The New York City Marathon is less than a week away and people have been asking me, “Are you getting excited?”

No, I am not. In fact, I’m pretty scared.

First things first, let’s talk about my left foot because without some hypochondria it’s barely even a blog post of mine. For a while now I’ve noticed some pain in the ball of my left foot. It transfers to the top of my foot sometimes. It’s been persistent so I went to a podiatrist and he gave me the standard issue diagnosis of a middle aged person: essentially, yeah, that starts to happen. “It’s your metatarsal and it’s from overuse. If you were a couch potato this probably wouldn’t be happening.”

But then he said something I really wanted to hear, “I’m not going to tell you to stop running.”

I picked up my rather expensive prescription orthotics today which my doctor recommended I don’t use for the marathon because I need to break them in.

This problem has made me a little timid as a runner, not going as hard as I could. I just hope my foot holds up during the marathon.

Problem two is that my mile paces are far slower than they were before the pandemic. I remember in 2019 that my longest run, the 20 mile run, was a warmup of six or seven miles before running the Staten Island Half where I ran my miles at an 8:30 pace and believe it or not I was kind of disappointed.

These days on my long runs, I run around 9:30 and then when it gets really bad, I can run 10:30 or 11:45 pace. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t stop running during the pandemic. I didn’t start smoking again. It’s just different.

I have two theories. First, is that it’s the pandemic lifestyle. I used to walk several miles a day in the city. Now, while I still run regularly (over 1,000 miles in 2020, in fact), all of my other time is spent at my home office or on my couch, two locations approximately three feet from each other.

My second theory is that I haven’t been running races. I haven’t run a race since December 2019 when I PR’d a 5K. Races push you and you find energy you didn’t think you had but I’ve been on my own for most runs for a year and a half.

That should be good news for the marathon then, right? If races push you and you find energy you didn’t think you had?!

Eh, kinda.

Here’s my main takeaway from training for a marathon twice and having run several other shorter races, such as 5K’s, four milers, 10K’s, ten milers, and half marathons: anything over fourteen miles is a different beast.

My friend Dave ran The Boston Marathon a few weeks ago. I tracked him through a website. As he got to miles 22, 23, 24, and onward I could almost feel the difficulty. Bear in mind that I was looking at a laptop screen, literally watching ascending numbers and a map with a blue line on it with a dot representing my friend. I felt some pain.

I just don’t know what I’m going to find when I get up to and beyond fourteen. Sometimes I feel fine even if I’m going a little slow. Other times, I want to lie down and die at mile 7 but I push on through. I’m scared that the adrenaline of the race won’t help that much with that.

But the crowd! The crowd will get you through! Their support is amazing!

Eh, kinda.

The party slash parade environment is awesome, especially at the beginning. Brooklyn is great as is the Upper East Side. But I remember when I struggled in 2019 as soon as I got to 110th Street. I found the cheers of “You can do it!” and “You got this!” to be almost cruel. I wanted to shout back, “What the fuck do I got? I am continuing to move, yes, but I assure you I don’t got this right now!” I suppose I would have wanted to hear, “What you’re doing sucks right now! But if you keep going you get to fucking stop!” That would have helped but nobody shouts that.

What is it that I am really dreading, though? I’ve been thinking on this.

I have an ego when it comes to running. I want to run well. In every race I run, I want to beat my previous time. But lately I’ve felt my times get slower and, on a few of my long runs, I’ve had to stop. And I hated myself for that.

On my second twenty mile training run, I had to stop at eighteen. I don’t know what it was but I just couldn’t keep going. I felt weak. I felt worthless. I wondered what the hell is wrong with me and why I can’t do what I was able to do two years ago.

My body was in pain, sure, but it was the mental pain that hurt more. I felt humiliated and I don’t know if I’ll hit that point this Sunday. I don’t have that successful long run in my memory that let’s me know, “you’re ready.”

So, I’ve had to do some goal resetting.

I had a goal in mind of beating my previous time of 3:55. My new goal is to finish.

I’ve also started to look at myself relative to the average person rather than comparing myself to the most in shape version of myself I’ve ever been. I’m healthy enough to run a marathon. That’s amazing. Two Saturdays ago, I had a long run and I thought to myself, “Phew, it’s only twelve miles.” Only twelve miles. I’m in that kind of shape at the moment.

Marathons are fucking hard and they’re supposed to be. If it’s really fucking hard on Sunday, that’ll be par for the course.

I’m also going to just try to have fun and enjoy the experience. I want to look for friends in the crowd. This is a huge day in New York and I get to participate in it.

I also have more of a running plan. I need to fuel more often with Honey Stingers. I need to hydrate more than I think I need to, rather than waiting until I’m parched. I’m also growing a Steve Prefontaine mustache for good luck.

The pandemic has been challenging but I haven’t challenged myself much during the pandemic. This is the first one and it’s scary. So, how am I feeling about Sunday? Scared.

No matter what happens I’m going to The Gate for a beer afterwards and then I’m going to eat an entire pizza.