The 2014 NYC Half Marathon: Fool Me Once...

I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard this saying: “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  Early Sunday morning I thought about this saying, mostly because I was wondering if I was about to fool myself twice.

I thought about being a fool and shaming myself as I was lined up in my corral waiting for the start of the 2014 NYC Half Marathon.  Now, what’s so foolish about running a half marathon (er, other than running a half marathon)?  Well, this was the race that I broke my foot in last year and ruined my entire race season.  So though I was lined up again and out for revenge, I was also worried that history was about to repeat itself.  Last year it was so cold at the start of the race that my feet were completely numb.  They didn’t warm up until somewhere along mile 4, and somewhere just after mile 6 I started thinking, “Wow, I am rubbing a huge blister on my foot.”  Except it wasn’t a blister.  It was a stress fracture that I ran and competed on for another month before I succumbed to an MRI and a diagnosis that led to 4 weeks of crutches, 13 weeks in a medical boot, and more training runs completed in a pool that I ever want to remember.

Now, the data analyst in me knew that the odds of breaking my foot again in the same race were about equivalent to me winning Mega Bucks (yet I still play Mega Bucks in a pool with 3 other people.  Hey, I’ve got the dollar and the dream).  But apparently my broken foot brought with it a mild case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I spent the day before the race convincing myself that it was going to happen again.

Last year at the start of the race it was about 27 degrees, which was unseasonably cold for the last few days of winter in New York City.  This year at the start of the race it was – 28 degrees (and no; that one extra degree did not make the weather “seasonably” cold for the last few days of winter).  But, this year was different.  Last year it wasn’t really windy.  This year the gusts were so bad I thought that they were going to have to put a “small dog warning” into effect.  Last year the winter was so cold that I had to do most of my training runs on a treadmill. This year – winter was so cold AND snowy that I had to do most of my training runs on a treadmill.  Can you see why my fear of breaking my foot again wasn’t really so far-fetched?

I didn’t want to be a fool this year, so I was a tad bit more prepared.  I wore toe warmers until about a minute before the race started so that my feet were freezing but not numb before the race.  Someone saw me removing them from my shoe just before we got started and said, “Hey, that’s smart!”  Yeah, it would have been a lot smarter if I had thought of it last year.

The race started, and off I went, bringing my neuroses with me.  After about a mile I warmed up enough to take my jacket off and tie it around me, but I kept my mittens on almost the entire time.  I concentrated so hard on my foot that I didn’t realize until the first mile marker that I was going quite a bit faster than I expected.

At mile 2, instead of turning west and climbing the Harlem Hills in the park as we had done in previous years, we exited the park at 110^th street, ran west for a ½ mile, then turned at Frederick Douglass Circle, ran back down 110^th street, and re-entered the park where we had just left (and by the way, I hate out and backs in the middle of a course.  I just think it sucks to be running away from where you know you need to be going). 110^th street is in bad need of a repave, so I kept my head down the entire time in order to find the flattest spots to plant my foot.  I made it through that mile and was rewarded with those damned hills at the north end of the park.  I admit that I concentrated more on breathing (or struggling to breathe) than I did on my foot, but before I knew it another mile was down.

After the hills we headed south down West Drive.  I was all sweaty from climbing the hills, so each gust of wind managed to chill my wet shirts and crush my spirit a little more each time.  All I kept thinking was that I wanted OUT of the park.  Finally at mile 6 we exited at 59^th Street and 7^th Avenue.  I looked at my watched and surprised myself with how good and steady my pace was.  Also, running down 7^th Ave is my favorite part of the race, so for the next mile I was actually happy and enjoying myself. I didn’t think about my foot and instead concentrated on how very cool it is to run right down the middle of a major street in Manhattan.

NYC Half, 2011.  I'm in green.  Looks like I'm winning :-)

At 42^nd street we turned west at mile 7.  That’s when my nerves and anger really kicked in.  I remember from the year before that it was almost exactly at that spot where I had to stop for a minute to figure out what to do about my foot hurting so much (to which the answer was “do nothing” for the next 4 weeks until I had really broken the crap out of it.  Wrong answer).  This time I took the turn onto 42^nd street and listened to my foot, but it wasn’t talking.  I would have been thrilled, except that’s when “Fat Girl” showed up and started telling me, “you can’t do this.  Just stop.  Drop out.  It’s OK”.  Now I had a funny feeling that Fat Girl was going to join me, so I built in a fail-safe.   I had left my Metro Card and money in the bag that I checked, so I didn’t have anything more on me than wet running clothes, 2 gels, my watch and my Road ID.  Just enough to get me through a half marathon, but not enough to get me downtown where my bag would be unless I used my own feet.  If that guy who saw my toe warmers was there, he probably would have said, “Hey, that’s smart!” again.  Except it didn’t feel smart.  It felt like I was trying to fool myself into running a race that I couldn’t do.  Shame on me.

We hit the West Side Highway right around mile 8, where we actually turned north for 2 blocks before running around a barrier and heading south (again, running in the opposite direction of where we needed to end up, and where my Metro Card was).  But instead of Fat Girl getting in my head, I was annoyed for an entirely different reason.  A woman near me was carrying a New Year’s Eve noise maker.  You know it; it’s the kind that looks like a rectangle with a stick coming out of the bottom.  You spin it on the stick and it makes a sound like a drill cutting through your brain, something you’d only find entertaining on New Year’s after a few bottles of champagne.  But it wasn’t New Year’s Eve and I wasn’t drunk.  I told myself that if I caught up to her I could tackle her to the ground and rip the noisemaker out of her hand.  That motivation quickened my pace for the next mile.  I actually passed her and let her live, just happy to have her noise maker out of ear shot.

2011, Mile 10. Face says it all.

Just after mile 9, the wheels came off the bus. I was done.  I could NOT do 4 more miles.  No way.  Fat Girl got in my ear, telling me what a fool I was to try this race again.  It just wasn’t meant for me.  I didn’t care about my Metro Card anymore.  This was New York.  Some stranger would pay my way into the subway and I could go down to the South Street Seaport and collect my stuff.  I started to slow down even more and was trying to figure out which street was best for walking off the course.  But then I thought, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  The race had fooled me last year and destroyed my whole race season.  Did I really want it to get to me again?  No, I didn’t.  I made a deal with myself that I didn’t have to run any faster, but I did have to get my ass to mile 10 where I would only have a 5K left.  At mile 10 I told myself that I if I could do one more mile that I’d only have a couple left. 

I ran the rest of the race like that, telling myself to go just a bit farther, and my reward for doing that was to go a bit farther.  I was fooling myself, but in a good way. And it was working.

Finally I got to mile 13, turned the last corner and did my best to sprint the last 10^th of a mile.  I didn’t sprint because I wanted to finish strong.  I sprinted because I wanted to finish.   Period.  I finally crossed the finish line and looked at my watch.  2 hours, 12 minutes and 53 seconds, my 3^rd best ½ marathon to date and about 6 full minutes faster than last year (showing how much a broken foot can slow you down).

I collected my medal and went to get my bag with my wallet and precious Metro Card, which were going to buy me a big breakfast that included a blissfully hot cup of coffee and a subway ride back uptown where I could catch my train home to shower and put on warm, dry clothes.  As I collected my stuff, I thought about my race.  It wasn’t perfect or even that enjoyable.  But I seem to have cleared up that minor case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and I didn’t fool myself by dropping out in the middle.  No shame here :-).