Marathon

On February 17th, 2013, I was crouching on the floor for several minutes working on a jigsaw puzzle. When I stood up, my heart rate didn’t adapt quickly enough to the sudden change of position and my blood pressure dropped precipitously. I fainted. A few seconds later, when I came to, the first thing I became aware of was intense, howling pain: I had sprained my ankle in the fall.

Exercise had been an indispensable part of my life for a few years at that point, and running in particular had become a favorite pastime. Although the pain of the sprain and the severe loss of mobility made almost every aspect of life more difficult or even implausible, I felt the loss of regular exercise most acutely. Almost from the moment I realized I was injured, I began to miss running. It had been an outlet for stress, a way to regulate my energy and health, and even a spiritual practice for me, and now it was impossible. I researched how athletes recover from similar injuries, and counted the days til I could safely run again.

My first run after the injury was on March 9th, about three weeks later. I made it 0.3 miles - as far as the old oak tree in the middle of the block - before the pain forced me to stop. I limped home and waited another two weeks to try again. My second run was even longer - 0.4 miles, as far as the train tracks. A week after that, my third run took me all the way around the block: a whole mile. The pain was slight, manageable, but still there.

Over the month of April I gradually increased the frequency and length of my runs, until the pain was gone and I was back up to the distances I was used to. On April 27th, I ran 7.1 miles without stopping, and thus broke my pre-injury record. That was when I made a decision which would come to consume more than a year of my life after that. I didn’t want to simply return to the level of ability I’d attained prior to spraining my ankle. I wanted to get better than ever. I wanted to dare to achieve even the impossible, or at least what I had always thought of as unattainable. For me, that was the marathon.

A plan began to form in my head. I would work my way up to a half-marathon by the end of the year, and set my sights on running a full marathon at some point during the next year. Since 2014 was the year I would turn 26, the number of miles in a marathon, it felt not just plausible but blessed by the superstitious, pattern-seeking part of my mind that is always looking for favorable omens. 2014 was going to be the year I ran the marathon. I was sure of it.

I ran all summer. I kept track of my miles and times in a spreadsheet I had used to record those first post-sprain runs. My times improved, and so did my gear, as I invested in a belt with bottle holsters so I could carry water with me for longer runs. I signed up for a half-marathon in September, and set up a schedule for when I would reach each milestone on the way to that goal. Every month, I added another mile to my maximum. On August 21st, I ran twice: a three-mile run in the morning and later, as the sun began to set, I ran 13.4 more miles - more than the distance of the half-marathon. I knew I was ready, and felt that this next step was in reach.

On September 8th, I donned a bib and ran the 2013 River Run Half-Marathon in Rocky River Reservation. Expecting to take two and a half hours, I ran it in 2:19:19, and received a finisher’s medal which hangs above my desk.

I was proud, and exhausted, and looked forward to a short break to focus on other things, but I knew that I was not finished yet. The ultimate goal was still a distant one: the full marathon. At that time, I signed up for the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon, which would take place on May 18th, 2014. I took a longer break than I had planned to, and began running again on October 1st.

A challenge I had not anticipated was the coming winter. Running in cold and snow is never pleasant, but that winter was one of the harshest and coldest I had ever experienced, with record-breaking freezes and endless, piling snow. Still, I ran, and sometimes pushed my tired shins through knee-deep drifts that covered the paths in the park. I learned exactly how many layers of clothing were necessary to prevent frostbite, but not broil my insides when I began to work up a sweat. Improvements were slow to come, and setbacks were frequent. My miles per week fluctuated widely with the weather. I began to wonder if I would be ready in time.

When Spring finally came, in fits and spurts of warm wind and melting ice, running became pleasurable once more. I could head out for a run of 8 miles or longer without spending an hour preparing my outfit and psyching myself up for the piercing cold. My optimism returned, but anxiety followed close on its heels: I was running out of time, and didn’t feel ready yet. None of my training runs were close enough to 26 miles to really inspire confidence. I didn’t know if I could do it.

One morning I woke up and realized that there was less than a week left. It was all but over. I didn’t have enough time to improve, so if I wasn’t good enough yet, there was nothing I could do.Dread and excitement ruled me for the next several days. The day before was devoted to nothing but preparation: eating carbohydrates, laying out my gear for the morning, calling my dad to make sure he would be up in time to drive me to the starting line, and going to bed at 7 that evening.

I woke up at 4:20. Miraculously, I seemed to have gotten a full eight hours of sleep.The race would start at 7. I ate toast. Lots of toast. I drank Mountain Dew. I filled my bottles with blue Gatorade and put them in my belt-holsters. I called my dad. It was time to go.

