Once upon a time, I stood at the full-wall kitchen window in my West Village office building and watched two planes crash into towers a mile downtown. I watched debris fall and gradually realized that it was not all pieces of plane and glass. I watched those towers pancake to the ground, the vision painfully surreal to process.
I walked the eighty blocks back to my apartment, tuned the radio to NPR, and slumped down onto the kitchen floor. An hour later, unable to sit with my grief, I threw on my sneakers and ran. Uptown and downtown, I would have looped the bridges had they not been closed. I couldn’t stop running; I needed to feel my heart beat. And with every beat, I wondered how many other hearts had stopped.
Though I had always enjoyed jogging, September 11th marked a turning point. That evening, I ran fueled by unbearable sadness and fear. I ran as a form of processing, if that was even possible on that day. The simplicity of one foot, two foot, the cadence, the rhythm of the blood pumping from heart to lungs to brain – it all provided order in the chaos of my thoughts. The only good that ever came out of that Tuesday was that I learned how to use running as a tool. It would become vital. There were moments when I felt like running was my only true friend. It was a life raft at first, then a hot air balloon of joy.
I began running races in 2002. New York Road Runners was much simpler then – none of this 10,000 people in waves with a lottery system that you have to enter on the dot as soon as it opens. There were mornings when I would just show up at the race and purchase a bib on the spot. Races were $25-40, not $100. You got a regular old t-shirt that fit like a shirt. I didn’t run with music because portable CD players skipped (the iPod did release that year, and I bought one, but it was too heavy to take out for long runs).
Races brought me closer to people. I met several friends through running and partnered with a bestie for many of them – a rare occurrence for my introverted self. It also brought me closer to my city. I had already walked every block in Manhattan. Now I ran them. I moved to Brooklyn that year and ran all of North and South Brooklyn. I discovered bridge runs. I marveled at the beauty of my home. I ran at 4 am and felt the run rise and hug the streets with a glow that never failed to lift the heart.
My first long race was the Manhattan Half, a route that has to be one of the most boring of all time – two laps around Central Park. Despite the mind-numbing circuit, I loved running 13.1 miles. It felt like the perfect length. That spring I decided to try out the Brooklyn Half, which at the time began in Coney Island and ended in Prospect Park – a route I think is way better than the reverse they have going now, but that might have been because it ended just a few blocks from my apartment.
The race was in March back then. There weren’t that many people willing to hump down to Coney Island that early on a freezing cold Saturday in March. The boardwalk was an icy mess. All of that made it super fun. It was a challenging run, but I finished grinning. I decided to run it every year.
Then came 2003. I was ready. I made my way down to Coney Island, threw my baggage on a bus, and began the race. I flew. At that time I was a solid 8:10 for medium-length races, 8:30 if I was taking my time. I think I pushed a sub-8 for the first ten miles, then hit Prospect Park and could feel my blood sugar completely drop. I slowed, completed half the lap, and then, about a half mile from the finish, my body simply said NO.
It was not a gentle no. It was a refusal. I paused on the side of the road. A man ran by and called out to me, “You can do it! Just walk if you need to!” But my body and mind had already quit, and I didn’t feel bad about it. I said to myself, “Fuck this shit, I’m getting a bagel,” and walked off the course. Bagel Delight was en route home. I bought a warm, doughy everything, curled up on my couch with Uncle Irving the cat, and took a nap.
I went on to run two NYC marathons and more races than I can count. I took a break when pregnant with my first child – I was so neurotic about jostling him that I stopped exercising altogether, which I am sure contributed to the high blood pressure and eventual induction. I ran all the way through to 37 weeks in my second pregnancy. I was that huge pregnant lady on the Y treadmill each morning, wondering if Emmett was just going to drop out mid-stride. I got back on the road six weeks after his birth and continued running after we moved to the suburbs.
I ran pretty steadily until life got complicated three years ago. Someone yelled at me for running on the street at 5 am during the early stages of the pandemic. I was masked and in the middle of the road. A woman screamed from her front door, “You are so fucking selfish.” I’d like to say that I let it roll off, but I didn’t. I crawled into an emotional hole.
Then things with Sid took a nosedive, and my mental whatnots slid into an abyss of darkness, and I could barely get up and brush my teeth in the morning, let alone run a few miles. I was lucky if I made it to the end of the day without feeling like I was going to pass out from exhaustion.
Most people understand the shame and helplessness that comes with being unable to access a lifeline. I spent a lot of time thinking, “All you need are legs and you can run. I haven’t lost my legs.” But running isn’t that simple. You can force yourself, but if your heart and mind aren’t in it, it feels like torture. I had enough emotional torture going on. So I stopped. I stopped, and it was like stepping off a diving board into the darkest, deepest body of water, and I couldn’t find the surface, and most of the time I was willing myself to drown.
About a month ago, I woke up, and some sort of automaticity kicked in. I found myself lacing up my running shoes without thinking. I stepped out into the darkness of morning and just ran. No smartwatch. No lights. I wasn’t even wearing running tights – just my pajama leggings (and a shirt, of course).
Even without timing it, I knew that I was moving embarrassingly slow. My heart rate was way too high. I was only able to complete two miles. But I found a rhythm. And, most importantly, I was happy. Everything came back to me – the feeling of flying, the flood of joy. “I want that,” I thought. “I want that happiness again.”
Late one night, I logged onto NYRR and entered my name for the Brooklyn Half. It’s on a lottery system now, so I assumed it was a done no-deal, but then I received this on Wednesday.
I considered pulling out of the race, but something wouldn’t let me click on the link. I shared the info with my husband and heard his “Okay…” sigh, which meant “here we go again.” I retrieved a photo he took of me in 2004 at mile twenty of the NYC Marathon, grinning and happy as a clam (to be twenty-six again!), and hung it on the refrigerator next to my training plan. Then, as I cleaned out my closet, I found my oldest and most treasured article of clothing: the 2003 Brooklyn Half long-sleeved shirt.
After recovering from the realization that 2003 was twenty-one years ago, I ran my fingers over the shirt and remembered the day when I DNF-ed in exchange for a nice, warm Brooklyn bagel. I recalled the feeling of caring but not caring, the lightness of running for fun, and being kind to myself when I knew I was done. It reminded me of how unkind I’ve been to myself for the past three years. And then I smiled.
I’m going to run this race. It will be slow and probably painful, and I’m sure I will walk a bit. But I will be grinning when I finish, and there will be a warm Bagel Delight bagel waiting for me in Park Slope afterward, just for kicks.
object of memory 
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