Harlem and the Upper East

Harlem is where I live. But it's not mine.

Familiar territory does not mean home. Home, to me, would be jogging down the valley path past the Babooters's house and the old fire-ravaged barn into The Valley, down the massive straightwaway between the Christmas tree farm aisles and to the shore of the mighty Chagrin. I've always considered the Chagrin River to be the most aptly named body of water in all the planet; should I attach a descriptive noun to the city of Cleveland, that noun would be adversity, and the resulting effect upon the populace would be chagrin. An overarching sadness, I think, follows the waters of the Chagrin, which sometimes flows like a real river, and other times barely resembles a creek. Small pools would form along the shoreline, breeding tadpoles, crayfish, and all manner of minnow, a perfect place for a young boy to learn how to kill waterborne creatures by removing them from their habitat.

I once fed some tadpoles I'd gathered to a pet turtle I'd purchased from a local pet store during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle rage; it died, as did the tadpoles, in different fashions. Its name was Botticelli. I didn't name the tadpoles.

At a particular spot accessible from the shoreline ridge was an unusually large rock in the middle of the river, splitting the current. My father speculated that there was a fishing hole behind it, and that the perfect cast would yield excellent results. I believed him. We called this rock Popeye Rock. It, of course, had grown so big and strong because it had eaten its spinach as a child-rock.

I used to fish those waters, never catching anything worth discussing. Chagrin river fishermen claimed trout and bass from other adjacent locales, but most of what I gathered were suckers. I will continue to fish them, as often as I can, despite it all.

Harlem is where I live. But it's not mine. This minor revelation occurred to me as I muscled my way down the Fifth Avenue corridor through the lower hundred streets of the neighborhood commonly referred to as Harlem. The spectators on the Manhattan side of the Third Avenue Bridge gathered on the streetsides, oblivious of the sidewalks and curbs, bottlenecking the runners into a tighly-packed mid-roadway vein that reminded me of the initial stages in Brooklyn in which I'd been running strong and loose amongst runners, not watchers. My phone buzzed at me once from my armband, alerting me to an incoming call, and I realized that it was likely that Liz and Tim and whomever else had probably finished by then while I struggled at Mile 22. I declined to remove the phone from its holster. I was busy.

Roughly ten minutes later, I wasn't so busy. I had been walking, briefly, I hope, struggling with another series of muscle-locks, trying desperately to push forward. My buddy Jamie was calling and this time I decided to answer. I couldn't hear him, but I shouted my coordinates into the phone, trying to alert my friends that yes, I was still running, and yes, I will finish sometime this year. I clicked off the phone, re-holstered it into my armband, and began plodding forward again.

Suddenly, hindsightedly instantaneously, the most interminable memory moment I can recall, we were at the park. Not in the park- just 110th Street, the north end, with the 4:45 crew. Clocks were stationed at every mile marker, alerting us to elapsed time, and I knew that 5 hours was going to be more of a struggle than I'd hoped. Fifth Avenue at this stage is a long gradual upward incline and a thoroughly demoralizing experience. I tried to find a stride and failed- my legs were nearly useless. At Mile 23 I tried stretching again, outside the Met, and felt the familiar(from ten years prior, as a football player) burn of a muscle about to tear as I attempted to loosen the threadbare structures of my wearied frame.

Not now. Goddammit, not now.

There would be no more stretching.

I ran on the left side of Fifth for awhile. A spectator held out a homemade-magic-markered sign that read, "There is BEER at the end!" I acknowledged him. Repeatedly. Actually, I stopped and shook his hand. Yes, sir. Yes, I hope so. Yes.

With that magical motivator, I turned into Central Park along with the rest of my fellow runners and nearly crumpled to the ground as my body mustered one last protest against the final two-and-a-half miles of the race. I paused, but not long- stillness would be death- and began long, exaggerated walk-strides along the designated path.

This was my route. I'd run the park no fewer than twenty-five times over the course of training. I knew we weren't really close yet.

I also knew that close is a relative term. Glass... half full?

Home was not so far away.

