Running

by Jen A. Miller

  “I can’t possibly do this,” I said, then drove to the library and photocopied the schedule. I wanted to do better. I needed to do better.

  Hansons looked impossible, and I needed the impossible, and I needed something to make me screw my courage to the sticking place so I wouldn’t quit when the mileage built. So I pitched a story to the New York Times and offered to be the guinea pig in testing out this method. The 2013 spring marathon season would be the first where people could buy the book and have the time to train with the method. I guessed—and hoped—that I’d be the first journalist to do so.

  I wanted to beat myself up. I wanted to serve my penance, for a lot of things: for failing in the relationship, for failing to get engaged, for failing Nick, but most of all for failing myself. I had let myself get trapped, and for that I must atone. It didn’t occur to me at the time that Nick might deserve some of the blame, too. At the time I hoisted that cross onto my shoulders, and ran with it.

  “We take a straight-talk approach when it comes to teaching you about marathon training; we won’t sugarcoat, offer any supposed shortcuts, or treat you with condescension,” they wrote in the first chapter. “Indeed, the marathon wouldn’t be big deal if it didn’t require a little blood, a lot of sweat, and perhaps a few tears.”

  I had a lot of all three, especially the last one.

  In honor of leaving Philadelphia and coming back to New Jersey, I chose the New Jersey Marathon—again—which is on the first Sunday in May. It shared the same date as the Broad Street Run. I was so twisted up by the last year that I saw this as a defiant move, turning my back on the race and the city that I had grown to hate. Fuck you, Philadelphia. You all do your little 10-mile race while I go out and put on my big-boy pants and run a fucking marathon along New Jersey’s beautiful but broken beaches.

  In rejecting that boyfriend, that house, that engagement ring, that situation that brought my wretchedness, I was picking up something that was home to me—a race in my state, at my Jersey Shore. I turned my back on everything that I was supposed to have loved, and set out on my own.

  Over those eighteen weeks, I became a machine. I pushed everything else aside and focused on two things: work and running. When my weekly mileage pushed past 45 miles a week, I added napping and eating.

  My tenants moved out in February, and while contractors took to my house, I skedaddled to Florida for two weeks, parking myself at the Don CeSar Hotel in St. Pete Beach. My first night there, I sat at the lobby bar and made friends with the bartenders, who invited me to play in their Oscar pool—and I won. The next morning, I ran 4 miles in a dank fog and waved at pelicans along the way. The morning after that, when I woke up to 95 percent humidity, I took to the gym treadmill to do 600-meter repeats on the treadmill—the only time I’d hit a treadmill during the entire course of training.

  By the time I crossed the state to spend four days with my grandparents in Sebastian, the humidity evaporated and temperatures topped out in the 60s—a cold snap for them, but beauty for me. I woke up early and ran laps around their retirement community. The early morning walkers in their winter coats and hats and gloves were concerned about me running around in shorts and a tank top.

  “Aren’t you cold?!”

  “You’ll make yourself sick!”

  “Where are you from, Alaska?”

  The first morning out, my grandfather left his house right after I did, and followed me in his Cadillac from 20 feet behind to make sure I was okay. Grandmom always had coffee and bacon ready for me when I returned.

  We didn’t talk much about what happened, except that I would be okay.

  “Men, what are they good for? Nothing,” Grandmom said over her one glass of wine at their very-early dinner.

  “You want to get married? Great. Don’t? Great too. You want to have a baby? That’s fine. You don’t need a man for that.”

  On another night, she said all men are schmucks. When women on a talk show asked the male guest why men acted like that, he laughed and said, “Because we can get away with it.”

  “Bums!” she cried.

  Bums.

  When I came home, I walked into a familiar front door, but a different house, like running into an old high school friend who grew up into a stone-cold fox. No longer was I going to be living with the choices of the previous owners, like thin green carpet and a living room painted the color of cornhusks. The hardwood floors shone, paired with a living and dining room painted warm but different shades of beige. I ran upstairs to see the seashore turquoise room that would be my office again, the pale blue that helped add to the sanctuary feel of my bedroom. I didn’t want to share this—any of this. I was home. One of those first nights back, when I’d had two glasses of wine but no place to sit, I hugged the wall between the dining room and galley kitchen. Mine. All mine. Again.

