The Execution Of All Things

I’ve got no middle ground, I’ve got no medium, I’ve got no 5 out of 10.  I don’t know where you get these things. I’m either/or, on/off, one or the other, I am always and completely me.

I love that, except for when I hate it. There is no middle ground there, you get?

Racing yesterday in Queens. Starting 10 minutes late, starting with nobody to race but my friend E, and a few other stragglers. It doesn’t matter, the clock starts at 0 anyway. Net time. We’re off.

And we’re fast, we’re fast from 10 minutes behind, and pretty soon we’re fast from 6 ½ months ago from before I fell down a hill and it was all I could do to limp for the few days from the bottom of the hill to the marathon, the marathon I might have run in 3 ½ hours, the marathon that I was peaking for at just the right time, the marathon that I watched from the sidelines at 89th Street and The Park.  We’re fast and I’m all the way back.

And mile after mile E is hanging in there, something all the more remarkable since he has never ever been there in the half, despite the fact that he could have been there if he wanted it as bad as I do.

My body remembers how to do this, something it did not know how to do 6 weeks ago in Brooklyn, 6 weeks ago when I had not yet been able to start piling on the miles, before I had shin splints, before mile after mile day after day in the blistering South Florida heat. In Brooklyn, my backyard, I’m forced to find a very tenuous middle ground, and I do not like it. This is how I do it.

Somewhere around mile 7, I pull away from E. Nothing personal, but I want to leave you in the dust. I want you to do as well as you can, but I want to beat you and I want you to know I can do it. I want this because you are as good as me, were you much faster or slower than me I could care less. If I can see you during a race though, I want to beat you.

Mile after mile, I pound the pavement. I eat hills like dessert, gobbling the downhills, pounding into the uphills. Eventually it becomes very very hard to do this. I’m talking to myself in some insane melodrama, that even I don’t understand. Amazingly, I’m very close to running my best half ever, but I don’t really know my time and I’m not that close.

Towards the end, I try to open up into a sprint the last 1/10 of a mile, 500 feet or so, and I have maybe 150 feet of sprint in me. I go through the line with nothing left but the strength to pump my fist in the air. An hour later I nearly collapse in the street, and this may be my favorite part truth to tell. I run a minute off my best time, and though I’m still heavier, though my ankle aches at times, my feet are a symphony of pain, I’m all the way back.

This is how I do it. All or nothing. Zero or 100. I either want it, or I don’t care one bit. I don’t need to do anything half assed, I don’t intend to settle. This is how I do it.