NYC Marathon - 50th Anniversary Edition

This marathon was meant to be an experiment.

Photo credit: John Tran

Eight weeks ago, I raced the Survival of the Shawangunks (SOS) Triathlon. It was my "A" race of the season, which means it was the race where I cared most about doing my best. I put all of my physical and emotional energy into preparing for it, which for me meant that the fallout after the big day was significant. It always is.

I know full well that fitness doesn't just "vanish" after a few days (or a few weeks) off. Yet somehow, perhaps because I put so much mental and emotional energy into these races, when I try to return to training, it is an uphill battle. I say all of this because after SOS, I took a week to recover (and heal the mega-blisters on my feet), a week to ease back into bodily movement, and the next thing I knew, I had six weeks until the NYC Marathon—and it felt like I was starting from square one. This was, of course, untrue; I had built plenty of fitness over the course of triathlon training. It just wasn't the "durability" fitness forged from twelve-mile workouts or twenty-mile long runs.

So the experiment was this: How well could I translate my "overall" fitness into marathon-specific fitness in six weeks? And really, I only had four weeks, because tapering for a marathon is a two-week affair. You have to let the body really heal and stock up on glycogen before you push it for 26.2 miles!

To make this endeavor even more complex, my work life was really becoming an issue. Big projects were ramping up, and every client seemed to need increasing amounts of time and attention. Ultimately this meant I sacrificed the "little things" in training. I continued to do my pre-run warmup routine (getting older comes to demand this) and did push-ups and planks two or three times a week, but over those six weeks, I failed to lift a single weight, and I committed maybe half an hour in total to drill/form work. I did a brief recovery routine most nights before bed, but I no longer counted the hours of sleep I would get before a workout or stressed over what I was eating.

Suffice to say, it was an imperfect buildup. I knew I didn't have enough miles in my legs. I felt lucky to have squeezed in a single twenty-mile run, whereas before other marathons of late, I've done at least three runs of that length. When someone would ask me, "What finishing time are you hoping for?" I replied that I would be satisfied with breaking three hours. Yes, I was hoping to run a bit faster, but what I absolutely did not want to do was feel pressured (by myself) to go out at a pace I could not sustain and have a miserable race. I ran this marathon back in 2013 in a time of 3:18:53, and all I remember is the struggle-fest that was Fifth Avenue. I wanted some new memories.

Back in 2013, I rode the 5am Staten Island ferry to the start, wore as many warm throwaway clothes as I owned, and sat alone in the dirt on top of a black trash bag. This is what tens of thousands of runners do before every NYC Marathon, and it's what I've done before most of my 11 marathons. This year, however, I qualified to be part of the sub-elite starting group. It meant I received much of the same treatment as the professionals did: I got to ride a charter bus from midtown Manhattan to Staten Island. I got to spend the hour leading up to the race indoors at the Ocean Breeze athletic complex, where there were free bagels and bananas and Gatorade, and a track where you could jog to warm up. I got to put my warm clothes back into a bag that someone would drive to the finish line for me. And I got to be very close to the starting line when the national anthem played, the starting cannon (yes cannon) went off, and Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" filled the air. All in all, it was pretty cushy. 10/10 would recommend.

And then there was the race.

For starters, I forgot how steep the Verrazzano Bridge is. My first mile was 7:15. The second was 6:08. I'll let you guess which was "up" and which was "down."

Coming into Brooklyn, I felt a wave disappointment. Where were the crowds? A few people were scattered on street corners here and there, but it felt nothing like the bedlam I recalled from 2013. (Fortunately, happy chaos was awaiting just a few miles down the road.)

After the first 5k, my nerves calmed down and I settled in with E___ and V___. E___ is my teammate; she had just run the Boston marathon and was hoping to improve her time from that race. I figured if I could help get her within striking distance, that would be a good use of my run. I had no idea what time V___, who I'd encountered at other NYC races, was intending to run, but the fact that she came back to us in the third mile and announced that she needed to rein in the pace seemed like a good sign. We became a pack of three.

Shortly after our pack formed, a tall, overenthusiastic guy named K___ pulled up alongside us and  announced that he was hoping to "set the world record" for the number of high-fives on the course. This may sound sweet, and in another context we might have humored him, but then he continued to try and make conversation ("What are your names? Where are you from?") while proceeding to veer in front of us so we had to stutter-step to keep from tripping over him. I could read the same thoughts behind each of our polite, strained smiles: Go away. Eventually he did.

Around the 10k mark, my left foot started to throb. This is a familiar sensation I've battled for several years. After doctor's visits, x-rays, MRIs, and physical therapy, the long and short of it is that I have a neuroma (an inflamed nerve), and the best I can hope to do is "manage it." This summer gave me the longest pain-free reprieve I've had, but in those few weeks of marathon training, the neuroma reared its ugly head. I had been hoping I could get through a good chunk of the race before it became a problem, but alas, here we were. Luckily (or not), I have experience mentally preparing for this pain—I've had to learn how to expect and accept it in every one of my last three marathons (the Olympic trials and my qualifying marathon included). And so when it started to feel like I had a golf ball emerging from the underside of my foot, I heaved an inward sigh and began the process of diverting my attention.

Photo credit: Ben Gross

Smiling and engaging with the thickening crowds was one way to distract myself. I read hand-drawn signs, made eye contact with children, and gave a "thumbs up" to anyone who looked like they were directing cheers my way. I also kept my eyes peeled for people I might know. Most of the people I was expecting to see were waiting for me on First Avenue, but I did see a few friends in Queens. This is the home-court advantage of the NYC Marathon: There's no energy boost quite like seeing someone you know rooting for you.

The Queensboro Bridge was also longer than I remembered.

Because I was running with E___ and V___, my attention was consumed by making sure we all had enough space. It takes no small amount of coordination to dodge NYC's numerous potholes and snatch tiny sloshing paper cups out of volunteers' hands, all while speeding up or slowing down to make room for your running companions. All in all, we did a fairly good job, right up until we reached First Avenue. That's the point in the race when the crowds get insane. The noise is pressing and constant, and it's virtually impossible not to get swept up, at least a little bit. I know better and I still dropped a 6:30 mile heading into the Bronx. This is when I lost E___.  Someone hopped in to run with her, and I thought, Well, I guess she has what she needs now. This would be our point of departure: she'd run her race, and I'd run mine.

V___ and I stayed together until we hit the Williams Avenue Bridge. (Yes, another bridge. There are five of them in total.) By the time I was in the Bronx, I was alone.

It was not the best part of the course to run alone, because I knew the pain was coming for me on Fifth Avenue, and I was still wondering if I'd gone out a tad fast. I had intended to take the race out in 6:50/mile pace, cut down a bit at the halfway point, and then try to hammer home the last 10k. By mile 20, I knew there was going to be no "hammering home." If I could sustain the pace I was going, that would be a success.

