I love New York. Even though I had very little time to be out and about this weekend, just walking around the City makes me happy. It thrums and buzzes and doesn’t even stink anymore. I kind of miss the stink.
The marathon Expo was predictably exhausting—especially since the Moeben booth was so busy. But the reward for a hard day’s work was hanging with my peeps, Shannon Farar-Grier and Lynne VandenBos. We had an incredible dinner at SushiSamba (where it was so dark and hip that none of us could read the menu and Shannon treated us by leaving the choices up to the waitperson and the sommelier) on Thursday night, and then, after the the swanky Runner’s World party on Saturday, we went with the editors of Runner’s World France and Runner’s World Italy—two clever, charming and Eurotrashily handsome guys—to drink in the “Living Room” of the W Hotel for drinks. Shannon knows not only how to live strong, but how to live well.
At the Runner’s World party I had a chance to have a conversation with my third Olympic medalist in two weeks. Lorraine Moller, who ran in four Olympic Games, and I rat-holed in a corner and had a real and meaningful conversation about success, nationalism, and where and how to find meaning in it all.
(For the record, I avoided being introduced to a fourth Olympian: Deena Kastor’s husband guilelessly related to me a naive and mildly snarky remark she made to him about something I had written, so while we stood near each other—I’m sure she’s very nice; spouses shouldn’t reveal each other’s true feelings, especially to journalists, even bad ones—I had no interest in meeting Deena.)
Two weeks ago, I was invited to San Francisco to attend the Nike Global Running Summit, where we stayed at the too-cool-for-school Clift Hotel, arrived to bags of Nike swag when we entered the room (so hiply and dimly lit that I may well have put on too much makeup—I couldn’t see a thing in the bathroom), and got an entry to the race.
I had asked the Nike folks to sign me up for the marathon, but there was a snafu and the number I got was for the half. Instead of bothering to change my registration, I changed races since 1) I’d done a marathon the week before and knew I was doing NYC two weeks later and 2) you get the same silver Tiffany necklace, presented by a fireman in a tux at the finish (I also asked for and got a kiss), no matter which distance you do. I run for Shiny Metal Objects, especially when they come in robin’s egg blue boxes and you can wear them.
But before the race, I got to talk to two Olympic gold medalists. Another person would be embarrassed by these stories. I suppose I should be, but I am not.
You will not be surprised to know that Nike hosts a great cocktail party.
A number of running journalists from around the world (there were as many international writers as there were national ones) were invited for a preview of their new spring line. This is nothing new. They do it pretty much every year, as do all the other major shoe and apparel companies.
What was different this year was that I got to go. I am not a gear girl. It’s pretty much true that I don’t know a last from a midsole; I don’t know the lingo. What’s a tread? What’s an upper?
At the party, we were able to use Nike computer technology to design our own shoes. You got to sit down with a rep and pick your components. Then, when you were finished, they printed out a piece of plastic with your shoe on it. A few weeks later, they’d mail the shoes.
Because I am, shall we say, not afraid of attention, I made mine in an in-your-face orange, with a neon yellow swoosh. Even though my friends refer to me as “visually retarded,” I was darned proud of my fashion design.
When I’ve achieved something that I think is great, I like to share. So I bounded over, second glass of wine in hand, to where my fellow Running Times columnist Jim Gerweck was sitting, chatting quietly with a young woman whom I assumed to be a college student. Maybe an intern at a magazine; maybe a Nike staffer.
I interrupted their conversation to show off my credit-card photo, my passport as a designer of my own footwear. They were both appropriately impressed and enthusiastic.
Jim did not introduce me to the young woman. Because he knows everyone in the sport, sometimes he forgets that I don’t. So I stuck out my hand and did the polite thing. She said her name was Kara. I asked who she was there for (no nametags, oddly enough at this event).
She said Nike.
Oh, I said, do you work for them? Are you in publicity?
She smiled and kind of laughed. She may have said she was a runner.
I wasn’t looking at Jim. I’m not sure what I would have seen if I had.
Our colleague Brian Metzler came over just as I was asking if she ran marathons.
Yes, she said, as Jim slouched further down in his chair.
Finally it hit me. Minutes before Brian had introduced me to a skinny runner guy named Adam.
Oh. Oops.
Poor colleagues. Poor embarrassed colleagues.
Brian looked at me with shock and awe and said “Who are you?”
