But I think I’ve gotten Boston out of my system now. At least until I stop being such a fat slow useless shit, and since that’s never going to happen, I’m done. I had one decent Boston already, and I should have quit while I was ahead.
It doesn’t matter if I manage to do everything right — it still just blows up in my face. There were some other contributing factors, sure, but the main problem is that I am me, I suck, and nobody can tell me why or how to fix it.
The plan was to start out “slow,” with no miles under 7:30. It’s downhill, which means that pace shouldn’t be too difficult, but when you add in the hordes of people running, it’s kind of hard to run faster. 2021 was incredible with the reduced field size… this was just ridiculous. It becomes even more important later on…
Warm temperatures were expected. I wasn’t overly worried about this, since it’s not like it was going to be 90°, and I generally handle the heat better than most. (Or I used to, anyway. These days I don’t handle anything well.)
The problem is that when there are a bunch of people descending upon fluid stations at once, some of whom decide to come to a dead stop and enjoy their beverage instead of grabbing on the go, it turns things into a bit of a clusterfuck. I lost like ten seconds at each fluid station because of this — sometimes twice, because in attempting to do everything right, I was going for both Gatorade and water. Some of those cups had about a tablespoon of liquid in them. It was hard to get the cups, and once you did, there was hardly anything drinkable. I got very thirsty, very fast.
The first eight or nine miles were okay, from there to about the halfway point were a huge struggle, and then I decided to just give up. It was going to be a shit show anyway, and I didn’t see any point in making myself suffer more for no good reason.
I don’t think there has ever been a marathon in which I was so repeatedly tempted to quit. Not even Boston 2018. It was frustrating to keep running into people every time I tried getting water (sometimes to no avail), it was frustrating to not be able to move away from the people hurling their sweat all over me, it was frustrating to be running yet another crappy race, and I just don’t want to do this anymore.
Speaking of Boston 2018, this was my slowest marathon since then, and my fourth-slowest ever. I’d say I don’t think I’ve ever blown up so spectacularly before, except that I didn’t blow up so much as I gave up. There is no point. My body just won’t do it, and nothing I do or don’t do makes a shred of difference.
Garmin recorded 26.42 miles (aided by pointlessly weaving for water) in 3:27:21, 7:51/mi. Officially, 26.2 miles in 3:27:18, 7:55/mi. 8786/25528 OA, 2083/10912 F, and 1556/4649 F18-39. Odd that I managed to beat my bib number, but since I qualified for this when I was already incapable of running fast, my bib number wasn’t that low anyway. (Yes, I am aware that for some people, 3:27 is an amazing result. Please don’t throw that toxic positivity in my face: I am not those people, and those people are not me, and comparing us is ridiculous.)
Physically, it was surprising how not awful I felt afterwards; I was fully expecting my knees to give up the ghost, since I didn’t get to do quite as many long runs as I’d have liked to get them accustomed to it, but they were more or less fine. My quads were a bit sore, but that’s it. This means I didn’t fall apart because I went out too fast on the downhill start: my legs would have let me know about it if that happened, and loudly.
Mentally, well, that’s another story. The self-disgust and self-loathing is just my everyday state now and so not even worthy of mention, but I am also very sad. I’m especially sad that I ran over 24 miles to get to where NJR was, and I went right past them in my invisibility cloak. I saw them, but they did not see me. This doesn’t really surprise me because I apparently go invisible a lot during races, but it still makes me sad.
All I know how to do these days is be sad. That’s it.
This race and I… we just don’t get along. Last year was a shit show to end all shit shows, which I was only running to avenge what I thought was a bad performance in 2022 but for which I would now give my eyeteeth. It was such a shit show, in fact, that I didn’t even time qualify for this year, and for some inexplicable reason, I entered the lottery… I never get into anything via lottery, which is fine, since I really didn’t feel like running it. Lovely as it is to roll out of bed to a start line less than a mile away, it’s not lovely enough for me to subject myself to that level of humiliating demoralization.
Except, Murphy’s law: I did get in. And since my credit card was charged, well, I had to do it.
To say I was not excited was an understatement. The Lebow Half just proved that I am as fat and slow and useless as ever, and it’s really not fun to repeatedly rub your face into those sorts of facts. It also makes it hard to stay in denial when you’re surrounded by thousands of people who are killing it, in glaring opposition to your own existence.
But I was given the assignment of running a negative split, with the time being irrelevant. In theory, I understand the reasoning behind that, but I don’t get why I would bother to run a race at all if the time doesn’t matter. Sure, I could easily run a negative split by walking the first half and slow-jogging the second, but I can’t imagine I’d feel very good about myself for it. (There is, however, very little I can actually do right now that would make me feel good about myself.)
The weather was close to perfect. In a way, that just makes me sad now: everyone else will benefit from great conditions, and my own pointlessness will be even more glaring in comparison, but whatever. It would probably yield a better result than the 85 degrees I was running through a few days prior (and I should have just stayed there, with my underwater friends).
I am very cognizant of the fact that I do not belong in Corral A… I belong in ZZZZZ, but I keep expecting to be dropped back and so I just stay there while I have the chance, which I realize makes no sense. But pretty far back, so I may as well be in B.