Photo credit: Kiersten Johnston

Fifth Avenue is painful because it is uphill. If you were to look at it, you'd barely notice, and if you were to stroll down the sidewalk, you'd be hard-pressed to call it a hill. At mile 23 of a marathon as challenging as New York, however, that slight incline makes you want to chop your legs off and beat someone with them. It hurts. And I was hurting good when I saw a woman up ahead of me in a backwards baseball cap. She looks fast, I thought. I probably won't catch her.

She also didn't look like she was hurting the way I was. As we ran down the street, she kept lifting her arms, trying to get the crowds—which were irritatingly quiet—to pump us up. I found myself joining the effort, giving a double thumbs-up as I ran in the hopes that these people would give us some energy. Why were they standing there if they weren't going to cheer?!

When we turned into Central Park, I felt a wash of relief. This was familiar territory. I knew this road. I had run it many, many times. I knew its dips and its divots, and the fact that it would eventually veer downhill. I was very much looking forward to that.

Photo credit: Emilia Benton's husband

And then I heard a scream—a literal scream—of excitement. My teammate C___ had leapt out from the sidelines and was sprinting alongside me, shouting her head off. She was supposed to have run this race but had held off for health reasons. She had every reason not to be here, and yet here she was, running alongside me, telling me how strong I looked and to go, go, go. I reached out for her gloved hand. Her enthusiasm and energy renewed my gratitude for everyone I had seen along the course: so many former teammates and current teammates and running partners and running friends and friend-friends, and even my partner R___, who was feeling under the weather. I was so grateful to be here, doing this thing.

This thing that f-ing hurt.

Those miles in Central Park feel like the end of the race. It feels like because you know where you are, and because you know where the finish line is in relation to where you are, you're nearly done. But you are not. You have to leave the park and go back onto Fifth Avenue for a little more uphill agony before going back into the park for one final, proper hill. I forgot about that part.

It felt like I was running so slowly I was moving backwards, and yet I'd left baseball-cap girl behind in the park. Turning onto Fifth Avenue, I came up alongside another girl. I fully expected her to surge, yet somehow my leaden legs carried me past her. I saw another one up ahead. Get behind her, I told myself. Get closer. I passed her, too.

I had wanted to race the end of this marathon, and here I was, racing it. But it didn't feel like racing. It felt like "surviving better." As I entered the final stretch, I survived better than a man I had seen at the beginning of the race, who had asked whether it was okay to cross to the other side of the street to see his family. (I'd said yes, so apparently I'd been right!). I survived better than a tall man with a weird gait and a short man sweating profusely. I tried with all my might to lift my knees, because the finish line was right there. I came up alongside a man in a neon green shirt, but there were still too many yards left, I'd kicked too soon. Right at the finish line, Mr. Neon Green Shirt shouldered past me.

"Good job," I grunted as I catapulted over the finish line, wobbled to a stop, and put my hands on my knees.

Didn't want to get chicked, I thought. And I smiled wide for the camera.

2021 New York Marathon Marathon Race Results

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place	W35-39 Place
26.2 mi	2:53:44	6:38/mile	351 / 24,944	43 / 11,394	10 / 1,603

The Olympic Trials Marathon

She might never know it, but Ali Feller gave me the permission I needed to finally write this recap.

Photo credit: Johnny Zhang

Ali is the host of the immensely successful podcast Ali on the Run, and in a recent episode, she interviewed Jay Holder, Director of Marketing & Communications at the Atlanta Track Club (ATC). Without shame–and perhaps, more importantly, without COVID apologies of any sort–she and Jay went straight back to that last weekend in February, when the Olympic Trials marathon happened, and talked about it with abandon. I loved every second.

It's been two months now since the trials, and I've wanted to write about the event. But I haven't. First I needed a week to settle down. Then I needed a week to process. And then . . . a worldwide pandemic happened. Ever since, I've been paralyzed by the fear that it's too self-centered, or tone deaf, or downright irrelevant to write about a happy, once-in-a-lifetime occasion like the Olympic Marathon trials.

But then I heard Ali's podcast, and her enthusiasm for the event took me straight back to that weekend. So I figure if she didn't even run the race and is still that excited to talk about it, and if I enjoyed listening, maybe this blog post will offer a reprieve from the "will we survive?" mentality of the media we're consuming every single day.

If I'm going to recount the experience of running the Olympic Marathon Trials, I want to begin with the weeks leading up to the whole event. Obviously I was training, but unlike many of my competitors, my goal was not to build fitness. Qualifying in Philly had taken everything out of me, and as stoked as I was about the upcoming weekend's experience, I was not excited to actually run a marathon. So leading up, I just needed to stay fit enough to compete without breaking down.

Yet while the training may not have been exciting me, the ever-mounting hype was simply unavoidable. And it was infectious. For the first time in my life, I was being sought out for my opinions, my words, my likeness based on something I'd achieved. Usually I'm the one on the question-asking end of the conversation, but now people wanted to interview me for articles. They filmed me for a television segment. Put me on their Instagram feed. Included me in their podcast. (Okay, full disclosure, I was on the podcast earlier, but that's because the host is my friend, and he needed someone to help him practice.) I have never, ever felt this much like a celebrity. And, knowing that I will almost certainly never experience this again, I said yes. Yes, take my photo. Yes, ask my opinion. Yes yes yes!

Photo credit: Ben Ko

Fast-forward to the weekend of the event. The best way I can describe the experience is that it felt like stepping onto one of those moving walkways and never getting off. From the moment we set foot in the Omni hotel, the energy was thick, palpable, high-octane, and unrelenting. I couldn't leave my room without tripping over someone I knew, or had heard of, or wanted to meet. Every hallway was loud, and everyone was always in motion, going somewhere.

Initially I'd thought that I'd have a decent amount of downtime. However, there was just so much to do! Between eating meals and attending events the ATC was putting on for us athletes, I had to sort out what, exactly, I was going to wear for the race; go and get it approved by a race official (including my shoes, which were measured using what looked like some sort of laser); decorate and drop off my water bottles (where I ran into none other than professional runners Steph Bruce and Allie Kieffer, decorating their water bottles); and attend mandatory athlete briefings. Oh, and I'd also planned to meet up with a few friendly and professional contacts, see my teammates, and eat dinner with my parents. So yeah. There wasn't time for much else.*

As with everything else that weekend, the race was nothing like any other race I've ever run. Part of it was me.** At most marathons, I am dialed in. While I'm running, I see little and hear even less. At this race, I saw everything and heard everyone. The crowds were insane. They were louder than I've ever heard . . . and I've run the Chicago, Boston, and New York marathons. Plus, these crowds were so much closer. The out-and-back course meant that fans could line both sides of the street, and the onslaught began immediately at the start line and extended for two straight miles, maybe more. In that pack were family and friends. And sure, many of them were there to see the race, the spectacle, but they were also there to see me. I can't quite explain what that feels like. I guess it feels like love.