By 6:30 I had checked my glasses, phone, and other non-essential essentials in a transparent bag labeled with my name, and made my way to the starting line near Public Square. The 20,000 runners were “corralled” in order of their expected finishing time, and I found myself near the back of the line, expecting to finish somewhere between five and six hours. I stood in a dense throng of people, in shorts and a tank top, shivering in the 40-degree pre-dawn. Traded jokes with strangers about the impossibility of understanding the amplified voice of an announcer somewhere nearer the front of the line. A singer somewhere up there sang The Star Spangled Banner. I put on my headphones and started the playlist I had put together especially for this purpose. And restarted the first song every few minutes until a signal rippled through the crowd and all began walking forward.

I knew that the clock would not officially begin ticking until the sensor chip in my bib crossed the starting line, but I was eager to begin running. My fingers had gone numb and turned white in the cold, and I desperately needed the circulation. Finally I did cross the starting line, simultaneously starting my stopwatch, and began to run.

***

Hiccups of nervous excitement occasionally rolled up from my chest to my throat and provoked little laughs to escape. Familiar landmarks of the city barely registered in my mind as I passed them. I had not bothered to review the course ahead of time, beyond a brief glance; my plan was just to follow the path ahead and not try to figure out where I was. Since the event consisted of several races at one time, the only thing I really had to pay attention to was when the course diverged from that of the 5k, 10k, or half-marathon runners. To be sure that I hadn’t gone the wrong way, I occasionally glanced around at others’ bibs to see that there were still blue ones like mine in the area. It was still a crowded race.

I felt fast and good. I didn’t know how fast, and didn’t really care. My fingers had gradually lost their numbness and I no longer felt cold. I glanced at my watch a few times, but knew from where I was in my playlist that almost an hour had gone by. It had felt like half that. Shortly after, I crossed the 10k mark. I was ahead of schedule. I reached for a paper cup of Powerade held out by a volunteer and drank it without stopping. Right after drinking it and disposing of the cup, my foot landed on another discarded paper cup. It felt like stepping on a rock with bare feet, so sensitive had my soles become. This was my first sign that my body was getting worn out.

I noticed from my surroundings that I was nearing my own neighborhood, and that soon I would be passing my own building (I knew enough about the course to know this, at least). But I was going the wrong way. I looked around me for blue bibs, but only saw red half-marathon ones. I saw a volunteer up ahead, and approached him.

“Is this still the course for the marathon?”
“Yeah. This is just a checkpoint.”
“The full marathon?”
“Yep.”

I accepted the answer and continued running, but moments later another volunteer chased me down and called out to me.

“Were you asking where the full marathon course is?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“He told you wrong. It split off a few blocks back there,” she said, pointing the opposite direction.
Dread. “Am I very far off course?”
The volunteer shook her head. “No, it’s just a little ways back.”
“Okay! Thanks!”

I turned and ran against the flow of traffic, and sure enough, a few minutes later I saw where the courses diverged. I hadn’t seen the signs pointing me in the right direction. But once I was back where I was supposed to be, all fear was forgotten. I was beginning to fatigue, and had felt myself slow down considerably from that first frenzied hour, but still felt strong.

I left the city of Cleveland and ran down familiar streets - streets I had always seen from the sidewalk, I now ran straight down the center turning lane. This was where I began to see the fastest runners - superhumans like Philip Lagat - powering along in the other direction, on their way back from the other end of the loop. These runners clocked in at almost twelve miles per hour. For them, this was the homestretch, and they were almost done. I still hadn’t reached the halfway point. Still, I smiled when I saw them. I had never expected to reach their level of ability anyway, and it was an honor just to be sharing the racecourse with them.

The next several miles were a blur of suburban houses, paper cups of water, and dwindling but persistent sideline onlookers with their encouraging hand-drawn-signs. The course was no longer crowded. The thousands of runners I had begun with two hours before had been whittled down to just the full-marathoners, and those had been stretched out over almost the entire twenty-six miles as the slowpokes like me fell increasingly behind the faster ones. The few others I saw around me then, my pace-cohorts, would repeatedly show up somewhere in my peripheral vision for hours. They became like friends to me in that strange alternate reality.

It was during this time that I passed the halfway checkpoint. In almost no time at all, I looked up and saw a flag marking the 15th mile, and was audibly amazed. By then I was in outer suburbs that I had never been to before, and had lost all reference for where I was except the placement of those flags at every mile. I looked for them desperately as signals that this was still happening, and an end was somewhere in the future. My hips had begun hurting, and the soles of my feet were raw. Then, I reached the end of the loop and found myself going back the way I had come. I was on the way back to center of Cleveland. It felt like a landmark in itself.

