That first post-marathon spring, we ran another series of shorter races and eyed another fall marathon. The Chicago Marathon appealed for a few reasons. We had both run half marathons fast enough to qualify for seeding in front corrals. Chicago is a World Marathon Majors and would carry with it all the razzle-dazzle of a top-notch race. It also didn’t have a half marathon on the course at the same time.
I wanted payback for Philadelphia, and to outrun whatever was nagging at me about this situation in which I found myself. I later wrote about training for Chicago on a blog that I’d started about being a freelance writer: “I bought a sub-four hour schedule, figuring if I could skip the GI issues and long port a potty lines, I’d be able to drop 30+ minutes from my time. . . . Six workouts a week? I got it. Nine miles of hill repeats on a Wednesday morning. Sure, why not. Workouts on Saturday AND Sunday? Bring. It. On.”
Plus, I reasoned, I knew what to expect. I wasn’t taking great strides into the dark. I knew what lay ahead.
When I signed us up for the race, I dimly registered that Chicago, being an October race, would mean a full summer of training. That training lined up with one of the hottest years on record in Philadelphia. In June, temperatures routinely brushed the 100-degree mark.
For the first weeks of long runs, I’d wake up at 5:00 AM, try to poop, then feed and water myself before stepping out into an already creeping sauna with a running water bottle that wrapped around my hand and $5 in my pocket. I’d start out down 9th Street past Pat’s and Geno’s, neon still blazing, each with drunks waiting for cheesesteaks. I continued down 9th, through the Italian Market and past more drunks stumbling out of an after-hours club, then turned up Pine Street, where cabs were the only cars swooshing by. Along the way, I passed brownstones with manicured flower beds hanging out of their windows. Then a turn on 23rd Street and take that to Fairmount Park. Anytime I saw a person, I played a game of Still Up/Just Up? to keep myself amused and my mind off the heat. What has she been up to for the last six hours? Is that person he’s with his lover or friend? Or, maybe that person in body glitter just likes to walk down the street early in the morning.
Once in Fairmount Park, I ran down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, hoping that my water would last until I reached a fountain. On one 12-mile run in July, my route crossed that of the 20 in 24 Ultramarathon (now called in24), where, along with shorter races and relays, runners tried to run around the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive/Kelly Drive Loop as many times as possible in twenty-four hours. It was a hazy day, but the park was bursting with summer lushness, the paved trail along the river passing under an archway of big fat green leaves that would have shaded the course if there had been sun. Still, the air was a mucky mess, and a light breeze off the river didn’t make much of a difference.
“Sweat rolled down my legs and pooled in my shoes, making them squish with each step,” I wrote in an essay in Runner’s World about that run. A race volunteer kept offering me water, but at first I declined because I didn’t feel I deserved it. In the essay, I wrote that I felt that way because I wasn’t as dedicated as those trying to run for twenty-four hours straight, but that feeling of being less-than had washed through the rest of me too. Free water? No thanks. I was meant to suffer (though I did take the water when I passed him on the way back, and later knocked back a second bottle that I bought with my cash at a gas station on the way back to South Philadelphia).
On most weekdays, I’d shake Nick awake so he could go to the gym. Sometimes I’d go with him. Sometimes, I’d head out on my own runs, pounding out miles on endless sidewalks festooned by trash and grime, trying to start before heat clamped down.
But that didn’t even work. Running there offered no solace or mental break. I was harassed and chased and grabbed. Once a group of men smacked me on the ass as I passed. A guy working at a seafood place near the Italian Market grabbed my breast as I ran by. I’d hustle my way out of South Philly, but even that wasn’t a help. While on Front Street in Old City, part of the Philadelphia Marathon course, a man stepped into my way and tried to block me. I dodged around him, but he chased me, calling me a filthy whore. These all happened after the sun had come up. No one did a thing. Even when nothing happened, I was always on guard, waiting for that next hand or body to reach out to me. When I told Nick and his city friends what happened, they just nodded and said that it was the price I paid for living in that part of the city, as if it were the only drawback, a small thing that I endured in exchange for living in their gentrified utopia. So I’d join Nick again on the treadmill (with the same woman still talking on her Bluetooth to who knows who), or drive to New Jersey to check my P.O. Box, park the car somewhere, and run.