Photo credit: Kelly Kilgour

I saw my ex-teammates first, screaming their heads off, phones out, signs up. These are women who were some of my first New York running friends. They bought plane tickets practically the day I qualified. "Wouldn't miss it," they told me. "We're so proud of you."

Then I saw current teammates–women who had poured their hearts out to hit the trials standard just a few months ago and come up short. These women weren't slower than me. On any given day, they'd be the ones running this race, and I'd be the one on the sidelines. These women (and their partners) had flown to Atlanta late the night before; they were going to cheer themselves hoarse at this marathon; and then they were going to get back on a plane, all so they could run a 5k the next day back in New York. Those are the kind of teammates I have. They're the kind of teammate I aspire to be.

Next up was my family. It's important to note that my parents haven't seen me run a marathon since my very first race back in 2009. I genuinely wasn't sure, if I qualified for this trials, whether they'd attend. But there they were: my dad with his goofy homemade sign, my mom bundled in her puffy bright red coat, hollering and smiling and just looking so happy. And right there next to them was the single-most steadfast guy who has been with me through my good races and my bad, who has cheered for me in the heat and the rain, who really truly has helped me get here, whether he acknowledges it or not.

I saw my neighbors–runners in their own right, and who have been amazingly supportive–cheering like crazy and snapping photos left and right. ("You're doing it!" one of them screamed when I passed them around mile 20-something, almost certainly looking like death. Has a truer cheer ever been cheered? It was exactly the right thing to say.)

There were my two high school friends, neither of whom has a particularly strong interest in running, but who came anyway, for no other reason other than to make signs and stand outside for a bunch of hours to show me they love me.

There was my coach, who was probably the happiest I've ever seen him, smiling and waving and cheering me on.

And then there was one last teammate. This is a woman I haven't known for very long, but who I will never forget. She had qualified for the trials at the New York City marathon, more than a year in advance, but right before the trials, she suffered a knee injury that required surgery. While at first she was hopeful that she'd still be able to race (and cross-trained accordingly–that is, more than any sane human would), as the day drew near, her hope was stripped away bit by bit. At first, her goal was just to finish the race, then just to make it halfway, then a mile. Finally, she settled for the start line, making it 2 minutes and 40 seconds into the race before bowing out. Maintaining hope and optimism throughout that ordeal is impressive enough, but it's what she did after that 2 minutes and 40 seconds that really shows you who M___ is and why I admire her so much: She took her disappointment and her swollen knee back out onto the course and cheered on her teammates for the rest of the race. I genuinely couldn't believe it on that final lap, when I was hurting so bad and in one of those "please just let me stop" phases, and I saw her standing in the road screaming her head off. Because I knew how she must feel–torn between devastating disappointment for herself and excitement and pride for the rest of us. Plus the exhaustion of standing and cheering for three-plus hours. Plus the pain of a swollen knee. And I was almost certainly pulling up the rear on her "cheer list" . . . yet there she was, cheering just as hard for me as for anyone who came before me. I can't quite express how much that meant to me.

I'll tell you what: I didn't stop running.

Photo credit: Andrew Dearling

* Honestly, it was all such a whirlwind that the best choice I made was, race morning, spending the final thirty minutes alone in my hotel room, earphones in, starfished across the king bed. (Song of choice? "Wait for It.")
** And part of it was the course and the conditions. 1,389 feet of elevation? 20mph gusts of wind? Nope, definitely never did that before.

Hartford Marathon Recap: A Glimpse into "Elite" Marathoning

Let me begin by making something clear: I am not an elite marathoner. Shalane Flanagan is an elite marathoner. Desiree Linden is an elite marathoner. Me? I’m sub-elite at best, and even saying that, I cannot help but think of at least ten women whom I know on a first-name-basis, who live within a few miles of me, and who could kick my ass at a footrace of literally any distance tomorrow morning.

However, according the Hartford Marathon's standards, I was “elite” enough for them. And if they wanted to give me free entry into a race I was already intending to run, I certainly wasn't going to say no.

Of course, as I was applying for “elite” status, I quickly discovered that the race had an even higher tier than elite, which they called “New England’s Finest.” If you, as a woman, ran a 2:55 marathon or better and lived in New England or New York, you could apply to receive travel reimbursement of up to $150, a free hotel room, and the opportunity to win considerably more prize money than the rest of the elites. (Take, for example, first place: the NEF runner would receive $6,000, while the regular elite could only earn $1,000.*)

I think this is the finish. But I'm honestly not sure.

Alas, while I did run a sub-2:55 marathon last year, and while I can literally see the World Trade Center from my apartment window (and spend more time running in New York than I do in New Jersey), I do not actually live in New England or New York. Therefore, despite my beseeching email to the race director, I was relegated to elite status. (Yes, yes, poor me. Merely elite.)

What I did get as part of the elite program was access to a tented area beside the finish line where I and the other NEF/elites could put our gear. The morning of the race, my friend and wonderful weekend host A___ and my fiancé R___ escorted me to that tent, which turned out to be not so much a clean, heated haven, as I had envisioned, but instead consisted of two rows of folding chairs and a folding table laden with safety pins, a case of water, and a box of bananas, all set up atop some already-soggy grass. (But hey, we had a tent, which was a lot nicer than standing out in the rain!)

After quick hugs and mutual wishes of “good luck,” A___ and R___ departed, leaving me feeling incredibly out of place as I hunched over my folding chair and watched all of the svelte runners arrive, looking like they knew exactly what they were doing and wearing matching warmup kits to boot. I, meanwhile, was wearing men’s sweatpants from Marshall’s and a free jacket I got at a race in Massachusetts last year. (I had meant for them to be my throwaway clothes, but apparently a volunteer was assigned to collect the NEF/elite runners’ warmup clothes at the starting line and take them back to the tent for us. Who knew?) Just as I checked my watch for the twelve-hundredth time and decided that 7:02am seemed like the perfect time to start tucking gel packets into my shorts, a woman in the next row of folding chairs made eye contact with me and smiled. After we exchanged a few pleasantries (yes, the weather was a little gloomy, and the grass beneath these chairs was awfully soggy, but hey, at least we wouldn’t be too hot!), she asked what I was going to do to warm up and would I mind the company? This was her first marathon, so “she didn’t know what marathoners did to warm up.” I invited her along on my one-mile warm-up jog, and as we trotted away, she asked what time I was hoping to run. I said anything under 2:55 would be a success. When I returned the question, she said she was hoping to OTQ (which is short for "Olympic Trials Qualify," meaning running under 2:45:00). Hmm, I thought. That’s a bit ambitious for a first marathon. But when she followed that up by saying she had recently run a 1:16 half marathon, my skepticism vanished.**

After finishing our jog, we parted ways. I had been told we’d be “escorted” to the starting line, but as I started seeing more and more runners leave the tent on their own, I decided that I must have been misinformed and jogged out toward the throngs of runners. When I finally found the starting line, I simultaneously ran into C___, a friend of a friend whom I’d met once before on a run in Connecticut. We hugged, at which point she said that since it was her first marathon, she just wanted to break three hours. (Just!) Then she inevitably asked what I wanted to run, and when I told her I was aiming for 2:55, she declared, “Perfect! We can run together, then.”