The Bronx

I have some advice for Marathon spectators that wish to be helpful by handing our water, towels, candy bars, or whatnot as runners stumble past: forget bananas. Some guy decided to purchase the entire GNP of Costa Rica and hand it out in the Bronx just past the (whatchootalkinbout) Willis Avenue Bridge, and I innocently decided to grab one. Unfortunately, I failed to recall my Cartoon Boobytraps 101 class from second grade as I maintained my line down the edge of the road. A couple of near-disastersteps later amidst a massive pile of trampled banana peels, I found myself at a dead stop on the sidewalk, cursing the concept of such a dangerous high-potassium fruit. That guy couldn't have more effectively tried to sabotage my race had he painted a hole in the street.

At least I had the banana. I started running again, peeling it as I trotted along, thinking that now, free of manufactured road hazards, I might at least enjoy me some sweet tropicality. Presciently, I recalled Sister Carmen's fourth-grade alternate nightmare across the hall from Miss Meehan's happy homeroom and how she'd check student lunchbags before they were discarded to confirm that all food had been eaten. Recess lore held that poor Nicky Snider had been forced to eat a brown, potentially rotting banana absentmindedly packed by his mother, while the rest of the terror-stricken class watched, in the name of starving children in Uzbekistan, or wherever.

Sergeant Carmen was one sadistic bitch.

I looked at my shiny new banana again.

OK.

Worst. Banana. Ever.

I pulled to a corner at some intersection and yakked out the half-chewed vileness, as some kid in my periphery reacted with a preadolecent "Ewwww!" and buried his head in his mother's coat. You have no idea, kid. I can only hope that he learned the lesson that he should never EVER take anything from strangers, especially strangers that seem friendly. The nice ones are the most dangerous.

And leaving that unsavory incident on the sidewalk (and in a garbage can- no one would be slipping on MY banana peel), I found we were nearly headed back into Manhattan. The race only runs through The Bronx for a brief mile or so. The route reminds me of oldsters in a mobile home that are trying to visit all 50 states, and as such get out of the RV long enough to say, "Ok, we've been to North Dakota." Maybe they stop at a diner and have a cup of coffee. Then they find another place that feels more like someplace. Not that I disliked The Bronx- I'd run this route before, and haven't had to dodge a single bullet. I like the bridges- they're frequent and short. Mostly I like the name, though. The use of definite articles in reference to place- The Ohio State University, The Netherlands (The Noplace?), The Fire Swamp, etc- announces that this is THE Bronx, and all other Bronxes out there (if they have the audacity to call themselves Bronx) merely share the same name and are inherently subordinate. The implication, I think, is that you will remember this place when you're gone.

I will remember the Third Avenue Bridge. Crowd noise dropped to a whisper as we climbed the approach, roughly six miles from the finish. Suddenly, we were a mass of a thousand people running through North Dakota, with only the sounds of our feet on the grated metal bridge surface. I looked up through the silence to see Midtown's skyscrapers resolving in the distance, the jagged horizon buried behind a low-rise sea in the foreground. I shouted:

"Why's everyone so quiet!?"

A halfhearted cheer arose from runners adjacent. My foot planted on the downward arc of the bridge curvature on the Manhattan side and noise from the Harlem crowd began to seep into the air. This is not a wall, I thought. This is a gateway.

My strides grew more regular.

I remembered how to smile.

I would be finishing this race.

Manhattan: First Avenue

Tim an I used to imagine on Sunday trips to the gym that we were kick returners, sometimes following blockers, other times avoiding oncoming tacklers as we zigzagged through the gathered crowds on Broadway in downtown Manhattan. We used to joke when one of us got hung up behind an old lady or a mass of tortoising Eurotouristas that our "wedge" blocking broke down. I bring this up because running in the 4ish-hour crowd reminded me of these Sundays, as much for the bobbing and weaving through masses of humanity as the foggy, hungover feeling that was beginning to creep over my body on the Queensboro. Those Sundays, I didn't want to go to the gym, but I did anyway. And I'd officially made up my mind that while I didn't care to run the next ten miles, I would be doing that, too, engaged in the most interminable kick return of all time.

