The seaweed pulled me under, and I sank even deeper when my grandfather died in May. I was so blinded by grief that I couldn’t look further than the week, sometimes the day, ahead. I had a few one-night stands—a bookseller from San Diego, a guy who had once turned me down when I asked him to a dance in eighth grade—but then I took my post-breakup mania a step further and bought a house, a three-bedroom row home in Collingswood, the same town where I’d been renting. My timing was spectacular: I signed the loan papers seven months before the first domino in the Great Recession fell.
My work slowed to a crawl soon after. Editors I loved were fired. Others didn’t return my emails. Even the Jewish Exponent, my first regular client, stopped assigning at the same frequency. My income halved. Not only was I a sad bundle of bones and skin, but I was an almost-broke one.
That summer I shuttled back and forth between my house and Avalon to write my first book, a travel guide to the Jersey Shore. The advance was meager, but enough to pay for a part-time share in the bottom floor of a bay-side rental with twelve other people. I didn’t strut around in a red bikini like I had two summers before. I rarely made it to the beach. Instead I worked during the day, walking these shore towns block by block to take menus, browse gift shops, and write down amusement pier ticket prices. At night I drank, either cocktails made from the makeshift bar in the rental and consumed on the porch until I passed out, or overpriced Miller Lites at the Princeton, a popular bar at the northern end of the island known for its sticky floors, crowds, and unreasonable prices for crappy light beer. I knew no one in Avalon (I found the rental on Craigslist), and I slipped into the background while telling myself I was part of the crowd.
I turned in the manuscript in September. I stopped seeing friends and only showered on days I ran, and they weren’t even good runs. They were short, stuttering attempts that maxed out at 2 miles. I found no joy in them. They no longer served a purpose—not even a dark one. They hadn’t won me Steve or Stephen, so why bother? Running had failed me, like he did, but I felt a pull toward both, still. I checked my email hoping to see an apology from him, but it never came. I set out on runs hoping I’d feel that soaring feeling from the year before, but it never came. I’d run, then walk. Sometimes I sat down. Once I lay down on a pile of leaves in the park. I didn’t care if I scared another toddler or his mother. I was too tired to move on, and stood up only after I was almost run over by a landscaper on a lawn mower bagging leaves.
Five months after the break up, I came out of my hole to help my mom pack up her parents’ house since my grandmother was moving into a nursing home. I made it to the top of the stairs on the second floor, then lay down and started sobbing. She sat down next to me, put my head in her lap, and ran her fingers through my hair. I told her everything, and she suggested that maybe I get some help.
I signed up for my first ten-mile race instead.
(I probably should have found a therapist. When I wrote about this seven years later in the New York Times, my editor titled the essay, “Running as Therapy.” I received a lot of emails from other runners who had also used running to work through break ups, divorce, unemployment, and grief, but an equal number of emails chastised me for suggesting self-care for the depressed. That headline—and piece—was dragged through the mud of the Internet again when Robin Williams, who was a biker and runner, committed suicide. I was told that writing like mine was responsible for people killing themselves. If you have a problem, seek professional help. And maybe try running, too.)
I chose a 10-mile race instead of a half marathon because I thought 13.1 miles was too daunting. A full marathon? Please. I could barely run 2 miles without being killed by a lawn-mower. Ten miles seemed a more reasonable goal. I found out about the Ocean Drive 10-Miler, which was part of the Ocean Drive Marathon, while researching the book. Both races are named after the road it travels, which connects Cape May to five barrier islands of the South Jersey Shore. The 10-Miler started in Cape May in front of Congress Hall, a beautiful hotel I visited often while researching my book, and ended on the boardwalk in North Wildwood.
Cost: $40. I could afford that, but I couldn’t afford Lowell without a magazine’s budget, so I typed “free 10-mile training plan” into Google and landed squarely on Hal Higdon.
Hal Higdon was one of the leaders of the first running boom. He’s been writing for Runner’s World since 1966, before the magazine was even called that, and he cofounded the Road Runners Club of America, which now has 2,300 chapters.
