Volume 5, Issue 41: 46 Long
"I got a list of people as long as my arm I wouldn't want cloned."
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The primary thing you learn about training for a marathon is that training for a marathon makes you even more of an insufferable bore than you were in the first place.
Rudy Giuliani, before he morphed into the dripping-hair-dye lunatic monstrosity that he has become, was famously mocked by then-about-to-fail-Presidential-candidate Joe Biden, who said, “there's only three things he needs to make a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11.” That is what it is like training for a marathon. Every conversation you have, with anyone, is basically a noun, a verb and your marathon training. It is the first thing on your mind at any given moment. Everything else in the world is just a background subplot. It’s all I can talk about.
I apologize: It is now your turn to have all this spoken into the side of your head.
I had never planned on running a marathon. I started running 13 years ago, when my wife became pregnant with the person who will become a teenager next month. I was still a smoker back then, and I thought I’d try to replace a terrible habit with a healthy one. According to my Runkeeper app, I’ve run 16,314 miles since—I’m 8,600 away from running a lap around the earth—and when I moved to Georgia in 2013, I tried my first half-marathon, a completely miserable experience I vowed never to repeat.
But I kept going. Running became a habit—a tic, really. Eventually I turned that corner you turn when you run long enough, when you run so often that when there’s a day you don’t run, it feels like something is wrong, like you forgot something important, or like part of you itches but you can’t quite reach it. We all settle into our patterns as we get older, which is less about falling into a pattern and more about becoming comfortable with who we really are—nestling into that ridge we’d always been looking for, whether we realized it or not. Running has become my ridge to nestle into: It clears my mind, it calms my brain, it prepares me for whatever I might be lying in wait for me. It has become, in many ways, the lens through I experience the world.
I’ve now run more than a dozen half-marathons, and I’ve gotten comfortable enough with them that I don’t need to do any special training leading up to one anymore; just give me a good night’s sleep and a banana and I’m ready to go. But none of it led to any strong desire to run a full marathon. As much as I enjoyed running my half marathons, there had never been a time that I finished one when I thought, “hey, let’s do that again.” 13.1 miles was plenty.
But then, last January, I ran the Classic City Half Marathon here in Athens, and I felt so unusually strong that day I put up the best time I’d ever ran, by far. I posted that time to social media, like any obnoxious runner worth his salt would do. One of the people who follow me on Instagram turned out to be the press relations person for the New York Marathon, who reached out to let me know the NYC Marathon set aside 10 slots for media people every year, and that if I were interested in writing about the race for New York, maybe I might want one. It is one thing to consider running a marathon; it is another to be invited to run in the New York City Marathon, a race that people, regular marathon runners, work years trying to get into. An invite to participate in that marathon was too much to say no to. How do you turn down the NYC Marathon?
So I accepted. And that has been my life since.
The best piece of advice about marathon training came from someone I asked years ago about the experience, a piece of advice so persuasive that it nearly turned me off from trying one in the first place. “So you know how when you run a half-marathon, when it’s over, everyone tells you good job, how proud they are of you, maybe buys you a beer?” he said. “Well, when you’re training for a marathon, there’s going to be a day where you get up before the sun rises, run 16 miles, three miles longer than a half marathon, and when you are done, no one will give a shit. You’ll just go back to work like nothing happened.” Now that I am deep into this process—tomorrow, three weeks out from the marathon, is my 18-mile run—I can confirm this is exactly what it’s like. Tomorrow, I will wake up at 5 a.m., run 18 freaking miles, then go back to tape a podcast and write about baseball and make the kids go to bed early for school on Monday like it’s every other Sunday. Then I will do it again the next weekend. Next week it’ll be 20 miles.
It’s an all-encompassing process, and it has instilled habits in me that I suspect will be more difficult to shake long-term than I realize. Part of me wonders if, when I look back at this months-long training period, it will become clear to me that this was the specific time span when I pivoted fully into being an elderly man. I’ve had to skip out on all the fun things I usually do in the fall. I’m so annoyingly healthy right now. I’m drinking less. I’m eating better. I’m going to sleep so early. I have caught myself taking naps! I do not even recognize this person. I have been the most boring person at the tailgate for weeks now. Is this who I’m going to be moving forward? I find myself fantasizing about November, when all this is over, of going on wild benders, of staying up all night, of steering into slothful indulgence. But I worry I will never be able to go back. I worry I am now forever changed.
One of the primary appeals to running this particular race was its date: Sunday, November 3. That is, of course, two days before Election Day. I thought having something else to obsess over would provide a distraction, giving me something else to focus on—to pour my anxiety into. In practice, the two events have simply compounded each other. Every time I read something about the election, I think about the marathon; every time my long run gets a little longer and we inch a little closer, I think about how close we are to the election. It has turned Thanksgiving into an absurdist promised land, a time when, once and for all, this will at last be over. (Though, it should be noted, if the election goes the wrong way, we’ll find ourselves nostalgic for this period, you watch.) Training for a marathon focuses the mind, but it may focus it too much. I now understand why athletes seem to have no idea what else is happening in the outside world. How much attention can you pay to global affairs when everything hurts all the time … and you have another game tomorrow?