In July, a bug bite on my leg became infected, and my doctor put me on antibiotics that made running nearly impossible. At the same time I was diagnosed with ovarian cysts, and another doctor was adjusting my birth control to see if medication would stop them from forming. One side effect was that I sweat uncontrollably at night. Most mornings I woke up on soaked sheets. Getting up to run and sweat some more didn’t work so well.
By August, the heat in the city was too much to bear, so instead I’d drive to New Jersey, set up my water and Nuun—an electrolyte tablet that’s dropped into water to create a sports drink without sugar—on my mom’s porch and run a 4-mile loop over and over again around the shaded park and lake near her house. Whenever she woke up, she’d drape a towel over the arm of a porch chair so I could wipe myself down.
She always had chocolate milk for me in her fridge, which I’d chug after the run. I never wanted to eat anything right after finishing on those hot days, but I could get that down. Then I’d either lie on and sweat all over the pale green carpet the previous owner had left in the house or shower so we could go to Club Diner for BLTs and fries and coffee.
Sometimes I’d bring up Nick, sometimes not. She didn’t put any pressure on us to get married, but was curious about our plans the same way she wanted to know what my next book would be.
“You don’t sound too excited about this,” she said one morning after we ordered and I mentioned we were still thinking of a winter wedding—though which winter, I didn’t know. I never looked at the menu because I ordered the same sandwich every time, even if it was 10:00 AM.
“I am. But there’s so much we need to sort out first,” I said.
My heart wasn’t in anything—not in Nick, not in running. I still wrote, of course, because I couldn’t pay my bills otherwise. But these pieces were impersonal and standard, like a feature on how to not be a jerk in a race, or the differences between being an introverted and extroverted runner. Of course those stories were necessary, but they didn’t take a lot of creative thinking. I spent most of my time writing profiles about the work of faculty at a Philadelphia research university for that school’s public relations office. It paid well, and I was grateful for the work—and I liked getting out of that damn house to spend a chunk of my workday somewhere else. That year was a blockbuster one for me, at least financially. But the writing didn’t require the same kind of elasticity of the mind as, say, a deep dive into why Catholic schools in New Jersey were closing.
My training suffered too. I cut back my mileage, and on the day of my 20-mile run, I quit after 8. My brother and his wife and son were at my mom’s that weekend, and my nephew, round and cute and stubby at two years old, stood on a couch by the window as I came in after my second lap, waving. So I stopped, cleaned myself up, and went to breakfast with them instead. On the way back, I blasted “Sloop John B” by the Beach Boys on my car radio, first singing and then screaming, “Let me go home / Why don’t they let me go home.”
Training never clicked. Partly because of the heat, partly because I was struggling to reclaim my running from inside this dark pit of warping myself to try to please another person who didn’t act like he loved me very much, which we both blamed on me. I was so tired of trying not to make Nick angry. I wasn’t myself anymore. My father later described those last months
as if someone had turned off my light. I was a shell, doubting and re-doubting my every move, hoping that I wouldn’t upset the delicate, shifting balance that I didn’t know how to maintain. Because this was what I was supposed to do, the expired parking meter: Get into whatever car was still parked in my spot.
I did leave once, briefly. It was another fight over where we lived, but it was really about everything, about me feeling trapped in that house, in the ball I’d turned myself into trying not to bounce and annoy him, and his claim that I didn’t do enough to “get better” after I’d been diagnosed with the cysts—whatever that meant, given that I’d spent nearly $2,000 on diagnosis and treatment, on top of expensive health insurance premiums. I packed a bag and drove to Cape May. I booked myself into the same hotel where we’d stayed before, with the antique store that had my ring. I paid too much for a room facing the ocean and cried for two days straight between looking at Craigslist ads for rooms to rent in Cape May and Asbury Park, eating lavish room service meals, and running, pounding out miles again along the promenade in that old town, and then crying some more. I peeked into the store with the ring. It was still there. I was relieved.