All I cared about then was that his schedule was free and the training didn’t look too difficult. His novice program for a 15K race (which at 9.3 miles was close enough to 10 miles) called for ten weeks of training with four days of running each week, plus one day of cross training and one day for both stretching and weights.
Since I doubted I could run 10 miles in one shot, I planned to get to the finish line by running nine minutes, walking one, and then repeating the process.
Four days a week before lunch, I slipped on my running shoes, plus gloves and a hat since I trained in January, February, and March. Hal had me start at 2 miles, and I worked my way up to 8.
In an interview on the American Public Media radio show On Being with Krista Tippett, which airs on our local NPR station, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the twenty-sixth presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and sub-four-hour marathoner, said, “Runners begin to understand the blessing that comes with putting the body to work and emptying the mind.” She was referring to prayer, but I had stopped going to church in college. Those long runs were the closest I came to going back.
Running for long periods of time—an hour, an hour and a half—prepares you to be on your feet for extended periods of time in a race, and those long runs are supposed to be done at a slower pace. This gave me a lot of time with myself. I don’t run with music outside, so the only thing I carried with me was my mind. In those first weeks, it was the breakup. It was work. It was the broken washing machine in my new house. It was how I was going to afford the mortgage and the electricity bill and the heating bill that month.
But as my long runs stretched to over an hour, I got sick of myself and my whining. So I started thinking about other things, too, like who lived in that house on the park grounds? Or how much did it cost to maintain the baseball fields? Who picks up the dog poop in the dog park? Would my dog like it there? These were silly questions for which I didn’t have answers, and still don’t (except: No, my dog would not like the dog park), even though that same park is still on my regular training route. By filling my head with nonsense, I emptied my mind. The seaweed floated off and hovered over me, as if I’d taken a deep, fast dive. It wasn’t gone, but running suspended it, briefly, and released me, letting my arms and legs swing and move and my mind breathe freely, at least for the time I was on the road.
Cold-weather running was a joy I had not known when I trained for that first 5K. Then I ran the most during May and June. I’d start sweating a few steps in, even if I ran at 5:00 AM to beat the sun, because you can’t get up early enough to beat the New Jersey humidity. In the winter, though, I breathed deeply and ran in cold, bright air without feeling like my lungs were clogged. I still sweat, but lightly, without that sweat running down the backs of my legs or soaking my shoes. In the winter, I ran with my face turned toward the sun. Running to break up the morning gave my day more of a definition, too: Walk dog, eat, work, run, eat, work, walk dog, eat, sleep.
I focused on running 1 mile at a time because running 1 mile eight times was less terrifying than running 8 miles once, then I applied the same strategy to my work: Find one client to replace the magazine I just lost, get one extra assignment from a client who had kept me on. I became an expert in financial distress, using my own life as material for website articles that paid 50 cents a word. The rate was lower than I was used to, but the editors were so thirsty for content about the recession that they assigned me a raft of short, easy work that I could write quickly. That work kept me a
float.
I still spent a lot of time alone in my house, a house I couldn’t afford, but I made an effort to integrate myself back into my old social life. I went to happy hour. I went to the movies. I went to parties. I went to a cousin’s wedding shower and did not want to kick a wall. I even went on a few dates. They weren’t great dates, and most were fix-ups with unsuitable men, like the forty-two-year-old marketing executive who lived two hours away, the twenty-one-year-old unemployed kid of my uncle’s best friend. But having dates meant that I showered, put on an outfit that did not involve an elastic waistband, and smiled through tedious getting-to-know-you questions. I even dated a business analyst for six months without thinking too hard about where the relationship would go. I dated him for the sake of that moment: for company, for sex, for someone to talk to, not as a way to change the course of my life forever and ever amen.
