The Finish Line

I had this idea in my head for a blog post that would explore my conflicted emotions over having decided to stop running in races. Pretty much every spring I’ve signed up for a local 5K that benefits Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, a wonderful place in Poolesville, Maryland, where scores of farm animals live out their lives in bucolic bliss rather than being slaughtered for food or abused by people who see them as commodities. When race day rolled around earlier this month, however, I was registered for the walk, not the run. I expected this to make me feel at least a little guilty, sad and old.

But it didn’t at all. In fact, it made me feel happy. And mature—not in a wizened, solemn way but in a, “Well now, that certainly made good sense” way.

I started running in the mid 1980s as a way to lose weight. Back then I was a single newspaper reporter living in the home of a friend and co-worker in High Point, North Carolina. I was a healthy eater, meaning not that I ate wisely but that I ate a lot. And I got pretty much no exercise. Even in a profession with notoriously low standards for fitness (and grooming, personal hygiene, and fashion), I’d come to really dislike what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Ultimately, I reached some tipping point and decided I needed to eat less and work off considerably more calories.

My friend and landlord Phil, an indescribably strange but gentle soul, dropped dead of a heart attack several years ago, when he was only in his 50s. But I repeated his enduring legacy to me just this morning in Northwest DC. It’s a short series of stretches I complete before and after every run. Leaning against his living room fireplace, he demonstrated those moves to me one day in the spring of 1986. Then he sent me on my way, huffing and puffing up and down the winding, hilly suburban streets of the self-proclaimed Furniture Capital of the World. There was a country club about a half-mile away, and in my early days I was walking by the time I reached it. I imagine the sight of me—sweaty, fat, dressed in an improvised clown version of running wear—heightened the ruling class’s sense that their private club offered blessed sanctuary from a very ugly outside world.

But somewhat to my own surprise, even incremental progress was enough to keep me going. I slowly increased my distances, and gradually the pounds came off. While this did not have the hoped-for effect of attracting the ladies—my grooming, hygiene and fashion challenges remained, and wouldn’t be definitively conquered until Lynn assumed stewardship of me—it did get my competitive juices flowing. By the late ‘80s I was running in several races a year, at distances of up to 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles. I never was a threat to win, by any stretch, but I didn’t embarrass myself, either. (I even was dressing a little better by then—wearing actual running shorts rather than work-in-the-yard shorts, and running shoes instead of uncushioned sneakers.) At first I finished in the far middle of the pack, but by the end of the decade I’d reached the near middle.

Never mind that the only aspect of running in races that I truly liked was drinking as much beer as I wanted afterward. Though it seems a tad counterintuitive in hindsight, in those days most race promoters thought it was a great idea to reward runners for their virtuous hard work with a bottomless tap. I’d bust my ass running the race, hating every minute of it and sorely tempted at every hilltop to join the quitters I saw walking at the side of the road, their heads bowed but their respiration unlabored. But then, as I approached the finish line I would see behind it, shining like a beacon in the wilderness, a huge inflated beer bottle bearing the logo of Budweiser, the Miller Brewing Company or Anheuser-Busch. What it signified, I knew, was that within minutes my agony would be replaced by a mellow, tingly buzz, as a body depleted of oxygen and not yet fed that day would be filled with refreshing, mood-enhancing booze. To this day, I savor the happiness of those early post-race celebrations, when I was high with relief and fermented hops.

Looking back, I should’ve retired from races when the taps ran dry, which had happened by the early ’90s as both the health craze and liability litigation exploded. But by then I’d gotten a little faster and liked seeing my name listed in the top third of finishers. One time I ran an 8K in sub-8-minute miles, which is nothing to elite runners and a joke to an Ethiopian or a Kenyan, but seemed miraculous to me. True, I did nearly pass out from exhaustion afterward, but had I died I might have had a smile on my face. Another time, in the mid ’90s, I ran a half-marathon course on Long Island that brushed the city limits of Bellmore, where my mom grew up. I felt somehow like I was doing my family proud.

