Oh. My. God. It was Bernie Kosar.
There, in the flesh, was the man whose name graced the race we were currently all running. Even for a non-sports (and definitely a non-football) fan like myself, it was a pretty cool experience to see him, right there on the course. I snapped a quick photo then kept on walking.
These were not runners who were also Browns fans. These were Browns fans first. Browns fans who decided, Hey, I’m gonna go do this race because it’s Bernie Kosar themed. Browns fans who, for the most part, weren’t runners at all. Not even a little bit, like not even close. The back of the pack was huge and comprised of mostly walkers, proudly sporting their orange and brown jerseys.
For once, I found myself in something more akin to the middle of the pack.
Because I wasn’t worried about my pace or time, the normal stress that comes with chasing the finish line of the past few months vanished and I was really just able to enjoy myself. It had been months since I’d felt so free and even fast, despite the fact that I was walking the whole thing. It was snowing and cold and I should have been miserable, but I was having a blast.
I had never really before noticed how lonely I tended to feel during races, too. Most of the races I run don’t have quite so many people and even those that are large tend to thin out soon after the race starts and I’m left in the back almost all alone. Oh sure, there are other runners back there with me, but our paces are all a little haphazard in that we aren’t keeping up with each other or trying to maintain the same pace like in the front and middle of the pack. I’m usually running all alone with runners a few yards ahead or behind me, but never with them on either side.
In that way, being in the back of the pack is kind of like being an elite runner.
With this, though, I was surrounded. It was fantastic and a very different experience that probably added to my good mood. Instead of feeling like a pressure-filled race, it was like taking a long walk with 1,000 of my not-so-closest friends.
Of course, they were all wearing orange and brown and I stuck out like a sore TARDIS in my bright blue BUT WHATEVER. If Doctor Who just magically landed in Cleveland on that particular day, he’d easily be able to find me, which is all that mattered.
As I crossed the finish line, I pulled out my phone to pause the stopwatch app that had been running the whole time I was walking. 57 minutes and 18 seconds. That means I walked an 18 minute and 29 second mile over the course of three miles. I was okay with that.
Up ahead, at the end of the pier, a pair of women were handing out the finisher’s medals. Grinning, I bent forward as one of the women put the medal around my neck.
It was even more gorgeous in person.
The ribbon was a bright orange with thin strips of brown and white running down the sides. In the center hung the biggest, most sparkly, most fabulous racing medal I have ever seen. Silver crystals sparkled on the rim, with the words BERNIE SHUFFLE and 2014 etched in metal. The orange center glittered against the sun, the big brown B in the very middle outshining them all.
To think I almost sacrificed this beautiful behemoth for something as silly as sleep.
I mean, really.
Medal hanging proudly around my neck, I walked the quarter of a mile or so back to my car and turned the heat on as high as it would go. Once home I took a shower that just about used up all the hot water, then climbed back into bed for a nap.
After waking up, I took my medal and hung it smack dab in the middle of my medal rack. That huge sparkly B outranked all of my other medals, and as I put it in its proper place, they all jostled slightly, the clinking and clanking of medal against medal music to my ears.
Not all runs, not all races, are going to be awesome. Some are just going to fucking suck and as a slow runner, the odds are in my favor that I’ll come in last place every once in a while. Sometimes the body needs a reset. Sometimes the mind does, too. Sometimes that means waking up early and walking an entire 5K while cold and tired (and, admittedly, slightly hung over).
It’s worth it, though. Because as I took a step back and gazed at my new medal, nestled among my other medals, I was able to calculate all the miles I had run to earn those finisher’s medals and additionally, I was able to calculate all the training miles that got me to all of those finish lines.
Step by step, mile by mile. These were my medals and I had worked hard for each and every single one of them and no matter what happened, no matter how horrible I may have felt on race day, those medals represent the blood, sweat, and tears that went into making me the runner I am today.
Not everyone approves of finisher’s medals. They liken them to the participation trophies that overwhelm elementary school sports across the country. The only people who deserve medals, the logic goes, are those runners fast enough to win their age groups.
The thing is, the back of the pack deserves medals, too. We are out there for longer, putting in just as much work and energy. We run alone for miles at a time. We love the sport as much as the faster runners ahead of us. Yes, sometimes we come in last place and, yes, this is a race. But our miles count just as much even if we don’t run them as fast.
When it comes to last place, it’s really sometimes luck of the draw. Sometimes I’m the slowest person who shows up for a race and I get that police escort all to myself. Other times, runners slower brave the long and lonely miles.
It goes both ways, too. When a fast runner places in their age group, it’s because they happened to be one of the fastest runners who showed up that day. But another day, another race, another faster runner could show up and bump them from the top spot.
Those miles were still completed, the race still finished. Which is why I love finisher’s medals so much. Because, unlike a faster runner, I don’t have the chance of possibly placing in my age group. So having a medal to hang and visually represent all of the races I’ve run reminds me on a daily basis that yes, I’m slow. Yes, I’ve come in last place before and probably will again. But I’m still a runner, no matter what.