It took me about a minute to cross the start line, and I made sure that everyone was passing me, because that was what was supposed to happen; it’s not like I’ll suddenly miraculously be able to not run like shit, go out at PR pace, and still negative split. I was trying not to look at my watch because whatever it said, it would just freak me out, and I was doing enough of that already in trying to assess how I actually felt, which is hard to do when all you ever feel anymore is like varying degrees of crap.
I ran the first mile in right around 7:30 (after being passed by the 1:25 pacer — what were they doing behind me in the first place?), and figured that was a decent place to try and stay for the first ten miles and then run the last 5K faster than the first 5K, as prescribed. This plan was aided when my shoelace came untied not long after the second mile marker (and not long after I was passed by the 1:30 pacer). If it were mile twelve, I’d have just left it, but I wasn’t going to run another ten plus miles worrying about landing on my face, so I stopped to tie it. (In all my years of racing, this has only happened once before. I guess I should count myself lucky?)
My watch was measuring way long, but according to the official mile markers, I hit 5K in 23:06. Since I so adore math (not), I busied myself with extrapolating that into 46:12, 1:09:18, and 1:32:23; and if I kicked it up after that, mission accomplished.
Except first, I’d need to make it through the FDR. This portion of the course always kills me, and I don’t know why. It isn’t technically difficult, it’s not hilly, and it wasn’t super windy today so that shouldn’t have been a factor. I made a point of paying attention there, and managed to more or less keep a steady pace.
Then we turned onto 42nd St., and the 1:35 pacer passed me. This could have been a blessing: all I needed to do was stick with them, and I’d have my positive split. But I have zero confidence in myself now — not that I was ever very high in that department — and I just watched them go, because I told myself I couldn’t keep up.
I really regretted that once we reached Times Square, because GPS always goes crazy there. Sometimes it tells me I’m running 4:00 miles, today it told me I was running close to 8:00. I knew I wasn’t running that slowly, but it is uphill, so I probably had slowed down a bit, and I tried to move faster because I was so close to that negative split, and I didn’t want to lose that on top of running a pedestrian time.
And then I came to the Nice Jewish Runners cheer station, which gave me life. Aside from the fact that I was sporting a singlet I can be proud to wear, having someone screech at me to RUN FOR ISRAEL (hi, Joe) was a lovely boost.
I can’t say it was a walk in the park (ha, ha, ha), but I did pass quite a few people in that last mile in Central Park. And in the last 200 meters, I caught the 1:35 pacer.
GPS wound up measuring short: 13.07 miles in 1:36:28, 7:23 mile.
Officially, 13.1 miles in 1:36:25, 7:22/mi. 2726/27797 OA, 494/14130 F, and 71/1855 F35-39. And I did negative split:
So, technically, I guess… I achieved my goal. But it was only eleven seconds faster than the Lebow Half, which was in awful weather, and even if this one was better executed… I can’t lie and say it doesn’t feel kind of pathetic to expect myself to be happy about such a pedestrian (for me) time, especially when I don’t feel like I’m ever going to be able to get past it.
It kind of makes me want to go crawl under a rock and never come out again.
The last time I ran this race, in 2022, I was disappointed that it was a minute slower than in 2020. I didn’t bother to register for it in 2023, because the weather is generally awful for this race, and I don’t need to further grind my nonexistent self-confidence to dust by running another shitty race. My feelings about that part were the same this year, so I wasn’t planning to run it.
But then I learned that NYRR was going to be highlighting that Fred was a Holocaust survivor, and the race is the day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and they were interested in hearing the stories of descendants of other survivors. To say that I despise being in the limelight is as understatement, but there are so many idiotic Holocaust deniers out there… someone has to remind them that they are idiots. I am willing to be that someone, even if I feel like an idiot (albeit of a very different sort) myself in doing so.
All of this means that I wasn’t really thinking of it as a race. Of course, I was fully expecting to run my slowest half in years, but because I was only doing that in the first place for reasons unrelated to running, I didn’t think it would bother me so much. (Please note, I didn’t say I would like it. I just might not be as tempted to jump in front of a bus, is all.)
And surprise, surprise: the weather was awful.
This race joined only two others that I completed in full while wearing a plastic rain poncho, the first being Boston 2018, and the second being Lebow 2019. I do not enjoy running in a poncho. More accurately, I do not enjoy the conditions that make it necessary for me to do so.
The course is also really not very nice. Central Park is hilly, okay, but do they really need to design it so that the worst of those hills (Harlem Hill) is there three times?! And it was hard to take advantage of the faster downhill stretches on the east side, because despite what the photo above shows, the wind was coming out of the north, and a 20 MPH headwind is going to slow me down much more than a downhill will speed me up. No benefit of the tailwind on the west side, either, because of the stupid hills.
I did want a negative split. I also knew that probably wouldn’t happen, because I wanted it, and evidently that means I can’t do it. It was too cold and rainy to bother looking at my watch most of the time, but I did take note of the course clock at the 10K marker, then doubled it to see when I’d need to hit 20K, but then I’d have another kilometer after that and the math was getting too… math-y, so I just gave up. It was better to think about how angry I am that people deny the Holocaust ever happened, when I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to (why the hell would anyone want to do that?), because I’m reminded of it every time I hear my name. I’m named after someone who was murdered by the Nazis before she even got to be half my current age, and I don’t even have a photo to know what she looked like, which bothers me to no end.