As the gun went off, my competitive brain got hostile. She’s totally crashing my marathon. Now I’m going to feel like I have to stick with her, instead of running my own race. What if she goes out too hard? What if she feels good? What if I feel good? I tried to reason with myself that if she started throwing down 6:15s in the first half, I’d just let her go and try not to let it bother me. On the other hand, if I felt good and she was flagging, I could leave her at mile 20. She’d better be flagging, warned the competitive voice. It’s her first marathon. You aren’t going to get beat by a first-timer are you?

Within the first few miles, all the OTQ women were long gone. Sure, there were a few men around, but otherwise it was frankly just me and C___. She seemed fine, and I seemed fine, and so we carried on, with her informing me at every mile marker exactly how fast her watch said we were running. (She was using the GPS auto-lap, while I was manually lapping my watch, so her announcements came earlier and earlier as the miles clicked away—exactly the reason I'd chosen not to use auto-lap.) We ran on a narrow park path and up along a highway. We ran beneath a bridge underpass where her family was screaming her name, and through a downtown stretch where R___ was screaming mine. On the uphills, she forged ahead, and on the downhills I sped past, but for the most part we ran stride for stride, taking turns going ahead of one another at water stops. (That is, except at three water stops where there were “elite runner” water tables. At those, she grabbed her pre-placed water bottle, and I ran straight past to grab a regular Dixie cup from a volunteer. Nothing new on race day, right?)

A rare photo with the "Dalai Lama" of running.

Now, my “ideal day race plan” had been to run 6:35-40 per mile for the first 10 miles, 6:30-35 for the next 7, 6:30s for the next 5, and anything sub-6:30 for the last 4+. However, the terrain was so uneven throughout the race and, quite frankly, I was so caught up in the fact that this girl was sticking to me like glue, that somewhere around mile 15, I abandoned that plan. My reasoning was as follows: (1) Nothing in my training indicated that I’d be able to negative split with this kind of precision. (2) If I picked up the pace significantly, C___ might not come with me, which would mean two things. First, I’d have to run the rest of the race literally by myself (because the annoying man who decided to sit on our heels starting at mile 8 was clearly not going to run beside me), and second, if my "wheels came off," I would have to watch C___ fly right past me. And call me a wimp, call me a coward, but I just did not want that to happen. Better to outkick her at the very end, I thought. After all: you know the kind of fatigue that’s coming. She doesn’t.

In fact somewhere right around where fatigue was starting to set in, we reached the second “elite” water bottle table, and C___ dropped her bottle. I saw her do it, and immediately thought Now what do I do? I could pick up my pace and try to drop her. I could simply keep going and see what she would do. Or I could slow down a little and look over my shoulder to try and encourage her to join me again.

You don’t know this girl, my competitive brain said. You don’t owe her anything.

Yeah, but if that were you, you’d want the other person to wait for you, said my rational brain. And what’s a few extra seconds? It’s not going to make a difference in the ultimate outcome of your race.

So I slowed down a beat and kept looking over my shoulder until I heard her footsteps again.

Around mile 19, we passed one of the OTQ girls. She looked absolutely miserable. “Come with us!” I tried to shout, but I was getting cold and my lips weren’t really functioning, so I doubt she heard me. And speaking of things not functioning, I spent all of miles 20 and 21 trying to get a gel out of my shorts pocket with fingers that absolutely would not cooperate. By the time we hit mile 22, my shorts were twisted, my shoulders were tired, and I had completely given up hope of getting that gel out—at which point C___ asked, “Do you want a gummy?”

See, this is why you were right to wait for her, my rational brain said as she handed over one of her shot blocks (which is basically a giant cube-shaped gummy bear). My competitive brain had absolutely no comeback to that one.

However, it had plenty to say when, a few hundred meters later, the man who had been running one step behind us the entire time finally started taking off.

Go with him! screamed my competitive brain. You can’t just let him beat you after he used you all that way!

But we were still four miles out from the finish line, and I just did not feel spry enough to match the move.

It’s okay, said my rational brain. Another time, another guy. You can go next time. This time, in this race, just hang on until 25.

And so I did. At mile 25, I saw what looked like an old man up ahead of us, near what looked like a gas station. He didn’t seem to be moving particularly quickly, and some guy C___ knew had just jumped onto the course to help her out. Neither he nor she said a word to me, so I figured all bets were off.

Time to go.

I pushed as hard as I could up the highway ramp that led back into downtown Hartford. I suffered through the downhill that came next. I tried to turn a wince into a smile when I passed by A___ and R___, all without turning my head, because I had to focus. I couldn’t let up, and I didn’t dare look back. C___ might be there, and I needed all of my energy to move forward. If I got out-kicked by the first-time marathoner who “just wanted to break three hours,” I’d never, ever forgive myself.

When the finish line finally came into sight, I couldn’t hear anything but my own footfalls, and there was nothing in front of me except that big, unforgiving clock. Suddenly it was all very real: if I didn’t push for these last 200 meters, I was going to finish with a 2:54 to my name, and damn it, I might have traveled a long way to get here, but I was better than 2:54. So I kicked as hard as my weary, beaten legs could kick.

And, as it turned out, those legs didn't let me down.

2018 Hartford Marathon Race Results

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place
26.2 mi	2:53:58	6:39/mile	27 / 1,560	5 / 635

* Not that I had any dreams of winning, the race, mind you, but prize money extended down through eighth place, and given the previous years’ finishing times, finishing somewhere in the top eight seemed possible.

** This woman went on to not only OTQ—by nearly 4 minutes, I should add—but she also won the entire race. Guess my warmup routine was sufficient....

Pre-Hartford: 2018 Year-Long Recap

Pro tip: pretend you're actually exercising by doing your PT at a gym.

They say "don't take things for granted," but we inevitably do. So let me start this off by saying how grateful I am to even be writing a pre-marathon season recap. Just getting to the starting line this year is a triumph on its own.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's start back in January. As of the first of the year, I was sidelined with an "overuse" injury called patellofemoral syndrome. If you happen to be a physical therapist, you'll recognize that this isn't a break, or a strain, or even anything specific; it basically means I was having pain around my knee, mostly likely caused by inflammation. The trick—and what my physical therapist and I worked on over the next several months—was to determine why I was having pain and to train my body to move in a way that would stop causing said pain. For everyone who's not a physical therapist, all you really need to know is that bending my knee hurt. So running was out, along with biking, erging (rowing), elliptical-ing . . . it even hurt to walk. Also, stairs were especially painful, which, as anyone who lives in or around New York City knows, was especially problematic in terms of getting anywhere. However, luckily for me, my fiance and I had moved to a building with an elevator in late 2017, so at least I no longer faced three sets of stairs anytime I wanted to leave the apartment. That was one silver lining, and the fact that I could still swim freestyle without pain was another. So from January until April, I went to the pool 4-5 times a week and spent the rest of the time dutifully practicing PT exercises and trying not to feel too much FOMO as I watched everyone else get fitter and faster.