I run and run and run, and I have the bling to prove it.
12
Forward Is a Pace
This is the story of a loser.
That word, loser. It is a complex, multilayered word. We can lose jobs, lose lovers, and even lose ourselves for a bit.
But it’s not always bad, losing things. We can also lose weight. Sometimes, with hard work and dedication, it can be a significant amount of weight.
But like a set of keys misplaced and lost in an apartment, these things can be found.
Or, in the case of lost weight, these things can be regained.
I started 2013 weighing roughly 175 pounds and running just under a 14-minute mile. Then, well. Life happened. The shit, as it were, hit the proverbial fan and I took it all in the face. Drama. Oh, the drama. Job drama. Boy drama. So much drama I could have gotten on stage and won a fucking Tony for the amount of drama in my life at that time.
So, I did what any fat girl with food issues and low self-esteem does: I started to eat.
I was still running consistently and in the fall of that year I had completed my first half marathon. Of course, training for a half marathon gave me the mental excuse to overeat because, hello, I was training. Proper running nutrition still eludes me slightly to this day but it really eluded me in the beginning. I heard “carbo load” and interpreted it to mean getting a gigantic, greasy grilled cheese sandwich, side of fries, and a beer from Melt, a local restaurant that specializes in everything that is gigantic, greasy grilled cheese goodness.
As my weight started to creep back up, there was a direct correlation between the number on the scale and my speed. I know it’s said that correlation is not causation, but I knew that my additional pounds slowed me down. It may be years since I have taken any sort of science class, but I do have a basic fundamental understanding of how physics work.
December was drawing to a close, with dark winter nights transitioning into the new promise of January and
the hope that comes with a new calendar, and as I reflected on the previous twelve months I knew something had to give because 2014 was just not my year.
It started out optimistically enough, but then came that second half marathon that had me walking the final four miles, and then what was supposed to be my third half marathon got cancelled. But in the end that was okay because my training was going horribly so cancelling the race saved me from having to officially drop out. Then there was that whole coming in last place at the Running the Bridges and walking the entire Bernie Shuffle and, well …
Roughly two years after I stepped on that treadmill for the very first time and decided to give running a try, I had now officially lost my running mojo. Again.
I didn’t want to give up on running, but I was just so not feeling it anymore. But I was feeling fat and slow and like a big ol’ phoney, fake runner.
I felt like the dreaded “J” word—a jogger.
All I could do was keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other for however long as it took to cross whatever proverbial finish line lay ahead on the horizon of my life. Sometimes, moving forward is the only progress that seems achievable.
That said, with any kind of goal it helps to have a focal point to maintain. Some small insignificant spot on the wall to train the eye. Something to help stay balanced, with feet feeling precarious and unsettled.
I mean trying to always maintain a positive outlook is all well and good, but sustaining that level of optimism does not come naturally to me. Sometimes my sarcastic, cynical self just needs an excuse to get her ass off the couch to go for a run. Because if I go for a run then I can feel justified in spending the rest of the day on the couch. It’s all about balance, after all.
Running-related goals live in abundance: Run a certain amount of miles per year, or month, or week. Maintain a run streak of running every single day. Aim for a personal record at a particular race. I hemmed and hawed, reading over the various goals, never quite finding the one that seemed to make the most sense for me.
It was around this time, near the end of 2014, while searching for that goal, that my friend Nathan posted on Facebook about wanting to run one race per month, amounting to twelve races over the course of a year.
This wasn’t the first time I had come across such a goal—my college roommate Megan had set out, and accomplished, the same goal the prior year.
Here, finally, was a goal that felt right. It wasn’t based on mileage or speed. I wouldn’t have to worry about how fast or slow I went. I wouldn’t need to worry about fitting in a run every day or finding a way to carve 2,014 miles into the year 2014.
All I had to do was select twelve races.
Picking races as a slow runner takes far more research than I think many faster runners realize. Those speedsters can just look at the racing calendar, then look at their personal calendar, and boom. No muss, no fuss. They can be those people who show up the morning of and register without a concern about their ability to finish within the cutoff times. The fact that a cutoff time even exists is so far outside their peripheral vision, it might not even occur to them that such a thing is an issue for other runners.
Runners like me.
As a slow runner, there are a whole host of elements that need to be taken into consideration before signing up for a race. The most important of these is how long is it going to take me to finish?
That, more than anything, is the question that helps guide me towards finding the right race for me. Race courses don’t stay open forever—they eventually have to shut them down and open the roads to normal traffic and, luckily, most racing organizations are good about posting that information on their website.
But just knowing how long the course is going to be open is only the start. I may see a race that looks and sounds perfect, thinking, Great! The half marathon course is going to be open for four hours and it’s going to take me three and a half hours to finish. I’m going to be just fine.
Well.
The question, see, is how is that course time calculated.