  Except of course I had almost no furniture, linens, kitchen utensils, plates, cups, or knives. “Why don’t we have breakup registries?” I asked Mom as I raided her kitchen and linen closet. She gave me two plates, a bowl, butter knife, fork, spoon, paring knife, one pot, one laundry basket, and one set of sheets. I moved in with that, my two duffel bags and two boxes, my dog, and an air mattress, since my aunts were in town for the Philadelphia Flower Show and needed my bed. The first night the air mattress broke, and I woke up on the floor.

  I ordered a $2,300 couch from Pottery Barn, a giant L-shaped thing that would take up the entire wall of my living room. I found the plates I wanted in HomeGoods, then ordered the entire set from eBay. After a Saturday run, Mom and I went to whole house auctions, and from there I bought a vanity for my bedroom, silverware, cups. A new bed frame came from a furniture dealer in Pennsylvania whose warehouse stank of cigarettes. I bought an octagon-shaped dining room table from a guy in Camden, and for months I sat at that table on a paint-splattered folding chair.

  As the house progressed, and the running progressed—to twenty-four, thirty-nine, forty-one miles per week—I progressed too. I didn’t stare at the ceiling at 3:00 AM anymore. Whether that was because I had quieted my mind or because I was too tired from running, I don’t know. I didn’t care how I got there, but I did.

  I went out. I dated, too, an older man named Alan who liked exclusive clubs, good wine, good food, cigars, and me. We met at a running event even though he wasn’t a runner anymore. It was a half relationship, one I rolled with for nine months. When we ran into Nick on a date with one of my former South Philadelphia friends, Alan looked at me, looked at Nick, and said, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” It was perfect for that time in my life. We never lay on the couch and watched movies, or spent weekends in bed or doing annoying shopping errands together or even talked about a future together. He was a good distraction (and fantastic lover). I saw him maybe once or twice a week. He was there, but I didn’t really let him into the life I was re-creating.

  Through it all, though, I was a little shaky, like a baby deer trying to stand on her feet for the first time. One wrong step and I’d fall over again. I was so tired and worn from running that I didn’t know if I was doing it right, or just beating myself up.

  I faltered most on tempo runs, which were every Thursday. I always went out too fast and then stopped to walk, or I’d go too slow, panic that I was going too slow, then go too fast and stop again.

  In the middle of March, I flew to Seattle for a conference and was scheduled to run an 8-mile tempo when I landed.

  I had every excuse in the world to not attempt a tempo run, let alone an 8-mile run. I had woken up at 4:00 AM to make the first flight, then sprinted through Dulles International Airport to catch my connection for a six-hour jaunt to the West Coast. I had forgotten to bring my own food on the flight and relied on what I could pick off the overpriced menu. Once I landed and found my hotel, I parked myself at the best-reviewed restaurant near my hotel (thanks, Yelp) and tucked into a sandwich and coffee, which tasted like rocket fuel compared to the Wegmans brand I brewed at home.

  Then
I walked to what I thought was a running store to buy Shot Bloks because of course I’d forgotten them too. I asked the guy working there where to run. “Uh, we’re more of a biking store,” he said, and handed me a free tourism map with my Shot Bloks.

  I had bonked on my previous tempo run, which was supposed to be an eight-miler that I had cut at the knees at four. I could have curled up on my hotel bed and taken a nap. I could have gone sightseeing, drank more rocket fuel, and watched fish being flung around Pike Place Fish Market. I could have gone to the top of the Space Needle. I could have brooded. Damp and drizzly Seattle is good for that.

  Instead, I lay out my running clothes and stared at the map. Then I put on my running clothes and sat on the toilet playing with my phone for fifteen minutes. Then I turned on my iPad and Googled local running routes. Then I went to the bathroom again. I don’t usually run with my phone unless it’s a weekend long run and I’m listening to podcasts, but given that the chance of me getting lost was 1270 percent, I tucked it into the back zip pocket of my shorts, cradling a sleeve of Shot Bloks.

