Dear recalcitrant portrait subject…

Do not bore me with your protestations. I have heard them all before. Yes I know Karl Lagerfeld photographed you recently and better, barely containing his joy behind those dark sunglasses and tight white collar. Ryan McGinley similarly found the pale of your flesh fetching as you tumbled out of your jeans in the soft desert night aglow with sparklers, a bitten peach spilling juice down your pimply chin.

And you D_____ , never do candids I understand, who would want to see your ample jowels mid-sentence frag-one eye drifting off to points unrelated to the other-

I agree wholeheartedly H____, posing for pictures is emphatically not art- i really don’t know what all those other artists might have been thinking, wasting their time like that when all along YOU had the answer-OH!-YOU are not comfortable, we must do whatever we can to make YOU comfortable, sedate even, we could go for tranquillized, I mean, tranquil- don’t worry, all that preparartion and equipment I brought with the intention of doing my very best, that will go unused in my back pocket, we will go with your best idea, I am sure after seeing yourself so, so many times and from so many angles, never from below of course, (you know who you are) that you really have exhausted all possibilities, thoroughly, and have calculated the best pictures come at an angle of 36 degrees with the north light in a month that contains an “r”.

And you are not interesting enough- we all see that now, something you suffered your whole life I expect, nobly, and I know you never look good in pictures, not a one, narcissism does do that to a person.

I concur, photography is the most cruel thing one human being can inflict upon another, perhaps second only to the indignities one might suffer in a foreign prison. I promise I will make this brief, your time is money isn’t it, not like my time which is spent like a found penny, and no, I don’t need to take so many just to get one-the true artist needs but one master stroke of the pen or brush, one fragile sheet of film, one hand coated glass plate sweated over mercury fumes by hand, with which to capture all that is so very

human,
famous,
noble,
beautiful,
glamourous,
witty,
urbane,
rebellious,
grisled or gamine about YOU.

Because this portrait is nothing if not about YOU, there is no one else in the room is there? That Mona Lisa really tells us a lot about Mona doesn’t it? I really don’t know why she agreed to that picture, definitely was dealing with some weight issues and depression, could this poor chap not come back at a more opportune moment, perhaps when I’d had a little more sun, these northern Italian winters are brutal on a woman’s skin after all.

I guess it is the paycheque, these Photographers all make a lot of money don’t they, another face in the rogues gallery, another payday, dining out as Jennifer Aniston likes to say, on my fair countenance.

Dear recalcitrant portrait subject, please indulge me.

Your humble servant,

Robert.

Officially 3:38:33. 7370/43741 total (top 17%). 6252/28354 of men (top 22%). 1379/5551 men age 40-44 (top 25%-the most popular demographic).

I spanked that little pansy Ed Norton (3:48:01) scrubbed Dr. Greene (Anthony Edwards, 4:08:45) and left Alanis to take the jagged little pill (4:28:45)…

After all that emotion of the last post you are probably wondering what the hell I have to complain about. A personal best (first marathon was 3:49:10) on one of the most difficult courses there is. Is it not enough to take 11 minutes off in 6 months?

If I take the “extra” time off the last six miles, assuming I could have at least maintained 8:00/mile, I add up 7:20- leaving 3:31:13. Still not sub 3:30:00. And probably more agonizing to have missed by a minute-thirteen. So how does this happen, how do the wheels fall off by almost eight minutes?

If you look at the 5K splits and their average minute per miles it breaks down like this:

5 Kilometers Time: 00:23:41.00 Pace/mile: 7:36

10 Kilometers Time: 00:47:32.00 Pace/mile: 7:39- for reference my PB on 10K is 47:45…

15 Kilometers Time: 01:11:39.00 Pace/mile: 7:41

20 Kilometers Time: 01:38:22.00 Pace/mile: 7:54

Half-Marathon Time: 01:43:50.00 Pace/mile: 7:55- for reference my PB on this is 1:40:33

25 Kilometers Time: 02:03:59.00 Pace/mile: 7:58.

30 Kilometers Time: 02:29:27.00 Pace/mile: 8:01

20 miles 8:47

21 miles 8:47

35 Kilometers Time: 02:57:06.00 Pace/mile: 8:08

22 miles 8:38

23 miles 8:56

24 miles 9:24

40 Kilometers Time: 03:26:06.00 Pace/mile: 8:17

25 miles 9:45

26 miles 9:03

Finish Time: 03:38:33.00 Pace/mile: 8:20

The 5K splits tell a gradual story, the mile splits tell the gory story, wheels coming off pretty quick in the last 10K. And look at those early splits, I have a new 10K record! Set during the Marathon! You are not supposed to do that! Clearly there was nothing left in the tank after 20 miles, and those early miles are responsible.