Well, I’m someone who is visually retarded. I like to say that I have prosopagnosia (it’s a real diagnosis; look it up in the DSM), but the truth is I don’t recognize faces, even when they’re plastered on magazine covers and in gigantic billboards. And I don’t pay much attention to elite runners. Even when they win Olympic gold. Even when they’re the fastest woman marathoner in America.
Kara Goucher could not have been more gracious. In fact, she seemed relieved not to have another person gushing over her, telling her “You’re Kara Goucher!” as if she didn’t know, cooing about how amazing she is. We talked about the fact that she is not running now because she’s trying to get pregnant.
When I went off to get another drink, I told the other journalists (there was a fantastic group of women at this thing) about our encounter and they were, let’s say, surprised, rightly wondering how I’d gotten invited to this gig. Since Kara was my new BFF, I said I’d make introductions and brought them over en masse. The real journalists were professional and admiring but not gushy and had lots of advice for her on how to get pregnant. I offered that she and Adam should leave right now and go to their room and—well, you know.
The next day Kara and Sammy Wanjiru did a Q&A for the assembled writers. Kara was charming; Sammy, the first Kenyan to win Olympic gold, was unintelligible. I couldn’t tell if it was a language issue, an accent problem, or that he was dumb as a post.
That night, as Jim and I were walking through the lobby on our way back from dinner, we ran into the little Olympian. Jim had been in a flock of journalists who were interviewing Sammy in a group, the running world’s version of paparazzi, shoving recording devices out from extended arms as he answered shouted out questions. Jim said he hadn’t gotten much good stuff and was regretful, since our editor, Jonathan Beverly had tried without success to interview Sammy after he won the Chicago marathon the week before.
So we went up to him and started talking. Jim made a few comments about running, and then I acted like me. I didn’t understand his story. He is Kenyan, right? But he went to high school in Japan? Yes, he said.
Why?
He had a scholarship.
For what?
Economics.
So you were good in school?
Yes.
Then why aren’t you going to university?
Because, he said, he was being paid by Toyota to run; more school could come later. He needed to run now, when he was fast.
I asked what language he dreams in.
He said Japanese.
Jim couldn’t believe I’d asked Sammy Wanjiru what language he dreams in. But we both found his response interesting.
A small group approached and wanted to have their photo taken with the cocky young runner.
He agreed. They snapped. They left.
I told him he had to work on his celebrity chops. I told him about how Bill Rodgers makes every person he meets feel like they’re his best friend, that once you can no longer run fast, you can still be you, an Olympian, a movie star of sorts. Bill Rodgers makes a living being Bill Rodgers.
Shake hands, I said. Look them in the eye. Ask them questions.
Smile more. You may even get some chicks that way, a cute guy like you. No, he said. He’s married. And he has a kid. I wanted to know what language they speak at home. He’s married to a Kenyan, so the answer was not revealing.
I asked Sammy what he does when he isn’t running. He’s running pretty much all the time.
I pushed, and he said he liked movies. Which ones? Action, dude. He’s a big fan of the Terminator series. We agreed that T2 is by far the best. I pointed out that it’s a feminist action flick. He smiled with his eyes this time.
I asked what he had coming up. He lives in Japan and his travel schedule is world-wide and grueling; races and appearances for Nike, plus visits back to his home in Kenya. All the races he rattled off were half marathons. I asked how fast he was going to run them.
Fast, he said. Like 58 or 59 minutes.
Why so many halfs?
Poor Jim. He cringed again like a beaten dog and supplied the answer: Um, because he has the world record in the half marathon?
Sammy’s accent—Japanese-inflected English with a dash of Kenyan—was harder to understand when he was miked on stage than it was in the lobby of the Clift. He was as delightful and arrogant and sweet as a 21 year-old wunderkind can be. It was great fun to chat with him.
But, I realized once again, I am the world’s most ignorant running journalist.
In New York City, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t there to write—I was there to sell what I’ve already written. Shannon, who is not only a small business owner but also a philanthropist, offered to let me give away a pair of arm sleeves to everyone who bought a copy of my book.
My book costs $25. The sleeves are $28. Not surprisingly, I sold all the copies I brought. Some of the people who bought the book may not even be able to read. But those arm sleeves sure are terrific.
I took some time off to walk across town to lunch with my former literary agent.