The 1:35 pace group caught up to me around mile 8. I knew that all I had to do was stay with them, and then I’d have my negative split, but I hate running with pace groups (too many people), and anyway, I just… couldn’t. See: I can’t do anything anymore. I was resigned to not running a NYCM 2025 qualifier, which would mean I’d have to do in at the NYC Half, and that didn’t go so well last year… but I was soaked and freezing and I just can’t do anything anymore.
The misery did come to an end, eventually. It always does. (The physical part of it, anyway. The mental part… not so much.)
Garmin recorded 13.21 miles in 1:36:40, 7:19/mi.
Officially, 13.1 miles in 1:36:36, 7:23/mi. 404/2998 OA, 36/1440 F, and 5/186 F35-39. That last one is particularly irksome, because the fourth woman in my age group… also ran 1:36:36. And the third ran 1:36:11, which I have no business not being able to easily surpass, except my brain can’t seem to remember that I am a big fat slow useless shit now, which is bizarre because it’s been that way for so long.
But it’s a NYCM 2025 qualifier. And not my slowest half in years after all, thanks to the NYC Half shit show of last year.
And then, after I defrosted a bit, I took advantage of the free admission to the Museum of Jewish Heritage afforded to me by my race medal. Feels kind of dumb to be upset about something as stupid as a race after that.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that I ran a race… it isn’t because I’m suddenly miraculously no longer a useless heap of shit. It’s because I needed to run one to give us a baseline of just how useless I am, and the Midnight Run couldn’t really do that since it was at such a bizarre hour. This one was also a bit odd, but 11 AM beats 11:59 PM, even if it does effectively kill the whole day.
I was actually planning to run the first race in this series, because the course was a nice simple out-and-back. But the weather last weekend was awful — cold and horribly windy — so we decided to hold off on it and hope for better weather on a less ideal course.
Foiled.
It was cold. So, so, so cold. I am actually fine running in 25°, but not with a headwind gusting up to 25 MPH. Hence the blue part of the heat map (what a misnomer) … I could barely even run in a straight line, as the wind wanted to blow me into the dirty ice piles at the side of the road. I pinned my bib to my tights, because until after I warmed up, I was seriously considering running the race in my jacket, which I haven’t done in… oh, ten years or so. I wound up changing my mind — it was too hot with the wind behind me, and I’d be freezing my ass off the other way anyhow. If I’d known I was going to run in a jacket, I would have brought a different one! I ditched it at the last minute, and by the time I made it back to the start line from my car, everyone had already lined up. Of course, I don’t belong at the front now, but I didn’t need to be as far back as I was… which meant I actually got to pass people for a change. Except I started so far back, I wasn’t really sure how many women were ahead of me. You’d think the amount of turns would have cleared it up — they went by going the other way multiple times — but I kept losing count.
Being that this was supposed to be telling me how much I suck, I was going to run it by feel. Imagine my dismay when I approached the first mile marker and saw a clock there! I considered not looking at it, but that would have been hard to pull off, so I glanced at it … under 7:00, which, if sustained, would beat the 22:00 I said it would take a miracle to beat. But of course that didn’t happen, because then we turned around. Into the wind. And even if I wanted to draft off someone, I couldn’t; it was coming in from the northwest, which would mean I’d have to tuck in right behind their left shoulder, and that would put me right in the ice piles I was trying not to fall into.
I don’t believe in fighting Mother Nature. You will never win. I tried plugging the stats into the Runworks calculator, but I can’t make heads or tails of the result. All I know is that yeah, I would have run faster without the headwind. Because I wouldn’t say I felt great, but I didn’t feel utterly awful either, so if I hadn’t been running against a wall of wind…
Garmin recorded 3.17 miles in 22:30, 7:06/mi. (That wouldn’t have happened last week without all the crazy turns, I bet.) Officially, 3.1 miles in 22:25, 7:13/mi. 31/747 OA, 3/396 F, 1/50 F35-39. And fingers that were in agonizing pain for many, many minutes afterwards as they began to regain feeling.
I don’t even feel disappointed anymore when I finish a race. I’ve numbed myself to that. There are only so many times you can fall into a suicidal spiral if you’re not actually going to manage to do anything about it. Instead, I just get overwhelmed with disgust, because it is so pathetic that a 5K at slower than my old marathon pace is supposed to be an accomplishment.
It’s been so long since I’ve finished a race and not experienced that. I don’t even really remember what it’s like to actually feel like I’ve achieved something noteworthy, but I miss it so badly it physically hurts. All I’ve managed to do in attempting to get that back is turn myself into a fatter, slower version of myself. (I’m not saying I’m slower because I’m fatter. The slowness came first, so I can’t blame it on the fatness. But it sure doesn’t seem to be helping, and I’d be more amenable to being repulsed by the way I look if I also got something useful out of it, but as it is… I’m just fat and slow. For no reason.)
It should go without saying that I have less than zero desire to run Harry’s Handicap, though the whole “freeze outside a church” thing never made me too excited about it. But doing this race is pure idiocy, which I openly acknowledge.