I knew I had to go back and sort things out, but when I did, Nick apologized, telling me that he was wrong, that he would do better, that we’d find a solution, he’d find another contractor to replace the one who kept not showing up, that he’d try to be the man I needed him to be. He told me again that he wanted to marry me, and asked me if I wanted to marry him too. I said yes. I don’t know if I could have said no in that crux of an emotional moment, or if I wanted to.
I wanted to believe him, that it wasn’t so bad. I really did. I had moved into this man’s house for some reason, and we had what could be a bright future together, as the grown-up, sophisticated couple I wanted us to be and that so many other people saw.
By the time we ran Chicago, that incident had turned from a sweet reunion and new start into another example of how I had abandoned him, and how I couldn’t be trusted.
If we hadn’t already booked a trip to Chicago for the marathon, I’d like to think that I would have ended things sooner. I kept telling myself “after this trip,” because how weird would it be for him if we were on the same flight? I didn’t want to upset “people,” and by “people” I mean everyone in our lives—me, him, our friends, the dog, our families. My mind still ran on those two planes: the one that knew everything about this relationship was wrong and that I could not continue this way without ruining my life, and the one motored by tradition telling me that I was taking steps toward the life every woman should have, whether those steps made me happy or not. If I left the relationship, I’d become a stereotype: a disappointment, a failure, the single thirty-something woman who was too picky and couldn’t just settle for the one she had, who was unable to walk the traditional path in life to marriage—even an unhappy marriage—and motherhood, just like my mother had. Look at the ring he wants to give you!
I also blamed myself. Nick had told me what he was like when we met, and I thought I could handle it. I could—but only part-time. Full-time was too much. Was that his fault? No. I told myself it was mine.
Running blanked on me, too. I struggled even in the taper, slogging through three- and four-mile runs—with dead legs. I boarded the plane to Chicago, despondent and praying for a miracle—any kind of miracle.
Here’s what I remember about the Chicago Marathon: Cold at the start line. Very organized corrals. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” blaring as we went off. Finding a friend at mile 3. Dancing drag queens in Boystown. A surprise bridge with a hill at mile marker 26. Spotters up on wooden platforms past the finish to catch anyone who collapsed at or beyond the finish line. A medal and space blanket placed over my shoulders, a sticker to make sure the top of the space blanket stayed closed. A beer shoved at my hands, which triggered not a feeling of celebration that the damn thing was over, but vomit. Staggering out of Millennium Park—an exit that, cruelly, included stairs. Wind howling down State Street as I tried to remember the way back to my hotel room. I don’t even remember crossing the finish line. I finished in 4:56:17, a disappointment.
Everything leading into this marathon had predicted that result. I even brought my phone and music with me, which I only do when I know a race is going to go poorly. My hips started aching at mile 8. I walked at mile 18. By mile 20, I knew I was sunk, the pain far worse than it had been in Philadelphia. I ran/walked/ran without even a plan for how long each walk and run segment should be.
“It was slow and agonizing, but I kept moving forward. I did not stop,” I wrote in a post-race recap. More than just bad training welled up in me on those lonely last 6.2 miles. The nights of sweating to soak the sheets. The frost covering my relationship with Nick. “Sloop John B.” I took all of that into the race with me. This thing that had been so important and wonderful and life giving had turned its back on me when I needed it the most.
When I finally staggered into our hotel room, Nick was already showered and changed. He finished nearly an hour before me and waited for me, but I was too slow, and he was too cold, so he went back to the hotel.
“I want to watch the Eagles game,” he said. I wanted to lie on the bed and cry my face off and punch my legs until I couldn’t feel them anymore. But I got into the shower, and hustled through a short, hot one when I wanted to lie on the shower floor and let the water run over me until my skin pruned. I knew Nick was waiting and hungry and impatient, so I shut off the water, shoved my screaming legs into tights, put on soft loafers, and lurched and lunged after him to a sports bar showing every NFL game that day. I sat across from him, medal around my neck, and ate the olives out of bloody marys and picked at the nachos in front of me.
