What It Feels Like For a Pepsi Person To Drink A Coke

Many people find calm in a hectic world by falling into a groove of routines and behaviors.  We sit in the same car of the train every day, we buy our coffee from the same vendor.  Some families have “pizza night” every Friday, unless your daycare gives your son pizza for lunch every Friday, so you have to change it to “breakfast for dinner” every Friday and you end the week by feeding your kids homemade waffles – hypothetically.

I love my routines, and nobody reading this who knows me personally is surprised.  I run Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  At work I drink my first cup of coffee around 9 AM, and it’s always the Colombian Select flavor.  For the cardio sculpt class that I take at my gym, I always am in one of the back corners (that’s mostly so that if I die in class that I won’t disturb too many people, but it also serves to illustrate my point).

In my heart, I am a “pure” runner, meaning that I like to strap on my kicks, walk out my front door and start to run at a steady pace until I’ve completed my course for the day or drop dead in the middle of it.  But since I hurt my foot, the only way I could get back to running was by “run/walking”, where you run for a certain period of time, then walk for a predetermined amount of time, repeated ad nauseam.  My pattern has been to run 4 minutes/ walk 2.  My foot is completely healed now, and doesn’t hurt at all (a mere 6 months after I broke the damned thing, sigh).  I could probably run straight through now, but with only 7 weeks until the marathon (and holy “poop”, by the way), I slowly yet begrudgingly have been making my peace with the fact that I’m going to have to run/walk the whole thing.  Please note that I am not knocking run/walking as a method.  It’s more like when a Pepsi person is stuck having to drink a Coke.  It’s fine, but just not the same thing.

Today I had to do an 18 mile race (really.  Not a typo) in Central Park with NY Road Runners.  This was race 8 of 9 to qualify me for next year’s marathon.  In my training plan, I was supposed to run 16 miles today.  But, when I saw that I could get in my 8^th race if I just added two more miles to that 16, I thought “what’s another pound to an elephant?” and signed up.

My old pace (when I was younger and less broken) was about 9:00 on a short run, and maybe as slow as 10 minutes during a half marathon or something of that length.  Today, my goal is to finish this race in 4 hours, which would have me doing a 13:20 mile.  I’m not happy with this, but I know it will soften the blow of the actual marathon when I’m pretty sure that I won’t finish the same day that I start.

I cross the start line and start my watch, so that it can beep out my running and walking intervals for me.  This race is 3 laps around Central Park, going north on the east side and then south on the west side.  To anyone who kind of knows Central Park and the Harlem Hills, yes, that’s the hard way.  The race starts on 102^nd street, and the hills start at about 103^rd street, so I quickly run into them.  Fortunately, about ½ way up them my watch beeps and I get to walk the rest of the way.  People pass me, and I’m pretty sure I’m hearing words that are not approved for general audiences.  My watch beeps again right at the top, and I fly down the hill past the people who had spent all their energy running up.  This time, if they are saying any bad words, I am moving too fast to hear them.

My watch beeps again for me to walk for 2 minutes, and as I’m walking, I realize something.  As much as I’m not enjoying having to run/walk for 18 miles, I can use this method to my advantage.  I can run like I stole something on the run portions, and then catch my breath on the walking parts.  Over the next few cycles I try this method, and as I hit each mile marker I look at my watch and see that it’s working.  I have an 11:37 mile, a 12:04 mile, an 11:56 mile. 

The first loop of the park seems to pass in the blink of an eye (that in reality was about an hour and 10 minutes).  As I start climbing those hills for the second time, I realize something else.  I feel great.  I’m not sure if I actually have been training enough and it’s paying off, if I’m on some kind of runner’s high that’s going to crash at mile 13 and make me wish I had never taken up running in the first place, or if this run/walking stuff is really working.  Regardless, I can see that the way that I feel is a lot better than the way some of the other racers look.  My intervals continue, and I hit such a great running groove that I get a little pissed every time my watch tells me to walk.  Before I know it, I’ve finished loop #2.

I have to admit, loop #3 is far less awesome.  This time, those hills hurt.  And the problem now is that the downhills are pretty painful, too.  I no longer run like I stole something, but more like someone who is coming up on mile 13 of an 18 mile run.

At mile 14, I get excited as I think to myself, “Great!   Only 4 more miles to go!”  Then I think that if I use the word “only” as a preface to the last 4 miles of an 18 mile race that I have completely lost my mind.  But I am surrounded by other runners as crazy as me.  Flocked with my birds of a feather, I happily trot on.

At mile 15 I look at my watch and do a double take.  I’m at 3 hours and 4 minutes almost exactly.  My legs are tired, but my brain just loves math, and I quickly do some calculations.  I realize that unless I trip on my own shoe laces or get lost (yes, we’re running in a circle and I have thousands of people to follow, but I still wouldn’t put it past me), I’m going to finish in under 3 hours and 45 minutes.  I did deep down (very deep down) and find that little well of energy that lives down there and I speed up.

At mile 17 I am elated for 2 reasons.  First, I only have one mile left before this misery can stop, and second, my watch is at 3 hours, 27 minutes and change.  I might actually finish in under 3:40.  Out loud, I say, “Come on, Ali.  You got this!”  This being New York and being surrounded by other runners who are as tired as me, nobody even notices that I’ve started talking to myself. 

I focus on a guy in front of me in a black t-shirt.  I rev up a little and smile as I pass him.  Then I pick a guy in a red shirt and pass him, too.  My watch beeps and I have to walk, and I end up behind them again.  When it’s time to run, though, I decide that I’m passing them again and staying in front of them.  I catch both of them and then pass a woman in a tutu (and I’m sorry, I really don’t get the whole costume thing in these races, but to those who do dress up, I guess that whatever freezes your cubes is fine with me).  My watch beeps for me to walk, and all I think is “Nope.”  I have about a 1/3 of a mile left, and I’m finishing it running.  So, I ignore my watch and when I see the finish line I start to sprint (or what could be defined as a sprint after 17.9 miles of running).

I cross the finish line, run a couple of extra steps so that the people behind me don’t slam into me, and look down at my watch: 3:39:07.  Later I do the math and figure out that that works out to be a 12:11 pace.  Not bad for a girl whose damned foot took 6 months to heal and who just ran/walked for 18 freaking miles.

On my way home, I try to ignore the screaming in my quads as I think about the marathon.  Maybe I will finish it the same day that I start it.  Maybe I won’t.  I may have as fantastic a race as I had today, or it may all go to hell in handbasket.  I will have to abandon my normal method of strict running, but sometimes changing things up is a good thing.  And this Friday my kids may even have dinner for dinner.