I saw stuff in duct tape too, like My husband made me do it<\/em>. Duct tape! Not a lot of Jesus stuff, though, except a guy passed me, he was carrying a cross and a flag. OK, man, run your ass off for God and Country. Thing was, right, he passed me. I got him back in Harlem, though, the bastard died.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLooking good!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nSo that Italian woman. Maybe she was pretty or maybe not, but she had a nice ass which I watched for what, half an hour? What was I supposed to do? She was two steps ahead of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Makes it worse, see, I\u2019m dying, I\u2019m already dead, and what, I\u2019m noticing nice asses? And I\u2019m thinking, What\u2019s wrong with you, shithead<\/em>. Con-cen-trate<\/em>. Don\u2019t die<\/em>. See, you don\u2019t ever want to say you\u2019re dying when you\u2019re dying, because then it\u2019s true and it\u2019s all over. Afterwards you say you died but while you\u2019re dying you don\u2019t admit it. A little pain, a bad patch \u2013 that\u2019s what the Brits like to say, a little bad patch<\/em>. Christ, what a euphemism.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd me, when I\u2019m dying I think of words like euphemism<\/em> or I do some tunes, even though in New York every mile or so there\u2019s some band so it\u2019s hard to keep your own tune going. There was a Korean church orchestra, all in black, sitting at an intersection, strings, brass, everything, but playing My Country Tis of Thee<\/em> which to me is not good running music. I like the last part of Monteverdi\u2019s Vespers of 1610, the part that just goes Santa Maria, Santa Maria<\/em>, and then once I did a six hour race with Beethoven, Archduke Trio, first movement, theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLooking good!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nMy stride\u2019s gone to shit too, see, you can say that to yourself because you can try to do something about it. But you can\u2019t come back from the dead. And you can say you don\u2019t look good, too, that’s OK. And I don\u2019t. There\u2019s snot running from my nose because it\u2019s cold. The right cuff on my polypro top\u2019s all nasty from wiping. My hair, what\u2019s left of it, it\u2019s gotta be sticking up every which way from the wind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So where was I? Oh, names, signs. Buffalo, too. Yeah, Buffalo. I\u2019m limping along and people start with \u201cGo Buffalo!\u201d and I\u2019m thinking, What, how do they know? I\u2019m outed<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThen this guy runs up beside me, he\u2019s got Buffalo written on his shirt, front and back, I don\u2019t recognize him, but I say, Wait\u2019ll they start with the Go chicken wings<\/em> and he acts like he doesn\u2019t understand what I mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLooking good<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOh yeah, I was looking good. Mister All In Black Man, but that\u2019s because of the temp. You know what I mean? I only had<\/em> black tights. Yeah. In these long ones you know you\u2019re gonna feel like shit towards the end, you know, if you do it right you redline the whole way and there you are at the end, nothing left. Even the Kenyans do it. It\u2019s not magic. You\u2019ve got so much in the tank and then it\u2019s all gone and the goddam finish line\u2019d better be there. But you don\u2019t expect to die early, not if you\u2019ve done your work and you\u2019re being careful.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLooking good!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat am I supposed to say? They\u2019re trying to help. Jesus, I\u2019ve gone \u201cLooking good\u201d myself even when I\u2019ve figured in about thirty feet the guy\u2019s gonna be down on his knees puking. Said it anyway. Said it to women too, just as bad. You know? It\u2019s what you say.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nRight? Am I right? Say it but you don\u2019t want to hear it. Who needs that shit? It\u2019s bad enough, dying, and then you gotta worry that you\u2019re rude, too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because, you know, it would <\/em>be rude. To be, like, \u201cHey, bud, you don\u2019t know shit about this, do you? Any asshole can see I\u2019m dying.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nRight. So here\u2019s this guy, he\u2019s trying to help, you know he\u2019s trying to help, and so you stick it to him? What a prince you are. For that you should<\/em> die, you know, your goddam quad should just snap, blam! the tendons let go, it should writhe around in your tights like you\u2019ve got some wild animal in there. You deserve it. But you know, what\u2019re you supposed to do? Only saints are saints when they\u2019re dying.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLooking good!