12. Run a Race

Turkey Trot families before me, beside me, behind me.

There are times in life that simply have to be endured, and that’s enough. They don’t need to be triumphed over or learned from or enjoyed. You just get through them. A lot of us, especially when we are young, thrash and fight against this because we don’t have the perspective to know the power of time passing. Every feeling and thought we have in a moment seems eternal because we’re not yet aware that most feelings and thoughts end, even if it takes a very long time. Learning that is the first part of an endurance test.

What it takes much longer to learn, in my opinion, is how to do this in a way where when that time has passed, you stop enduring and start living. You’ve kept your head down so long you can’t look up. I find myself enduring things all the time, mundane things that don’t require such hardened acceptance. I endure the process of keeping my body strong at the gym, of planning my grocery shop, of another day working or cleaning or seeing people I don’t really want to talk to. Even the things we do for maintenance that are supposed to be fun, like skincare or eating cheese—looking at the world through the perspective of endurance makes everything a chore you’re just trying to get through so you can do the next chore.

Anyway, I thought about that a lot while running my first five mile race. I’d intended to sign up for a 5K, which is a little over 3 miles. When looking for 5Ks I noticed that almost all of them are on the weekend or very intimate events intended as memorials. On the weekends, I work for money and I think my ineptitude would stand out in a group of less than 2,000 people in a way that would be a bummer for everyone. There was, however, a big race on Thanksgiving within walking distance of my apartment, the annual Turkey Trot: Race For Reconciliation, which raises money for the American Indian Community House. There are Turkey Trots all over the United States on this cursed holiday and it was a joke meme this year about belonging to a “Turkey Trot Family,” the kind that forces its members out to run at the crack of dawn instead of starting to drink at at 10 am with a little Kahlúa in their coffee.

My family is very small. It keeps getting smaller and I find this devastating when I think about it too much. Conceptually, Thanksgiving is disgusting, but I do miss having a place to go that feels good with a huge group of people when everyone else is doing the same thing. So, it was kind of nice to plan to be a part of all these Turkey Trot families that morning and to also get some fresh air and sunshine before falling into total dismal gloom. But it wasn’t until I signed up and paid for my bib that I realized that five miles, not five kilometres, was what I’d been paying for. That’s too many miles!

When you look up how long it takes to train for a 5K, the word “months” is involved and I registered a couple weeks before the race. Experimentally, I tried jogging for about a mile on the treadmill. My lungs and heart were fine with it. My knee was not. My mind? Forget it. Running, or slowly jogging, is such a sport of endurance. There is allegedly a “runner’s high” out there waiting to hit at some elusive distance, but it is not something I’ve ever experienced. I do remember once feeling delirious in a Whole Foods five or six years ago after working out too much, which was nice. At this point in life, the best I can hope for is a power walker’s mellow. I decided I’d show up and do the best I could do and if that meant crossing the finish line after it had been put away for the night, that was fine.

My friend Molly met me on the big day and it was her first race ever, too. The big difference is that she has been running for regular exercise and intended to run the entire race, not walk and skip and hop like me. On my way to meet her at the starting line, which is in a wooded section of Prospect Park that leads onto the main loop, I saw some serious runners rounding the track. They had begun way back at 8:15 at the first starting time and they were racing, like very seriously. It looked excruciating and beautiful as they flew along in tiny shorts and tanks over spandex in the brisk weather. They had very ropey legs and proud shoulders and flushed cheeks. As I got closer, more and more late arriving Turkey Trotters gathered around me and I was relieved to see that the 9am group was considerably less serious. There were people in turkey hats and tutus and peacoats holding large coffees, clearly nursing hangovers. 

For many years, my left knee has bothered me once in a while. It feels stiff, like it is slowly coming to a stop. It started one morning about eight years ago when I woke up and it was swollen for no reason. Then in September, something worse happened to it. I don’t know what—I went for a bike ride and I did some squats at the gym and then the next day, my left knee would not work. Since then, it has gradually improved, functioning one day and not another, but there’s always a dull ache where the meniscus should be. When the race started, Molly quickly pulled ahead as expected and I tenderly plopped one foot in front of the other, waiting for the problem knee to take me down. We’d arrived early and so were at the front of the group initially. Obviously, I soon fell behind, running, then walking, then jogging, then walking, then speed walking, then walking very slowly.

The crowd thinned, but a few people stayed consistently in a similar speed range. We took turns passing one another before falling back into a walk again. The person behind would run ahead for a bit, pass, and then slow. Etc. At times my knee did hurt, but the thing that fucked me up was my hips, which were not muscular in the right places for the constant motion. The loop passed the finish line once before you had to run completely around again to make the full five miles, and my group of slow pokes got a preview of everyone crossing the line for real, cheering and shouting, being greeted by folks holding signs reading, “Best leg day of the year!” with drawings of drumsticks on them.

Lots of people I know go to cheer on runners at races and I totally don’t understand it at all, especially if you don’t personally know anyone who is in the race. Presumably, they have some generosity of spirit that is so great it needs these overflow events to keep them from exploding. My spirit is very miserly, so I soaked up their good will like a sponge. It propelled me onward even though passing by the end of the race when you’re barely a third of the way through sucks ass. 

There’s a loooonnnnng hill in the Prospect Park loop that I hate and as I climbed it, I seriously considered just cutting across the lawn so I wouldn’t keep Molly waiting too long. Like, who cares, I said I’d try this thing and I had! It was unpleasant! But for reasons I can’t explain I just kept going a little bit further and a little bit further and a little bit further until it was finally fucking done. I endured. I drank the little cups of water that were handed to me by volunteers starting to pack up and I listened to a podcast about The Walking Dead. My feet started to chafe, my hips were screaming. I dodged Chuck Schumer at the finish line and demanded my leaf-shaped participation trophy. I had to show off my bib because apparently a bunch of chaos makers had been demanding them without signing up for the race.

It took me one hour, six minutes, and thirty-nine seconds. I came in 2,054 out of 2,369 people. The very last two people in the race were, I believe, a mother/son pair. She was 49 and he was 16. Who was holding back for who?  

Look, there are some new things I’ve done for this blog that I knew I would hate. I hate running, I think it’s bad for my body and I was in pain for days after this event. It’s a struggle to resist moralizing about these new experiences, especially the bad ones, because we’re always trying to find meaning in things that are not only meaningless, but have perhaps made things about you worse. Like a bum knee, for example.

Still, I did learn something from reflecting during my first race and it’s that I endure too much and live too little. Treating every moment as a moment to get through gets you to the finish line and that’s it. What’s the rush? If there is a lesson to a race it’s that it’s not what life should be like at all and I hope we all slow down a little. Maybe come to a full stop and look around.

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• When’s the last time you felt really present in life? What could you stop treating as a chore today?