We talked for a while about my writing projects, my career, and then she said: “Here’s
what your problem is, Rachel.”
She told me. She was right.
After we discussed this for a while, she asked me to point out her flaws. I thought for a while and did.
She said, Oh my God, you’re right. How did I get to be so old without knowing it?
You don’t often get to have conversations—or friends—like this.
On Saturday I got in a taxi to go to another swanky restaurant for the reception for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation runners. Last year there were 10 runners at the NYC marathon raising money for this bitch of a disease. This year they had 113, who had, among them, raised more than a million bucks.
I started crying in the cab and didn’t stop. I wiped my eyes through the recitation of the fundraising statistics; I choked when the newly-appointed director of development mentioned, in passing, that his dad had died of the disease; I sniffled through a short video on myeloma. Worst, worst of all, I started crying about seven seconds into my own talk. I had to cover my mouth to keep deep sobs from escaping. I did not want to be that girl. But I was.
Afterward, seated at a table behind stacks of my books, I cried when Allison came up to tell me that she too had been close to her mother. Her mother had died in December.
Allison bought a book and wanted a photo of the two of us; when it was taken, our eyes were red, and not from a bad flash.
Then Susan came up and said her dad had died in May. There were now three of us crying.I managed to recover, until Naimah, a young woman who had grown up in NY (her mother, now dead, taught poetry in the MFA program at Syracuse) but moved to LA to work on re-writing scripts, bought a copy and told me she was running for her godmother, Mittie.
Then I met Mittie. And then I really lost it.
Mittie was diagnosed with this “universally fatal” disease in 1995. Most people live five years after getting the news. Mittie has undergone two stem cell transplants and she looked fantastic.
I said to her, “I am so sorry. I don’t know what it’s like for you. I can only try to imagine how hard it is.”
Then Mittie cried.
She said, “You’re right. You don’t know. No one knows.”
This is something my mother said often. She told me that I was the only one she could speak with about how she felt, who would let her speak with honesty, but even so, she said, I couldn’t understand how bad it felt.
I sold a book to a guy named Alvin, an oncologist who now has a company working on clinical trials for myeloma meds. He struck me as the smartest guy in the room and we talked for a nice while. His wife was supposed to be there too, but she had broken her toe. She’s also a researcher, working for a cure.
People said I did a good job with the talk/reading. It’s impossible to say.
It was the hardest speaking engagement I’ve ever had.
I thanked the women who had invited me, former Running Times colleagues Alicia O’Neill and Jane Hoffman, both fellow marathoners, and walked back to the hotel sobbing my way south.
The thing is, if you’re crying your eyes out in NYC on Halloween, elbowing through costumed hordes in Times Square, no one even notices.
When I got back to the room I was going to lie around and continue to dehydrate myself. But then I got a call from Nikki Kimball, by all measures the best woman ultramarathoner in the US, and one of the best in the world. Nikki is the best ambassador this crazy niche sport could ever hope for. She is also someone to whom I feel extremely connected, but do not see or talk to enough. If neither of us ran, we would still be close. I cannot say this for all my ultrarunning friends.
She was having dinner with her North Face sponsors that night and invited me along.
As we walked (fast, we walk fast) to the restaurant we caught up. Her year also has been horrible—loved ones dying everywhere, all the time. We ended up laughing at just how awful it can get, and by the time we arrived at the restaurant (another groovy, swanky Manhattan spot), we were both kind of okay, better for being together.
When we got there one of the guys from the advertising agency that handles the North Face said to me, as we were introduced, “You wrote that essay about going back to your college reunion. You’re wild.”
True, and less true than I may appear in print. But it was nice to know that someone reads those columns.
At dinner we sat at a big round table and Nikki and I continued to gossip like girls and talk like women. With a certain kind of friend, lots of time with no contact can elapse but still, you are able to pick up in the middle of a conversation you’d started years before. Nikki’s that kind of friend.
Finally I began to pay attention to the skinny middle-aged guy on my left, a bloke named David. He was something like the brand manager for the North Face. I asked if he was running the next day.
(As it turned out, I was the only one doing the race; the food was delicious and the Chateauneuf-de-Pape kept flowing. If it weren’t my favorite wine, I would have been abstemious. But it is, and I wasn’t.)
I asked if he’d done any marathons and he said, Yes, a few.
How many?
Five.
