Men do it so well, the way they spout off the statistics, records, jersey numbers and championship years of their favorite athletes in their favorite sports. For a brief window of time, I could rattle off the most recent good news or failures of the New York Mets. My first years as an office girl were defined by high heels, the Long Island Rail Road, lots of cocktails in dive bars, and baseball. It was one of the things that caught Husband–he escorted me home one day on the train and when he saw that the Baseball Weekly in the mailbox was mine (not my dad’s–I still lived at home, paying down the credit cards after a few months of debauchery in Italy), he was hooked. I knew all the players, their positions, and kept score when I’d go to see them at Shea. We sat in the upper decks right behind home plate, every nuance of the game within sight for $15 plus beer. I kept score, knew by heart the sequence for a double play (6-4-3). I’ll never forget when they beat the Reds in a one-game playoff for the wild card in 1999. TV-less, I listened to the game on the radio, and jumped up and down, hooted and hollered and hugged Boyfriend (who would become Husband) in my studio apartment on the other side of Queens Blvd (by that point I’d paid off the credit cards). Now though, I never read the sports page, and while I am glad when my team is victorious, it’s a tangential joy unseasoned by an investment of time or attention.
But what does a runner remember about their sport? We remember our PR’s, our most recent races and workouts, our injuries and our goals. Some of us remember races as spectators–I have visceral memories of the Men’s and Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials–and the World and American Records of certain distances, but most of us cling to our years of pounding the pavement through a journal–handwritten or online–tabulating our daily workouts. I started logging my miles when I was training for my first marathon, in 2007, which means that the bulk of my running years (2001-2007) has gone unrecorded. Some memories persist from that time (mainly of the oh-my-god-this-is-so-fucking-hard type), but most of my workouts are a blur, smudged into one another because of similar weather, choice of outfits, effort and location. If I truly want to snatch a run out of the air and put it in a bottle, I’ve got to put it here, on this blog. Races, those I tend to remember anyway. But my hundredth time around the Sunnyside Loop? What will ever set that apart? Perhaps it’s a westerly breeze, the moldy smell of Spring in the air, or an unshakeable sense of melancholy. My log notes don’t capture that, so I use this meandering, nostalgic, opinionated and breathy beast of a blog to pin the rest of it down. Running is my modern dance, my postexpressionist painting, my memoir. My legs pound out my life’s story, my blog provides the transcription.
Where were you a year ago today? What did that run say to the world about your life? What did it say to you about your life?
Some other favorite passages from my memoir in motion:
Pigtails Flying 
Love the reminiscing about the Mets! Also a pasttime of mine. By chance, I’ve been moving the final game at Shea, and ceremony, from my DVR to DVD’s the last few days. Sad times (I was there that day as well as many other important highlights) but very good memories.
A log is so important. I only started mine in 1999, with half-hearted attempts before that, so I lost much of 1994-1998 including the training for 2 marathons, and I wish I had that stuff. But, it is so much fun now to go back through the years, good and bad, and remember the PR’s, injuries, fun courses, vacation runs (like the run in CT you link to), line up races against each other, etc.
Not sure how many NYRR races you did, but I did lots in that timeframe and can at least go back and see the race results, while incomplete, is very cool…
Inspired by you, I read my entry from last year http://430orbust.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/2009-planning/ and some others. So much fun! I need to write on my blog some more…
This is exactly what I hoped my post would inspire! Lots of posting of links from a year ago!
And yes, I do go back & look at my NYRR race results…. but everything in between the races is mostly scattered in the breeze.
http://vermeulenblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/interesting-segue/
Wow. A year ago tomorrow I was divorced. Thanks for this.
OK, I’ll bite. I posted thrice on November 23, 2008.
First I “announced” my move to WordPress.
Second was a reference to Pascal Lauffer’s typically wonderful NYC Marathon race report.
Finally, and most importantly, an overview of Where Things Stood.
Great Post! A year ago tomorrow I was off to see an orthopedist on the upper east side to check out my nagging post-marathon knee injury and I was totally bummed to not be running my usual Thanksgiving morning run. You just gave me something else to be thankful for besides my wonderful job, great new apt and my adoring new hubby!! Now I can also be thankful because I’ve had a healthy year of running and I get to do my turkey day run this year 🙂 Thanks for the reminder!
Wow, a year ago yesterday I ran my second marathon in 6 weeks. A tale of two runs: one in extreme heat and extreme cold. Amazing what a different place I was in a year ago beyond running. In a much happier place this year! 🙂
I am so thrilled! I love everyone’s looking back with wisdom and gratitude. It’s not always a pretty picture, but it’s always revealing.
My fondest Mets memory is game 6 of the NLCS in 1986.
Funny. I caught somebody off guard the other day when I spouted off all four of my marathon times (with seconds) in the midst of a discussion. Christ, I can’t even remember my phone numbers…
Oh, and I like not to think about a year ago this week. I was in some pretty serious post-marathon-debacle blues.
Fun to think about where you’ll be a year from now too. A few months after London. Looking forward to Boston perhaps?
Ack! Hush, man! Hold your tongue lest you JINX me.
Runners are by nature forward-looking creatures. We overanalyze our failures and underappreciate our successes. In every run, though, there’s an element not only of the literal moving ahead but of the figurative building for something yet-to-be. Even in those long periods most of us have encountered when we cannot run a step, we chomp at the bit for the day we know will come when we can run again, for the training we will do, and for the races we will run. And when we’re running but not running well, we still enjoy the effort and trust that it will lead to better running ahead. Otherwise, what’s the point?
It’s in our nature. We look back at where we’ve been and what we’ve done, but we don’t dwell on those bad runs or bad races. We relish those magical moments when we were light on our feet and one with what we were doing. We don’t worry, in my case, that we’ll never run another PR but are driven to just be as fast as we can.
If you’re one of those souls who can drag her butt out of a warm bed to get out before the sun is up — admittedly I am not — I think by definition you’re not taking a lot of time looking back.
This post may have been looking back. But it was not to dwell on anything. It was to relish those magic things you identify and to understand how very small things can make you that happy runner that you are. Whatever else is happening, you are a happy runner. Because all happy runners are happy in the same way.