During this four-month span, I was faced with a hard choice. At the end of 2017, I was accepted to attend Wilder, an all-women's running-writing retreat hosted by retired professional runner Lauren Fleshman. Anyone who knows me knows how excited I was to be accepted—this retreat was practically made for me!—but given that the event was scheduled for Memorial Day weekend, I was now faced with a tough choice. Should I pay the rest of the deposit and buy a plane ticket, gambling on the fact that I'd be healthy enough to run by the end of May? Or should I save my money, give up my spot, and hope to be accepted into a future retreat?

With the encouragement of my physical therapist (who also happens to be my coach), I took the gamble, and lo and behold, by the end of May, I was finally running again. (Albeit very low mileage and with a lot of huffing and puffing . . . but I was putting one foot in front of the other with minimal pain!) Suffice it to say, that weekend in Sisters, OR, remains a highlight of my year. I met amazing women, communed with nature, and basked in a sense of security and freedom that I rarely, if ever, feel. It's hard to summarize the experience in a few short sentences, but the whole weekend was an important reminder that I don't always need to have an agenda. Every word I write does not need to be an act of performance, and every run I go on does not need to be in service to larger goal.

That said, I was still eager to get back to training for my "larger goal," so when I returned to New York (okay, okay, New Jersey), that's what I did. And man, was it humbling.

Fast-forward to the end of July, when I ran my first race of the year. It was a low-key 5k in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and I knew I wasn't in shape to do anything impressive. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to come in under 19 minutes, and, thanks to very few other women showing up for the race, I won. Two weeks later, I ran the exact same race . . . almost 30 seconds slower. This was yet one more slice of humble pie, but, to take this metaphor much farther than it needs to go, I got a scoop of ice cream with it this time: at mile 2, a man-woman duo started to pass me. I huffed something along the lines of "good job, go" and then the woman turned and invited me to "come with us." This was somehow exactly what I needed to hear, because I kept pace and wound up out-kicking her and another woman at the end, for second place. All of a sudden, I could feel that old love of competing nudging me. That was exciting. Can we do that again?

Still can't quite believe this trip was real. That's Lauren Fleshman, in the flesh!

I had just started searching for more upcoming races when, the next week in August, disaster hit. I got the call that my sister had been rushed to the hospital, and since both of my parents had just left on a cruise to Alaska, I was the family member left in charge. Without getting into the details, my attempt to "get to Cleveland ASAP" involved two separate trips to La Guardia airport and half a night spent in the Port Authority. To make matters worse, cruise lines still apparently communicate using smoke signals and carrier pigeons, so by the time I arrived at the hospital, two days had passed since I first got the call, and I had only just reached my parents to tell them what had happened. I spent the rest of the week in and out of the hospital, so needless to say, not much running took place. 

The good news is that by the time I was able to leave my sister's bedside, I had an excellent distraction lined up: the 2018 Hood to Coast relay! It was a dirty, smelly, stressful race . . . with really awesome people. If you want more details than that, you can get them here.

September thankfully calmed down, although it was still not smooth sailing: I tweaked my neck, and as soon as that was fixed, I got sick, and on top of all of that, a lower back problem I'd been trying to manage since springtime finally insisted that it would no longer be ignored, so I grudgingly went back to PT (although thankfully I was still able to run).

Also, it was during this month that I ran the second-worst half marathon of my life. This pattern is apparently pretty standard for me: before my each of my last two marathons (Berlin and Portland), I had an "all is lost" moment when I seriously questioned whether I'd be able to run the upcoming marathon at all, let alone as well as I wanted to. This year's "buildup" race was no different, complete with bitter tears of self-rage and utterly shaken confidence. But this is also my year of attempting to re-frame what happens to me, so I did my best to take away some positives: I did not drop out of the race (despite an overwhelming desire starting at mile six), I (miraculously) did not walk, and I got lots and lots of practice with my various mental strategies (ignoring my watch, remembering to be grateful, listening to my breathing, telling the doom and gloom voice in my head to "STOP").

If you look up "anguished emoji face," this is what you'll find.

And here's the thing about reframing: it doesn't always work in the short term (as can be deduced from conversations like, "Allison, you'll come back from this mandatory rest stronger!" STFU. You try not running and see how strong you get), but in the longer term, I think it is helping. I really am grateful to run again. I'm grateful to my training partners (both new and old) for their constant enthusiasm, and to my coach for his limitless patience and optimism. I also focused on one of the few controllables in my life this year, my diet, and while it's hard to say if it has helped in any measurable way, experimenting with a farmshare has been fun, and eating more fruits and vegetables can never hurt!

All told, I wouldn't say I'm any sort of "new athlete." I didn't come away from this year's challenges with stronger muscles, a leaner frame, or an ironclad mindset. But I'm working on that much-lauded "process" mindset, and one thing I can say for sure: I really did enjoy putting in the work.

We'll see what that's worth on Saturday.

Portland Marathon Recap #3: The Win

Okay, so honest truth: given the size and past results of the Portland Marathon, I knew there was a possibility that I’d be able to place in the top 5, maybe even top 3 women. However, every time I’ve gone to a race with “placing” in mind, I’ve stressed out and am almost never satisfied with the results, no matter if I live up to my own expectations or not. Therefore, I approached this marathon as laissez-faire as I could. After all, the only factor I could control was my own race, so that’s what I wanted to focus on. If I hit my time, that really was winning enough for me.

Of course, that’s not to say I didn’t want to race other women at all; I just wanted to save my competitive drive for the last few hard miles. Therefore, my race strategy—compliments of Coach J—was this: Whatever you do for the first 13 miles, don’t panic. If you run 6:35s or even slip into 6:40s, who cares? You’ll run the first half of the course uphill, so on the return trip, you can make up time. Bottom line: Don’t go out too hard. Then, get to mile 23, and in those last three miles, race.

This was a great strategy, and it worked . . .  at least for the first two-thirds of the race. I spent the first several miles cruising along comfortably, paying little mind to the fact that I was in third place. (Just to be clear: when I’m talking about “place,” I mean third/second/first place woman.) Honestly, I thought there would be more women in front of me at that point, especially considering that the half and full marathons started together. However, only one half marathon woman appeared near the front of the pack, so already at mile two, I found myself running down Natio Parkway behind just two tiny Japanese women and a bunch of men.

I was still marveling at how good my body felt—6:30s didn’t feel like work yet!—when I caught up to the second-place woman. We were somewhere between miles six and seven, just having turned onto a long, straight industrial road that would lead us to the one major hill on the course. She and I ran side by side for at least a mile, maybe more, and all I can remember thinking is, This lady is breathing way too hard for this early in the race. By the time we hit the hill, I could no longer hear her.