By the 1990s I also was married, and I often dragged Lynn along to races in and around DC to buck me up, hold my wallet and cheer me on. She was great about it, but she quickly picked up on the fact that running in races was all in all a miserable experience for me before, during (especially) and after (if I didn’t meet my personal goal). She noted how I dreaded the upcoming event for weeks, was inconsolable with worry and nervousness the morning of the race, looked absolutely dreadful as I ran past her gasping like I’d been waterboarded, complained afterward about how awful it had been, and brightened only when I was later sipping coffee at Starbuck’s, the whole nightmare behind me.

Still, I kept competing in several races a year through the ’90s and into this century. At a certain point, though, I stopped requiring that Lynn come along to endure my whining and be bored as hell while she waited for her masochistic husband to approach from the distance looking like he’d soon be making her a widow.

Actually, the beginning of the end of Lynn’s participation came around 10 years ago, when I finally took the step of entering a marathon—the Marine Corps event in October. I thought I’d trained sufficiently for it, but it was a miserable experience. I started losing steam about halfway through and then somehow injured my foot, such that I had to walk the final 8 or so miles. It was the first time I’d ever walked as much as an inch in a race, and every runner who subsequently passed me seemed to add mockery to my pain and horror. I’d imagined beforehand that I’d finish in 4 hours at the very worst, but as I trudged toward the finish line at the Iwo Jima Memorial that day I couldn’t so much as manage the short sprint necessary to beat 5 hours. A few years before, Oprah Winfrey had finished the same course a good half hour earlier. Oprah!

I was hurting and humiliated when Lynn and I found each other through the throngs of finishers and well-wishers. She’d sacrificed a huge chunk of her Sunday for the privilege of waving to me at mile 15 or so as I shouted dejectedly “I’m fading!” It got hot that day, and she’s never been a fan of either heat or crowds. As she drove her mopey mess of a spouse back home, I started rethinking this please-share-my-hell-with-me thing. A few months later there was a St Patrick’s Day 10K downtown on a 25-degree morning. I advised Lynn to sleep in, and took Metro by myself.

In recent years I’d cut way down on the number of races I’d entered. For one thing, age had caught up to me and my times were getting increasingly slower, which was annoying. For another thing, my friend Maryann, who’s six years younger than me and a much more serious and dedicated runner than I’ve ever been, went in just a few years from novice to kicking my ass in races, and that bummed me out. And for a third thing, Lynn’s mantra over the years that I didn’t have to punish myself in this way was finally starting to register. Recreational runs at my own pace were fine. But races were a bitch.

Finally, only a pair of 5K races each year—a Thanksgiving Day “turkey trot” and the Popular Spring event—stood between me and competitive-running retirement. The former went by the wayside last November, when, rather than killing myself to try to run 3.1 miles in under 26 minutes in DC, I worked off a larger number of pre-holiday feast calories running for an hour at a slower pace on my own in my neighborhood. Then, earlier this month, I walked and talked with friends while the Poplar Spring runners sweated their way toward the finish line on the partially shared course. And I felt good about it. Smart, even.

You know how you did stupid things as a kid and your mom said, “If I told you had to do that, you’d shout, ‘Not a chance!’” You understood her logic, but you kept doing whatever idiotic thing you were doing because it pleased you in some juvenile way.

Well, for the nearly 20 years of our marriage Lynn had been taking the more-direct approach of telling me I didn’t have to run in races and it was dumb to keep doing something I didn’t enjoy. I don’t know why I kept doing it anyway for so long, but maybe the fact that I’ve finally stopped now means I grew up at long last.

Anyway, it’s not like I’ve abandoned all running goals. Those goals just aren’t about times and distances anymore. I keep track of all the US states in which I’ve run at least once for an uninterrupted hour. I’ve been stuck on 30 for a few years, since the winter day I road-tripped to Kentucky specifically to jog around a sleepy coal town (and coincidentally dined at the worst Chinese restaurant in existence). But I have every intention of adding each of the 20 remaining states to my list.

I may be slow achieving it, and I’ll definitely be slow running it. But when I reach that particular finish line, it’ll feel really good. I might even have some morning beers for old times sake.