I should also note that I was no longer in the 4-hour crowd. Sprinkled throughout the mass of racers were volunteer pace-setters with signs on their backs indicating an approximation of what their ultimate time may be. In Brooklyn, I'd hung nicely with the 4 hour group; in Queens, I started seeing some 4:15s.

This would become a consistently depressing theme.

According to everyone I'd consulted coming into the race, the turn onto First Avenue is supposed to be a major re-energizer for the runners. I will grant, the bigger crowds, the cheering, and the sense of increased proximity to the finish line was emotionally useful; I found familiarity to be the most encouraging sign, though. I'd run this route before- not specifically down First, but down the East River from Harlem. I could gauge distances. For example, as anyone that rides in a NYC Taxi is reminded on the back of the driver's seat, every four blocks is approximately 1/5th of a mile. Twenty blocks is about a mile. So I could run 18 or 19 blocks and walk one or two and feel like I was getting somewhere. I would be coming to my first "somewhere" reasonably shortly at 90th St., supposedly the St. Vincent's Hospital cheering location, and where I knew I would at least find my parents.

I hoped that, anyway.

Of course, measurements and pacing were theoretical; reality was maddening. My legs would begin to feel better for brief flickers of time and my stride, naturally, would get a bit longer. Seemingly within an instant of regaining an internally acceptable pace, though, near that 18- or 19-block mark (or the 8- or 9-block mark), my calf(ves) or my thigh(s) or my hamstring(s) would spontaneously contract, forcing a halt to progress as I pulled off to the side to attempt to regain control of my bodily functions. I hadn't felt dehydrated the whole race; fluid stations were useful only for purposes of self-image, as other runners walked through these areas too, and so I could refrain from muttering the series of expletives I'd been exhaling since Queens for a hundred yards per mile as I gulped down Gatorade Endurance Formula (TM) and Poland Spring (TM), the official drinks of desperation.

I managed to extract myself from my focus-coma for the few blocks around 90th and slowed considerably at Bar East, the designated Marathon party zone for St. Vinny's. As I slowed and scanned wildly for a recognizable face, the crowd stared back with equally vacant eyes. One of them shouted "Keep going, buddy!" and was forced to catch myself before responding "Eat shit, buddy!" A wave of primordial panic overtook me. That hangover melon in my gut nearly exploded my broken body into a mass of ectoplasmic rage. Some guy cut me off, and I started trying to catch up with the possible intent of pummeling his face into the street until my hands hit pavement.

Oh, Hi Mom!

I saw her on the side of the road, my dad standing next to her, she holding up a "Don't Stop Believin'" sign she'd made at the office. Well then.

They hadn't seen me yet, so I surprised them as I pulled up looking as if I'd been having a jolly good time. I hugged my Mom and answered a few questions- "How're you feeling?" "Great. This is turning into a nature hike, though." "How's the knee?" "Fabulous. I don't think I even have a knee anymore." Blah? "Blah-great-blah." etc. I let them take a photo and took my leave feeling... better. I'd made my first real checkpoint- getting to my parents without looking or sounding like a rabid bloodthirsty lunatic, or worse, like I might not finish. Next was getting to the (whatchootalkinabout) Willis Avenue Bridge and the Bronx, another thirty or so blocks down the road. Not far at all. Things, it seemed, were looking up.

There, with seventeen-plus miles down and nineish to go, I began to think about my tiered pre-race expectations. Initially, I'd thought I could break four hours, but that seemed unrealistic given recent tea leaves and shirt-signs. My secondary goal was to beat the average race time, which in 2007 was somewhere around 4:30; I've always prided myself on being above-average. This still seemed doable, if I could just stop breaking down. I thought this just as a sprinkling of 4:30ers passed me, idle on the sidewalk, chatting up an extraordinarily bored police officer and stretching my calf muscles around 116th St.

Yep. 4:30 or bust.

The ultimate disappointment would come, though, if I would fail to break five hours. The New York Times publishes the name of every runner that finishes with a time under five hours. Everyone else... would need to hurry to get to the afterparty.

The conditions called for a readjustment of priorities and expectations. I'd run the first half of the race well. I simply had to run the second half poorly, it seemed, to make good on five hours. I haven't always said this, but I may start saying it now: If you can't aim high, just try and aim.