The next seven or so miles passed fairly uneventfully; I mostly spent them watching the pink shirt of the lead woman and the orange flag of the accompanying bicyclist bob up and down in the distance. This was the residential stretch of the race, and lots of spectators were out there cheering for me to “go get her.” It was surprisingly encouraging, especially because we all had our names printed on our race bibs, so people would shout, “Go Allison!” as if they knew me and really wanted me to catch the leader. (And, notably, this is where three of the four spectators who actually knew me were standing—so they probably did really want me to catch the leader!) However, I had no idea what that woman had in store for the rest of the race, so I was content to keep hitting my paces. If I could still see her at mile 23, I knew I’d be ready to “go for it.”

Unfortunately for me, that’s not quite how things worked out. Instead, I caught up on St. John’s Bridge, around mile eighteen, and by the time we made it back down the hill, I couldn’t hear the patter of her footfalls anymore. I was on my own. And when I say I was on my own, I was on my own. From that point through the end of the race, I think I passed three, maybe four men running the marathon; everyone else I caught up to was walking the half marathon. (The two race courses were essentially layered on top of one another—see my earlier blog post for further details.) Basically, the point is: when I got to mile 23, I had no one to race. It was just me, dodging walkers over uneven asphalt and slippery train tracks. So this is where it was easy to get defeated. Where was I going to get any adrenaline? How was I going to find the grit to finish hard when every part of my body was already hurting?

Luckily for me, I had practice in this setting. During this past training cycle, due to a wide variety of circumstances, I wound up running most of my long run workouts alone. As a result, I came up with all sorts of dumb tricks to convince myself to "keep going" when the going got tough. One trick: hypnotize yourself with a mantra. In this case, I co-opted one that had been offered by my friend T___: “Today’s the day.” Today’s the day. Today’s the day. Today’sthedayToday’sthedayToday’stheday.

Trick number two: use your arms. I originally learned this from my first coach, as advice for climbing hills when your legs are tired. My current coach took it one step further and showed me how “using your arms” actually rotated your core to generate more power with each stride. I don't often remember to focus on this, but when I do, it really works. And I remembered this time.

The last trick was arguably the hardest, but it was also the most effective, and that was ignoring my watch. At this point in the race, seeing a 6:45 mile wasn’t going to help me adjust my pace any more or less than seeing a 6:15, other than to make me feel defeated and give up on the PR I wanted so badly. Now was the time to buckle down and pour out whatever I had left; however that showed up on the clock was how it would show up.

So with my mantra and my arms, and without my watch, I bobbed and weaved my way through those last few miles. When I finally made it to the finish line, it was almost exactly like any other marathon finish I’ve ever experienced. I saw the time on the clock, I passed under the banner, and I felt that gush of relief that it was all over. There was no tape to break, no flashing lightbulbs, no paparazzi. I wobbled along on unsteady legs, up to volunteers who wrapped me in the standard finisher’s poncho and hung a finisher’s medal around my neck. A  few moments later, a woman came up to me and led me over to a photographer who took a picture of me shaking her hand (which, ironically, never made it onto the race website or into the Portland newspaper article, although the men’s winner and both half marathon winners are on there!). Then she handed me a surprisingly heavy black box containing a glass trophy, asked me whether I had someone waiting for me in the reunion area, and sent me on my way. And so I went on my way, almost as if nothing had happened: one more day, one more marathon. That's the irony of it all—life is very much the same, glass trophy or not. There will be a new PR to chase soon enough.

2017 Portland Marathon Race Results

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place	Age Group Place (F 30-34)
26.2 mi	2:50:25	6:30/mile	14 / 2,927	1 / 1,460	1 / 234

Portland Marathon Recap #2: Irks and Quirks

The Portland Marathon is one of a kind . . . and I mean that in the best and worst ways possible.

First of all, it almost didn’t happen.

Second of all, despite this being the race’s 46th year, there were some definite issues that the organizers need to figure out before I can recommend this race to any other runners. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The course took an extraordinarily long time to be finalized. As in, we didn’t find out where we’d be running until a month before the race. Apparently, the reason for the delay was that the race organizers were having trouble securing a permit from the city . . . which none of us knew about until Runner’s World published an article claiming the race might be cancelled. I have two words for that: poor communication.
• Along similar communication-related lines, I received more emails from the Chicago Marathon—which I wasn’t registered to run—than I did from the Portland Marathon. This is not only a lost opportunity for Portland (after all, they’re the hometown of running apparel behemoths Adidas and Nike . . . neither of which sponsors the race!), but also a point of stress for runners accustomed to bigger races with lots of professional communication. It’s okay to be a little slow getting the details of the race together, but please, be more communicative next time (so us runners don’t go into full-on panic mode), okay?
• Next up: nutrition. Now, I understand that this is a small and only moderately sponsored race, but if you’re going to provide something other than water on the course—which is very important in a marathon, and for which I am certainly grateful—why in the world would you choose a beverage that has zero calories? Marathoners need calories! 
• Then there's the course itself. It’s an out-and-back route, which would not be a problem, except for the fact that the half and full marathon courses are pretty much on top of one another and start at exactly the same time. This means that any marathoners who run under four hours wind up colliding with the half marathoners who are walking on the “back” part of the out-and-back course. Speaking from experience, this turns into one big game of Frogger, but a whole lot less fun, given that everyone is fatigued and therefore much less agile than they might otherwise be. Let me tell you: there is no turning on a dime at mile 25.  And if you add in some rain and uneven train tracks . . . collisions will happen. (Luckily, Portlanders are really nice about this sort of things; see below.)
• Speaking of train tracks, my final grievance is based on something that didn’t even happen to me, but it is the primary reason I cannot recommend this marathon. My friend L___ was on pace to run well under 3:30 when she came to one of several sets of train tracks at mile 25. However, she couldn’t carefully step over these tracks because . . . there was a train on them. She and all of the runners around her had to stop and wait—again, at mile 25, when they were all sore and fatigued and dying to be done—for a train to pass by. L___ still ended up running under 3:30, but who knows how much time that interruption cost her? I'm pretty sure I'd have thrown a fit.

So that’s it for grievances, other than the fact that there was no tape to break at the finish line (a very minor grievance in the scheme of things, but it would have been nice!). Now, on to accolades. (Because Portland really is a lovely place to run a marathon!)