First off, I am old, I go to bed at senior citizen time. Why would I choose to run a race at an hour when I would normally be snuggled up in a nice warm bed? Why, in fact, would I choose to run a race at all, when, as previously established (see: 2022 and 2023), I can’t do anything but suck at it?
But, as also previously established (see: my date of birth until now), I am very often quite dumb. And so here I was. Arriving super early to avoid the horrific security lines of which I was warned, only to find that they didn’t exist. Or maybe they did. Later. While I had ninety minutes to cycle in and out of various porta potties, because what else was I going to do? Stare at all the people bundled up in tights and long sleeves and jackets, fretting about how horribly underdressed I appeared to be? (In my defense, I did purchase a long-sleeved shirt on which I plan to put the NJR logo. I just haven’t done it yet.) No, apparently a better use of that time was to have a panic attack. Because it makes total sense to do that before a race that means less than nothing.
All that time in porta potties, and then when I gave up on the idea of a warmup (it was just way too crowded for that, and any egress points were blocked off), I couldn’t even make a final trip because the lines were too long. My long trek from there to corral D — the only way to get to the other side of the roadway and the corral entrances — and back to A would have to suffice.
There was no real goal for this race, because it’s hard to set a goal when I have no idea anymore what I can or can’t do. I was supposed to go out at a 7/10 effort and try to negative split, which would be an interesting experiment since I almost never negative split anything anymore, and I can’t determine what constitutes a 7/10 effort since everything feels like 10/10. And I wasn’t planning to look at my watch. So. An experiment indeed. (All I really wanted to do was run a sub-7 mile again. Remember when I was realistically shooting for an entire marathon at that pace? Let’s not go there, it’s too depressing.)
The start of this race is really cool, I will admit that. Fireworks instead of a starting horn was pretty awesome, and we were running out right underneath them, so there was a kaleidoscope of color over the whole roadway. But then we ran away from them, and up Cat Hill we went, and while I’ve never particularly minded Cat Hill, a speed bump these days might as well be Everest to me, so if I’m expected to run uphill, I’m screwed. Ergo, it wasn’t surprising that when I came across the first mile marker, it said 7:35. I knew my actual pace was a little faster than that, but I hadn’t taken note of the clock when I crossed the start line, so I wasn’t sure by how much.
The second mile is, to me, the only really friendly part of Central Park. I figured if I was going to squeak out a sub-7 mile, that would be the one. I’m not sure if I actually did (officially), because I don’t remember what the clock said other than that it started with a 14, and there was a non-straight number after that. 14:2x, 14:3x, 14:4x, 14:5x … who knows? I’m leaning toward one of the latter two because I seem to remember thinking that if I finished in under thirty minutes, it would be a negative split.
The third mile is the worst. I have always hated the West Side Hills, and they hate me back. I believe it was just over 22 minutes when I passed the third mile marker, which meant that barring a disaster (not unlikely), I’d be able to finish in under thirty minutes. Which is sad when I was once aiming for under 26:00, but whatever.
At least I did run an official sub-7 mile, because I finished in under 29:00 by the clock. And I even had a pathetic kick, which is only because it was a downhill finish. I assure you that was 100% gravity, 0% me.
Look at that… two sub-7 miles. Much speed. (Much sarcasm.)
Garmin recorded 4.04 miles in 28:48, 7:08/mi.
Officially, 4 miles in 28:46, 7:12/mi. 188/4794 OA, 20/2541 F, and 2/285 F35-39. That last one is a surprise, but then, this isn’t a race people tend to run for speed, it’s more of an experience thing.
And I am glad I had the experience. I’m less glad that it was exactly two minutes slower than my PR, but the more time that passes with me being useless at races, the more I believe that’s all I will ever be able to do, and I’m getting to the point of being too exhausted to even care.
There’s not much to say about 2023 … I could just refer you back to 2022’s end-of-year post, as nothing has really changed.
I only ran four races all year (I used to run that many in a month). None were impressive. All were expensive. I expect this trend to continue, because while I can’t control only being able to run like shit, I can control that I’m spending money like I have unlimited stores of it.
Maybe I am more blasé than I used to be about how much I suck because I have given up hope of it ever changing, and because while huge swaths of the global population do not, and never will, get it, October 7 served as a huge slap in the face that reiterated what, technically, I already knew: it’s just running.
It doesn’t really matter.
But in that vein, with the founding of Nice Jewish Runners, I can now represent a club that is representative of who I actually am. I didn’t realize how important that was to me until the possibility made me aware of how much it was lacking before.
Well, it’s been quite a while since I’ve written one of these, as it’s been quite a while since I’ve run a race. No point in doing that when I can’t do it well and am sent into an emotional/mental tailspin as a result, is there?
I wasn’t going to do this one, either. I bought the insurance, so I had the option of not having to eat the whole entry fee, and I was planning to take it. But then I found out that my sister was going to be working in the med tent at the finish line, and I’ve never had a blood relative at a marathon (or any race, really) before, which is an odd reason to do something dumb like run 26.2 miles, but I am dumb.
