As the sun was starting to slide down, I stood up, put on some shoes, and came downstairs.
“Hey hey, she’s alive! Let’s go for a walk!” my dad said, bundling me into my coat and out the door.
“I’m embarrassed,” I said to him and his new wife as we walked down the long driveway to the street.
“Jenny! C’mon! Nothing to be embarrassed about. We’re family!” he said. He was peppy for someone who had just dropped a lot of money on a wedding, but he must have still been washed in the afterglow of the wedding and knowing one daughter was finally settled.
“Oh, Jen. Don’t worry. I’ve seen far worse,” my dad’s wife said. “I’m just glad you could sleep.”
We crossed the street to a development of multimillion-dollar houses where they liked to walk. Despite the November date, the sun was warm.
“What’s our daughter-father dance going to be?” my dad asked.
“Little Surfer Girl,” I said. He had always held my hand as a kid when that Beach Boys song came on.
“Of course. I was thinking the same thing,” he said. And I felt a twinge. Of course my father expected me to get married. Everyone did. What if it never happened to me? What if no one picked me? That’s what I wanted, right? That’s what I was supposed to want, what would make me happy.
Jason had made me feel better than any other man before—had made me feel better than I was by myself. He had betrayed me for the sake of what? Money? To prove a point? I had been so wrong about him—but there had been no warning signs either. Whereas Stephen was cagey, aloof, an addict, Jason had been all in until he wasn’t.
Despite that warm, late November walk, the sinus infection and the cold hung on. My training dropped to 10 miles a week. I had two choices going to the starting line of the half marathon: I could hold back and play it conservative given that I wasn’t feeling 100 percent, or I could still try to hold that 7:24 pace to qualify for the New York City Marathon.
I am a very stupid person, so I went with option two.
The race started at 7:00 AM, and because I was already a ball of stress and tissues, I didn’t want to risk driving. What if I was stuck in traffic? What if I couldn’t find a place to park? What if, to get to the starting line on time, I had to abandon my Civic down some alley in Philadelphia, only for it to be scurried away by vandals who broke her up for parts, never to be seen by me again?
I opted to take the PATCO high-speed line, which is two blocks from my house, into Center City and walk to the start. I wanted to leave plenty of time to get to the start, so I chose the 5:10 AM train. That meant getting up at 4:00 AM to make sure I had enough time to eat and poop before the race, which meant setting the alarm at 3:30 AM and then 3:45 AM SO I wouldn’t oversleep, which meant waking up at 3:00 AM anticipating the alarm going off.
I made my mom come with me, too. I didn’t force her to go, but I did plead. I had a bad feeling that the race wasn’t going to end well, and I wanted her there at the finish line, even if it meant she’d be standing in the cold for hours waiting for me. She didn’t even question why I’d want her there, just showed up at my door at 4:45 AM with a tote bag full of magazines and my grandfather’s old flannel jacket, which she threw on top of me.
Temperatures hovered just below 40 degrees at the start of the race. Because I still preferred a deep chill for running, I wore gray capri-length tights, a cotton American Apparel purple tank, and red arm sleeves (which are just what they sound like—tubes of fabric that leave your shoulders and wrists exposed), gloves, and about seventeen sweatshirts.
Normally the only people coming on or off PATCO trains in the 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM block are drunks, but that morning, the platform was full of runners, most quiet and still half asleep. The ride over was silent except for the sound of PowerBar and granola bar wrappers. We filed off the train at the last stop at 16th and Locust. My mom tried to break that silence on the walk over to the start by talking to me about my race strategy and the weather, but I didn’t reply. My brain and stomach were both churning, and the crowds didn’t help. As soon as I stepped off the train, we were swept up in a flood of people. About eighteen thousand people would finish races that day. I was just a peon in the mix.
This race is put on by the Philadelphia mayor’s office, and it’s not the most well-organized event. So when I saw locked Porta-Potties at the start, I thought that was normal. When I saw long lines for the open bathrooms, I thought that was normal. I got in line, and despite my cushion of time, the national anthem played before I had a chance to go. I hadn’t even seen the starting line yet. I hadn’t found my corral.
