Miles Away

I once spent three days field-measuring an abandoned office building in a deserted New Jersey office park. I have woken up at the end of a train line after service ended for the night. (Several times.) I attended a late-season game between the Cleveland Browns and the New York Jets.

But I have never encountered a place lonelier than the twenty-third mile of a marathon.

No one takes on the marathon without grand ambitions. The thing itself is daunting! Twenty-six is a lot of miles, David. While I had very cautiously avoided setting any time-based goals for my first stab at the distance in nearly a decade, it still rankled to see my best-laid plans unraveling in the face of hard physical realities as I reached that lonely point again last Saturday.

Despite near-ideal race day conditions, I hadn't been able to manage the pace that I'd held in my peak-distance training runs. I'd slept terribly the night before–pre-race anxiety, a noisy hotel room, whatever. There's always speedbumps along the way, and making excuses wouldn't change the facts: my legs were aching, my stomach was suffering under the weight of carbohydrate gels, and my heart race had been riding higher than I wanted all morning. Worst of all, my headphones had died, leaving me without the comfort and distraction of my carefully-curated playlist of '90s-'00s butt rock and hip-hop.

I was alone with my thoughts. Or, more pointedly, I was alone with one thought:

What are you trying to prove?

I'm never going to impress anyone with my race times. My personal best in the marathon happened in my very first attempt 21 yars ago, and my times since then have bounced around in the four-to-five-hour range–respectable, I suppose, but nothing that's ever going to get me to a podium or to Boston. I might love what running does for my ability to eat dumb things afterwards, but it's hard to argue that 40-mile weeks are necessary or ideal for maintaining fitness. I could ride a bike instead. I could lift weights or swim or do Tae-Bo. (That's still a thing, right?) I could just run normal distances, instead of spending two or three hours every Saturday morning hoofing out routes I'd be annoyed to have to drive.

Something keeps drawing me back to the marathon, though.

The first time? I needed to prove that I could do it. I'd lost a lot of weight after being an especially unathletic child, and it seemed like the best way to show that I'd changed for good. Each subsequent time, I set out to prove something else: that I could do it again, that I could do it while approaching 30, that I could do it as a working parent of two small kids. The distance is merciless–I was reminded of that in my lonesome moment this past weekend–but it rewards persistence, and while I may not have ever had a lick of athletic talent, I can be one hell of a stubborn ass when I need to be. Those long, tedious, often pre-dawn runs, those aching joints and battered toes–they're all just trials to persist through.

That persistence shaped much of my year.

When I was 23, I could run whenever I felt like it, and my body was relatively forgiving of how I treated (or mistreated) it in between runs; neither is the case in middle age. I've had to plan carefully all year, both to avoid injury and to simply find the time. If getting my run in with time to see my daughter off to the school bus means that I have to start at 5:30am, well, my alarm went off at 5:12am a lot of days this fall. I've been eating healthier and drinking more water and less alcohol not just because I want to make my doctor happy, but because it's the only way to not feel like shit while running at 5:30 in the morning. I've been more dutiful about sleep–heck, for the first time in my life, I've even become religious about stretching.

I had ample time to reflect on all of this as I shuffled the last few miles back into downtown Indianapolis. Ultimately, I keep coming back to the marathon because it's not about how fast you can run 26.2 miles, at least not for me. Instead, it's about everything that it takes to get to the starting line: a year of taking myself seriously, of pushing through the doubts and pains and pushing down the voice that asks why I'm doing this.

I did it for me. The race itself was just a victory lap.

A half-mile from the finish line, my legs were in agony, and I'd taken once last walking break. A runner behind me exhorted me to stay strong, reminding me that we were almost there. I dug down one more time, pushing into what felt like an all-out sprint, but probably looked more like that courtesy shuffle you do when a car's waiting for you at a crosswalk.

I turned the corner, and saw the finish line.

I saw my wife and kids–they'd already found me twice along the course, but now they'd managed to position themselves just before the finish.

Forget everything I just said.

I did it for this.

And it was well worth the trip.

Friends, it's Friday again at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

It's been six days since my race and I'm just barely walking normally again–but I'm still striding headlong into the weekend, and I'm bringing you along with me.

Today, I've got a sweet-spot fall cocktail, some great new music, an intriguing new book, thoughts on the quickly-approaching best holiday of the year, pets, and more!

Come join me. (It's not far.)