• The people. And not just the spectators—who were wonderful and supportive, don’t get me wrong—but the runners, too. Because the course was out-and-back, I found myself facing a lot of other runners after I turned at the halfway point and began retracing the course. Not only did these other runners smile at me, but they actually cheered for me while they were running their race. I was astounded. These people had no idea who I was, but nevertheless were shouting, “Go girl,” and “Stay strong,” and “Go get her [the lead woman].” It was amazing support and kept me smiling for a vast majority of the race.
• The swag—the tree seedling in particular. Every marathon gives its finishers a medal (which typically gets put in a shoebox) and a T-shirt (which eventually gets thrown away), but how many people can, twenty years down the road, point to a giant tree and say, “See that? I won that in a marathon!”
• The weather. Of course this varies year to year, but the 2017 weather was perfect: fifty degrees and overcast. We had a sprinkle of rain about an hour into the race, which made the footing a bit slippery, but a short shower was by far preferable to torrential downpour or blistering heat alternatives.
• The terrain. Apart from my grievances (above), the course actually played to my strengths. Being forced to run generally uphill for the first half of the race forced me to stay controlled and attentive, and running downhill for the second half made it that much easier to negative split (my preferred way to race). Also, while a good chunk of the race follows empty industrial roads (read: no spectators and no scenery), these roads are straight (i.e., no turns, no tangents) and they’re fairly well kept. Ultimately, I’d say that any runner who has run and enjoyed the Brooklyn Half Marathon course would like this course, too.

In spite of the negatives—and thanks to the positives—I did manage to run the race I had planned . . . which is obviously a huge positive. So I'll spend my final blog post dwelling on that. Stay tuned!

Pre-Portland: Fall 2017 Season Recap

After a few crazy weeks and a nearly-missed flight, I am finally in Portland . . . so I guess it's time for the annual pre-marathon self-pep-talk/season-review.

Posting a goal time (that I will fail to achieve) at the Strava mile.

The Challenges
The biggest challenge this season has been adjusting to a new coach. Trusting someone brand new is hard, and no matter how badly I want to fast forward to the point where I blindly believe everything he says, I'm simply not capable of that . . . at least not yet. But looking back at my previous coaching relationship, I recognize that I am capable of that level of trust, it just takes time, and certainly more than one full training cycle. So as impatient as I feel, I have to accept where I am and how far I have to go, and give it the time it takes.

The long and lonely road . . . crossing train tracks
on my 3hr long run in Portland.

The next big challenge has been learning how to fail, although truthfully, I don't think I've learned this lesson yet. I failed in my last two long runs leading up to this marathon, and I'm not talking about just running "off pace;" I'm talking about quitting entirely. The hardest thing about these failures has been knowing, even as they're happening, that the stumbling blocks are mental, and succumbing to them anyway. The perfectionist in me wants to scream, Weakling! How will you ever get through this race if you can't even finish a workout? But I'm (hopefully) learning to reign in that voice, and to keep the punches from flying when I'm down.

The final challenge this cycle has been (re)learning how to train alone. When I ran my first marathon, I trained pretty much by myself; I had just moved to New York City and didn't know very many people, never mind runners. Now, things are different: I know tons of runners and have had the luxury of running with many of them for my last few training cycles. This year, however, that luck ran dry. My old training partners were taking breaks, and my new ones were focusing on the mile, meaning that they had zero interest in doing a ten-mile workout on Tuesday and another twenty-mile run on Saturday. Having had company for so many previous seasons, I kind of forgot: training alone is hard. There's no one to inspire you to get out of bed, no one to pace off of, and no one pull you along when you're having a crappy day. If nothing else, it makes me that much more grateful for runs where I do have company. Silver linings, right?

The Triumphs
If most of my challenges this season were mental, most of my successes were mental, too. For starters, I consider it a success that I finally stopped worrying over whether I was doing "enough" training. Frankly, it's scary to go from increasing mileage every single season to suddenly scaling it back, yet still with the goal of running faster than ever before. It's scary to abandon track work altogether when I've gone to that same oval every single Thursday for the last three years of my life. But sometime in the midst of training, I decided to put my own fears aside and just do my best with what I was being given. My new coach's approach to preparing for a marathon might seem gentler, but I chose this coach, with this approach, for a reason. I owe it to myself to see it through.

Teammates really are the best

The other triumph this season was learning to read my body. I've had to face a hard truth this year: I'm not 25 anymore. I can't just roll out of bed, throw on some shoes, and expect to start running at 6am. I also can't expect my body to recover like it used to. Case in point: about a month ago, I took a trip to the west coast for a wedding. While I was out there, I was scheduled to do my longest run of the training cycle. The next day, I felt fatigued, but certainly not "wrecked," so I was pretty upbeat about the workout I had coming up. However, two days later, I found myself a mile into the workout, straining mightily, and still not coming close to the pace I was meant to hit. At that point, I had a decision to make: try to grind through this workout feeling like crap and very obviously failing, or throw in the towel, jog back, and attempt the workout again the next day. I went with Option B. The next day, I found a middle school track and did all nine miles there--and nailed them. Now let me be clear: this is not a triumph because I nailed the workout. It's a triumph because, instead of berating myself for "failing," I recognized that my body had not yet recovered and gave it a chance to succeed on another day. I showed myself compassion and, by doing that, was able to make a smart choice. This is not something my 25-year-old self would have been capable of doing, but my 31-year-old self did it, so I am ready to call that progress.

The Bottom Line: I know I can do this. I can run this marathon the way I want to. Whether I do or not remains to be seen. But I did everything I could to give myself the best shot, and really, that's all any of us can ask of ourselves.

"B is for Brains" – The Berlin Marathon Race Recap

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I’ve rewritten this race recap three times. Each time, I fretted over how much to include, what to omit, which events are "interesting," and just how honest to really be. In the end, it turned out longer than I'd like, but it finally says what I want it to say. I think.

I don’t know how other people do it, but when I prepare for a race, I set three goals. The first is the one I tell my friends and family–mainly the people who don’t know much about running. This “C goal” the “safest” of the three: the one that, barring any catastrophe, I should reasonably be able to hit. Typically, it involves running a PR–a personal best–by any margin.

The next goal is the one that, depending on my mood (and who’s asking), I may or may not tell my running friends. Like the C goal, it’s one I also think I can hit, but requires a little more hope and a lot more luck. If race conditions are good and I keep my head on straight, I have a very good shot. The B goal is usually the one I tell my coach.

And then there’s the A goal. In college-application-speak, this is the “reach” goal, and it’s the one I truly have my heart set on. I almost never share this goal with anyone, because yes, I’m a little superstitious, but also this A goal seems greedy. It reveals that I don’t think it’s enough to just PR; I have to PR by this much.

Pasta dinner "race faces."

Three weeks out from Berlin, I had my three goals in place. The C goal was to PR. The B goal was to run a 2:55 (three minutes faster than my last marathon PR). And the A goal was to run a 2:50. My racing season thus far had gone great, and all three felt achievable . . . right up until I ran the worst half marathon of my life. After that, I spent the next two weeks trying to convince myself that the race was a fluke, that I wasn’t a mental disaster, and that the marathon couldn't possibly feel that bad . . . could it?

Then, to make matters worse, the night I was scheduled to fly to Europe, my coach announced that he was leaving New York. By email. An email that I read on my phone at 9pm while standing in an extraordinarily long airport check-in line, stressing over freelance work I had not yet finished.