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nOh man, then the kids and the hi fives. Man, those little Hassid kids back in Brooklyn, their fathers silent, nothing at all, their mothers smiling a little, and the little kids, all nicely dressed, hats, shy smiles, held out their little Hassid hands for me to touch them. You bet I did. Maybe they liked me because I was all in black, too. The kids in Harlem, the Hispanic kids being held out by their fathers, the Chinese kids, all the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All the kids were the same \u2013 \u201cHey mister! Touch me!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christ, can you imagine? You\u2019re dying, you feel like homemade shit, and these little kids reaching, wanting something from you, that little palm. No way you don\u2019t do it. They\u2019re just kids, even when you\u2019re dying you know that. They don\u2019t know what you\u2019re feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You don\u2019t want them to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2003: Beaten by a Fairy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI got beaten by a fairy,\u201d I said to David, the finish line director, after I crossed the finish mats, wondering if I was going to puke. A worker put a medal around my neck. I talked instead of puking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI ran as hard as I could but the fairy beat me,\u201d I said, and peeled off to the celebrity exit. I felt like weeping. I always do after a marathon, good or bad \u2013 it\u2019s a flood, the emotion, the stuff you\u2019ve kept pent up for a few hours because you\u2019re concentrating on running, that stuff takes the easy way out, which is release by weeping. With David I didn\u2019t worry about weeping or not making sense, because he\u2019s seen a good half million marathoners finish and must have talked to a thousand of them. Or listened to them. Or danced away from their puke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So he didn\u2019t bite on the fairy thing. \u201cGood job,\u201d he said, \u201cGood job. Looks like you\u2019re in under five.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt sucks,\u201d I said, drawing my mylar blanket around me, \u201cI blew up. Groin. Groin blew up. Yesterday I told you hamstrings, but it was the groin. And I got beaten by a fairy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGo up to the celebrity tent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He led me to a gap in the fence, where orange-jacketed workers checked out my secret stickers, and let me through. I had only had a couple of hundred feet to go and lots of attendants, because I was a celebrity, and we got special treatment before the race and after it, even though what happened during<\/em> it was up to us. The other celebrities were real celebrities, like P Diddy, or they were friends of the sponsors, or they were like me, one of the guys in the racing business, getting what amounted to professional courtesy. Celebrity status at this race covered a lot of ground, and although I liked what it promised, I had been ambivalent about it because most of the other celebrities were not serious runners. Evidently I wasn\u2019t either, because I\u2019d just been beaten by a fairy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt the moment, though, I felt like a celebrity. Someone offered me water. A man draped my arm over his shoulder and walked me away from the gate. Another person clipped my timing chip off and thanked me<\/em>. A woman walked me up the path, looked at me carefully and asked if I was all right. I knew she meant was I physically all right, so I said I was fine and didn\u2019t need anything. At the tent a young woman led me to the bags and found mine for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cCan I take anything out of it for you?\u201d she said while handing it to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo, I\u2019m fine. But thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wasn\u2019t fine. What I meant was that I wasn\u2019t going to faint, I wasn\u2019t going to puke, my blisters and sore toes were nothing, and my groin didn\u2019t hurt now that I\u2019d stopped running. So I was fine except for the cramps that I knew would be along pretty soon, but in the meantime I could flop down on the Central Park celebrity grass and have some Poland Spring and hope that nobody I knew would find me for a while, wouldn\u2019t out me and my dogshit time, because I wasn\u2019t ready to talk about how much of an idiot I\u2019d been, how I\u2019d forgotten what I knew how to do, that I\u2019d run stupidly and had been beaten by a fairy. Probably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By this time I was thinking more clearly and wondering if the fairy had really beaten me. Maybe I\u2019d beaten her. I didn\u2019t know for sure, even though when I charged up the last little hill to the finish line, I\u2019d thought that the fairy had been ahead of me, even though I couldn\u2019t see her. The last time I\u2019d seen the fairy she was<\/em> ahead of me and moving away, but that didn\u2019t mean she\u2019d stayed there. The fairy and I had swapped positions eight or ten times since the 59th<\/sup> Street Bridge, and the last time I\u2019d seen her moving away from me had been back on Central Park South, which had felt a hell of a lot longer at the end of the race than it had when I\u2019d walked down it the night before to get to my free celebrity room in the Sheraton. I\u2019d bet there were a thousand people on that stretch of road, so it was possible that I\u2019d passed the fairy for the last time and hadn\u2019t known it. But in my heart I was sure the fairy had beaten me.