I started to get my body back, too. I no longer tried to manufacture muscles with weights. Instead, I built strength that had purpose. My quads galvanized, my calves strained against my lace-up boots. Training for a long-distance race pulled a hunger out of me that I had fought for two years. So I cooked: recipes from America’s Test Kitchen and Runner’s World, a magazine that I also put on my pitching target list. And I ate: beef stir-fry, pasta with mushrooms and broccoli, salads with full-fat feta cheese and olives and olive oil. I re-learned what real food was, and why I needed it. I started to lose the bony look. My cheeks came back. I could no longer see the top of my rib cage pushing up out against my skin. I threw out my scale.
Running became a way for me to take back part of myself, even when I was the one who let others take advantage of me so quickly. I was ashamed that I let Stephen do that to me, and that I had whittled myself down to a matchstick in hopes of changing his mind. The more miles I ran, the stronger I felt, and, though not recovered, at least I made it to a point where I could look for the new road ahead.
Race day was frigid, especially for March. When I woke up, it was 32 degrees with a howling wind. I stayed overnight in Cape May, in the first-floor apartment of a friend who lived across the street from the beach. He decamped to his girlfriend’s place so I could terrify myself with every scenario of what could go wrong without anyone watching me. I woke up at midnight, 2:00 AM, 4:00 AM, before finally giving up at 5:00 to get up and try to read away my stress, picking books from his shelf at random and pretending I could find an interest in shipbuilding and 1950s pulp novels, when all I wanted to do was puke. My longest run leading into the race was 8 miles. How was I ever going to do 10? Sure, an extra 2 miles doesn’t sound like a lot, but wouldn’t they be insurmountable when stacked on top of another 8 miles? What if I didn’t make it? What if race officials had to send the tram car that ran up and down the Wildwood boardwalk in the spring and summer to pick me up? Usually the tram blasted “Watch the tram car, please.” Would they change it up just for me? “Watch the passed-out runner, please,” and charge me $2 for the ride? I didn’t carry any cash on me during races.
An hour before the start, I ate my Cheerios with a banana and whole milk, put on my race gear (long-sleeved top, matching shorts—because I hated running in tights, even in cold weather—plus hat and sunglasses), peed three times, paced inside until fifteen minutes before race time, then walked the quarter mile to the start. I cut through a food and games pavilion, shut down until the summer, and I was stunned by what I saw.
That first 5K was a small community race. This one looked massive to me: Hundreds of runners waited on the lawn of Congress Hall, stretching or talking or laughing. Laughing! Some of these people were about to run a marathon—a marathon!—and they thought something was funny? What could be funny about forcing your body to the absolute limits on a 32-degree morning with a steady eleven-mile-per-hour wind? Who was sick enough to see some kind of humor in that? If I wasn’t laughing, maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I should just get in my car, drive back home, and burn my running shoes in my sink. At least I’d save a couple bucks on my heating bill that way.
But the surge of runners walking toward the starting line carried me forward. I had no time goal, so I drifted toward the back of the crowd lining up on Beach Avenue, the big, grand, nearly two-century-old yellow hotel on our left, and the ocean on our right. Ten-milers wore yellow tags; marathoners wore white.
“First race?” I heard from behind me. This came from an older woman, close to my mom’s age. She was short and wearing long tights and long sleeves, a small fanny pack around her waist and sunglasses on top of her head. Her tag: white.
“First ten-miler.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“I don’t . . . well . . .” I said.
“Sure you will. This is my twentieth marathon. You get used to it.”
Twenty. TWENTY! No. NO. A marathon was a bucket list thing to be done once in a lifetime. No one did twenty. This woman must be a crazy person. She was old. She wore a fanny pack unironically. She could not be trusted.
I would not be fine. I would not . . .
My panic was interrupted by the national anthem. Then the megaphone let off a siren, and the crowd pushed forward. I was on my way, running through spectators that lined both sides of the first quarter mile, then tapered away as we continued down Beach Avenue.
The plan was to run for nine minutes, walk for one minute, then run again. This was a recommended tactic on many running message boards I’d read before the race, and it took a bit of pressure off me to run straight through 10 miles. I felt stupid stopping nine minutes in, right at the point where the Victorian-era core of the beach town gave way to motels and condos. I wasn’t alone in doing so, but most run/walk/runners had white tags.
