It’s crunch time in the roller coaster of training. Boston is a mere forty days away. Part of me feels pressure; I am clearly not in the shape I’d like to be in with a marathon so near. Part of me, says a healthy, “So what?” Last fall’s “Walk-on Marathon” was a zero-pressure joy, excluding of course the agonizing part. I’ve nothing to prove, really. So long as I come out the far end alive, kicking, and without facial scars and a broken nose, I’ll be doing OK. Go with it, enjoy it.
Nevertheless, I’d rather be in my best possible shape going in if for no other reason than to reduce the length of the agonizing portion. (How is it we manage to minimize that bit when wistfully reminiscing about these races? Perhaps it’s the ultimate denial. But I digress, as usual.) So it’s that time when I need to cram in the long runs that I wished I’d started earlier but know there were perfectly legitimate reasons I didn’t. And it’s that time when I really don’t want interruptions to my training, which means it’s the time that work goes haywire. Life is like that. Make lemonade.
January and February, despite being deluged waist-deep in white stuff, in truth turned out half decent. A buck sixty per month, average training pace sneaking slowly down, culminating in a fun day at Hyannis and a coveted clamshell award. And just like that, it’s spring, at least by my March 1 definition. Sun shining, daylight savings time almost here, weather warming, open season for easier-to-schedule training runs, joy and bliss run amok.
You wish. It’s never that easy; it’s always something. March first arrived gorgeous, sunny, mid-thirties, a great day for running, so I thought as I headed to the east edge of my city to cover some new Run Marlborough quest turf, flying, loving every step. You can see this one coming. How I hadn’t noticed the wind buffeting my back is beyond me. Call it endorphins. But the long westward slog home into the chilling gale sidled well beyond the edge of brutal. Botox was never so effective. Complete facial immobility. Or as I might have tried at the time to say, something sounding like, “faaaa-haaaalll immmaa-irrriiiheee”. I seriously worried about black frostbite spots. Happy spring!
Just another day escaping the office, I suppose, but it set up what rapidly threatened to be one of those training interruptions I so don’t want right now. Miss a day, that’s rest. Miss two, that’s stiff. Miss three, and on day four you feel you’ve lost ground. At least I do. Miss the fourth and, well, things get mental at that point. So when the next day dawned with even stronger wind and I sat it out, the count was one. The next rolled in utterly gorgeous, but I found myself chained to my desk, and traveling in the evening to boot. The count was two. Friday jarred into existence at five AM in a hotel room in Connecticut with a serious prospect of the count becoming three, three becoming the count, and so on. Hurl the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch into my training continuity.
One must creatively resist. The day called for an achingly early rendezvous with the work wonks, a hop to Hoboken (at least rewarded with a beautiful view of the Big City, bad cell phone photo with finger almost cropped out), and a Friday escape back north ahead of traffic. The plan was simple: sneak one in on the return-trip after splitting from my work buds. Like all of these opportunistic adventures, timing was everything. Get in, get out, get the run in mid-afternoon before the late afternoon conference calls came around, and the count shall not become three. A little night-before research works wonders. The plan was set. The primary and alternate targets identified. The go-bag packed. The expected timing choreographed.
But the customer decided to not stop talking. For an extra two hours. When the customer wants to talk, you listen. He pays the bills. When you’ve traveled that far to see him, you really listen. It’s a long way to come back the next time. By the time we walked out in the shadow of Manhattan, the plan was shot. The count was headed to three. Having escaped New Jersey, fed ourselves, and parted ways, it was pushing three thirty, the bewitching hour after which I’d be locked in conference calls till five. Darkness would arrive shortly thereafter, not the time for strange locale adventures. Damn the torpedoes, put on the tights anyway, you never know.
And then, a funny thing happened. A rare, almost unheard of thing happened. An event so cosmic, so unexpected, I could hardly believe it happened. An hour-long conference call suddenly ended only twenty minutes in. The count shall not be three, provided of course that the mountain wasn’t still covered with a foot of snow, still a distinct possibility.
A few minutes post-call, I’d found the park entrance on a surprisingly tiny street with utterly zero fanfare. This is not, apparently, a real popular spot. Gated and deserted. But plowed, or at least one of the two roads from the entrance was plowed. I’ll have to come back some time to check out the other.
Being gated at the bottom meant starting with a hill climb. The perfect therapy after twenty-four hours of travel. Within a few hundred yards I found myself running over the highway tunnel entrance, cars flying at me at seventy yet missing by thirty feet of vertical. A few switchbacks and the ridge was attained.
Spectacular? No. Pleasant? Absolutely. Scattered views through the trees for miles and miles, hampered only by the haze of the low sun, the highway a distant trace, lakes to the west, the skyline of New Haven to the southeast. Plowed, melted, clear and dry soft pavement, the way roads become almost spongy when rarely used, lined with patchy snow. Quiet and entirely abandoned save one lone soul out for a walk, foolishly absorbed in his cell phone and MP3 and paying dearly with a near coronary when he didn’t see, hear, or otherwise sense my approach. Out for a few miles till the plowed section ended and snow and ice overtook the footing, signaling time for the back portion of the out-and-back. Reverse ridge run, scream down the switchbacks, back in the car as dusk overtook the shady glen of the park entrance, and two more hours with the heat cranked to melt the sweat on the ride back home.
Another small victory over the forces that get between man and fitness. At least this week, the count shall not be three.
I live in CT and didnt even know of that park! Awesome post. -Amanda Augeri
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