I stepped out of line and shed one sweatshirt, two, three.
“Give me your tissues,” I said to my mom.
“What are you doing?” she asked, transferring the tissues to me as I handed the clothes to her. I hugged her tight.
“I love you,” I said.
“But the bathroom . . .”
“C’mon,” I said to the three women in line behind me. I found a bush about 20 feet from the Porta-Potties, dropped my tights, and let it go. They did the same, trying not to look at each other but giggling. I passed the tissues around.
“Hey!” a cop said as we were wiping.
“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Chase us?”
We flung down our tissues like football penalty flags and then sprinted out to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to join our corrals.
Given my aggressive plans and estimated finish time, I was put in the green corral, the third group out of seven (not including the elite runners). This meant I was standing next to a bunch of very skinny people who were absolutely not wearing cotton.
The Philadelphia Half Marathon shares its course with the first half of the Philadelphia Marathon, and both races start at the same time in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, heads down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway toward city hall, then shoots down with a few twists and turns to Columbus Boulevard, home to panhandlers and strip clubs. After that, we turned west along South Street, made famous by an old doo-wop song but now a lane of sex toy and T-shirt and “tobacco” shops, then up to Chestnut Street. This was the longest straight shot in the race, about 2 miles long, and when it ended, we were about halfway to the finish. It’s also where the most crowds are because it’s in Center City and easy to get to by public transit.
I held my pace through those first 7½ miles. I remember feeling cold, then hot, and the strain of running at that pace broiled my lungs—but I thought that was how I should feel. I was holding steady 7:30 miles, and if I was going to hit my time goal I needed to feel it through the entire race, even if the head cold still clung to my nose, my throat, and my lungs. I stared at my feet all through Chestnut Street (and missed a half dozen people looking for me). One of my editors was at mile 7.3 because his son was visiting Drexel University that weekend and they decided to stay to watch the race. The turn off Chestnut is at the Drexel campus. I wanted to pass the school with my head held high. And I did, until the course turned into the residential area around Drexel, where stately old brick homes had been turned into frat houses. Bros blared rap music and did keg stands to celebrate the race.
That’s when my body gave out. My legs shook and I took one step, another, then stopped and walked, the 7:30s draining out of me. I had never had a bad race before. I had only ever walked because I planned to walk. I planned to destroy this race. Instead, I hobbled along 34th Street thinking how I could get a cab or take a bus or train back to my mom. But I didn’t have any money, and good luck getting a cab through a half marathon and marathon start/finish setup, even if I did have cash. I didn’t bring my phone, either, and there was no Uber then.
The only way to was through. So I started running again, but slowly, and I continued to shuffle past the Philadelphia Zoo and Fairmount Park until the turn at mile 10.5 that brought me down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. By then the sun was up, and I was glad I had worn a tank top because we ran into that full sun. The most I remember about that stretch
was the whoosh of the cars on the Schuylkill Expressway, which parallels the Drive, and trailing a woman running in a bra with thin straps, her muscled shoulders sparkling with sweat.
And I turned my focus on getting back to my mom, hoping it would distract me from an all-body ache. She’s been standing out here in the cold for you. You are not going to quit. You are not going to give up. At mile 12, the air turned giddy—not for me because I was gulping it—but around me. Pairs of friends running together shouted, “We’re there! We’re there!” Two college boys in Penn shirts hugged each other. And, oh, did the marathoners throw us the stink eye, because they still had half a race to go. I said nothing and did nothing but put one foot in front of the other, and when we made the final turn around Eakins Oval with the finish line in sight, I did not throw my hands in the air in victory for that perfect finish line photo. I crumpled, stepping out of the way of other finishers, and put my hands on my knees to suck in air and dry heave.
So much had gone wrong in the last three months—and especially in the last three weeks. If I could have pulled off that win, if I could have made running love me when Jason could not, I would have felt like I had accomplished something—SOMETHING—in the last full year of my twenties. Instead, I was just another runner in gray pants and a purple shirt who finished that day—barely.
