Running

by Jen A. Miller

  Boot camp also came with a diet, one that involved no carbs except at lunch, and no fat—period. Our trainer recommended things like fat-free soy nuts and fat-free cheese. I threw out everything in my kitchen that didn’t comply, and except for my Saturday sandwich tradition with my mom (bologna and cheese with mayo and pickles on a roll), I stuck to it, applying the same determination that I’d used on my coffee-only college diet. I had incentive to do so. My weight and body fat had been measured before I started boot camp, and would be measured again after. That was the shove I needed for a fitness program to stick. No one wants to read a fitness challenge story where the writer is the same at the end. They wanted to read about progress! Solutions! Results! From a program that didn’t seem too hard! I wanted to show readers that boot camp was magic by having the best outcome possible.

  The food was disgusting. I assume rubber tastes better and has a nicer consistency than fat-free cheese, and trust me when I say that a fat-free soy nut snack is neither a nut nor really a snack. But it worked. The combination of three-day-a-week workouts and no-fat, no-carb grazing equaled a 6 percent body fat loss in a month. I had biceps and abs, and thighs that still touched but didn’t jiggle so much when I walked. After boot camp was over, I joined a gym and started lifting free weights, watching meatheads to see what they were doing and copying their routines.

  I knew I looked good. I took the class in the spring, and immediately that summer, I attracted more catalog model-looking men than I had before.

  So I didn’t mind being a little shallow for a while. I was buoyed by the attention. That summer, I crashed at friends’ houses at the Jersey Shore and strutted around the beach in a red string bikini, then hit the bars at night and got numbers and someone to make out with on the beach until the cops came and shooed the dozen or so couples away. These hookups didn’t go anywhere—and more often than not I’d wake up the next morning with a strange number and a headache—but I reveled in the fact that these kinds of men wanted me when they hadn’t bothered to look at me before. I kept challenging myself to work out harder and cheat less often to see how far I could go, and I dropped another five pounds. Thank you, Jewish Exponent, for that assignment, I thought.

  Not only had boot camp shoved me over my seven-year exercise slump, but that clip gave me enough ammo to pitch a story to a national women’s magazine. Topic: running. But not just any running story. The angle was that I, the person who thought running was a socially acceptable form of torture, would train for a 5K. Yes, I would do that for $750 and a clip in a publication I could buy in a grocery store.

  Another prong of the pitch was that I would train through this newfangled thing called online training. I signed up for a twelve-week 5K program with a guy named Lowell who ran an online coaching program. Online portals for coaching are the norm now, but this was in 2006, before iPhones and Fitbit and Internet on airplanes. I had only just gotten Wi-Fi in my apartment.

  The training package included the following: one consultation phone call, an online training log, and weekly emails. After my boot camp workouts, a 5K didn’t sound impossible. I didn’t think this assignment would turn me into a runner. I figured my anti-running stance would make for a funny story.

  I tried a few treadmill runs before I pitched the story, setting the machine for ten-minute miles and running in place with Guster in my ears and the Phillies on the TV in front of me. It was boring, but steady. I couldn’t go out too fast if I was on a belt that did the pacing for me. I knocked out 3 miles in a half hour and didn’t wheeze. The most exciting thing that happened in those thirty-minute segments was a squirrel snuck into the gym and ran under the treadmills.

  I wanted to start my 5K training on the treadmill, too, but Lowell, in his initial consultation call, insisted that I run outside. The first run he had me do was 2 miles with the goal of pacing myself right so I wouldn’t sprint and tire myself out like I had during my attempts running for running’s sake in high school and college.