  The best bet seemed to be a path named the Elliott Bay Trail, which I could get to by running from my hotel, crossing under the Viaduct to the water. Water. Wouldn’t that be nice! I ran to the water, turned south and next to the water. . .and shipping containers and boats and that elevated highway. Every time I thought I lost the path, I’d see a sign pointing me forward, or a dude on a bike with a couple of kids in a coupe on the back, and then knew I was at least not going to be taken, Taken-style.

  It wasn’t a pretty run, and I hate running on concrete since it’s harder on your legs and knees and feet than asphalt is. I got turned around a few times, including into a rail yard, where I had to figure out how to run around the tracks or cross over in places I wouldn’t be hit by a train.

  But in all the worry and fretting and thinking, Am I really running next to a container field? and, Why is there a Home Depot right next to the Starbucks headquarters? Do coffee people like DIY home projects?—I just did it.

  My mind was on things other than OMG HOW AM I GOING TO HOLD THIS PACE for 26.2 miles?! I didn’t go out too fast. I held the pace. I got lost, but when I found the Viaduct again, I knew I would at least be guided back to the street that led up to my hotel. I breathed easy and deep, and when my pace ticked up faster, I didn’t do anything about it.

  When I finished, I put my hands above my head and yelled “YAHOO!” which echoed off the Viaduct, but I didn’t care if someone turned around to stare. I had done it.

  That was a turning point. It was the first time I thought that maybe all this would work out, if I could keep training, not get hurt, eat the right thing the night before the marathon, and not end up in the Porta-Potty multiple times along the way. That maybe I could run faster than 4:35 and be triumphant at the finish line. And that maybe, just maybe, I’d get through this. Not just the run, but all of it.

  The day after I landed back in New Jersey, my couch arrived. After I wrestled the slipcovers onto the cushions, I lay down on the couch, my dog hopped on top of me, and we both took a nap.

  March flipped into April, and I mowed down more miles, surpassing 50 per week, then 54, 55. I was tired and nervous, always thinking about the race even when I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about it, like when walking my dog or interviewing running coaches for my Inquirer column. I toured the course with the race director, and I wrote a New York Times piece about the race going on after Sandy. Then I worked on the essay about training using the Hansons Marathon Method. I interviewed the Hansons, too. My editor—and every other marathoner who knew what I was doing—focused on the fact that I would not run 20 miles at any one time in training.

  “Everyone asks, ‘Why a sixteen-miler?’ My question is, why a twenty-miler?” Kevin Hanson said over the phone. “I’ll tell you why. Because you’ve been brainwashed. Because every program out there has a twenty-miler, so it must be right?” When the story ran, my editor zeroed in on that twenty-miler too, and titled it “Marathon training—minus the long run.” I cringed. The training was the hardest physical thing I had done in my life—twenty-mile run or not.

  On April 15, running became a target. I wasn’t at the Boston Marathon. I watched the professional race on my iPad in my dining room, and then, buoyed by a feeling of “yeah running! RUNNING!” I went out on a 7-mile run on a warm, sunny day. I didn’t carry my phone. When I returned, I expected to check the marathon website for the times of all the people I knew who were running the race. I had about a dozen text messages asking me if I was okay, if I was home, and sorry to hear what happened.

  The rest of the day was a rush to find people. I checked the Boston Marathon website for their results and saw those for friends who had finished around when the bombs went off, or 5K splits that stopped updating after the 40K mark. Where are they? Where are they? Some were in hotels in lockdown. Others wandered around Boston. No one had cell phone service or any real idea what was going on. One friend who saw both bombs go off but was far enough away to not be hurt ran to her hotel room and left Boston as fast as she could, post-9/11 New York City fresh in her mind.

