Running Towards NYC

I’m in the middle of training for yet another marathon - my first one since finishing chemo and radiation - the famed New York City Marathon on Sunday, November 1st. You’d think by now I’d have this figured out. I haven’t.

The alarm still goes off at 5 AM and I still lie there negotiating with myself before my feet hit the floor. That part never changes. The weather changes, my body changes, my head changes, and some mornings I have no idea which version of me is going to show up until I’m halfway down my block.

Some days the training is the best part of my day. Three weeks ago I ran 14 miles on a Saturday morning while half the world slept in and somewhere around mile 7 I stopped thinking about my splits and just ran. No podcasts or music. No watch-checking. No mental list of everything waiting for me back at FCA. For two hours nothing was required of me except the next step. I don’t know what to call that feeling exactly. Relief, maybe. Or peace. Or reaffirmation. Whatever it is, I chase it every time I lace up, and I only get it every few runs.

Then there are the other days.

The days where there’s an interval run on the schedule and by mile three I’m already negotiating with myself to cut it short. Legs are heavy, head isn’t in it, everything feels harder than it should. Often I finish anyway, slower than I wanted, annoyed with myself the whole way home, doing the math on what that means for the upcoming race and whether thousands of miles on the road is supposed to make this feel easier. It doesn’t get easier. A lot of endurance content pretends otherwise, pretends the right mindset or the right shoes turn this into something fun and frictionless. It isn’t. Sometimes I hate it. I lace up and get out the door anyway, and I don’t think that’s discipline so much as stubbornness.

After completing lots of races, here’s what I’ve noticed: the marathon itself is rarely where the real work happens. The real work is on the hardest days, in the dark, with nobody watching. It’s the decision to lace up anyway when there are no cheering crowds, friendly volunteers and cinematic fish lines. If the training was honest, the race mostly takes care of itself. If you cut corners, the marathon finds them, usually around mile 18.

I don’t know what November 1st is going to look like for me. Good day, bad day, somewhere in between — I’ve stopped pretending I can predict that from here in September. What I do know is I’ll be at the start line having put in the work, and after that most of it is out of my hands.

Tomorrow I’ll grab another long run, banking a few more miles and perhaps even a few quiet smiles in my journey towards 26.2 in New York City.