I stood back up because I started to feel cold, and let a volunteer drape both a medal and a silver space blanket around my shoulders. “Congratulations!” she said. “You did it!” Maybe she thought they were tears of joy.
I walked through the finisher’s chute and grabbed water but no food. Mom was waiting for me at the exit, my grandfather’s big flannel coat open and ready for me.
“Don’t talk to me,” I stammered through my tears. “Just . . . don’t talk to me.”
It was a rude thing to do, especially because she was the only reason I had continued through to the finish line. But my lungs and throat were stuffed, both from the cold and crying. Then I pitched forward to lean on my knees again. She removed my space blanket and put on the flannel jacket, pushing my arms into the sleeves like she had put my snow coat on as a kid.
“I didn’t make it,” I sobbed. “I wasn’t even close.”
I had not told my mom my final goal. I never tell anyone in case I miss. When people ask me what I want to run, I usually say “I want to finish and not require immediate medical attention.” Then I’ll give what I consider my highest offer of a time. The goal was to run that 1:37, but worst case 1:40. I told my mom I wouldn’t take any longer than two hours. I ran 1:53:06, more than sixteen minutes over my goal time, more than a minute per mile over my goal pace.
“Jenny, you finished exactly when you said you would,” and patted me on the back. “You did it. You ran a half marathon!”
I looked up and wiped my tears on the jacket sleeve, leaving a trail of snot on the wrist.
“I’d give you tissues but you peed on them,” she said.
We made the long, slow walk back to the 16th and Locust PATCO station. I swatted away the idea of a cab because I wanted to keep my legs moving and ward off the pain that I knew was coming, and I figured we’d stop at a bar on the way home. I wanted a drink, but because the race starts early no bars were open.
As we walked down Chestnut, I noted the timing mats in the street.
“I wonder what other race is today,” I said.
“That was for your race. You ran here.”
I needed to eat something. Post-race hunger clawed at my stomach. We stopped at Little Pete’s, a corner diner with a cigarette machine in the vestibule, linoleum counters, and unbreakable beige coffee cups. The chill had caught up to me by then, and I started to shake.
This is a place known to be a haven for all walks of life, but even the waitress gave me the eye.
“She’s not homeless,” my mom said, “but a half marathoner,” and pulled my medal out from under my coat.
They gave me my coffee for free.
The Ballad of Jason and Jen would have a few more stanzas. He came home for Christmas and apologized, taking me to dinners and on long walks through Collingswood to try to win me back. I flew out to Minneapolis to see him for Valentine’s Day, and when his grandmother died in March I was at the funeral. But in the end, the center did not hold. We drifted, and even when he moved to New York City I didn’t pursue him, because why? Why would I let him pick me back up again just to throw me off a cliff again?
The last time I saw him was on my thirtieth birthday in July of 2010. He was home to spend time in Sea Isle, and my family had rented a shore house for that week. We had a drink at the Carousel Inn, which is neither an inn nor has a carousel, but it is an outdoor bar. It was about 1,000 degrees, and he was late. He skipped my birthday party that night (I didn’t want him there, and I lied to my family about meeting him after the party, saying instead that I had some more friends who wanted to see me that night), but we bar-crawled around Sea Isle, visiting all the places we’d gone before when he still lived here and we were still loopy with love (drinks at the Lobster Loft back bar, Dead Dog, Bracas, and then made out on the floor of Ocean Drive, where we’d gone before the Ocean Drive 10 in what felt like an eon ago, when the clock struck midnight). We then talked on a lifeguard chair and he grabbed at me to make out again, but I pushed him away. I don’t know what I said, but it was far from those post-sex beach musings. My tolerance for words that didn’t match action had run out.
Besides, I had another man coming to see me later that morning. The Nick era had begun.
