Running harder hadn’t helped me get over Jason the first time around, but I didn’t blame the running or the training. I blamed getting sick, my sister’s wedding, for me being wrong—about everything. This time, I told myself, I would do better, and it would work.
In 2009, a twenty-nine-year-old woman needed to run 3:40:00 to qualify for Boston. That meant covering 26.2 miles at a pace of 8:23. Yes, that was hard, but it was still about a minute slower per mile than what I had needed in the half marathon, and I held that pace for 7.5 miles. Don’t get sick and you can do it, I told myself. Simple.
I printed out Hal’s Advanced 2 marathon schedule, the most difficult one he offered. No matter that I’d never done a full marathon before. In addition to 400-meter repeats and tempo runs, this schedule added 800-meter repeats, hill training, and pace runs, with only one running day off per week instead of two.
I targeted the New Jersey Marathon on May 2, which meant eighteen weeks of training starting the first week of January.
As I took a running lunge forward, the sport did too. From 2000 to 2009, the number of finishers in U.S. road races increased 37 percent across all distances, according to Running USA. In 2010, the organization produced its first-ever half marathon report because of what it labeled the “astounding growth” in the number of finishers of the half. Marathons saw 10 percent more finishers in 2010, the largest one-year percentage increase in any of the previous twenty-five years. Marathoning, Running USA reported, had become a “mania.” In 2009, women surpassed men in races: 53 percent of race finishers were women that year (5.4 million), compared to just 23 percent of finishers in 1989 (908,000).
“Training for and running a marathon is something that one can control unlike the stock market or the economy,” Running USA wrote in its 2010 marathon report. And, for me, a way to tighten control over my emotions, find some sort of solace in the wake of being dropped—again.
I was going to take running, which had failed me at a crucial part in my life, and pin it to the ground. With hard training, I could crush it, dominate it, make it my bitch. If I wanted it enough, tried hard enough, trained hard enough, I could control running and center at least part of my life. I would not let the breakup with Jason remind me that I was a failure, that no one would love me, that I would die alone. If I ran hard enough—even if I ran alone with my podcasts again instead of with a glorious, gorgeous human being who proclaimed that he loved me—I could win.
Another mania took hold in 2009: barefoot running. Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run, which is about the Tarahumara Indian tribe, was published in 2009 and hung on to the New York Times bestseller list for more than four months. Part memoir, part reportage, the book championed barefoot runners (like the Tarahumara) and outlined how once McDougall gave up bulky, overly padded running shoes, his running injuries disappeared. The Mizuno Wave Riders 9—my first pair of running shoes, bought in 2006—clocked in at nine ounces. I ran the 2009 Broad Street Run in Asics that looked like they carried their own flotation devices.
After Born to Run, running shoes shrank. Vibram FiveFingers, those funny toe shoes, showed up in my running store, in races, and, as a marker of quick-flash fashion, on hipsters, who wore them on their fixies on their way to the PATCO train. (By 2010, hipsters discovered Collingswood, fleeing here from Philadelphia to get their kids into our schools without feeling like they were giving up and moving to the suburbs—we had row homes and a train. I could deal with that, though their proclamations that they “discovered” Collingswood were grating.) In the 2009 Broad Street Run, I ran next to two guys who skipped shoes entirely. Minimalist shoes made up the fastest-growing segment in running for 2010 and 2011, according to the Wall Street Journal. Companies like Merrell, New Balance, and Fila got in on the act too.
Jason and I both read the book during his first fall away. We both bought Nike Free shoes, too. They weren’t much different from Jason’s regular shoes. He preferred to run in racing flats, something he kept with him from college. Running in flats was a big change for me, though, and I stuck with it even when he didn’t stick with me.
I felt lighter and faster in those shoes. They made me feel like a real runner. Those tiny white and yellow shoes looked more like slippers with laces than running shoes. Like those other real runners, I rounded the track on an 800-meter repeat once, twice, then did 400 meters of recovery running in between, and repeat, repeat, repeat again. Instead of putting my head down when I passed those other runners, I smiled and nodded (track etiquette: Run counterclockwise on the sprint, then clockwise on the rest lap in between). Sometimes if the runner looked friendly, I’d offer a high-five, and they’d slap back, our gloves muffling the noise.