“Free shots for marathoners! Free shots for marathoners!” a waitress called to us and the people at the table next to us, who also wore marathon medals. I almost threw up again. I barely touched the tasting menu dinner Nick had planned at Mercat a la Planxa that night—lovely restaurant, but it’s on the second floor, which required walking down stairs both to go to the bathroom and to leave. “No,” he said quietly when we saw the stairs leading up to the restaurant. When we left, I was tempted to walk backward down those stairs. I wouldn’t want to eat until lunch the next day, when I ate my way through Portillo’s: hot dog, fries, and steak sandwich washed down with chalice of beer, then capped off with a milkshake.
Despite the bad race and my rush to get past the bad race, we didn’t have a terrible time. There were flashes of why I had moved in with him, and why I still had a lingering hope. The day after the race we had drinks at the top of the John Hancock Center, smiling goofily that we had done a second marathon. That night, we found two seats at the bar of a steakhouse next to someone who had appeared to have ordered up a hooker for the night. But those moments were just that: flashes. By the time we flew home to Philadelphia, we settled back into our lives of mutual misery.
Three weeks after the marathon, Superstorm Sandy made landfall in Brigantine, New Jersey. The week leading up to the storm had been calm. We figured it would hit somewhere else, or weaken, or turn, like so many hurricanes had done before. That feeling turned to rising panic as Sandy moved as if she would hit New Jersey dead on. Then came the grim watching and waiting as people boarded up their homes and fled inland right before Sandy smacked into the middle of the coast. I watched it happen in real time through social media accounts and live webcams, horrified as I stood at my desk trying to sort through tweets and posts to determine what was real (that a roller coaster was in the ocean in Seaside Heights) and what was not (that the Ferris wheel at Morey’s Piers in Wildwood had fallen over). While the South Jersey Shore was largely spared, the North Jersey Shore was pummeled, with roads upended, boardwalks destroyed, entire blocks wiped out, homes flooded and tossed into the ocean. Nick kept telling me I needed to let it go, forget about it until the next day, but I couldn’t. I knew too many people whose homes and lives were being destroyed.
When he finally pulled me out of my office to get something to eat, I followed him in a daze to a corner bar. A group of his city friends had gathered there, laughing and joking as if a chunk of my home state wasn’t drowning. They worried about whether the homes they rented for vacation would be okay without showing even a hint of concern for the people whose lives were being destroyed. As they laughed and drank and joked about how maybe they’d have the next day off because of all the rain in Philadelphia, I tamped down my urge to grab them by their flannel shirts for being so goddamned self-centered and not seeing outside of the bubble they created around themselves in this hellhole of a city. Other people were suffering, dying, losing their livelihoods and their homes. And you sit here and drink and laugh and hope the rain keeps you out of work tomorrow so you can drink more tonight? You can be so myopic? What about your souls? I’d have rather have been standing in the storm than sitting in that bar in that moment with those people—Nick included.
I play the “shoulda” game a lot, even now. I shoulda been more assertive. I shoulda been more vocal. I shoulda left sooner, had one of those screaming matches. Maybe things wouldn’t have ended so badly.
But when two people are locked in the spiral of a disintegrating relationship, it’s hard to see outside the tornado, and it’s easy to keep doing what created it in the first place. First I blamed me, then him. Over time it changed both of us, two people trying to stick out a bad deal, and it made us both different people from the two who had met in a shitty bar in South Philadelphia that day in June. Maybe we could go back to being those two people again, but we wouldn’t be able to do it together. Someone just had to make the first move to get out.
The rest of October, then November, then December, I thought about leaving. My tenants’ yearlong lease was up in November. They bought a house and switched to a month-to-month lease until they closed on their new home, so I could, in theory, move home. On the worst days, in that hour between when I could write no more and when Nick came home from work, I’d close my eyes and imagine life without him. Sometimes I saw clouds and sunshine and me floating above our misery. Others, it was me and Emily walking down the beach into a sunset in brilliant shades of pinks and oranges and purples, with Guster, my favorite band (which Nick hated), following behind me, softly playing “Jesus on the Radio,” a song that says “Don’t look back, there ain’t nothing there to see,” while the waves lapped at my toes. Both shared the same things: freedom. Release.
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