This is it, my overreacting brain announced. He’s abandoning you. The team you love so much is finished.

Of course, I knew that none of these things were true. But nevertheless, I proceeded to spend the entire equally long, equally stressful security line trying to convince any onlookers that, no, these weren’t tears, I was just having an uncontrollable yawning epidemic. All in all, not the best send-off.

Fast forward to Saturday, September 24^th: the night before race day.

I’ve always known that I am part of a fantastic team. Everyone is friendly and fun, supportive and encouraging. But on this particular day, my incredible teammates and fellow running friends took it upon themselves to remind me how great they really are.

So much love!!!

Here I was, thousands of miles away, in an entirely different time zone, and all of these amazing people took it upon themselves to not just think of me, but to bombard me with Facebook, Instagram, iMessage, and WhatsApp messages wishing me luck and reassuring me "you can do this." And for the first time in two weeks, I felt more than just apprehensive. I felt excited.

So. On to the race.

There’s nothing interesting to say about the morning of my race other than the fact that once I finally reached my starting corral, I was surprised to discover that there were almost no women around. And I don’t just mean standing near me; there were almost no women in sight at all. (As it turns out, fewer than one in four people running the Berlin marathon this year were female!) Eventually, a tiny British woman standing nearby approached me. She introduced herself by way of saying, “Honey, you look about as nervous as I feel!” and we chatted about the lack of women in our vicinity. Then, twenty minutes later, the starting gun sounded, and away we went.

Here was my plan:

Run the first half in 1:28. This would average out to 6:43 per mile (which I calculated the night before).

Then, alternate 2 mile “workouts.” Run two miles of fartleks (i.e., 1-2 minutes fast at the beginning of each mile before settling back into an easier pace for the remainder of the mile), and then run two miles at tempo (i.e., an even pace).

With this scaffolding, provided by my very wise coach, I decided I’d try to decrease my tempo miles by each set. Therefore, my plan ultimately looked like this:

Me, trying to pretend marathons are fun.

Miles 1–13: Average 6:43/mi

Miles 14–15: 2 miles fartlek (2min hard per mi)

Miles 16–17: 2 miles tempo @6:30-40/mi

Miles 18-19: 2 miles fartlek (2min hard per mi)

Miles 20–21: 2 miles tempo @6:20-30/mi

Miles 22–23: 2 miles fartlek (1-2min hard per mi)

Miles 24–25: 2 miles tempo @6:15-20/mi

Mile 26+: Whatever’s left

Unfortunately—as every runner knows—races rarely go according to plan. Here’s how the race actually broke down:

The first half of the race felt like floating. Literally. I felt like I was prancing down the street, with absolutely minimal effort. This is exactly how I’ve felt at the start of every marathon I’ve ever PR’ed, so it was definitely a good sign. My goal at this stage was to stay in control: don’t get too excited, but also don’t lose focus and let the pace slip.

Around mile twelve, the ball of my left foot started to bother me. This has happened before in other races, but I never know when it will start or why. Halfheartedly, I prayed to the running gods that it wouldn’t get worse. Then, since I’d been running primarily on the left side of the street (where it was less crowded), I attempted to move closer to the middle in hopes that doing so would solve the problem.

I crossed the half in 1:27:32. So far, so good.

My first fartlek went better than expected, with each mile clocking in around 6:20. In fact, other than the foot pain, which was getting worse mile by mile, everything was going better than expected. Each mile of my first tempo came in in a tad under 6:30/mi, so I mentally rolled back each tempo set to the faster end of the range. If I could do 6:20s for my next set and 6:15s for the last, it would be a very good day.

Ah yes, there's the pain face.

The next fartlek, I knew, would be telling. Miles 18-19 are typically the “bonk” miles, meaning that if the race falls apart, it usually does so right around here. However, these two miles went okay, and in spite of choking at a water station and slipping on some of the plastic cups (yes, this race used plastic water cups, which we had to grab off of the tables ourselves), I still managed to average the set in 6:25/mi. I was starting to get tired, and my left foot felt like it was being smashed with a sledgehammer, but I wasn’t suffering-suffering. And on the bright side, I only had one fartlek left!

The next tempo was when fatigue really hit. My first mile was nowhere near the pace I had planned, and while I put in effort to pick up the second mile, even that one didn’t quite make it down to the 6:20 mark.

And that’s when I got scared.

This hurts, said the fear, and you’re not even running as fast as you should be. What if you try to go faster and blow up? You’ll be at Mile 23, dead as a doornail, with nothing to show for all these months of hard work.

But listen, continued the fear. You have this PR in the bag. Just hang on here. You can do this—just don’t try anything fancy.

This moment may seem like a turning point, a decision, but that’s not how it felt; it felt like a foregone conclusion. And even as I succumbed to my own mental demons, I already knew: no matter what the clock said at the end of this race, I’d be disappointed. I could have done better.

A few miles later, somewhere within the last 5k, a girl in a white and blue tank top ran by me. Part of me wanted to latch onto her and try to get back under the 6:40 pace I was running, but mentally it was just too late. Let her go, said the fear. Let her run her race. You run yours.

So I did. And off she went.

Team pride, right here.

Finally, we passed under the Brandenburg Gate and into the home stretch of the race. In the distance, I could see the broad blue finish line cutting across the sky. We had less than half a mile left to run, and that's when I saw her. The girl. The one in the blue and white tank, who had passed me earlier. Suddenly, my coach’s voice piped up inside my head. “Don’t get outkicked.”

It's been his mantra to me for a year or so, now, ever since I lost third place to another girl by no margin at all.

Don’t get outkicked.

So I kicked. I ran this girl down, crossed the finish line, and waited for the exhilaration of “winning” to hit. But it didn’t come. Instead, all I felt was a dull ache of disappointment. Sure I had put in a colossal effort, and sure it hurt. But I’d been capable of more, and I gave that up.

Here’s the bottom line: am I sorry to have run a 2:53 marathon? Hell no. It’s a nearly 5-minute PR, and I worked hard for it. Am I embarrassed by my 33rd place finish among 9,000+ women? Of course not. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that sort of statistic would ever apply to me. But could I have given more? Yes. I knew it in the race, and I know it now. I didn’t lay everything on the line, because I was afraid to fail.

My best, most surprising races to date have always been the ones where I took risks. These are the races where I told myself, “it’s okay if you fail—because you gave it your all.” If I'm honest, I haven’t tried this yet in a marathon. I’ve run smart, and I’ve run well, but I’ve never fully thrown caution to the wind and said, “Screw it. If I fail, I fail.” However, that day is coming. And when it does, I can only hope that everything I have in my arsenal—the training, the rest, the food, the sleep, my awesome coach and amazing teammates—will be enough to pull me through. After all, they've gotten me here.

2016 Berlin Marathon Race Results

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place	Age Group Place (F25-29)
26.2 mi	2:53:15	6:37/mile	881 / 45,066	33 / 9,263	9 / 1,434

GCR reunion in Berlin.