Clouds on a Sunny Day

I’ve had a stormy black cloud following me around for a couple of days, and apart from all of its other depressing effects, it sapped me of my usual enthusiasm to hit the road in pigtails and sneaks. This has upended my training plans for the weekend, which called for a 10-Miler and a 20-Miler, as part of one of my top-mileage weeks of the season. Alas, I couldn’t get out of my favorite chair yesterday, and reclined there like some Victorian woman with consumption, legs up on an ottoman gazing wanly into space. Husband checked on me as he headed out the door around 5, tucking a chenille blanket over my lap and kissing my forehead. 10-Miler? The closest I got to that run was to note the concept, abstractly recognize it would do me good, and then discard the idea like a used tissue. Matilda laid curled on the couch licking her paws, and I sat in that chair until the apartment was dark. 

I knew I was too exhausted to even try for a 20-Miler this weekend, but thought if I went to bed early enough, I could get up, run 10, then head into the city for the Fifth Avenue Mile, since my heat (Women 30-39) started at 10 AM. I got up with my alarm at its usual 5:45, got dressed for my run, ate breakfast, took some Aleve and promptly laid back down in my chair, pulled up the ottoman, arranged my blanket and slept until 8:30. Pigtails Lying, more like it. 

When I glumly woke up at 8:30, though, it became about dropping the melodrama, taking myself by the scruff of the neck and tossing myself out the door to my race. I promised myself coffee if I was at 86th and Lex by 9:30, so I grabbed my race essentials (and camera), and focused on the small black cuppa Dunkin’ that awaited me on the UES. Thank God I signed up for this race weeks ago–would I have otherwise even left the house today? I doubt it. Talk about preventative medicine.

I got that cuppa, and the persistent sunshine and familiarty of race prep shook some of me loose, too. Pin number. Lace flats. Zip chip. Stretch legs. Jog warm-ups. Normally, I’d have done some research for this race, at least ascertaining an appropriate time for the distance, and maybe even memorizing quarter-mile splits I thought I could hit. This time, I thought to myself, TK, you got nothin’. Just break seven. That’s not even fast for a mile (I’m pretty sure), but what could I do? Simply showing up felt like a stroke of genius today.

As we’re waiting for the gun, Mary Wittenberg addresses us in her so-cool way and says, “This one’s gonna hurt.” Bring it on! And then pop! We’re off, one mile down Fifth Avenue, from 80^th Street to 60^th Street. I tracked my splits in the hopes of developing some sort of mid-race strategy (this never really panned out, I need more than six minutes to plan my breakfast, forget strategize a race distance I’ve never run before), but have now completely forgotten them. There was a hill in the second quarter-mile. I was also dimly aware that we were streaking past some iconic New York City buildings, but thought, BFD, I run by them all the time. My two prevailing impressions were Gee my legs feel heavy and My this race is going by quickly. (Deep thoughts, I know.) At the 3/4 mark I dialed back to that moment at speed training when I zoomed, and really dug in. I stared right at the finish line and tried to pass as many women as possible. It hurt: my lungs, my legs. My shoulders, amazingly, were relaxed. When I crossed the finish line, all I could think about was the Olympic Trials (I tell you this next bit well aware that I am going to sound like a total idiot; you are allowed to tease me in the comments section), when the sportscasters would shove a microphone in the winners’ faces and start asking them questions, and I’d think, how come they can’t catch their breath after running just 1500 meters? Well, clearly I’ve got to learn everything the hard way because now I get it. Boy, do I get it–I couldn’t even talk. 

As it turns out, I came in 27^th in my age group (out of 207 women), and ran an official time of 6:36, which would have been about 5 or 6 seconds faster if I’d pushed my way up to the start line before the gun (lesson learned for next year). I’m not sure if this is a good time; I suspect it’s not embarrassing-if I look at McMillan Race Calculator, and plug in my half-marathon time, it tells me I should be able to race a mile at 7:05:05. So purely against that measure of equivalent performance, I did well.

After the race, I confirmed bag watch would stay open for a couple more hours and headed into Central Park for 6 miles, which I ticked off in about 57 minutes. They felt so good. I had completely lost track of what part of the day it was (it could have been 10:30 AM, it could have been 4:30 PM), and my body just took over. I felt the sun as I ran through the bright patches, and appreciated the shade as I ran through that. Memories and visions of family, friends and other favorite people occupied my mind, and for once I saw no one I knew in the park; I liked that. Chances are good, I thought, that I’m outrunning that stormy cloud.