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt wasn\u2019t that I wanted to beat the fairy. I wasn\u2019t racing against fairies, or against women in their twenties, which is what I judged her to be. It was more that I didn\u2019t want to be beaten by a fairy. At the time these seemed very different ideas to me, and after it was all over they still seemed different, but I couldn\u2019t have said why. Logically they were identical. Either I beat the fairy or the fairy beat me, or we tied, which I knew hadn\u2019t happened and couldn\u2019t have happened because if I\u2019d gotten into an all-out sprint with the fairy I felt sure I would have kicked her fairy ass, groin or no groin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At least the fairy who beat me was an international fairy \u2013 English, because of the Union Jack stitched onto the top of her white fairy costume. I fell in with her on the 59th<\/sup> Street Bridge, just about the time my groin blew up for real. Back on the Pulaski Bridge it had started to go but it hadn\u2019t gone bad until the big bridge. I\u2019d been monitoring it carefully since the halfway point and it\u2019d been deteriorating since then, which was bad because I had 10 miles to go, and had already fallen off the pace, because of the groin. I don\u2019t even like the sound of groin<\/em>, it\u2019s blunt and ugly. Plus it\u2019s all those little tiny muscles I can\u2019t even remember the names of, little ones so you say, well, who cares about those little guys? Look after your quads and hamstrings and the rest\u2019ll take care of themselves. Except nope.<\/p>\n\n\n\nToo fast, too fast,<\/em> I couldn\u2019t stop saying to myself, you took it out too fast, you idiot. <\/em>How could I? Being old and out of racing form wasn\u2019t any excuse because I\u2019d known all those things and had meant to be cautious. And I\u2019d even run the race the year before. But, almost unbelievably, I\u2019d started my watch at the gun, and all the way walking and then jogging the 13 minutes it took to get to the actual starting line I hadn\u2019t stopped and reset my watch so I could start it at the line. Me! The professional timer guy, timer of more than a thousand races, of nearly a million runners, making an idiotic mistake trying to time himself. Not starting my watch properly meant I couldn\u2019t judge my pace from the mile markers all along the course. (This was before GPS watches that displayed your pace.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nSo I\u2019d run the first ten miles too fast. But I felt good<\/em>, as I said to my son later, the plaintive cry of the runner who misjudged his fitness badly. When I was young I\u2019d just say, Well, I went out too fast so I\u2019ll just have to hang on and maybe I\u2019ll have a good one<\/em>. Now that I\u2019m old I say, I went out too fast, I\u2019m fucked.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge was the usual mixture of paces. Some runners were attacking it, some were walking, and the rest were passing people or being passed. I was passing people who were walking but about as many people were passing me. When I came up on the fairy I wasn\u2019t too surprised. She wasn\u2019t the only person in costume, although she was the only fairy I\u2019d seen. You don\u2019t really expect costumes in a marathon, because a marathon is serious business. You can get goofs in a marathon, people with stuff written all over their shirts, sometimes funny hats or socks, but not many costumes. But here was a fairy, white with silver trim. She looked good, too; her stride was short and controlled \u2013 just right for climbing. I passed her, slowly, wondering if I\u2019d see her again, suspecting that I would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in the pack the runners seem to be part of a giant phase-shifting experiment. We start in the same place, we end in the same place, but at every moment some of us are speeding up, some are slowing down. It\u2019s almost fugal. I saw Nori, the Japanese guy, about every half hour. I came up on another Japanese guy and decided to say konnichi wa<\/em>, good day, to him. I concentrated on my accent. He was surprised and, I think pleased. I never saw him again so maybe those words, the only words I said before I finished, magically took us so far out of phase that we never fell back in again.