I think 3:30:00 was probably not a possibility. There was no margin for the course or the unexpected. And the unexpected in this case was the course, I did not expect to be so unfocused and running like a scared deer. Oh Bambi!

Looking at those final mile splits I know how bad I was feeling, but I see that I was moving, and that I had a little surge even in the final mile. It certainly did not feel that way. I can accept that this was the best that I could do on that day, and that it reflects the training I put in and the experience level that I (don’t) have. Sure, I could have run a more balanced race and felt better in those final miles, I doubt however that the time would have differed by more than four or five minutes. But everything they say about banking time early and giving it back double is true. I was ahead almost 4 minutes by the half and gave it all back and then some by the end.

In terms of training I really focused on speed this time, and next time I will focus a lot more on marathon pace runs or progression runs, some going past 20 miles or past 3 hours. The last 30 minutes of the race is really “the race” and I need to experience running more on heavily fatigued legs.

Next time? Guess I am not that upset.

Finally something to add about Team for Kids: They came through Big Time in this race: the volunteers and organizers are all amazing, the buses ran smoothly, they did their best to shepherd us through the start on Staten Island. And at the finish, they were there with people to help you to Cherry Hill, they bring your baggage and a beverage to you and give you a place to rest and collect yourself. At that point, they were like sweet sweet beer angels, minus the beer:) I do not want to think about having to negotiate the baggage line and mile long walk from the finish line. We were treated like Rock Stars and they really deserve a lot of thanks for that. If you have googled this to get info for next year, run don’t walk to sign up for TFK, they really have your back.

This is my medal, there are many like it but this one is mine…

Sorry that may be a little creepy to associate a marathon trophy with a rifle but this race was all heart and no head.

Early on it was shock and awe though.

We are at the head of 10,000, squeezed between double decker busses topped with young children. In the distance ahead, through the trees is visible a bridge leading up with the first wave departing. You see it on TV but it is different when you are next. They are small and colourful and rustling uphill like the back of the leaves in a storm wind. I point this out and the woman standing next to me is thrilled, she leans over and touches my arm, we feel connected in the two minutes we have been standing in the corral. We wish each other well, she is a triathlete but running is not her best sport. She expects to finish in a little over four hours. The canon goes off, the race starts, and we are instantly dissolved into the flow and she is gone.

You don’t notice the uphill when it comes, although others are already breathing heavily. Some jump up on the divider to take pictures of the runners and Manhattan in the distance. Coming off the bridge there are about three families waiting right there, a small cheering section. You could be at any suburban off-ramp, a car could be pulled over to change a flat, and it would be the same folks, waiting by the side of the road.

“Go NYPD!” The guy is not actually NYPD, but his friend his, so he joined the escort and got a t-shirt, which is why he is getting the shout-outs. From the looks of him however he is not a first-responder. He is actually a podiatrist from Florida. Greying, 45-49, if he was NYPD he would have been retired by now, unless he was a captain or a detective. He doesn’t have the build of a police officer, but this goes unnoticed. He is trying to qualify for Boston, needs a 3:30 to get there, which is why I know his age range. We run together for five or six miles. At about mile five he spots his girlfriend off the side and runs to her, he says, “I am running with Robert!” I slow down a little, we are very ahead on time and am starting to get worried that I am not hitting my goal pace.