It was shortly after that - somewhere during mile 18 - that I reached for yet another paper cup of Powerade and stumbled. My hips seemed to buckle, and I almost stopped. A volunteer came and put his hand on my shoulder, saying “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” I gasped. “I just need a minute.” I drank while walking (having stopped myself from stopping), and a moment later, shoved my legs back into running. As luck would have it, that was when a song began on my playlist that I had placed there specifically for when I am having trouble going on. When it began, I found it easier to match my strides to the beat of the music, and was back up to a pace I could feel confident in. I punched my hurting hip once with my fist, urging it to keep working, although this may not have been necessary (or helpful).

It was a short-lived second-wind. Barely a mile later, I was done for. I slowed to a walk. I wasn’t giving up, but I just could not run another step. Not now. It hurt. I sucked on a bottle of Gatorade from my belt and focused on moving forward at whatever speed.

I walked for fifteen minutes, less than a mile. I was walking when I re-entered familiar neighborhoods. I wasn’t entirely aware of where I was, though. So I was surprised when I recognized, off in the distance, my family standing on the sidelines. I didn’t find the sight of them inspiring so much as galling. I had planned to walk another five minutes before attempting to run again, but this was not going to happen. With a sigh and an inward nod to the pain, I forced myself into a run.

From then on, it was a dogged, stubborn struggle against my body. It hurt, and it begged for rest. Meanwhile, I had forgotten what rest was. Stopping was not an option. My pace fluctuated, but I gauged my success only by whether I was running or walking. Other runners around me were alternating between running and walking, and in one particularly dark-humored moment I realized that a person ahead was walking faster than me - and I was running.

I stopped once to use a porta-potty right before entering the Shoreway. The flags told me that only a few miles remained. This was the best news I had ever received.

The Shoreway was easily the most surreal stretch of the imagination I had encountered. To run or walk at any speed down the middle of an abandoned highway, littered with dead animals and other debris that don’t get cleared away as on city streets, after more than twenty miles’ worth of exhaustion, is like the perfect metaphor for desolation. Almost no other runners were around, and when I did see one, their presence barely made a mark on my consciousness. It was in the middle of this wasteland that I saw the flag marking the end of the 25th mile, and I swear when I read it I had an orgasm.

One mile left.

Every step was pain, but I had forgotten what it was like not to hurt. I felt like I was barely moving forward at all, but I was running, not walking. An indeterminate amount of time later, I saw a figure up ahead, standing on the sidelines, that I recognized. My brother. The moment I saw him, I doubled my speed, ignoring the screams of my joints and muscles and feet. I saw him say something into his phone and, when I had reached him, he turned and ran at my side.

“How far is it?” I asked. I didn’t hear his answer, but it was 200 yards.

It was so close. I left the highway and was downtown, and saw the finish line just as my brother pointed it out. He told me he had to leave, and made his way back to the sidelines. I kept running as fast as I could, thinking, at least I can finish fast. I was aware of cameras clicking when I approached and crossed the finish line, simultaneously stopping my watch, five hours and thirty-five minutes after I had begun.

***

I tell people that I like running because it’s cheap, solitary, and simple: all I need is my own body and the space to do it. No special equipment (although many specialized products are available), no teammates to coordinate schedules with (although running in pairs or groups can be fun), and no complex rules or techniques to master (although there are volumes to read on how to improve form and performance, often with contradictory or dubious science behind them).

I feel now that my running experience has not been simple, and is far from solitary. Like the authors of books with long acknowledgment pages, I have many people to thank for this victory, and although that road seemed lonely at times, I look back and realize that I never ran completely alone.

These people I thank: my family, especially Ian who ran those last few steps alongside me, and my father who brought me to the starting line. My friends, especially Erin who, true to her word, was waiting at the finish line with a Chipotle burrito ordered to my exact specifications, and Ahmie, the best wheelchair-using cheerleader one could hope for, applauding every training milestone.

Although most of my training was solo, I also thank everyone who ever joined me for a run, including Ian, Vivian, Melinda, and George. And even when I was solo, I thank the many musicians whose songs occupied my ears while my body was busy, especially Imagine Dragons, Fall Out Boy, Vienna Teng, Indigo Girls, Hank Green, Tim Minchin, Igor Stravinsky, Tori Amos, Nikki Minaj, Chameleon Circuit, Andrew Calhoun, Course of Empire, and probably others, I mean, I listen to a lot of music.

I thank the administrators of the race, and the 20,000 runners who joined me that morning and stood in that way-too-cold street waiting for the signal. And, of course, the athletes, scientists, engineers, and other contributors who have worked to turn running from a simple defense mechanism into something that an affluent, sedentary individual might undertake to do regularly and far beyond what is called for in any rational sense if she knows what’s good for her. I mean, come on.

I’ve signed up for a 5k race in just five weeks’ time. Hopefully, it will be my longest run for a while.