| It isn't really a marathon until you cry at the finish line. |
New York City, 2008
But I didn’t feel the urge to run another one right away. I finished college, then graduate school, then moved back to New York. I became a teacher. I got engaged! I ran nine New York Road Runner races in a year (in those days there was no +1 volunteer requirement!) so that I would qualify for the New York City Marathon.
Whereas in my first marathon I had trained using a book called “The Non-Runner’s Guide to Marathon Training,” I was now running six days a week to help me run faster. I had an ambitious goal: to run 4:30.
Phil accompanied me to the Staten Island ferry and kissed me goodbye. He would be waiting for me in the Bronx, he said, just about the time I would be facing “the Wall.”
There were tens of thousands more runners in New York City than there had been in Cape Cod. I sped through Brooklyn feeling light and strong. Just as I reached the “Wall of Sound” on 1st Avenue, I felt sharp cramps in my side.
I had never had cramps while running before. I didn’t know what to do. I slowed to a walk, gulping back tears. I kept telling myself to get to the Bronx, to make it to Phil. Then I crossed the Willis Avenue Bridge, and I didn’t see him.
I finished in 4:34:48, which remains my PR to this day.
My second marathon taught me that the marathon will humble you.
New York City, 2009
The next year, Phil and I decided it would be fun to run the marathon together for the first time, just two weeks after we got married.
We trained, but not hardcore — we were planning a wedding, after all. We decided we’d use the “Galloway method,” five minutes of running followed by one minute of walking, then repeat. By then I had a Garmin, and I programmed it to beep to signal us when it was time to start doing one or the other.
We got married on a rainy, windy Sunday in a restaurant downtown. We danced our hearts out. Exactly two weeks later, I used black marker to inscribe “JUST MARRIED” on the back of our marathon shirts.
Other runners congratulated us as they streamed past. Some of them joked that we had chosen a hell of a honeymoon.
We ran-walked the 2009 New York City Marathon in 5:27:20. It was nearly an hour slower than my time the previous year, but it was infinitely more enjoyable.
My third marathon taught me that there’s something special about running through life with someone you love.
New York City, 2011
After back-to-back marathons, it felt good to take a year off. Phil and I got a dog to be our running buddy. I transferred to a new school. We moved across Queens Boulevard to a new apartment, a bigger apartment because we were hoping we’d need more space for a baby.
2011 was my PR year. I ran my fastest 4-miler in April, then my fastest 10K in May, then my fastest 5K in June, then my fastest mile in September. As the marathon drew closer, I kept wishfully thinking, “Well, I’ll probably get pregnant and then I won’t run the marathon.”
I didn’t get pregnant. November seemed very cold and dark.
I don’t remember what our expectations were for the 2011 marathon. But I do remember that we absolutely crushed them. In the final few miles, we found ourselves darting around other runners in Central Park as we whizzed toward the finish line, elated by how strong and fast we felt.
We finished in 4:45:05, and my fastest mile was mile 26.
My fourth marathon taught me that finishing a marathon fast isn’t always as important as finishing it strong.
New York City, 2014
A month after the 2011 marathon, I finally got pregnant.
When Eli was a year old, he and I went to cheer on Phil in Long Island City as he ran the 2013 marathon. He finished in 4:37:30 and I remember feeling vaguely insulted that he had run it faster without me.
In 2014 I nervously returned to the starting line. I had broken my pinky toe in early July stubbing it against a rock while carrying Eli at the beach, bringing my first post-birth marathon training to a crashing halt before it had even begun. I was seeded into one of the last corrals of Wave 3, but I decided to start in Wave 4 so I could run over the Verrazano Bridge and not underneath it; besides, I wasn’t in a rush. It was my longest gap in between marathons since the one from my first to my second, when I’d been younger and thinner and hadn’t yet given birth.
It was also the wildest weather I’d ever experienced in a marathon, the year when they wouldn’t let the wheelchair racers cross the Verrazano Bridge because it was dangerously windy. As we ran up the bridge at the start and runners began shedding the extra layers they’d been reluctant to take off, I saw jackets and sweatshirts whipping through the air and sailing across the lanes.
All 26.2 miles through the streets of New York felt like a blessing. It was the first time I had ever negative split a marathon (that means to run the second half faster than the first), and substantially — my first 5K was 37:02, my last 5K split (from miles 21 to 24) was 32:42.
I finished in 4:48:49 and it felt like a tremendous achievement.
My fifth marathon taught me that I could finish strong all on my own.
New York City, 2015
Phil and I had come to a parenting agreement that we would take turns running the marathon, so 2015 should have been his year — but buoyed by my accomplishment at the 2014 marathon, I decided I would join him.
I hadn’t done back-to-back marathons in a long time, and I had forgotten how grueling it could be — planning every weekend around long training runs, working through nerves you’d have thought I had long since conquered. One night Phil and I dropped Eli off at my parents’ house for a sleepover, but it wasn’t so we could have a date night; it was so we could get up really early for a 20-mile training run the next day.
By the time we reached the starting line on the Verrazano Bridge, I was already over it without really even knowing why. I had never run with headphones in a marathon — I preferred to soak in all the cheering and excitement from the crowd — but that year I missed having my own music to motivate me. Just a few miles into the race, while we were still in Brooklyn, the tape I’d used to emblazon my name on my chest blew off and I distinctly remember thinking, “Well, that was an omen, and today isn’t going to be my day.”
It was a warm day — for runners, anyway — and we probably went out too fast. By the time we reached the Bronx, I was done for.
Phil and I had an unspoken agreement, and we parted ways so he could continue ahead; I hadn’t expected or even wanted him to stay with me and watch me struggle, but I had never felt more alone in a race. Tavern on the Green felt very, very, very far away. Remember my amazing 5K splits from the 2014 marathon? In 2015, my first 5K split was 34:30. My 35–40K split? 44:10.