But by mid-February, a prick of pain settled into my right hip. As I progressed through the month, charging up and down Haddonfield’s steep Centre Street hill, surging through pace runs at a speed that pushed my lungs to bursting, that prick became a stab. I pressed on, grinding through tempo runs before lunch and pace runs on Saturdays, then I’d down Advil and take a long, hot shower, after which I’d still be soaked in pain.
I stopped lifting, too. I didn’t want free weights to get in the way of my devotion to the sport. I turned over the keys to my body to running on the promise that it would save me. I could not give up. I would not allow myself to quit like Stephen and Jason had quit on me.
On my first 19-mile run, I made it out 1.5 miles before turning back home, pain radiating from my hip. I changed into my old Asics. I made it a half mile again before I quit. I walked back home and threw my shoes across the living room. I slunk upstairs, crawled into bed—still in my running clothes—and pulled the covers up over my head while my dog tried to lick my sweaty face.
All that running and I think, to some extent, running in the wrong shoes, had killed my butt. The real name of the injury is gluteus medius tendinosis, but my doctor called it Dead Butt Syndrome. When he told me, I laughed.
“I know,” he said. “But you can recover.”
The injury is the inflammation of the tendons in the gluteus medius, one of the three large muscles that make up the butt. It was my first running injury.
As much as it hurt, that dead butt led to my first big break in writing about running. When I wrote about the injury in the New York Times later that year, I described the injury as so: “If you think of the pelvis as a cup, the muscles that attach to it, including three gluteal muscles and the lower abdominals, interact in an intricate choreography to keep the cup upright when you run or walk. If these muscles are strong, the cup stays in place with no pain. If one or more of those muscles is weak, the smaller muscles around the hip take on pressure they weren’t designed to bear.”
My body struggled to keep the cup upright, and those muscles tore. Scar tissue set in, which sent the injury into a feedback loop that had me walking back to my house instead of running 19 miles.
This wasn’t my first piece for the New York Times, but it was my first about running, and the first that drew a lot of attention—warranted and not. When I first had meetings at the offices of Runner’s World, one editor called me Dead Butt Girl. A guy who blogged anonymously under the name Angry White Dude called me a “yuppie libtard running freak” and wrote over and over again, in a mocking way, that I’m a Starbucks coffee drinker. Well, sorry, Angry White Dude. I’m a Dunkin’ Donuts kind of gal—though yes, you do seem very angry.
To recover, I was ordered to stop running, break up that scar tissue through sports massage (a.k.a. agony), and rebuild the muscles in my abs, back, and legs to keep the cup upright—the same muscles I had kept tight through weight lifting but ignored while on my Boston Marathon qualifying-time quest. This would take time, though. I would be out for four months.
I still made it out to the Ocean Drive 10 that year, turning in a 1:22:46 performance, which wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t close to what I wanted, in either distance or time, and the pain was shattering. I waffled at the expo about whether or not to bump up to the Oc
ean Drive Marathon. I had run 17 miles in one shot. What’s 9.2 more? What’s a little more grinding pain when I already felt so flat and dull, like a winter sky tamped down by fat gray clouds? Just as I reached out for a pen to make a change on my registration, my mom took me by the shoulders and steered me to the 10-Miler packet pickup table.
Only after the Ocean Drive 10 did I take my running break. I felt like a fish flopping around on the sand, grit lodged in my gills and eyes. I retreated to the stationary bike and stared longingly at runners on the treadmills, even though I hated the treadmill. I felt floppy too, like all the work and training and muscles I’d built from running were melting away. I was afraid to eat too much but afraid to eat too little. I did not want to turn back into the 115-pound waif I was with Stephen. I didn’t want to inflate into a heifer, either.