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe fairy never turned to look at me, and I never turned to her. I didn\u2019t want to talk to her \u2013 it felt as though it would break some kind of spell. I almost did when I passed her in Harlem at the same time we both passed a chubby blue bug, well \u2013 something with antennae. I wanted to say, shaking my head, That blue bug is too much, isn\u2019t she?<\/em> In Harlem I still had hope for my 4:40 or 4:45, because I thought the groin might be easing and I\u2019d be able to speed up even if I had to slow down on the long pull up Fifth Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe groin. Years ago in the Solomon Islands I was hanging with some medical guys who referred to people by their complaints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGot a toe to see you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIs the tropical ulcer still out there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted my groin to get better so I wouldn\u2019t have to find the celebrity doctor, a thoracic surgeon doing volunteer duty. I imagined him calling out from his little tent, I\u2019m ready for the groin.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nI walked out to Central Park West to find my son. I was still thinking about the fairy and how I didn\u2019t like being beaten by her. She was probably a fine fairy and on this Sunday she had been the better runner, but she was in costume<\/em>. There\u2019s a Richard Pryor routine about fighting a guy who knows karate, where he says Kick my ass if you can but don\u2019t be hollerin\u2019 at me while you doin\u2019 it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s how I felt about the fairy. You can clean my clock in a marathon but don\u2019t be doing it in a costume. But is it really that simple? Is that really the problem? It\u2019s not. It\u2019s not really about the fairy. It\u2019s about screwing up when I shouldn\u2019t have, and not liking admitting it to myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I finished, someone put a medal around my neck. I left it on when I went out to the street. I\u2019ve never been one to wear a finisher medal. The year before I hadn\u2019t worn mine, but later David gave me a hard time about it. Everybody wears their medals after this race, he told me, big-time executives wear their medals to work on Monday, with their Armani suits and silk ties, and it\u2019s cool. So I wore mine and yes, everybody said Hey, congratulations<\/em>. On the street they said it. At the restaurant where I went with my son they said it. At Jet Blue I wasn\u2019t the only one in the lounge wearing one, and they all said it, and we the finishers exchanged glances. In the airplane my seat mates said it. What they all said was, Good job. <\/em>If I\u2019d run a smart race I\u2019ve have loved it, but all I could think of was, I ran a bad race<\/em>. I lost control<\/em>. I was stupid.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nI was married then. My wife picked me up at the airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I said, \u201c<\/em>I got beaten by a fairy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd she looked at me like I was nuts, and I didn\u2019t know what to say, so I said it again, \u201c<\/em>Don\u2019t you get it? A damn fairy beat me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nShe said, \u201cWho cares? You\u2019re sixty years old and you ran a marathon and I don\u2019t know why you\u2019re complaining. \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I said, \u201cP Diddy beat me, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said, \u201cYou\u2019re old enough to be his father.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cChrist,\u201d I said, \u201cyou don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we got back to the house I hung my medal on the window latch. The neighbors couldn\u2019t see what it was, so they wouldn\u2019t tell me I\u2019d done a good job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
Here I am after the Honolulu Marathon, forty years after my first one. I’m planning on doing one next year, fifty years after my first one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This Sunday thousands of runners will hit the streets for the New York City Marathon. I won\u2019t be among them, but back in 2002 and 2003, I was. I thought I\u2019d post a couple of pieces I wrote a few years ago (and a year apart, in different styles) about running it. I\u2019ve run more… <\/p>\n
Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[88,87,89],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marathoning","tag-marathoner","tag-nyc-marathon","tag-running-injuries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":462,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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