Oh, I said, more than a little drunk and, as is the case even when stone sober, too full
of myself, I don’t think you get to call yourself a marathon until you’ve done at least five.
He raised his eyebrows and I explained that it takes a while to get the hang of it, you see. I’ve done something like 50, and I still don’t really know what I’m doing. It just gets harder.
He said the five he’d done were pretty hard.
Then I started thinking. Oh shit. Had I done it again?
Were you fast? I took another big swig of the delicious burgundy.
Yes, he said.
Oh, I said, looking down into my scallop. How fast?
Very, he said.
Tell me.
I was second in NY.
[Here we go again.] Tell me your times.
He did: 2:12; 2:11; 2:17 (he made a face); 2:13; and 2:59 (in Boston, ten years after his competitive days.
Did I mention that I’m the world’s worst running journalist?
Then I told him that my next Running Times column was about why so many runners hate his star athlete, Dean Karnazes. (Will I ever learn to shut my pie hole? You have to wonder.)
We had an interesting conversation about Dean. He kept saying being in the booth with Dean, he was swarmed by fans, that there are far more people who love him than hate him, that the negative reaction comes down to a four letter work.
Fuck? (I can’t help it—it just popped into my head.)
No.
Cash?
Well, yes. But that’s not it.
Fame?
Well, yes. But that’s not quite it either.
When I refused to continue trying to read his mind he told me. He attributed the reason to envy.
That’s part of it.
So we discussed the topic at length and found that we agreed. And I continued to find him more and more attractive.
I told him about Speed Goggles. That, combined with a Liverpool accent made him seem like the fast Beatle. Irresistible. (He may well be married and kidded. Maybe even gay. That is so not the point.)
As it turns out, I had written a draft of a new Finishing Kick column on the plane to New York. It might read as being about him. It might read that way because, in some ways, it is about him. And obviously, of course, it is not, since we met after I wrote it.
The next morning, hung over from good wine and Ambien, I had to be at Central Park West at 6 a.m. to board the bus to Staten Island. I wore my “charity” bracelet with pride. Not only would it get me into the MMRF tent and allow me to avoid the hoi polloi, but it made me feel like I was running for something bigger than my small pathetic self; I accidentally raised a thousand bucks for the foundation by mentioning it to a wealthy friend.
(I realize that by coming out as a “charity runner” it means I probably shouldn’t be writing for Running Times. For the RT gang “charity runners” are the human instantiation of a handful of deadly sins.)
I bumped into Alvin, the geeky doctor. We sat together on the bus, and then wandered through soggy, muddy Fort Wadsworth Park, looking for coffee and talking about running, life and death. I’d dread all that waiting around time before the race. I needn’t have. I could not have been in better company.
I would have been happy to run the whole thing with him, but we were in different start groups. Since the marathon is so big, NYC has switched to a “wave start,” sending three groups of the 43,000 runners off in twenty minute intervals. It was, however, still crowded the whole way.
In the corral at the start, I looked down and saw an IPod Shuffle at my feet. I picked it up and looked around.
A woman next to me said, “Whoever lost it isn’t going to find it. Just take it.”
It was another one of those weird gifts that sometimes fall from heaven—or the pockets of careless runners. I put it on and listened to music I would have chosen myself. [NB:There is a photo of me in the New York Times on the photo blog about the marathon, holding this IPod and not quite believing that we're about to start running. This is not how I wanted to make my NY Times debut.]
Unlike many, I am not fueled in races by cheering throngs. One of my least favorite things about the NYC marathon is how noisy it is.
Not this year. I heard nothing but Katrina and the Waves, the Bangles, Bruce Springsteen, and other music selected by someone who was likely in college when I was.
Two days of being on my feet in the Expo, walking miles around the City to get where I needed to go, and three nights of drinking does not make running a marathon any easier, even if you’ve done 50 or so. I told people, when asked, that I would run somewhere between 3:40 and 4:15. If I felt like it, I’d stop for Ben and Jerry’s. I didn’t give a hoot about my time. Because here’s the thing: I was responsible for no one. As much as I love pacing, right now, I love even more not pacing. Am I’m still getting free trips and comped entries to marathons. So. Much. Better.