And then October 7 happened, and while I always knew that in the grand scheme of things, running is insignificant, I never really knew it so deeply the way I do know. It’s trivial. (Of course, I can still be disappointed about running a shitty race, even while knowing it’s trivial, I’ll just feel even worse about myself for caring about it!)
Because this is what happens before marathons, on Wednesday my leg felt weird. It didn’t hurt, exactly, it just felt kind of… weak, like it wanted to give out on me. I decided to ignore it and hope it would go away, and it sort of did. Taper probably aided in that a little.
Look at me, still rocking the original Endorphin Speeds from my 2021 stash. None of these fancy super shoes seem to work for me. We’ve graduated from them not working to them being actively detrimental. I tried the SC Elite on two twenty-mile runs, and after the second, my feet were in so much agony, I considered walking home in my stocking feet. So. Speeds it is.
I did a four-day carb load because that sounded a little easier than a three-day one, which is true if you discount the part about having to feel like a rolling water jug for an extra day. It was not fun, which is how you know you’re doing it right.
A lot of how any race will go for me depends on how my digestive system cooperates. This is something that is, to my knowledge, not completely in my control. I just have to cross my fingers and hope for the best. (I did accidentally discover that taking Imodium the day before seems to help a little. A little.) But, even if that all went perfectly, I had serious doubts about whether I could even break 3:30. I was not excited about this.
On race morning, while I was already on the bus, I realized I had forgotten that I wanted to look up what my qualifying time would be for 2024, when I am an older fart than I already am. (Yes, I ran a half marathon solely to get that qualifier, but I think NYRR is switching to marathon-only qualifiers, and maybe I’m confused about that but better safe than sorry.) I asked Adam to look it up for me, and he told me it was 3:26. For some reason I had thought it was 3:19, so that was like an unexpected gift… except, remember, I didn’t think I could run 3:30.
NJR took a group photo outside the international minyan tent before the start, where I acquired a temporary Israeli flag tattoo, as well as a sticker of the same, which I stuck on my arm. (I am proud to see that not being a sweaty person meant it stayed on throughout the whole race.) And a little flag that I stuck in my pocket. And a photo of one of the hostages, which I stuck on my back.
Having perspective helps. Not as much as it probably should, but it definitely helps. Ezra gave me a lovely little pep talk right before the gun, which also helps because a head as thick as mine needs to be repeatedly banged against many brick walls.
The plan (if something as tentative as what I was doing can be called a plan) was to go out relatively slowly, around 8:15-8:30, and try to negative split. NYC is the only marathon I have ever negative split, back in 2016, so I know it can be done.
But my watch didn’t wait until the Queensboro Bridge to go insane. It started on the Verrazano. I expected everyone to be passing me like I was standing still, but I definitely was not running over 12:00 pace, except that’s what my watch was telling me. I wound up reaching the first mile marker in eight minutes flat, with my watch having recorded .71 miles. If it’s going to be off, I’d rather have it trend this way, because then the average pace it’s telling me is slower than my true pace, which gives me mental wiggle room. But I also couldn’t rely on the watch at all, so I had to resort to running by feel.
Running by feel does not work so well when you don’t know what anything feels like anymore because you’ve been running so terribly for so long.
But there were so many places along the course where I did feel the love, both from spectators and other runners, and seeing all of the Israeli flags warmed my soul and served as a constant reminder of how very little something as silly as a race really matters.
Right before the Pulaski Bridge, I ran straight into a traffic cone, and I’m lucky that didn’t end it disaster. People, this is why you don’t just stop dead after grabbing your water. If you want to stop to drink, don’t do it right there. Please! (Ditto for stretching out cramps. Move over to the side for that.)
Of course, my watch went even crazier on the Queensboro Bridge, so what little ground I’d gained toward accurately measuring the distance was lost, as I was apparently running 16:00 pace. I hit mile 16 with 15.51 on my watch. But it was nice to know that I technically, kind of, sort of, had less to go than it was telling me I did.
That’s generally right around two hours for me, which is when my pelvis and my knees start to whine. My troublesome leg had been lowkey complaining all along, but it was holding up, so there was that. (It held up quite well. Until I got home, at which point I realized it really isn’t working properly. It has a day and a half to figure it out, because there is diving to be done.)
And, spoiler: I did not negative split. In fact, I ran a larger positive split than I did last year, making this my second-slowest of four NYC Marathons. I’m oddly not as disappointed as I thought I would be… I doubted whether I could break 3:30, and I did that, along with getting my 2024 qualifier. Seems weird to complain in those circumstances. (But I’m still a horrible green monster, so if you had an amazing race, congratulations, but I’m too jealous.)
I always look for the Israeli flag among all the country flags lining the route when coming up to the finish line. This year, I knew where it was because of the multiple police officers stationed in front of it. How sad that that’s necessary because hateful flag-burning psychos exist in this world.
I did dig my own flag out of my pocket then, but it didn’t follow my unfurling instructions; I should have used both hands. Pretty sure it just looks like I’m holding a piece of blue and white fabric. Oh well.
Garmin recorded 25.91 in 3:22:33, 7:49/mi.