  “Go slow, go slow,” I repeated to myself as I walked down my apartment stairs to the street, then to the corner where I had set the route’s starting line using Google Pedometer. By that time, I was renting the second floor of a house in Collingswood, New Jersey, a town that sat between the wealth of Haddonfield and its cousin Haddon Township and the poverty of Camden. As a result, Collingswood was a medley of grand turn-of-the-century mansions, row homes, bungalows, duplexes, and apartment buildings. For me it was perfect, a step up from my former one-bedroom apartment, but a bargain compared to where my other writer friends lived. I paid only $1,000 for 1,200 square feet. When I had briefly considered moving to New York City, a studio in Brooklyn—and not the nice part—cost as much. I could write from anywhere, I reasoned, so why not write somewhere that was cheap and close to home?

  That first run attempt happened on a pretty, clear day in April, right after I’d walked my dog and had a banana for breakfast. I ran on the treadmill with music to block out other people, but outside I left my iPod at home so I could focus on the task at hand. I had adopted Emily, my four-year-old Jack Russell terrier, the day before I moved into this apartment. She hunted tennis balls but was terrified of empty brown paper bags, and she did not understand why I put on sneakers but left her behind.

  I didn’t own what I’d call running clothes, instead wearing Target gym shorts, a cotton sports bra, and old college T-shirt. My shoes were the same I’d worn in boot camp: gray New Balances with worn treads that looked vaguely trailish.

  “Go slow,” I said again as I stood at the corner, finger on the Start button of my Timex sports watch. I took a deep breath, pressed the button, and set off down the street.

  Running is controlled falling. Every time your foot hits the ground, your body absorbs three times its own weight. That’s a lot of mass to be throwing around, no matter your weight, especially when that movement is new to your body. A treadmill can make the motion a little steadier, but when done outside, everything from a rogue bird to a tree root to a driver rolling through a stop sign can throw off that controlled motion. Running at length for the sake of running was frightening and almost violent: my shirt, my shorts, my arms, my head, my hair, flying up and down at the same time. As I hurled myself forward on that very first training run, I stared at my feet. One gray foot in front of the other, and repeat, repeat, repeat. When I tried to run in high school and college, I focused so much on not wanting to be there, and hating every second, that I didn’t think about what I was doing. Then, I could quit if I wanted to, even with my dad waiting for me to come home. Here, I could not. I could not fail, not on my first run. I was scared, both of failing my new editor at the brink of what could be a big break in my writing career, and of my body failing too. What if I didn’t get past that first run?

  I didn’t look up until I hit my first turn, which took me to Knight Park in the middle of town. It had soccer and baseball fields, a playground, and picnic areas, all ringed by a paved trail.

  I had to look up, first to cross the street, and second so I didn’t ram into one of the many women pushing strollers on the trail. I moved my “Go slow” mantra into my head, too, because I didn’t want to scare anyone by talking to myself. I passed them without saying a word, not even a hello. I didn’t want to risk adding any sort of movement that could turn into a real fall. As I turned away from the park and back toward home, my breakfast started to make itself known.

  Don’t puke. You don’t want to write about how you puked. Not far now, not far now. How far? Not far. Not far.

  When I reached the final corner and stopped my watch, I was panting, my shirt spritzed with sweat. I ran those 2 miles in nineteen minutes, seven seconds. The experience was terrifying. My legs shook, my lungs burned, my mouth tasted like mushed bananas and stomach acid, and I could barely breathe, but I did it, and I did not die.

  Over the next twelve weeks, I ran five days a week. The feet-staring and “go slow” muttering stopped, and while I was still running with an aura of te
rror, I felt a little bit more confident with each workout, even though they didn’t get any easier. They couldn’t when Lowell had me doing interval training (400-meter sprint followed by 400-meter jog, then repeat) and weekend-long runs went up to six miles. Six! The race was only three!

  I started changing up my route so I could see something a little different every day: Once I ran at twilight so I could lap Little League games. Another time I ran two towns over so I could browse yard sales. I stopped defaulting to the treadmill in the rain. I didn’t feel like I was wringing out my lungs like a wet rag when I ran anymore, and didn’t worry that I’d collapse on the way back to my house in the final mile of a training run. I dirtied up my brand-new red-and-white running shoes, and as I scrubbed mud off my legs I realized this could be fun.