I finished in 5:14:26 feeling small and defeated, like I had tried to treat the marathon too casually and it had vanquished me. The next morning at work, some of my co-workers presented me with overly large printouts of the photo proofs of me miserably struggling toward the finish line. I had never felt more ashamed to look at a race photo.
It wasn’t my time that bothered me — it wasn’t my slowest marathon. It was my attitude.
My sixth marathon taught me that mental fitness for the marathon is just as important as physical fitness.
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After 2015 I knew I would take a long break from marathon running. I wanted to enjoy a season of not training for a marathon.
But in 2016 I injured my foot; I limped for two months, right at the heart of marathon season running, and three different podiatrists never quite figured out why. It was the first time I had ever been injured by running, and it made me feel terribly vulnerable. From then on, every time I felt a twinge in that foot I’d freeze, worrying I was about to ruin my running all over again.
Years passed. I went on enjoying the freedom of not marathon training. In 2018, after having finished 30 half marathons in my life, I didn’t run any — it was the first year in as long as I could remember that I hadn’t done a half.
But then of course I started to miss it — that feeling of running long. Standing in a hot shower on legs that have just run 10 miles in the cold air. Arriving at a destination hours and miles away from where I started. That runner’s high.
And I knew I didn’t want the 2015 New York City marathon to have been my last marathon — that shameful, sad feeling of defeat, of having not tried my best and paid the price for it.
I also wanted to run a different race than NYC, for a change, so, almost exactly one year ago, I signed up for the Philadelphia Marathon.
It started out as my lucky #7. I ran while listening to podcasts for the first time (specifically "Binge Mode: Harry Potter"), which quite possibly had not existed the last time I had trained for a marathon. I ran to work a few times, slipping upstairs to grab my backpack so I could head back out to the gym to shower, carrying the knowledge that I had done a long run in the morning throughout the work day like a secret talisman. I ran a few 5Ks where I placed in my age group. I experimented with all the new kinds of gels and electrolytes on the market that had barely existed the last time I trained for a marathon.
I bought new wireless headphones, and new sports bras, and boxes of Honey Stinger waffles and gummies. I put Nuun tablets in my water. I was diligent about stretching and about sunscreen. I felt like I was doing everything right.
I dared to hope that this marathon would be the one — the last one, where I would leave marathons feeling strong and fast. I ordered some pace bracelets online, and a bib with my name on it, and T-shirts with running puns on them. I was ready.
Then three weeks before the marathon, days before my final 20-mile run, my foot started to hurt.
It was just a little sore. I thought I might be imagining it. I iced it and stretched it. I foam rolled. I thought I’d better not do 20 miles, so I stopped at 10. I had never, ever before stopped short of a long run.
My foot didn’t hurt, exactly. But...it didn’t not hurt.
Dr. Google told me I had sesamoiditis, or pain in the ball of the foot under the big toe. (Dr. Quinn, an actual podiatrist and not a medicine woman, told me the same thing.) Dr. Google’s prognosis for sesamoiditis is very, very grim. I stopped consulting Dr. Google.
For the past three weeks, I cycled through a crushing tide of emotions and changed my mind every hour about whether or not I would run. I imagined myself crossing the finish line in triumph and also imagined myself limping off the course in defeat.
I recognize there’s something a bit warped in the runner’s psyche: Imagine being devastated at not having to run 26.2 miles. Especially because I know that it isn't as if I have nothing to show for it: This year I feel like I truly rediscovered the joy of running.
In January I ran with a friend in her first 10-miler (and then we drank beer after). In February I ran a 5K in the most frigid, bone-chilling wind I'd ever run in, and it turned out to be the fastest 5K I'd run in three years. In March I ran to the Bronx Zoo and met my family there, a long run I'd always wanted to try. In April I ran in the rain on a Rockefeller trail in the Hudson Valley and remembered that running has always been my favorite way to explore new places. In May I flew to Cincinnati to run the Flying Pig half marathon with a friend, the most fun I'd had in a half in years. In June I placed first in my age group in a 5K, finished my 16th Mini 10K as an official "Crazylegs" runner and conquered my jet lag in Copenhagen with a run. In July my running routes in Amsterdam were some of the most scenic I've ever done. In August I ran 15 miles to the beach with friends and noted that it had been my longest run in four years. In September, another age-group win. In October, I cried as I took the last few steps of my 20-mile run along the Bronx River Pathway — not because I felt drained, but because I felt so euphoric. And in November, right around the time I was losing faith in the marathon, Phil and Eli and I signed up to do a family turkey trot on Thanksgiving.
But oh, it stings. I realized that what I'm feeling is a kind of grief, and maybe what I'm grieving is not missing out on the race but the loss of the runner I used to be, the runner who was carefree and never stretched and never got injured and recovered rapidly. Maybe what I'm grieving is that freshness and naivete that comes from not knowing any better, from running without fear.
I ran my first marathon because I had something to prove: that despite my average physique, lack of any athletic ability or talent and inexperience, I could run a marathon.
Maybe what my seventh not-marathon has taught is that I don't have to run marathons to prove anything anymore. Maybe what it's taught me is that the marathon is a distance just like any other race and that there's no shame in not running one.
Or maybe what it’s taught me is that there’s been something worthwhile in the journey to get here. That I want to be a runner for life, not just for one race I didn't get to run. That I didn't make it to the finish line because there is no finish line.
"You tried your best and that's good enough!" Eli said firmly to me at what was supposed to be my pre-marathon carbo-loading dinner, where I was shedding tears into my plate of tasteless pasta as my seesawing decision came to its final reckoning. Maybe what my seventh marathon has taught me is that the journey has to be enough.
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