The race itself almost seems manageable.
Up through Brooklyn, my old neighborhood, will be fun: Maybe some old friends will come out and say hi. My family is flying out for support; they’re apparently going to greet me on the other side of the Queensboro Bridge, around Mile 16, I’ll definitely need it by that point. And once you get into Manhattan, sheesh, then you’re just watching the street numbers go down until you get to Central Park, the finish. I can surely do that, right? At the 18 mile mark of the marathon, I’ll have thousands of New Yorkers yelling for me as I stroll up Second Avenue. At the 18 mile mark during training tomorrow, I’ll be running up the same brutal hill by the gas station for the fifth time that morning. Surely the marathon will be easier than that, right? Right? Right?
The goal of a marathon, it seems, is not to enjoy it, or even take in the experience while it’s happening. The goal is not to run a marathon; the goal is to have run a marathon. To have it overwith—to say you have done it and then not do it again. I find myself looking forward more and more, when it’s over, to getting back to normal, even as it occurs to me, as it gets closer, that “normal” is an illusion—I’ll just be different when it’s over, after I’ve gone through it and, hopefully, survived it. Which, come to think of it, also makes it feel a little bit like the election.
In three weeks, I will send this newsletter to you from New York City, and then I will head to the Javits Center to pick up my race packet and my bib and commiserate with all the other nervous people. Then I will go back to my hotel room, and I will try to go to sleep at 6 p.m., and I will likely fail, and then it will be 5 a.m. and it will be time to make my way to the bus that will take me to Staten Island for the start of the race, and then we will begin, and I will be going, and you can track me, and hopefully I will survive it, and then it will be over. Will I be able to get back to my life? Will I be able to go back to normal then? And most important: Will I shut up about it? I sure hope so.
Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.
The Athletes Are Being a Lot Quieter This Election Season, New York. Couldn’t help but notice!
The Impossibility of Portraying Donald Trump, The Washington Post. Tied to The Apprentice, and featuring all sorts of Brendan Gleeson love.
Your Saturday Postseason Preview, MLB.com. Let’s rank the best six Quentin Tarantino movies. I’ll start! No. 1: Inglorious Basterds
Your Friday Postseason Preview, MLB.com. No. 2: Jackie Brown.
Your Thursday Postseason Preview, MLB.com. No. 3: Pulp Fiction.
Your Wednesday Postseason Preview, MLB.com. No. 4: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood …
Your Tuesday Postseason Preview, MLB.com. No. 5: Reservoir Dogs.
Your Monday Postseason Preview, MLB.com. No. 6: Death Proof. If we’re still counting down here, I’d go: No. 7: Kill Bill Vol. 1; No. 8: Kill Bill, Vol 2; No. 9: Django Unchained. No. 10: The Hateful Eight.
PODCASTS
Grierson & Leitch, we reviewed “Joker: Folie a Deux,” “Will and Harper” and “The Dead.”
Waitin’ Since Last Saturday, we recapped the Auburn game and previewed the Mississippi State game.
Morning Lineup, I did Monday and Wednesday morning’s shows.
Seeing Red, no show this week.
LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK
“I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is,” Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic. It is difficult to overstate how scary and dispiriting hurricane disinformation has become. Ominous signs everywhere. Warzel strikes me as the appropriate level of panicked here.
ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!
This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers! (I’m sorry I’m so behind on these. But I am starting to catch up!)
Write me at:
Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603
CURRENTLY LISTENING TO
“Some Might Say,” Oasis. [Jay Leno voice] Lots of Oasis in the news these days, have you heard about this? [end Jay Leno voice] I go through Oasis jags every year or so, and I’m in one right now. I think I like their straightforward rock songs the most.
Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.
Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.
Had a birthday dinner with a couple of William Bryan Leitches this week.
Have a great weekend, all. Go Illini.
Best,
Will
Good luck with the rest of your training! I have a similar relationship with running and have run Chicago 3 times. Awesome experience. I bet you’ll want to do it again!
I’m no psychologist, but I do have internet access 😁, so I’ll surmise that you enjoy running because your Mom runs. My late father was, simply put, an athlete. He grew up playing everything, played football and rowed in high school and college, played handball until his knees (decimated playing football) would no longer tolerate it, and then played golf as long as he could. He and a group of buddies would play handball at lunch for years and years, and I think the thrill of competing - against others and himself - pushed him to keep doing SOMETHING as long as he lived.
I started doing CrossFit nine years ago when I was looking for an outlet of some sort. I had just moved into the city after what your Human Resources Department calls “a major life event.” And I think of how much my Dad would have loved CrossFit, if it had existed when he was alive. I want to keep doing it as long as I’m able to, to stay as fit as I can, sure, but to honor my Dad and his unending desire to challenge himself.
Congratulations in advance for your first marathon! You may choose to do more, or you may not. But you’ll always share that bond with your Mom, and you’ll remember that and the races you’ve run with her for the rest of your miles on this planet.