Officially, 3:22:29, 7:44/mi. 4171/51290 OA, 620/22273 F, and 133/3021 F35-39. It’s laughably pathetic because I really ought to have broken three hours by now, except that after 2021, I not only hit the brakes, I started zooming in reverse.
But hey, I have that 2024 qualifier, so I get to try and fix it.
Again.
The shirt may be a disaster, but this medal is beautiful.
The last time I did this race, in 2019, I ran a PR. That, of course, was before I was quite such a useless pile of steaming shit, so I was under no illusion that I would get anywhere close to a PR… even my PR from back then. Which is nearly six minutes slower than my actual PR from 2021. Which, it looks like, will be the fastest HM I will ever run in my entire life.
At least I didn’t waste money for this pathetic showing, because I had an invitational code. There is no way I was going to spend that kind of cash to try for a 2024 NYCM qualifier after my spectacular failure at the NYC Half. Even if it was my last chance. Because for me, now, that is as good as no chance.
This race was a couple of days after I returned from my post-Boston Marathon dive trip, where I got to feel like I was actually able to do something. Admittedly, diving isn’t really hard, all you have to do is breathe, and if you can’t do that you’ve got other problems… but I can fool myself into thinking I’m “good” at something. Those small tastes of joy make the slap in the face of reality so much worse, somehow.
The night before the race, I had a bit of a breakdown. It was supposed to rain, and since, for some inexplicable reason, I am attempting to be nutritionally obedient, I needed to wear shorts that had fuel storage pockets. Because of said rain, I couldn’t wear a pair that actually feels comfortable to me — I despise having tight things around my waist, but too-big shorts + rain = shorts that will probably fall off. So I spent way too much time trying on a dozen pairs of shorts, and half a dozen sports bras, and a few different singlets, and that cued a mental meltdown because nothing fucking fits and all of this “nutritional obedience” is doing nothing but turning me into a fat disgusting cow who still can’t run fast.
So. That happened.
The rain that was falling nonstop all day Saturday took a brief hiatus for the race, for the most part. Too bad I was a stuffed sausage anyway, because who can really trust the weather forecast?
I will soon be demoted to corral B, and it will just mean that fewer people will zoom past me like I’m standing still. Because surprise, surprise, my ability to not run like shit has not made a stunning resurgence.
There is no real need to actually talk about the race itself, because it would just be an echo chamber of all the recaps I’ve written in the past eighteen months. I felt like crap, I ran like crap, the end. It wasn’t even so annoying to lap people during the second loop because I didn’t feel like I was running that fast anyway. Though it did give me a reason to skip most of the fluid stations, as if I needed help finding excuses for that.
Garmin recorded 13.11 miles in 1:35:13, 7:16/mi. Officially, 13.1 miles in 1:35:09, 7:16/mi. 46/5904 OA, 46/5902 F, and 4/731 F35-39. Nice that I apparently did a great job of running the tangents in a race where it essentially served little purpose. But, I guess, mission kind of accomplished, since it’s a 2024 NYCM qualifier. Not enough for a 2024 NYC Half qualifier, though, since my birthday is in August.
Not really sure why any of that matters. Why do I even want to keep running races, when all I am accomplishing is rubbing my face in the utter futility of my existence? I don’t need to pay a lot of money to feel like crap about myself. I already do that every day for free. A couple of years ago I could practically run a 1:31-1:32 HM in my sleep; it felt far, far easier than this did. I can’t say I was in love with life back then — I absolutely was not, I’m not wired that way — but compared with now? When being alive just means stringing together days and weeks and months of feeling like garbage for no good reason, with no way to escape? Yeah.
It’s funny: since I have lost the ability to run fast, I have cut way back on racing, since I don’t need to pay to run slowly when I can do it for free. And yet, the races that I do do are the very expensive ones. This is thanks to the fact that you need to register for them so far in advance; I live in the deluded hope that at some point, I will find myself fixed.
Obviously, that magical fixing didn’t happen, and I was not really excited about subjecting myself to further self-flagellation. But, you know, I paid for it already. I didn’t really have the option of just deciding to run it for fun, because it’s hard to do something “for fun” when you feel awful, which is exactly how I feel all the time now.
The drive up to Boston was far too eventful for my liking. In short order, I got a low tire pressure warning before I had even made it out of Westchester County, didn’t find a spot to pull in and deal with it until somewhere in Connecticut, had my compressor conk out on me, and discovered a bubble in my left front tire. The remaining 185 miles were absolutely terrifying and stressful, and an already-expensive trip immediately turned more so because dealing with the anxiety of driving home on an unsafe tire was not something I wanted to do.
All of that meant I arrived later than originally planned, and then I just missed a train when I was heading to the expo to get my bib; I felt super at home because the next train was delayed and I had to hang around on the platform for over half an hour. When said train finally did show up, it was crawling. (Apparently the speed on the red line was decreased to 10mph a couple of months ago because of track problems, or something. That’s very slow. And very annoying.) I was so aggravated, I couldn’t bear to make a connection to the green line to get to the convention center, so I just walked a mile and a half. Each way. The day before a marathon. Brilliant! Except that since I was expecting my “performance” to be the textbook definition of a total shit show, I didn’t think I could really do much to make it worse.
