The Last Mile I
What is a "Real Runner?"
What is the most physically painful thing you’ve ever done?
It was still dark when I woke up last Sunday morning and windy, and I could smell the cedar in the air. I had laid out my clothes the night before: gray leggings, a black-striped Adidas dri-fit, Lululemon shorts, toe socks, black Atomic Athlete hat.
It was 6:50 am when I finally made it downtown and the first skirts of morning were radiant and christened Austin’s metallic skyline a supernatural shade of pink.
South of the Capitol building, the blocks were roped off and mobbed and there was a restless buzz racing through the cold streets. Strangers. Friends. I was talking to a middle-aged brown-haired woman wearing a bright orange vest and clean white running shoes. In her right hand was a long, daunting wooden pole. A flag. As one of the races’ many “pacers,” it was her task to run at exactly the min/mile speed needed to finish at the number printed on her pace flag.
Three numbers had never looked so devestating.
I gave a slightly embarrassed (slightly nervous) laugh and told her just how slow I had run my first marathon. All public races had been canceled so, in November 2020 I ran 26.2 miles on my own. It took over 5 hours1. And I had trained significantly more.
This time—not so much.
She shrugged and smiled warmly and said “well, ya never know.”
I grinned back and thanked her for the confidence then retied my Brooks, stuck my Airpods in my ears, and put on the playlist2 I’d prepared. I fully expected to tire out and let her pass by, but why not try to keep up?
“Why not try?” has become a sort of motto for me in my twenties. Why not have a go? What’s the worst that happens? Wounded ego? Sore knees?
Though I would later make one painfully rookie mistake, shooting for 4 hours 30 minutes was a good choice.
The crowd started walking slowly. We were about fifty yards from the starting line where a big man in a white shirt and a beard like Wolverine stood with a megaphone pressed to his mouth. “Four hours thirty-minute racers, are you ready?”
We were all thoroughly cold and welcomed the command to begin the journey—the harsh knee-hacking, four-plus-hour, march of elective collective reckoning.
The run started crossing the bridge on Congress Ave into south Austin. My hands were frozen and my body was thankful to be on the go, passing hundreds of onlookers dressed in knit beanies and mittens and holding coffee. Salad shops, jam-bands, bars that still smelled of stale beer.
I kept to the left-most edge so as not to get stuck behind anyone, and it felt good to have some space.
The first 4 miles were a quick cruise. I looked at my Garmin and saw that I had run faster than 9 minutes per mile and turned to see the woman with the 4:30 pacer flag almost out of sight behind me.
Ok Jeremy, I thought, check your ego. I recalled something I'd read from Japanese novelist and marathoner, Haruki Murakami. In What I Talk About When I Talk About Running3, he told a story of getting carried away early on by the energy of the ‘herd.’ Running too fast, outside his money zone. Late in the race, Murakami had such serious leg cramps he had to walk. The warning lingered in my head and slowed my ego down to a more manageable 9 minute 10-second pace.
After about 8 miles I checked in again with my legs and pulse and pace. High heart rate, but still feeling good and not at all winded. I started to accept that I wasn’t burning myself down, wasn’t going to lose control in the third quarter. Not a fluke.
It was exciting and terrifying and confusing all at once. Exciting, because I might break four hours. Terrifying, because I now had to run fast enough to break four hours. Confusing because I didn’t think I was capable.
—In running communities the 4:00:00 marathon pace is a sort of standard, if you want to be considered a “real runner.”
A few hours earlier, the number hadn’t been anywhere near my radar.
And there she was.
Like many road races, roughly three-quarters of the runners (probably the smart ones unlike me) stop at the half marathon.
The 13 mile (halfway) point came and went. We had been running for about 1h50m, on pace to come in 20 minutes under 4:00:00. When we split off from the half-ers, heading uphill toward north Austin, I found myself on a shell of a road, a skeleton silhouette of what it had been.
For the first 13 miles the road had been packed. If you wanted to pass someone, you had to search for a hole in the crowd and shoot the gap when you could. But now, on the back leg of the race, I was one of maybe ten on the road.
The space and the lack of comparison-based motivation was like an anchor dragging behind me. Passing the slow and chasing the fast had been fuel. Ego stroking fuel, but fuel nevertheless.
From there every step, every hill, every mile was a challenge.
Maybe worse at this point: the screaming, crying, clawing of a full bladder.
We all know the feeling of really having to go. To the point where you can’t sit still and even the sound of water is an excruciating reminder of what you are unable to relieve. And though I hadn’t drank any water until mile 14 or so, the punchy, pressurized feeling of needing to go was raging.
“Ok Jeremy,” I told myself, “get to mile 15 then you can stop.”
The 15th mile relief area came, and I let it go. Then Mile 16, 17, 18. Like some sort of inguinal masochist, I let bathroom after bathroom pass.
You might think this is counterintuitive (and it probably was) but I was so afraid that if I stopped my legs might seize up and I would lose the magic, lose the four hours pace. So I didn’t stop. Another sixty minutes? I thought, I can hold it.
The sun was finally shining and I could finally move my fingers well enough to wave at the fewer and further between fans on the sides of the road. It was mile 20 and we were in the hilly part of north Austin. A little girl in mittens held a sign out to me with a Super Mario Bro’s mushroom on it: “tap this to power up.”
I did. No dice.
The only power-ups come by way of water stations and the absolutely vile energy-goo4 packs held out by volunteers. A Faustian bargain.
I’d been running for three hours and my stomach was as throbbingly full and swollen and sore as Thanksgiving. But I couldn’t not drink. I had to hydrate or my pace would fall off a cliff.
Painful as it was, I had to keep drinking.
Still, between the ever steeper hills, the exhaustion, and the ever bloating bladder, my pace slowed.
And then my best and worst selves began to snap at each other
Will anyone even notice if I slow down?
Won’t people just be impressed I finished at all?
Who cares about being a real runner anyway?
Compared to my first marathon, I had barely trained. Sure I am active and did go for a few long runs, but I didn’t deserve to break a 4:00:00 marathon. And thinking I could do so anyway was a flex of an outsized ego.
With every incline, the pace slowed and my guilty shame grew. I felt like the trickster Sisyphus, destined to push a boulder up the mountain ad infinitum.
Up the next big hill, my pace fell slower than 10 minutes per mile. At that rate, I would finish closer 4h30m than 4 fours flat.
But then, at just the right moment, I came upon the best thing I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Sorry y’all. Substack only lets you go so long . . . más coming your way soon.
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Thanks for reading compañeros
Be good 🖖
—Jeremy
My route was twice around Lake Austin (22 miles) and some change
Spotify Playlist:
More on this book in the forthcoming February 2022 Reading List
They’re really called “energy gels” but that name makes them sound like they actually taste decent