I Lost The New York City Marathon.
Today is an ode to all the things that I did right when I could. An ode to all that I won’t eventually do right. And mainly, to all that isn’t here. Today is Nov. 1 — the canceled 2020 New York City Marathon.
After getting into some trouble at 22, my lawyer said that I was to NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS OR ELSE…!!! My grades suffered in senior year (it’s a miracle that I graduated), I went fucking platinum blonde (gasp!) and I made my treat of the week to go to the theater alone every Wednesday night to see only Oscar buzz worthy films with the goal to critique the writing as if I could write the script better. lol.
I was pushing alcohol, was lonely and ashamed while completely unaware of my possibilities. I had always believed that I had a great work ethic. I just was void of how to channel it because I was choosing to numb the grief instead of owning the grief.
Then, I started running only cause I hated it. Being a collegiate athlete, it was as if running was a form of punishment while simultaneously illuminating just how much you sucked in comparison to your teammates ala how slow you were. Since I hated myself, I was like ehhhhh, one more thing to feel shitty about? Let’s run!
So, I did. I ran my first 5k. Then my first half. And then another half. And then in 2017, my first 26.2 miles — The Los Angeles Marathon. I ran from Dodgers Stadium to the Santa Monica Pier, which is freaking rad given that just three years before you would have seen me taking pulls from a flask that held a terribly mixed vodka lemonade while watching “Her” starring Scarlett Johansson as a literal computer.
I say that anyone can change their life if they want to, and I mean it. I say that anyone can run a marathon if they want to, and I mean it. I say that cause I have and it’s not that hard. The hard part is deciding to do it.
As I was training for LA, I thought about harder races and the New York City Marathon became less daunting and more do-able. The only issue was that my best option for qualification was to move to New York City.
Problem solved — I moved for many incredible reasons but one of which was to run New York City’s five boroughs. Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx and Queens.
The common question that I received when leaving the comfortable OC to the chaotic NYC was, “How long are you planning on staying?” which I still don’t understand because what would happen if I never returned to California? What if New York were the start to a lifetime of adventure on the East Coast? Or further? To Europe? Since when is it so wrong to leave and never come back?
I dodged the inevitable question with responses of endless run on sentences and wrapped it up with the, “Oh, and I plan on running the New York City Marathon while I am there too!” as a means of sharing some sort of vantage point for them to focus on like I’LL BE BACK IN CALIFORNIA WITHIN A COUPLE OF YEARS! But how I really wanted to answer was, A BITCH IS ‘BOUT TO BE GONE! DEAL WITH IT, SUGAR!
Running is this thing that only I get to do. It’s this gorgeous intersection of meditation, distraction, contemplation, imagination and remembrance while using my body to do it.
The key to distance running is to run at a pace that you can comfortably talk to someone without feeling winded and it’s best to not listen to music because your pace will fluctuate according to the tempo of the music which is why people say FUCK THIS just after a mile into their run.
The quicker that you can get bored at running is the quicker that you can get better at running.
Once you regulate and break through the body scan of aches and your heart rate stabilizes is when you start to get groovy. Your sails pick up wind and it’s cruising time, baby. It’s epic. It’s pure. The best part? It’s literally accessible for anyone to experience.
It’s boring, alienating and painful. With each pain that arrives during a run, you know it eventually will leave which is both promising and scary. Your right aching knee will stop aching in 20 minutes but then randomly the pinky in your left hand will start sending spiking pain waves up your arm. To which you are like wtf, whhhhy?! How?! Then you let it stay and hang out until the pinky pain leaves and the next pain arrives.
The one pain that I am sensitive to are my feet. When I am training hard, I will wake up in the middle of the night crying and wishing that the pain in my feet could go away because my plantar fasciitis decides to flare up with the pressure of bed sheets. High arches are sexy for stilettos but not for distance running. The pain is unmeasurable.
I stay up through the night trying to soothe myself with sweet lullabies of just one more, just get New York and then you can be done. I wipe the tears as I know that’s a lie that I continue to promise myself. Cause after I run New York, I want to run Berlin. And after Berlin, I want to run Seoul. And after Seoul, I want to run Patagonia. And after, and after, and after…
After distracting myself and telling myself that the sharp pain will leave soon. I fall back asleep. Until it comes back.
After the afters the sun rises, I wake up and think, alright ya freaking-drama-queen, just get New York. You can travel to Seoul and Patagonia at some point. Just run New York….. and… run.. Berlin, too?… ya, Berlin too! BUT THAT’S IT!
After living in New York for a couple of years, I had to move back to California in the middle of the pandemic for multiple reasons and the one thing that held me together with hope was that I would be back in New York to run the marathon that I diligently qualified for. During a traumatizing, distressful exit from the city, I learned that the marathon was canceled. I let out a loud FUCK cause it was the last hope for me. My thing. My whole heart. My favorite version of me. It was the one last thing that I felt I could hold on to that I could focus on during a year that has been so bizarre that I was stoked to lean into the pain of training.
As strange as 2020 is, completion is a craving, follow through is necessary and owning what you mean is more than just temporary.
I had no more ties to New York except sheer disappointment.
I was on the phone with my parents on top of a rooftop in Brooklyn while stress-chain-smoking and probably on my 5th beer of the day, wearing the same oversized Grateful Dead shirt and Nike shorts that I had slept in for the previous few nights. My dad said, “Don’t feel embarrassed for coming home.” When he said that, I took a fat drag of the American Spirit while gazing at the Manhattan skyline hoping that if I stared at it long enough that I wouldn’t forget a single building while trying to dissect just what he said. don’t. feel. embarrassed? for. coming. home?
I said without emotion, “I’m not” but what I wanted to say was “I’m not finished here yet.”
I made Nov. 1st more significant than my college graduation day (Cal State school pride is different) or what it might be like on my wedding day (dramatic feminist shit) or holding today as such a day of significance that could have been in pure ownership of my body, my time and how those two intersect with my intuition and driving all of that into The New York City Marathon. The marathon was just a tool for me to be that best version of me that I had so dearly fallen in love with over the years since judging ScarJo as a computer.
Yet, the goal consumed me. To prove to it my value. Or rather, to prove to me of my value.
It’s Nov. 1st and I have lost my expectations of where I would have been, where the world is, and just what the fuck it means to be here between the two.
When you run a marathon, it is highly calculated of packing the right snacks (constantly eating gummy bears, peanut butter pretzels and In-N-Out salt packs #gourmet), timed running/walking cadences, water stops (internal dialogue when chugging water goes something like FUCK-YOU-FOR-FINDING-THIS-FUN, YOU COULD BE AT BOTTOMLESS BRUNCH RIGHT NOW, IDIOT) and the inevitable yet anxiety ridden poop breaks, etc. It’s calculated. Everything has an expectation and that is to finish strong.
But when it comes to grief, there is no way to compute it because grief is non-linear.
Experiencing the non-linear thing of grieving for a linear thing like marathon-ing, makes room for other things to show up that I have managed to half-ass-ing-ly grieve. I really think that that’s what 2020 has been for a lot of us.
Grief turns music into sirens and another person’s laughter into a fucking nightmare. I could be in denial. Fear. Anger. Sadness. Either one at a time. All at once or even worse… sometimes, nothing at all.
Grief is a magnifier of what I need and there is sweet hope in loosely holding the magnifying glass for myself to discover. Yet, what I need is time and space and acceptance of the truth to this loss.
The truth is,
I lost The New York City Marathon. I lost the favorite version of myself that I have fallen madly in love with who lived and thrived in New York.
I am choosing to happily grieve the both of them. I am choosing to happily say goodbye to them, too.