But, like I did for NYCM, I tried to do “everything right.” Which means a proper carb load and race day nutrition, along with a heaping side of anxiety, because those go hand in hand. I suppose it helped to have the tire situation to stress out over instead of freaking out about the race?
Since the train was just a disaster on Sunday, I woke up crazy early on race day even though my bus loading time wasn’t until 7:30. And then I managed, yet again, to just miss a train. The schedule, apparently, is just a general suggestion. As soon as I sat down to wait for the next train, I remembered I had forgotten to put Voltaren on my knees and my stupid right foot (ligament injury from January that doesn’t seem to ever plan to fully go away). Lovely. Luckily, I made it to bag check and bus loading with plenty of time to spare, and then I had the long bus ride to Hopkinton to spend hyperventilating. The situation was … not good.
I never even went into the tent in the start village since I wound up in the parking lot instead of on the field. So much for wearing throwaway shoes because of the mud village of 2018! I had time for two bathroom stops in the parking lot, then another two in the CVS lot right before the corrals. The more the merrier.
It was raining by this point, which was not actually supposed to happen. But I was just thankful it wasn’t the frigid, gusty sort of rain we had in 2018, and that I was able to dispose of my poncho instead of running with it on.
The plan was to not really pay much attention to my watch. Why bother, when I had no idea what to expect? This is not the same as running by feel; doing that won’t work when everything feels impossibly difficult. For the first few miles, I didn’t have much choice in what I was doing anyway, given how crowded it was. I just got swept up in the flow and checked in periodically to see how fast I was running and try to figure out whether I could maintain that.
It made me a little sad to be so much slower than 2021, but I was also cautiously optimistic that instead of feeling like total garbage, I only felt about 90% that way. I was absolutely expecting to positive split this, but I didn’t want it to be solely because I trashed my legs in the first half, so I did try to hold back a little. Whatever that means for me these days. I haven’t the faintest clue.
Sometime during the fourth mile, a woman ran past and told me that I have “great running style.” I wanted to tell her to check back in about twenty miles, but then I figured… why not focus on trying to maintain that? Especially in the Newton hills, that’s a full-time occupation.
We ran past a tire repair shop! And that reminded me that I had forgotten to stress out over it for three and a half minutes.
There is something about the Wellesley scream tunnel that always makes me want to cry. I do not know why that is the case, but it happens every time.
At the halfway point, I took stock of the situation, decided it seemed reasonable to expect a five-minute positive split if everything didn’t completely blow up in my face, and expected to finish in around 3:17. That’s five minutes slower than my last Boston, which is obviously discouraging, but it’s also better than what I was expecting — I had thought breaking 3:30 would be a stretch. That’s when I decided to stop thinking about the finish time, since I can’t control how trashy I feel, and to start thinking about the things that I currently can control. See above re: form, and the nutrition piece, which was made a little easier since my stomach was behaving relatively well. (Relatively. As in, sometimes the overload of gels and Gatorade made me feel kind of puke-y, and that is not a good thing for anyone, but especially not for someone who is emetophobic. It shows how stubborn I am that I stuck with it anyway.) I was proud of this in the moment, but after the fact… well, the comparison thief always shows up.
I was not excited to enter Newton. I may have done this race before, but I can never remember which one is Heartbreak Hill, so that’s always an unwelcome adventure. It’s nice that there’s a sign at the top of Heartbreak to let you know you’ve summited it… at mile 21. When I had been anticipating it since mile 16. The hills sucked, for sure, but not nearly as badly as I thought they would. Which is not to say I did a stellar job out there: I slowed down. But then, I suppose that was all part of the “plan.”
And the PPTC cheer zone was during those hills! So there was a little bright spot there.
Photo by Linda Chan
At some points, we were treated to random sporadic downpours. It was weirdly refreshing, minus the part where my fingers got so cold, they were having trouble functioning. Getting into my final gel was a struggle. (And I don’t just mean mentally.)
The marathon math is also always fun. Toggling between miles and kilometers when passing markers (8:00/mi is 5:00/km, so that’s manageable even for someone like me who is awful at math) keeps my brain busy, and that was actually a very helpful number, because allowing for GPS overage, it was probably close to what I was actually running, which enabled me to predict my finish time if I ran that pace for whatever distance remained. Not that I needed to know that, but it gave me something to do. Better than thinking about what hurt, anyway. (My left ITB was a bit cranky from around the halfway point, and my quads were getting quite fatigued after mile 20, but nothing really hurt, and I am thankful for that. My stupid foot didn’t bother me at all, but it usually doesn’t do that anymore while running. Just while doing… anything else.)
It seemed to take forever, but finally, I made the right on Hereford. I’ve heard Des call the little rise on that street “Mount Hereford,” which I thought was funny, and I might not have even noticed it otherwise! But yes, definite speed bump there. The left onto Boylston was exciting enough to override that… and there was the finish line, far, far, far in the distance. I don’t know what to do with a long finishing stretch like that. Once upon a time, I had a decent kick at the end of a race, but that seems kind of pointless if I’m not setting any sort of record, so who knows if I still have it?
Garmin recorded 26.44 miles in 3:16:28, 7:26/mi.
