My run with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Ever read the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?  If I remember it right, Dr. Jekyll was the kind, if somewhat troubled, scientist who would drink a potion to become Mr. Hyde, a sinister man without morals.  Well, today I either had both of them on my run with me, or I accidentally filled my water bottles with Dr. Jekyll’s potion.

Let me explain.  Today my long run was a “step back” run, meaning that it was shorter than my last couple of long runs so that my leg muscles could have a bit of a break.  But, since it’s only 6 weeks until the marathon (and holy sh*t! by the way), this “step back” run was still 14 miles long.  The run was going to have a bit of a twist to it, though.  I was going to run the first half of it with my friend and running buddy, Karen.

Karen and I have run together a handful of times over the last few years.  I really enjoy running with her, but the logistics just don’t work out for us to be able to run together very regularly: we have different schedules and different styles.  I like to run the entire time, mostly because I like to keep a constant pace, and a little bit because I just want the damned thing to end.  Karen follows a “run/walk” style, where she runs for 4 minutes, walks for 1, etc.  The few times we’ve run together, I’ve adopted her style, and I do like it, but this old dog just isn’t up for learning any new tricks right now.

Last year, Karen and I both ran the New York City Marathon (it was my first, her second), and God decided to smile on both of us at the exact same time.  At about mile 16, right when I thought I was going to keel over and die on the Queensboro bridge, Karen – who was looking for something to distract her from her own impending demise – saw me, called out my name, and we spent the next 7 miles trudging along together.  She used her run/walk method, and I “ran” the entire time (if you could call forward movement as slow as I was going as “running”), and it actually worked out just fine.  Karen is a bit faster than me, but when we ran together she mercifully ran at my pace, and then when her timer would beep and tell her to walk, she slowed down and I kept going.  Because she’s faster than me, when she started running again, she’d catch up to me, and we did this over and over.

Just last week I was thinking about my game plan for the marathon, namely, how the hell I was going to get over the Queensboro bridge with enough energy to run TEN more miles.  I thought back to last year, and immediately panicked when I realized that just hoping Karen and I would run into each other again amidst the throngs of the 50,000 other runners was probably not a sound strategy.  But, then God smiled again, and the very next day I got a text from Karen, asking if I would run the entire marathon with her.  I looked to the heavens, smiled, and wrote back a quick “YES!!!”

So, now Karen and I were faced with the logistics of how to mesh our two running styles. We figured that it would probably work given that it did last year, but we thought we should do a dry run anyway, since we both had very different paces at the beginning of our marathons than we did when we found each other at mile 16.  Since Karen’s long run today was 7 miles (to which I was totally jealous, by the way), we decided to run the first half of my 14 mile run together, and then I’d break off and finish up those last 7 miles on my own.

To make things easy, I set up two 7 mile loops that started and ended at my house, so Karen could join me for the first one and then be close to her own home when we finished it.  She was at my front door bright and early this morning, and we set off.

At first, it was tricky.  We were both running too fast.  Karen pointed it out, and we slowed down a bit.  After 4 minutes, Karen’s timer beeped and she slowed to a walk.  For some reason, my brain and legs shifted into overdrive, and I got a bit faster.  After one minute, Karen had to sprint to catch me, and she honestly admitted there wasn’t going to be able to do that for the entire marathon.  I really wanted to figure this out; even though we had only been running together for a few minutes at that point, it was SO much more pleasurable than any of my extremely long runs had been in months.  I simply just wanted her company on race day.

After about 2 miles, we seemed to find our groove.  I slowed down on my solo minutes, so Karen had an easier time catching up.  I think we were both happy to have figured this out.

The first half of my run was nothing short of pleasant.  At the end, we reached my house and Karen stopped running.  I drank some water, swapped out one of my empty water bottles for a full one I had sitting and waiting for me on my front steps and I took off again.

Here’s where the roof caved in.  Less than a mile into my run, I had to stop.  I couldn’t get a good rhythm, my shirt started chafing, I was just miserable.  I told myself I had to keep going, so I started trotting along, but within 100 yards I stopped again.  Now I had a rock in my shoe.  I got it out, then my calf hurt and I had to stretch.  I think you get the idea; Dr. Jekyll had apparently left when Karen did, and I was left to run with just myself – the evil Mr. Hyde.

After a few more minutes of this misery, I assessed my situation.  I still had several miles to go, and I absolutely had to do it on my own.  I thought for a second.  Now, Karen and I plan to run the marathon together, but anything could happen: our paces might not match, one of us might get hurt and have to drop out, a shark might jump out of the ocean in Brooklyn and attack just one of us (and how weird would that be, by the way).  I needed to stop getting in my own way, just like Mr. Hyde kept tripping up Dr. Jekyll, and start telling myself that I could succeed on my own.  I broke up the rest of my run into 1 mile segments, and just knocked them off one at a time.

Finally, I did it. I looked at my watch and saw that the time of my first half with Karen was only 20 seconds different than my last half alone.  Yup, Karen and I can definitely do this together.  And neither Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde are welcome to join us.