Chapter 5
BIRD-IN-HAND HALF MARATHON
NOVEMBER 6, 2010
New Jersey Marathon — Miles 12–13
At mile 12, we left downtown Long Branch and turned onto Ocean Avenue to enter the southern part of town, the wealthier section. More homes here are used only seasonally. Some are large, severe, and guarded by long driveways, hedges, and, in one case, a griffin. Ocean Avenue is wider here, but its fault for racing is a big one: Here and in Deal, the next town south, the only shade provided would be the shadows of streetlights that curled overhead, and we’d run that strip twice.
Before we crossed into Deal, though, we turned off Ocean Avenue to run around Whale Pond Brook, a 0.7-mile jaunt off the main road. Because the course had to be rerouted off boardwalks in Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, it made up distance with a few turns away from the shore and into the respective towns. One of these was at mile 12.
I started passing people here, a little earlier than I’d anticipated, even though I kept my pace—in spite of the Porta-Potty stop.
Keep your speed. Don’t go too fast. Keep your speed. Just keep your speed. Just keep swimming? Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.
Back at mile 11, I had fallen into step with a blond woman about my age. She told me she was three months pregnant and running this race after having run the Boston Marathon three weeks before. She had finished just before the bombs went off. This was her redemption race.
“I just want to run and feel safe again,” she said. She ran strong next to me with a tiny little belly protruding from under her race bib. If she hadn’t told me she was pregnant, I would have assumed it was from an overexuberant carb load the night before.
Between miles 11 and 12, we closed in on a couple running the marathon together. For the last half mile she had been futzing with the arm band that held what I assumed was an MP3 player.
“Do you want me to stop and fix it?” her partner asked. He looked older than me, face slick with sweat, and strained.
“No!” she snapped back, ripping off the arm band, the sound of the Velcro detaching like a shot that echoed off a redbrick church on our right. I turned to my temporary running friend. My eyebrows zipped up, as did hers.
“I told you that this wasn’t going to work,” she said, trying to rewrap and attach it while running, and slowing down. “And now my neck hurts!” she yelled.
Her partner took the MP3 player from her. “I’ll fix i
t,” he said. Their pace slowed, and they fell back closer to me and my temporary running friend.
“NO!” she said, and grabbed it back, then stopped in front of me. I sidestepped around her.
“Do you want me to fix your neck?” he asked, pleading now. Runners and a few spectators stared too.
““NO!” she yelled. “I don’t know why I’m doing this with you!”
Watching them fight made ugly memories try to jump into my brain.
My temporary running friend broke away. Her fiancé and his mother—who didn’t know my friend was pregnant—were up ahead. Her shirt had +1 printed on it, and that’s how they were telling her soon-to-be-mother-in-law that she was also a soon-to-be-grandmother.
I pushed ahead without her. The words of the “Cell Block Tango,” from the musical Chicago shoved my memories out of the way. “He only had himself to blame . . .”
Picturing those women of the cell block kept flashes of my past running fights from clogging up the gears, which I didn’t need when I was still dropping ten-minute miles despite the blip at the Porta-Potty. My legs and lungs and hips felt fine. I needed my brain to stay calm and clear if I was going to drop-kick the second half of the race and cross the line with my head held high.
After Jason and I reached our inevitable, slow-motion car crash of a conclusion, three options presented themselves, running-wise:
1. Stay the course. Despite bottoming out at the end of the race, I was still in the best running shape of my life. The Philadelphia Half Marathon is at the far end of the fall racing season, bumping up against the start of spring’s training season. I could roll that training over into setting another PR in the Ocean Drive 10, and try the half again at one of the dozen spring races in the area.
2. Take a break, at least from distance training, just like I planned to do with dating.
3. Run harder. A lot harder—and farther too.
I went with number three, and set this goal: Run a marathon, and run it fast enough to reach what is considered a mark of excellence for the amateur runner, which is to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I saw no reason why I could not do this. I had been posting faster times, and I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t set a high bar and reach it, especially when my state of mind wasn’t so much La la la, I love running, so I should do more of it and be good! but more grim determination.
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