For some reason I really don’t know what to do, I cannot stop checking the sides of the road to see if I know anyone. I want to focus and just run but the spectacle is too engaging, too distracting. When we go past Sixteenth Street I tell NYPD, this is my street, and he shouts to the crowd- “he lives here! he lives here! this is Robert’s neighbourhood!”  It is funny and warm. Even though we are going too fast I continue on, I think there may be some folks at Union Street I know, I can peel off there. I say to NYPD, “if I clock another 7:45 I am going to have to dial this back-”. Union Street comes and goes and I cannot find anyone, NYPD goes ahead, I let it be.  He is no longer running with Robert. I didn’t get his bib number so I don’t know if he bq’d or not. Three minutes ahead of schedule and growing, still not hitting the splits. I am running like it is a half marathon.

I have run seven hundred miles in training, and never gotten a blister. For some cosmic reason, I am getting a blister. It is on the top of the second toe on the left side, the one with the black toenail from the first marathon, since healed perfectly. This little piggy. But the sock, the one I hand picked out of a dozen as being the newest and softest is rubbing a bare patch. Either I stop and deal with it or figure it will eventually go numb. I retie my shoelaces twice in mile eleven, but it is not working. I hit the med tent at mile twelve and ask for some vaseline. There are no emergencies here or traumas, just people like me with blisters. Time is passing but I am so much ahead I think it will not matter. There is no blister, just an abrasion. It makes no sense. The aid worker takes my bib number and ailment. Statistics? Accountability.

Finally the volume of the course ebbs a little through the middle miles leading up to the Queensboro Bridge. I do an internal check and figure I am at about 80% considering. I am running marathon pace finally and figure the uphill on the bridge and the downhill will all even out. I find some friends at mile 14, still optimistic, still unaware. I have no idea what I said but I know I was here, there is a picture-I am beatifically happy. All this leads up to the Queensboro Bridge.

A first sign of trouble, I see some course marshals coming my way, picking their way through the stream, someone behind me is stopped, bent over, another person holding them up. I know I am not 80% anymore. The mile uphill and crosswind has shown me that my achilles is not happy any more, it is sore, beginning to complain, to stiffen, and compensating is my left quadriceps, slowly getting more beat with each landing. The next mile is all downhill, will make hamburger out of my thigh, another sharp turn at the bottom, gingerly on the achilles, they put hay bales on all the sharp turns as if a runner could be going so fast as to miss the turn and need something soft to crash into.  The beginning of the mob noise coming up from the street below. This is Manhattan and the last ten miles.

First Avenue seems as wide as it is long when there are no parked cars on either side.  I may have checked my mile splits here but it was beginning not to matter, I was drawing inward, conserving, doubting, getting scared. I knew exactly how far it was to go, the ten miles was not something impossible, a routine rest day run. I tried to tell myself, it was work to be done, no more no less.

We run past a large grey facade, Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital. I look right and they have wheeled out two children, still in hospital beds. They are very young, a full battery of I.V’s and monitors is behind them, they are pale and I imagine bald from Chemotherapy, wrapped under blankets to keep them warm. They are here to see the marathon. All this stuff about how running a marathon changes you, when it is only the fact that you are living that matters. If change was what comes from running 26.2 miles then these kids would not be in beds. How does one regard another’s suffering? Who was here for whom?

The Poland Spring Hydration Zone at mile 17 distributes green sponges-on a hot day a cool sponge might be a good idea. Under grey skies it looks like a plague of toads has recently fallen, thousands of dark green sponges lie flat on the street. You would not want to step on a toad and turn an ankle.  In the fluid stations the spilled gatorade forms a slick glue that adheres to your shoe for several dozen yards after, and each step skitches as you peel your foot from the road.

Towards the Bronx the noise abates and the crowd diminishes, getting up and down the bridges is about all I have left now. I ask someone what the real time is and they give me the time 11:45am, but they have forgotten to set their clocks ahead-it is 12:45 and this means I have actually hit my goal time for twenty miles more or less. But I know there is no way I can maintain pace for the rest of the race. I am going landmark to landmark, block to block. Finally we are at 139th Street in the Bronx and I know that it is a countdown now to 90th Street and Engineers Gate where we enter the Park. I cannot or neglect to do the subtraction and arrive at 49 as the difference.

In Harlem a church choir and small band are playing something uplifting, another man and a piano dealing the STAX tracks. After all the volume of the race course so far, these sounds are incredibly soothing and mellowing and I pass through them and them through me to 125th Street and then Marcus Garvey Park. More children are out to greet us, youth from the TFK programs. I have nothing to pass back as I am saving it all for the hill up Fifth Avenue to come shortly.