I didn’t push myself even a little bit. I am suffering from the lingering effects of what was likely a mild case of pig flu (acquired when I was in San Francisco the day before the Nike Women’s Marathon), and I didn’t want to make myself sicker. I cruised. I zoned out. I zoned in: I wrote an angry email to a friend that I will never send. I worked on my columns. I daydreamed about spending December on a Thai beach.
This was the first marathon in a long time where I was anonymous. At the Spokane marathon, three weeks before, I was recognized by a couple of people who had either read my stuff or seen me somewhere. In San Francisco, I was running with a bunch of people I either knew or had just met.
Some folks recognized me at the NYC Expo, and even at the Myeloma reception, the first people to come up to me after my talk were a mother-daughter pair who said that I was their hero; they had both read my admissions book when the daughter was in high school and now she was about to graduate from Duke. You never know who knows who you are until they tell you. It’s kind of fun, but also weird and a little scary at times. But it’s unseemly to complain about answered prayers; I have sought publication eagerly, and can’t be surprised when people more observant than I (who isn’t?) notice.
But as is appropriate for New York City, at this marathon I was both surrounded and crowded by people and invisible and alone. It was restful in an odd way. And I couldn’t pay close attention to my time because my watch was giving me fits.
Now, as I have documented in print, I love my watch. Recently it has been suffering from problems, both internal and external. I did not want to replace it. This is the one that I want. My one true love, my beloved.
The infinitely-connected and well-loved Jim Gerweck told me that his friend Matti from Polar might be able to help me out, so at the Expo, I trotted over to their booth and asked for him.
Matti looked at it, I told him the issues, and he said: Easy.
Just like that, my beloved was restored. It no longer takes me fifteen minutes to get it on and off (new band). The button to turn on the backlight is no longer naked. The Polar reps showed me how to fix it so the lap times were big and the elapsed time small.
Matti fixed up the beloved and, like a true and narcisstic dork, I gave him a copy of my book, pointing out the chapter called “The Watch,” thinking that somehow he would care.
Yes, my beloved was back, but some setting had changed, and the little bastard kept saying “Check Sensor.” Screw you, I said, every time it said “Check Sensor.” I would fiddle with it and mess up the lap time. I’d get all confused and had no idea how fast (or slow) I was running.
True, I had my even-bigger Garmin on my other wrist, but I couldn’t tell, mile to mile, what pace I was on. I kept telling myself (and now you) that I didn’t care. And that’s mostly true. But I did want to know. I fetishize information.
I shivered my way through the finish in 3:45, respectable enough for a woman my age who’s recently done a bunch of running and traveling and being sick, shuffled to the UPS truck with my drop bag, put back on the thrift store sweats that I did not discard at the start, and walked two blocks west. On Broadway and 80th you’d never know that one of the world’s biggest races was finishing up just then in Central Park. It was business as usual. I got a cab easily and went back to the hotel.
After a shower, a successful shopping trip to Daffy’s (“Clothing Bargains for Millionaires”), and a gyro from a hot Greek street vendor in Herald Square, I went back to the room and settled in to read student work and whimper to myself.
Then, as I always do after a race, I called Mike.
He’d gone away for the weekend, so I hadn’t talked to him in a few days. This is unusual. Usually we talk most every day. Our romantic relationship ended more than a dozen years ago; Mike is the bestest of my best friends, the top of the heap, the one I tell it to. He filled me in on his trip and said that the woman he’s dating had made a cake for him.
Oh shit.
Oh double, triple, super shit.
Mike’s birthday is on Halloween. It’s impossible to forget. I managed not only to forget to call Mike on his birthday, I forgot about it altogether. Didn’t think about what to get him, didn’t even remember it was coming up. Gone baby, gone.
October has been a month I’ve needed to muscle through. Granted, everything I’ve done has been good and fun and productive—amazing, really. But I’ve been home three days a week for too many weeks. That’s not enough.
I am a homebody. I need lots of time alone. Between preparing for my regular classes, teaching at the state prison, working with my thesis advisees, going to meetings, meeting my writing deadlines, and dating a new guy, I have neglected to be a good friend to the people I care most about.
Mike said he understood and I know that he did. But still.
In November I’m going nowhere. Don’t invite me to visit you; I won’t come. Not in November.
I’m staying at home and recovering, catching up and resting up—at least until I take off for Asia for December.
As bad as things have been this year, I have a good and rich and full life. I know that, though sometimes I forget, just as I sometimes (once—never again) I can forget my best friend’s birthday.