  I thrilled in every small victory: every “this is the longest I’ve ever run” run, every interval training set met, every time I went into a running store and didn’t try to tuck my head into my shoulders like a turtle because I felt I didn’t belong. I learned that cotton socks give me blisters, that a sports bra appropriate for the elliptical didn’t contain anything when I ran, and, when I finally crossed the bridge into the world of Body Glide, that I could avoid stinging red welts on my thighs even though they still touched.

  I felt good when I met the tasks Lowell laid before me. Sometimes I stopped thinking about running while running. I looked up and I thought maybe there was something to this thing after all.

  For the story, I chose to run the Run for the Health of It 5K in Medford, New Jersey, about a half hour from my apartment. My mom drove me to the race because I was a twitchy bundle of anxiety, and I wanted her there in case I broke myself. I had run further than 3 miles, yes, but never with other people trying to beat me at it. I didn’t know how my pace compared to anyone else’s. What if I went out too fast? What if I tripped? What if I was hit by a car flying through a police barricade and broke both my legs? Would anyone help me? If I crawled through the finish line, would the magazine let me write the story? Would they still pay me the $750?

  What if I finished last?

  “What if I finish last?” I asked my mom before shoving in earphones and trying to psych myself up with misogynistic rap. She pulled one ear phone back out. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Look around you. There are people here like me.” But I couldn’t look around. I was still trying to figure out how to pin my bib to my sports bra. The race was in June on an 86-degree day with start temperatures in the 70s, so I didn’t want to overheat by bothering with a shirt.

  Lowell told me to do a 1-mile warm-up, but I was too nervous, and his request didn’t make sense to me. Why tire my legs out before the actual race?

  I gave my mother my iPod, made the sign of the cross, and put myself near the start line. Then the official announced the race was delayed while the police closed down the road leading to the finish line. I ran to the bathroom and peed again, made the sign of cross again, put myself near the starting line again. When “GO!” came through a megaphone—for real this time—I pushed off, bringing back my “Go slow” mantra to combat a surge of adrenaline that wanted me to spring out as dozens of runners around me did.

  I let them go around me in the first quarter, then half mile. I ran the first mile in seven minutes, thirty-four seconds. I held steady and started passing people who went out too fast and were already Darth Vader-breathing halfway in. I hit mile 2 at fifteen minutes, twenty-two seconds, sweat already damping my sports bra. I passed another batch of runners walking while grabbing their sides, like I had done as a kid running that one-block lap. Between miles 2 and 3 my lungs tightened, and I felt the sun press down on my head and shoulders. I almost stole a water bottle from a spectator. But I didn’t want to stop, and kept going, even as my legs and lungs protested. One more mile, one more mile, one more lap, and you never have to do this again, I thought. And DON’T FINISH LAST.

  The end of the race was first set to end in the town park, but it had been moved on the day of the race to finish in a parking lot, which was a surprise uphill. I made the final turn, saw that steep climb, and wanted to weep. My legs already felt like pilings. I didn’t know if they could make the climb. But there, at the top of the hill, I saw my mom, jumping up and down like a contestant who just won the Showcase Showdown on the Price Is Right.

  Just get to Mom, I told myself, lungs and legs on fire. I reached her, and the finish line soon after. I put my hands above my head, which is what I had always done after soccer sprints because my coaches told me it was an easier way to suck in air. It wasn’t working just then. I thought I might lie down on the grass and pass out for a little while when my mother caught me.

  “I counted ponytails,” she said. “I think you won something.”

  I finished in 22:12, good enough for third place in my age group. I won a mug and a $5 gift certificate to a place called Macho Taco that sold tacos for $6.

  “Aren’t you excited?” Mom asked at Club Diner, our local spot, after the race while I wolfed down a BLT.

  “Um, should I be?” I replied. I was sore and stunned. That was not the outcome I would have expected. I didn’t know how to feel.