This isn’t a trick question, I promise. It’s more sort of like if The Doctor was a race director. It’s all a little wibbley-wobbley, timey-wimey when it comes to being a slow runner. Only, y’know, there’s no actual mad man in a blue box waiting for you at the finish line.
When looking at course cutoffs, I’m estimating my projected finish time based on how long it will take me to get from the start line to the finish line. In other words, I’m going by chip time. The chip turns on at Point A when I cross the starting mat and turns off at Point B when I cross the finishing mat. The race organization, however, may be going by clock time, which starts counting down as soon as the race starts, regardless of how long it may take me to officially start the race.
In a smaller race, this isn’t that big of a deal. We’re talking maybe a few minutes difference between the race starting and you crossing the start line.
But in bigger races, ones that use a corral system, this works against slow runners since race etiquette states that faster and elite runners start up front with slower runners and walkers in the very back. In small races, where everyone just lines up wherever they want, it’s more of an honor system thing. With big races, runners often give their projected finish time when registering and the race organizers use that number to assign corrals. Elite runners start in the first corral and the assigned positions move back from there, with slow runners and walkers being in the very last corral.
Once again, there is going to be a lag time between the official start of the race and when a runner officially starts running—only now it’s going to be a much bigger lag time, possibly a significant amount of time. A significant amount of time that I now need to build into my possible finish if I’m working with a set course closure that is close to my overall finish time.
While I can certainly appreciate the desire to start out in the front or jump corrals to avoid all of that, I’m going to go ahead and tell you not to do that. There are safety reasons why slow runners line up in the back, as annoying as it may be for us sometimes. It’s sort of like when you’re driving on the freeway and there are a majority of cars going 70 mph and then mixed in with all the other cars are a handful going 45 mph.
Those drivers keeping their cars at a steady 70 mph are going to get frustrated at the cars going 45 mph, and they are well within their right to be frustrated. Those 45 mph cars, whether they know it or not, are disrupting the flow of traffic and the 70 mph cars are going to have to play a dangerous game of dodge ‘em just to keep their pace. This could potentially cause accidents and collisions.
There is a reason why the far right lane of a highway or freeway or interstate or what have you, is often designated as the slow lane. So if you as a slow runner ever find yourself among a faster group of runners during a race (and there are many justifiable reasons why this may happen), be like those cars in the slow lane of the highway and stick to the outside of the course. This will allow the faster runners to easily move around you without disrupting the flow and speed.
I get it, too, since it happens in the back of the pack as well. Walkers are awesome. I love walkers. I have walked races myself. But walkers often walk in groups of people. Groups that stretch the entire width of the road. Some fast walkers match my speed as a slow runner and I have to zig and zag and weave my way in and out of the walkers to get myself to an open space. That said, it’s also a catch-22 that we slow runners often find ourselves in on race day. We want to practice safe race etiquette by planting ourselves in the back, but we also know we are racing against the clock in a situation that works against us without really realizing it.
As I said: wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.
The second thing to consider is What time does the race start?
This might not seem like that big of a deal because all it really dictates is what time you have to wake up, right?
Wrong.
As an example: the Cleveland Marathon races are
held in mid-May every year, which can be a frustrating season because the weather is still slightly unpredictable. May hovers on that line between spring and summer, which means some years it may be nice and cool and other years it’s blazing hot. I am talking it’s like running through the corridors of Hades itself. The fact that the race ends with the runners out there on uncovered concrete for the final four miles doesn’t really help with that whole exposure to the sun thing.
(See, that whole read-your-course-map-carefully thing keeps coming back!)
For those of us in the back of the pack, this means that while the race might start in the cold darkness of early morning, we’re going to be out there fighting against the sun for several hours. The longer the race, the longer I am going to be exposed to the elements.
And, sure, while I’m finishing my 3:30 half marathon, there are still fast marathon runners out there working on their sub-4 hour race. So just imagine what the slow marathon runners are dealing with.
So, if I was going to follow through and do this “run one race a month for the whole of 2015” thing, and I mean really do it, really commit to it, I needed to start off on the right (and left) foot.
This meant running the first of my twelve races as soon as I could.
The Commitment Day 5K is held on January 1 at various Life Time Fitness gym facilities all over the United States. I knew about it because my friend Alan had posted finish line photos from previous years of embarking on this challenge.
Oh, what’s this? A race on the first day of the New Year? WELL. DON’T MIND IF I DO.
My boyfriend Ben was going out of town that weekend, meeting up with some friends down in Miami. While I was stuck suffering through Northeast Ohio snow, he was going to be hanging out in Florida.
Yes, a small part of me hated him for it.
Before dropping him off at the airport on December 31, 2014, we stopped for brunch at a little greasy spoon near his house. The kind of greasy spoon that only takes cash, a not-so-small detail that we missed before sitting down. But, that’s why they have those ATMs with exuberant fees sitting near the cash register, right?
Running with a Police Escort Page 16