  I sat at my dining room table, bumping from computer to phone, trying to find these people and not destroy TV producers and reporters from rival papers calling and emailing me for information on people that I hadn’t even found yet. I never liked writing straight news and that morning confirmed this for me, as people I didn’t know kept emailing and calling, telling me I needed to give them the phone number of someone who just survived a terrorist attack. I met Alan that night and drank too much red wine while watching a woman who had just lost her job do shots and yell along with every song she chose for the jukebox, and spent the next day on the couch watching updates on finding the people who did this, who killed those people and maimed so many more. I called Mom and told her she wasn’t allowed to come to my race.

  “I can’t let you take that chance,” I said with a half-sob.

  “Of course I’m coming,” she said.

  “Then you can’t stand at the finish line.”

  “I’m getting as close as I can. You can’t stop me.”

  I wrote about her that week in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “I know there will be a hitch in my heart, and that the images of a bomb going off in a crowd of people, who on Monday were doing the same thing she’s going to do, will play over top of the reality of what I’ll see in front of me as I near the finish line. But she’ll be there. She always is. She’s the reason I’ll run hard toward that finish line. I can’t picture it otherwise.”

  I booked my room. I stalked the weather forecast, fretting about the possibility of full sun but relieved at the forecast temperature. One week away. I tweaked my ankle, and panicked. I went to New York for a writing conference, and a bike messenger going the wrong way down a one-way street clipped my shoulder.

  I’m doomed! I wailed into my pillow at night. The Hansons don’t believe in a long taper, but I cut back mileage anyway to give my still wonky ankle and weirdly clicking knee time to heal please God heal for the race.

  May 1 came and went. I picked out my race clothes—almost exactly what I’d worn in the Ocean Drive 10-Miler that March except I changed the visor to yellow for Boston. While everyone else in the Philadelphia region fretted about Broad Street and 10 miles, I stared down 26.2. I started to carb load. I packed my Shot Bloks and Body Glide and sunscreen. And then, that Saturday morning, Mom drove me to the race expo to pick up my packet, then to our hotel in Asbury Park, and deposited me in our hotel room. I ordered room service and watched Chicago on a local TV station on a grainy old television. And then, after half of a Miller Lite, earplugs in place because Mom snores, I fell asleep.

  chapter 9

  NEW JERSEY MARATHON

  Miles 20–26.2

  I crossed the 20-mile marker, and my body held together. All I had left was a 10K—a lousy 6.2 miles. I passed the Wonder Bar, from which Tilie loomed over us with his Cheshire cat grin. Instead
of crossing a bridge over Deal Lake, like we had on our way into Asbury Park, we left on a road that wound around the east end of the lake. It had been upended by Sandy and couldn’t be repaved in time for the race, so we ran over gravel the marathon had put down. We passed a home where Sandy had gouged out the garage but left a car—still parked inside—behind.

  If I thought I had been running on a warm summer day the first time I came through Deal, I was broiling now, grabbing two waters for my mouth, two for my head, and one for my face.

  All I saw around me was pain in the movements of the runners who slowed or walked around me. I passed them by the dozen.

  Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

  Mile 21. Mile 22. I didn’t stop, but hurt laced through me. My hips ached, my shoulders burned, my left foot cried. My legs started to knock on my brain and say, “Hello! We are displeased!”

  9:55 mile, 9:50 mile. From my legs: Please can we walk now, just for a moment? From me: Shut the fuck up.

  Mile 23. Just a 5K now.

  Just a 5K. Just a 5K.

  Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

  Mile 24. A hop and a skip to the end. At 24.5 miles, we turned toward the street that had once run parallel to Long Branch’s boardwalk. Crowds started to gather here, not a sprinkle but in clumps. Pain bloomed now, everywhere, but I was so close, so close. I was not going to stop.

  Mile 25. I looked at my watch and tried to do mental gymnastics to see if I could beat my time goal. I would PR, that was for sure, but the number that popped into my mind could not possibly be true. I could not possibly have run that fast.

  We came off that road and through Pier Village, where the streets in front were usually jammed with cars, but open to runners and, today, wall-to-wall crowds.