  When I turned in the article, my editor’s first comment was that they couldn’t publish my time. It was too fast for their readers, she said. I was surprised. I had no idea what was a good or a bad time. I thought I won something because the 5K was a small community race on the border of the Jersey Devil-producing forest of Pine Barrens. Lowell said that if I kept working with him, he could probably get me to under a twenty-minute 5K—whatever that meant (now I know: not pro-level, but pretty good).

  I ended the article with the truth: “I don’t know if I’ll ever be a serious runner. But I know that I can now lace up and go out for a run. That’s serene enough for me.”

  No one ever read it, though, at least not in a magazine. After a flurry of rewrites and revisions and then a check that came three months late, the entire staff at the magazine was fired, and a new crew came in. The article was lost in the shuffle. I was disappointed, but the check cleared, so I moved on to the next assignment.

  Despite those moments when running turned to a joy, I didn’t expect it to stick, not without a coach paid for by a magazine and a check waiting for me at the finish line. I figured I’d keep running as part of my regular workout routines, all of which were chosen because they burned as many calories as possible in the shortest period of time, and that the mug would be a souvenir of one of those athletic things I could say I tried, like boot camp and Ultimate Frisbee. You know, for that one time I ran a 5K.

  chapter 3

  OCEAN DRIVE 10-MILER

  MARCH 30, 2008

  New Jersey Marathon — Miles 0–7

  With Bruce blasting, runners around me leapt ahead. I held back the urge to go with them, reminding myself that my goal was solid ten-minute miles for the first 20 miles. If I stuck to my plan, I knew that I would start passing a lot of those runners by the halfway point and then—fingers crossed, wood knocked, prayers said to St. Sebastian, the patron saint of athletes—blowing by them in those last 6.2 miles. My training may have been controversial. My longest run topped out at 16 miles instead of 20 as most American training plans do. Taken as a whole, though, the training program was designed to prepare my legs to maintain a pace at the end of the race instead of folding as they had in my last two marathons.

  To distract myself, I looked at the crowd around me. I didn’t wear headphones that day—I rarely do in races—and knew that ten-minute miles meant I’d be able to keep up a conversation while running. Also, any race longer than a 5K can be a slog. Talking to people keeps the miles interesting, and blocks my brain from obsessing about the pain that lies ahead.

  But it will hurt. It will. It will.

  In the first mile I fell into step with two thirty-something men who were either friends or brothers. They stared ahead, puzzled looks on their faces. I looked too: It was a young woman whose shorts wer
e either too small or had lost the elasticity in the bottom of the legs. Her butt cheeks kept popping out of the bottom of her shorts, prompting her to pull down on them every thirty seconds.

  I could tell the brothers/friends were trying not to look.

  “Um,” one said.

  “Ah,” said the other.

  “She’s going to be sunburned by the end of the race,” I said. I’m not a pale person, but I knew that once we passed mile 10 and moved out of the year-round residential towns of the race, we’d lose trees and shade. After I’d dressed that morning, Mom sprayed me with sport-strength 30 SPF sunscreen in the bathroom of our hotel. I still smelled like chemicals, but I hoped I wouldn’t have red shoulders by the end of the day.

  “Oh, is that what we’re looking at?” the taller brother/friend asked.

  “How could you not? It’s right . . . there,” I said.

  They both laughed.

  “First marathon?” I asked them.

  “Yup, and we’re running it together,” the shorter friend/brother said. “You?”

  “Third,” I said as we passed the second mile marker and crossed into a residential section of Oceanport, where more than half of the town’s 2,400 homes had been damaged by Sandy. The first 7 miles would be a pretzel through residential streets of Monmouth and Oceanport, piling up miles for both the half and the full marathon before turning south.

  “Any tips?” the taller brother/friend asked.

  Before you lies a gauntlet that will test your body, your mind, and your soul. Unless you are in the small majority of people who have perfect first marathons, you will encounter waves of crushing pain that will stab you with such force in your legs, your butt, your feet, your toes to bring strong, strapping men and women to their knees. Or at least make them sit on the curb.