Then I start the mantras. Engineers Gate. Engineers Gate. Engineers Gate. Whatever I can do to dissociate from my physical state. I have few memories of this section, there are spectators but I don’t see them, all the way up to 90th Street. Waiting for the mirage of Frank Lloyd Wright’s white beehive to appear.

Engineers Gate. More hay bales. Where do you get hay in New York? I try to feel like I have achieved something by getting here, that it is all as the saying goes, downhill from here. Except when it is uphill. Breaking the Park down into blocks does not work. It is just winding green turning turning on itself. For a long while I hear over and over “Crazy Daisy!” “Crazy Daisy!” Someone near me has written this on their jersey. I do not look around to see who it is. It takes me a while to associate this, crazy Daisy is the nickname of a little girl I know in Omaha, who not incidentally has endured more in her short time living on this earth than anyone might want to endure, a double transplant, nearly a year in NeoNatal intensive care. At least a dozen operations. How is it that I hear this, right now, here? It is all bizarrely about living, this marathon.

We roll downhill in mile 25 and this is about as much as my leg muscles can take, my left side is twanging like a banjo string, I have never felt this before, and then a partial cramp, and then a real cramp, my left side freezes up in that spasm where you don’t know if you should straighten it or bend it or what- I haul off to the left side of the road, I have no idea what I looked like. A lady with a British accent leans over the cyclone fencing and says, “well you cahn’t stop naw cahn you then? Gota t’keep gowin’…” and she is perversely right, I am startled by her clarity. Just what are you going to do now? So I put weight on it not knowing what is functional and what is not and manage to generate a stride and then another.

The last mile and two-tenths was complete focus on putting one foot in front of another. People around me who are having a different day are pumping their arms and high-fiving the crowd along Central Park South. I really don’t like them and imagine they are all from France or Spain or Portugal and probably enjoy shopping in New York but think America is full of stupid fat people. I stay dead center and aim for the statue of Columbus. He had the right idea. It is a washing machine of emotions, I feel I have so badly bungled the race, so obviously ignored the simple facts of going slow early, I cannot believe this is how I am going to get across the finish line. All heart and no head. This is not my way. I lead everything with my head, the heart has no place in rational matters. And if it is to be heart, it is all triumphant rock guitars and explosions and drum solos. It is not- this-? My first New York City Marathon, that I have watched for thirteen years from the sidelines, have said to myself as we all do, “I’d like to do that one day…” and now I am a mile from finishing, have not a jot of energy left to jubilate, ululate, do the robot, a funky break, muster any sense of triumph-it is just going to get done-

Making the turn to Columbus Circle we bottleneck into the Park, someone is shouting my name over and over and over and I realize who it is-another picture tk- yes I look happy, it breaks me out of this tunnel, and now the last 800 meters. I remember from mile repeats the time 3 minutes 30 seconds, I have at least that and more to go. Remember to raise your arms and look up for Brightroom to take your picture, the clock is there, 3 hours 51 minutes, less the offset which was around 16 minutes means I am still under 3:40 at least, I hope it is not that close because I am not capable of sprinting to close a few seconds gap if it is. Across the mats and it is done. Someone reaches out from behind me and congratulates me-the man at the running shoe store-was I faster than him? I think I squeezed his hand very hard, there was just so much I could not express at that moment. Someone asks me if I need an escort, no, I am fine, really, barely holding it in, you pass the medals, I pick a very young hispanic lad because no one seems to be picking him, he places the medal over my head, I bend down low, I thank him, I hope I thanked him. I pose for a photograph, you could tell I think that I had been weeping, but I stand there, just stand, this is it. I have no idea what that looks like, defiance, sadness, passing through sadness. Next they give you the silver heat sheet and a sticker to keep it on in case you can’t. I pull it up over the bridge of my nose to hide and let the rest out.

If all this sounds like a lot of emotional handwringing it is because it is, because you don’t always know what to make of things when you make them. But this is what it was as I did it. So much different from the first, I think they are all probably very different, all like different lives even, no two the same, all flawed, all unique, all unexpected. I will tie it up in a brighter bow next post.