In May, the New Jersey Marathon came and went. I’d booked a room along the race course—nonrefundable—so I went anyway and picked up my race packet. I thought I’d scoop out a few coupons, but I was so angry at being there yet not really being there that I threw the bag in the trash, free race T-shirt and all. The night before the marathon, I went to a Kentucky Derby party in a red strapless dress and floppy hat, then lay on the beach the next day while the race went ahead without me, afraid to look up toward the Ocean Grove boardwalk in case I saw runners passing on their way to the marathon’s turnaround point. I kept telling friends who asked how I was doing that I was fine. I told myself that I was fine. See? How could I be sad in this floppy hat? Sipping this mint julep? Lying on this beach in this tiny string bikini on top of this fun Superman towel? I was super. How could someone like this have a sad thought in her mind?
Through that early summer, after the dull gray clouds wiped away, I bloomed—not in a flower-buds-and-soft-green-grass sort of way, but in anger. I drove too fast, cut through lanes too close. I stayed out too late, partied too hard, and snapped too quickly at people around me. I didn’t have that time running on the road to myself, that place to work out problems and aggression, even if it was just burning a little extra energy charging up a hill. I turned back to the weight room, sometimes spending an hour pounding out reps listening to hard-core rap music, dubstep, death metal. It didn’t have the same calming effect, though. I stayed mad.
I was mad, at Stephen, at Jason, even at Dan, for rejecting me. Anger was better than acknowledging the desperate, weepy voice in my head that cried they were right to reject me, and that I’d end up a sad, lonely spinster with a dozen cats even though I’m allergic to cats. Anger was better than that.
So when I walked into a bar in South Philly and sat next to a tall guy with shaggy hair, the first thing I thought was Ugh, get a haircut, hippie. And stay away from me.
That night, I was In a Mood. When I’m In a Mood, I stomp around a lot and lose my verbal filter. I put on a short, black dress and three-inch heels and stomped to catch the train to Center City to attend a Thursday night fund-raiser at a swanky hotel. But my friend Adam, whom I had met while working on a story, texted me and said I should come down to the South Philly Bar and Grill to watch the final game of the Stanley Cup.
South Philly was often a no-go to me. I couldn’t easily walk there from PATCO, and when I did go—for work, to meet friends who lived there and wanted to convince me it was a hip new neighborhood where all the cool twenty-somethings moved—what I saw was all garish neon slapped onto cheesesteak places, and no grass. No thanks. I didn’t like cheesesteak, so I had no reason to go there regularly.
The fund-raiser was boring, but I didn’t want to go to this bar either (see: In a Mood). But I told Adam that FINE, if I could catch a cab in the rain, I’d come. I stepped out of the Bellevue, and there was a cab.
FINE, I thought as I stomped into the car. The driver took me out of Center City, past the run-down buildings and homes along South Broad Street, and turned down what looked like an alleyway with cars parked on both sides and bikes whizzing by close enough to touch their handlebars on the cab’s side mirrors. The driver stopped in front of a neon-lit bar that matched the cheesesteak places. Outside guys with no necks and gold chains smoked cigarettes and took breaks from yelling into their cell phones to yell things at the pretty girls going by. And next to them were Adam and Derrick, Adam in a black T-shirt and Derrick in an old Flyers T-shirt.
The hostess, in a tube of black that pushed up her tits and pushed out her ass, which made my little black dress look like a caftan, told us that she couldn’t seat us until our entire party arrived, despite a still-empty bar behind her. I huffed. All I wanted was a goddamn drink.
And who’s the late one in our party? In strolls this big guy built like an oak tree with reddish hair that came below his ears, T-shirt, ragged shorts, and flip-flops.
“FINE. Let’s go,” I said, turning on one heel and stomping behind the hostess to a back table.
This was game six of the Stanley Cup, do or die for the Flyers. I wasn’t much of a hockey fan and neither were Adam and Nick—that long-haired guy—but Derrick was. He flipped and flopped and stood and jumped and ended the game with his head in his hands when the Flyers lost in overtime. The rest of us talked around him.
As the drinks continued, the conversation turned to how we lost our virginity, then how long you should wait before having sex with someone.
I, being In a Mood, countered everything they said.
“What if she wants to go?” Adam asked.
