Running by Jen A. Miller

Author:Jen A. Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781580056113
Publisher: Seal Press

Chapter 5

BIRD-IN-HAND HALF MARATHON

NOVEMBER 6, 2010

New Jersey Marathon — Miles 12–13

At mile 12, we left downtown Long Branch and turned onto Ocean Avenue to enter the southern part of town, the wealthier section. More homes here are used only seasonally. Some are large, severe, and guarded by long driveways, hedges, and, in one case, a griffin. Ocean Avenue is wider here, but its fault for racing is a big one: Here and in Deal, the next town south, the only shade provided would be the shadows of streetlights that curled overhead, and we’d run that strip twice.

Before we crossed into Deal, though, we turned off Ocean Avenue to run around Whale Pond Brook, a 0.7-mile jaunt off the main road. Because the course had to be rerouted off boardwalks in Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, it made up distance with a few turns away from the shore and into the respective towns. One of these was at mile 12.

I started passing people here, a little earlier than I’d anticipated, even though I kept my pace—in spite of the Porta-Potty stop.

Keep your speed. Don’t go too fast. Keep your speed. Just keep your speed. Just keep swimming? Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

Back at mile 11, I had fallen into step with a blond woman about my age. She told me she was three months pregnant and running this race after having run the Boston Marathon three weeks before. She had finished just before the bombs went off. This was her redemption race.

“I just want to run and feel safe again,” she said. She ran strong next to me with a tiny little belly protruding from under her race bib. If she hadn’t told me she was pregnant, I would have assumed it was from an overexuberant carb load the night before.

Between miles 11 and 12, we closed in on a couple running the marathon together. For the last half mile she had been futzing with the arm band that held what I assumed was an MP3 player.

“Do you want me to stop and fix it?” her partner asked. He looked older than me, face slick with sweat, and strained.

“No!” she snapped back, ripping off the arm band, the sound of the Velcro detaching like a shot that echoed off a redbrick church on our right. I turned to my temporary running friend. My eyebrows zipped up, as did hers.

“I told you that this wasn’t going to work,” she said, trying to rewrap and attach it while running, and slowing down. “And now my neck hurts!” she yelled.

Her partner took the MP3 player from her. “I’ll fix it,” he said. Their pace slowed, and they fell back closer to me and my temporary running friend.

“NO!” she said, and grabbed it back, then stopped in front of me. I sidestepped around her.

“Do you want me to fix your neck?” he asked, pleading now. Runners and a few spectators stared too.

““NO!” she yelled. “I don’t know why I’m doing this with you!”

Watching them fight made ugly memories try to jump into my brain.

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