It’s okay. Okay. Okay. O.K. Corral? What? No, run. Run.
I had a plan and I was going to stick to it. On this course, right before the mile 3 marker, runners hit the bridge that connects Cape May to the rest of the Jersey Shore. It doesn’t look like much when you’re driving over it, but it’s a long, steady climb on foot, and anyone who went out too fast dropped away when they hit that bridge. I did not, and turned at the foot of the bridge to follow the pack down the Ocean Drive.
The scenery changed here too as I ran on the strip of road that connected Cape May to Wildwood Crest: Gone were buildings and crowds, and in their place reed grass that looked bleached and burnt—but still standing—after being beaten down by salty winter winds. I’d driven over this section of the Ocean Drive dozens of times, but more as a way to avoid traffic on the Garden State Parkway than to look at the scenery. I never stopped to see what I was passing through, which you can’t help but do when you’re running at a blazing speed of six miles per hour. I read the names of boats dry-docked for the winter (Chef’s Mess, Nuttin’ Fancy, and Finsanity). I watched the reed grass blow in that steady eleven-mile-per-hour headwind that gusted up to twenty-three miles per hour that morning. I looked at the sky, a brilliant blue that looked like it’d been dipped in egg whites, a color that can’t be replicated in the summer. If I looked at the water, the boats, the sky, the other runners, I told myself, I wouldn’t think about how that wind was making my face go numb. The road was closed to spectators, so the only people around were cops, EMTs, and other runners.
I started to forget about not being able to do it by doing it. The walking minutes gave my body a break, especially after mile 5. There, reed grass gave way to shorter, scrubbier cordgrass that grew out of the salt marsh and where fiddler crabs were burrowed until summer. That was about where I felt like those crabs had pinched themselves to my legs. But mile 5 was also where I really started passing other runners, even with my walk breaks. I charged onto the toll bridge (where almost every runner pretended to pay the tolls) and back down the other side, then passed signs for Methodist, Greek Orthodox, and Crest Community summer church service times, which signaled we were almost to Wildwood Crest; then we were in Wildwood Crest, where we hit cottages and motels and—finally—saw some spectators other than emergency services providers. Mos
t looked like they had woken up surprised to find a race outside their front doors but cheered us on with their morning coffee from their decks and porches anyway.
My legs felt like they were sinking toward my shoes by mile 8, and my toes pounded with pain from banging against the fronts of my sneakers, but I was determined to keep on. Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop. I hit the boardwalk in Wildwood at mile 9, running up the ramp to the boardwalk because a group of high school kids screaming at the top told me to. I turned onto the boardwalk and hit the wooden boards, which pushed back up against my feet. I felt like I was bouncing on pogo sticks after pounding the asphalt for 9 miles.
On the boardwalk, we lost those homes that sheltered us from the wind. Here, it slammed into us from the right and rattled the gates covering the closed T-shirt shops and pizza joints on my left. At mile 9.5 the wind ripped off my hat, but I didn’t stop to get it, not when I was so close.
The finish line was near Montego Bay, in front of a big yellow building with a motel and water park inside. I moved onto the concrete strip usually used by the tram car at the same time a woman with a toddler started to cross in front of me. I was so close to finishing that I would not have had one qualm about stomping on a toddler or her dumb parent if they stood in my way.
“GET OUT OF MY WAY, LADY!” burst out of my mouth along with my last pained breaths of the race. My mother and sister, who had driven straight to the finish line that morning, started screaming when they saw me.
When I crossed that finish line, a volunteer put a square medal with seagulls wearing running shoes around my neck, and a silver space blanket around my shoulders. I wanted to crawl out of the finishers chute because my knees shook and my quads spasmed, but my mother grabbed me, pulled me out, then held me close in a bear hug. I sobbed into the shoulder of her puffy coat while my sister tried to throw a fleece blanket around my legs. It wasn’t just the race, but relief that out of all the crap in my life that I couldn’t control, this one thing I set out to do, I did.
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