“Then fuck her,” I said. “She’s an adult. She knows what she’s doing.”
“But don’t girls worry we’ll lose respect for them?” asked Nick.
“Are you kidding me? Did I miss us stepping back into the 1950s? And by the way, we’re women, not girls,” I replied.
Adam and I debated how many dates you should go on before having sex. He said three. I said it depends. “Maybe she just wants some dick. And we can lose respect for you too.”
I took a gulp of my Miller Lite, rolled my neck, and told this story:
“I was dating this guy Jason. We met at a concert, and I woke up next to him the morning after—but no sex. Not on that date, not on a date where he took me to Le Bec Fin . . . (“Hoooa” from the group).
“For his birthday, I booked us a room at the Rittenhouse Hotel. We were going to a black-tie that night. Everything was perfect. He was gorgeous. I wore a little gold dress that stopped just inches short of my snatch. We were lying in bed. He’s on top of me. I can feel his dick pressing into my hip, and I’m like ‘Yes! Finally!’ Then he breathes into my ear ‘I don’t want to have sex until you’re my girlfriend.’ All I could think of was, ‘I just want to get fucked!’”
Nick and Adam laughed so loud they broke Derrick from his hockey bubble. I sipped my drink, pleased with myself.
I gave Nick my card because his company was hiring and I thought my friend Jen might fit the bill.
On what we would later call our first “date,” he met Jen and me at a corner wine bar in Center City on a soft summer night. They talked shop for a bit, but then the conversation was between the two of us as Jen watched. I felt something there, and he did too: He asked me to dinner a few days later.
As we talked, a van ran a red light and smashed into a black sedan. We watched as the medics came, and as tow trucks haggled over who would the haul away the wreckage. No one was killed or even taken away in an ambulance, but it was a big mess that left people limping as they walked away.
Nick was married when we met, but separated. She had moved out while their lawyers hashed out a divorce settlement. At first I didn’t mind his situation. I still wasn’t over Jason, and I didn’t want a boyfriend. I didn’t want to get hurt like that again, and I figured a fling before trying to seriously date again would be a good idea, like releasing a steam valve. I had no interest in anything long-term, and what I saw as Nick’s semi-unavailability was a perk. He encouraged me to date other people—which, hey, why not. I had been out a few times with a runner I met in a group run, Nate, a redhead with a sub-th
ree-hour marathon PR, but he had just split from his fiancée and said that he didn’t want to start something with me that he couldn’t finish.
Where Nate was quiet and shy, Nick was a bullhorn. He told me up front that he was “kind of an asshole.” On one of our first dates, right before my thirtieth birthday, he pointed to a parking meter and said, “That’s you. After your birthday, you expire,” a joke he’d keep making for the next two and a half years. He said what he thought, did what he wanted. He loved to debate because he went in knowing he was never wrong. I liked his confidence, his assertiveness. He was a good temporary match.
Our first real date, he bent down to kiss me before I caught my train home and while grabbing my hip accidentally pulled down my strapless dress. My boob popped out, which sent us into gales of laughter—and I hadn’t laughed like that in a long time. We had sex for the first time on the Fourth of July on a futon mattress on the floor of his bedroom, because he still hadn’t replaced the furniture she took. He let me bring my dog too. No guy I had dated before had ever invited both of us over. The three of us watched the fireworks from his roof deck, us sipping wine, my dog—who isn’t bothered by fireworks—zipping from plant to plant sniffing away, then sitting on a bench between us as the colors boomed.
It wasn’t supposed to last. I was very conscious of being the one after the wife, and I had not given up on Jason just yet (that last encounter on the lifeguard stand was the month after I met Nick). But he stuck. We dated through the summer and into fall. I met his sister, his mom. On a warm September day that straddled the seasons, Nick came with me to Ocean City to keep me company and make funny faces at me while I had my head shot taken for the second edition of my Jersey Shore book. After, we ate greasy pizza at Mack & Mancos, then strolled down that boardwalk, our arms linked, my heart thrumming. Oh shit, I thought. I may want him to stay.
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