Are You Ready to See Some Suffering?!

Live from New York, it's marathon weekend!

I know that guy!

Leg Day is a newsletter about pursuing joy as a city cyclist, which occasionally requires getting off the bike.

Marathon weekend has always been one of my favorites in New York. As I wrote earlier this year, I used to live right next to Lafayette ave, the first truly spectated stretch of the route. It’s such an early point in the race that all the runners look like they’re having the time of their lives, unfazed by the fact that they still have well over a half-marathon to go. I assume it catches up with some of them, though I have never had proof of this. Embarrassingly, though I’ve lived in New York for almost eight years, I’ve never actually seen the marathon from any other point along the course.

That changes on Sunday. By this time next week, I will have completed the New York City marathon.

I didn’t get baited most of the stuff at the marathon expo … but I did have to get a pic with Grover.

Running and I are on generally good terms these days, but I still can’t say I actively enjoy doing it. Even on good days, where I’m not pressed for time and feel well, I struggle to find the motivation to lace up my sneakers and get myself moving. In the past, I genuinely believed I just lacked a “winners” mentality, probably some latent criticism from the middle school gym teacher who made us call him “coach” rearing its head.

People have told me the problem is that I just haven’t run long enough distances. Runner’s high apparently only kicks in after mile 10. Or, is it 15? The number always changes depending on how much you push back.

The beach in Long Beach, WA. I ran there!

I’ve yet to feel it. No matter how long my long runs were, I’ve ended them feeling … fine. I can only believe that runner’s high is a myth concocted by villainous fit folks who have never tried biking, or anything else that is actually fun.

Honestly, the fact I can get myself up to bike, whether for early morning events or for hill repeats in Prospect Park, released me from the notion I couldn’t follow a training program. And with only two exceptions, I managed to run three times a week for the last 13 weeks in a row. (The proof is on Strava.) This was despite a truly insane travel schedule. I ran in Louisville, Kentucky. I ran in Halifax, Canada. I ran in Long Beach, Washington. I ran in Salt Lake City, Utah. I ran in Cusco, Peru, which is located two miles above sea level. I bonked so hard on my second run there, which was supposed to be a 13-miler. I barely made it three.

This Peruvian dog knew I was going to bonk and didn’t say anything. I appreciated that.

There were other failures: when I tried doing intervals around a track near my apartment but set a too-ambitious goal for how hard they should be and how many I should do, when I rolled my ankle the first time I did a long run on a trail, when I forgot to unpause my watch after a water stop and didn’t track my first westward ascent of the Queensboro bridge, when I forgot to take my socks off before going into the bathroom post-run and careened into my tub.

But mainly, my training routine started to just feel … routine. When I launched this newsletter, I was writing a weekly (paid-only) update highlighting the novelties I’d encounter as I attempted to run more consistently than I had ever thought possible. I only actually managed to do this like six times. The writing started to feel too repetitive and bland. How many times could I say “I went to Prospect Park and sent it up the hill?”

A shot from Beckley Station Park in Louisville, early on in the longest run I’ve ever done. (21 miles!)

Now that I’m approaching the end of the 14-week block, I can appreciate the little differences. In August, I laced up for the first 10-mile run of the program with a “just get through this” mentality. Somehow, only two months later, when someone asked me how much I had to run that day, I responded “only 12.”

Only 12?

It’s been a weird few months. My life is so dramatically different now than it was last year, when I was a full-time newspaper editor was prepping an affiliate-link-less gift guide. Back then, I had a clear mandate. I knew exactly what was expected of me each week, exactly which categories I was supposed to be following, and, most importantly, exactly how much money was going to be deposited in my checking account every two weeks.

Occasionally, I have found myself completely overwhelmed by the insecurity inherent to my current work circumstances. There are so many days where I have no real sense of what I’m supposed to be doing, when I get swept up in the tidal wave that is the internet. Should I be trying to pitch ambitious stories that can, if only temporarily, affect the discourse, even the amount of work they require won’t really cover the amount of time and work I spent putting them together? Can I be happy just putting together lists of things people can buy? Am I actually supposed to start making Instagram Reels?

Marathon training, as much as it pains me to say, has helped. I have been clinging to the three runs a week structure as a way to organize my weeks. I guess the thought of collapsing in exhaustion in front of hundreds of people on First Avenue is a pretty good motivator.

Some motivation courtesy of the pedestrian path on the Williamsburg bridge.

I’m not sure how I’ll feel when it’s behind me. I have been told that running a marathon is kind of like giving birth—that people get so caught up in the joy of what they’ve accomplished that they totally forget how painful the process actually was. I’ve been warned that, in the wake of post-marathon euphoria, you are prone to displays of extreme stupidity. You’ll propose to your girlfriend of eight months, take on a work project that’s doomed to fail, or worse, sign up for an ultramarathon.

I’ve been trying to make plans for the future this week, before that happens. I’ve been thinking about how I want to try and organize my life when I don’t have this 26.2 mile run hanging over my head. I know I am going to bike a lot. But what kind of biker do I want to be? Am I just a commuter? Am I going to try to bikepack? Am I going to try and race?

I’m not really sure how running will fit into my life moving forward. I know that cyclists are supposed to run—it’s apparently good for bone density as long as you’re not doing too much of it—but what will those runs even look like?

Salt Lake City is absurd … how is there a mountain in ever freaking direction?

I can say that I have enjoyed this stint as a fake professional athlete. I have enjoyed attempting to follow a training program. I have enjoying trying (and mostly failing) to go to bed on time, eat a bit better, stretch myself out. If that’s true now, before I’ve even ran the dang thing, I’m pretty confident I will have more ambition inside of me after it’s over.

So I guess what I’m saying is, watch this space. And if you want to figure out where I am on Sunday, you can follow my progress on the course using the TCS New York City Marathon App or the interactive course on the New York Road Runners website. You can find me using my bib number (61896) or my full name (Daniel Varghese). I am starting at 11:30, so I’m hoping to be on Lafayette by like 1 and over into Manhattan by 2:30.

It might be way later. After all the work I’ve done, I might as well try and enjoy this.

See you Sunday.

Thanks for reading Leg Day! If you made it this far, you’ll probably enjoy my dispatch from the Bergen Bike Bus, a weekly group ride intended to help kids learn how to pedal their way to school.