Officially, 26.2 miles in 3:16:26, 7:30/mi. 8140/26606 OA, 1306/11409 F, and 1043/4880 F18-39. I beat my bib number! Definitely didn’t think that would be happening this time.
It’s four minutes slower than my last Boston finish, but three of those four minutes came in the first half. I guess that means I did a better job this time, since it was a smaller positive split? Certainly doesn’t feel that way, because it’s like it just happened; nothing I did or didn’t do had any bearing on the outcome. I am powerless in that regard, and I hate that. Talk about feeling completely useless.
I also hate that the green monster comes roaring to life when I see that other people’s version of a good race — and many, many people had good races, since the weather was pretty decent — is actually good, not just my “only half a shit show.” It is completely bizarre that I never compare myself with other people when I am running well, but when I’m not… I love to rub my face in my own inferiority. Just another thing to hate about me, I guess, even if it’s probably more human than most will admit.
And thinking ahead a year or so, I really do want to do the Jerusalem Marathon, even though I’ve long said that you couldn’t pay me enough to subject myself to 26.2 miles of those insane hills. This is more true than ever as I sit here with barely functioning quads, but ignoring the “after” … how am I supposed to run such a monstrous course when I can’t figure out what the hell is wrong with me?
Literally the only reason I registered for this race was because I was disappointed with my performance last year. Except that now, I would be over the moon if I managed to run a 1:30:xx, and it seems really dumb to go out and send myself into a spiral of self-loathing and suicidality in an obviously futile attempt at rectifying what I considered a disaster last year.
I didn’t defer. I am a complete idiot, but I didn’t defer. Largely because, at the rate I’m going, I’ll be lucky if I can squeak out a sub-2 a year from now.
So I showed up on a freezing windy day to run what is inevitably going to be my last race with an A bib. Let’s be real, I obviously never belonged there in the first place.
The only good thing about this race is that it starts a mile away from where I live, so I don’t need to deal with the MTA before the ass-crack of dawn. But since I am a timely person, when I am told to arrive by 6:10, that is what I do, which meant I had time for so many bathroom trips, I lost count. I didn’t even need to go for half of them, but I had nothing else to do, and it gave me a minute or two out of the biting cold. Repeatedly.
Once the race finally started, I didn’t really look at my watch. There isn’t much point in doing that when I can’t run faster anyway, but if I did have any hope of a decent finish time, I would have been crushed, because the first mile was an absolute disaster. I expected it to be a bit better than last year, when the race started in the park, because the streets are wider than the park roadway, but that did not turn out to be the case. It was kind of a logjam, though it improved slightly after the turnaround at the north end of Flatbush, since for some reason the lanes weren’t divided evenly, and the west side of the road had much more space. Seems like it would have made more sense to do it the other way around, allowing a few more minutes for people to spread out, but what do I know?
I actually think I dressed just right for the conditions (half tights, merino wool base layer, long-sleeved PPTC Tracksmith shirt)… except that it took me at least five miles to be able to feel my feet, and I never got to feel my fingers. It’s safe to say that I fell off a little bit of a cliff in the months after NYCM in terms of nutrition, because after doing everything right, I still felt like utter crap and couldn’t run well, and I got tired of fighting it. I can’t say I see any reason why I should bother to do that, since it doesn’t seem to be helping me, but as previously stated, I am an idiot, and so I am trying. In this case, that meant taking about a quarter of a mile to be able to fish a gel out of my pocket with my frozen fingers, which of course I couldn’t take with enough water because when there are only a couple of ounces in the cup to begin with, at least half of which spills out due to my clumsy fumbling, not much is left to be of use; and then my stomach decided it really didn’t feel like having any more of that, so I went for Gatorade instead of water once. And then stayed away from the water stations altogether, as the ground in front of them too closely resembled black ice for my liking.
But none of it really makes a difference, because all I managed to accomplish with this race is exactly what I knew I would do: verify the well-proven fact that I am nothing but a completely useless stinking heap of steaming shit.
As a nice little cherry on top of that shit cake, there is the fact that since my birthday is before November, I will be in a new age group for the 2024 marathon, which means my qualifying time with a half is no longer 1:34. Now it is 1:37.
I missed by three fucking seconds. And I won’t have a chance to try again (ha, as if that would help), because Brooklyn is on Saturday as usual, and Staten Island falls out on Sukkos this year. The only way I can get it now is if I run under 3:26 at NYCM. Which is very, very unlikely.
Though I’m really not sure why I care. Why do I even want to keep bashing my head against the wall to prove to myself that I’m not useless if it does the exact opposite, given that that’s the truth??
So, yeah. I ran my slowest half marathon in years, I feel even crappier than I did twelve months ago, and this shows absolutely no signs of getting better. “Take some time off” doesn’t work, either, since I had some weird freak ligament injury or something in January, and I did pretty much nothing but sit on my ass for the better part of a month, at the end of which I emerged even slower. At some point, I will have to switch from running to walking, because I’ll be able to do that faster. It’s embarrassing. And I don’t mean that in the “I don’t dare show my face in public” way, as I am well aware that nobody gives a shit about me or what I am doing, unless it’s something good that can be easily congratulated. I mean I am embarrassing myself with my repeated stupidity in thinking that anything I do will ever be worth a damn again.
Running Break 