Race day
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I think the four-mile course I ran in Central Park on Sunday was not technically my first running-only race, but—since the last one was a kids’ 5K in the 1980s—it’s the first in which I didn’t cry over losing track of my mom.
Racing has figured little in my archipelago of athletic endeavors. There were a few meets in the summer swimming program I did as an early teenager. There was a, quite thrilling, uphill bike ride in Big Cottonwood Canyon the summer I stopped in Salt Lake on my move from West Coast to East. And then the last couple of years there’ve been the triathlons in California.
But in that handful of races I’ve noticed and derived a love of their purity—the regimented absence of distraction, the coherent movement and intention of the collective, the way that your brain excises any nonessential stimuli. Yesterday I was a bit worried about my right foot, which had been hurting for a few weeks and eased up only the night before the race. But once I realized it was going to be OK, if a little irritable, I turned up the symphony on my earbuds and charged ahead.
And the whole thing brought on an experience I’ve had in this city on early weekend mornings before, an appreciation of its hardcoreness: Here we all were in Central Park at 8 a.m. on a Sunday. Punctual, alert, moving dramalessly through the pre-race routine, getting our bibs and waiting in neat lines for the portable toilets and dropping our possessions at the hyperorganized bag check. And then: eyes on the horizon, arms pumping efficiently, full speed. And then, a half-hour later, dissolving—heading off into the whole remains of a Sunday.
A race is a distillation, like a piano recital or a monologue on stage or the Google Doc of an article that five editors have reviewed many times in its entirety. When you are preparing for this kind of arrival point you will have ranged widely, experiencing many things that don’t make it into the performance. What’s left out is defining, because it generates the shape of the resulting clarity. What is essential for you to deliver, and what is your process for discarding the rest?
Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram, or let’s Peloton together: @leggy_blond.