What do you wear for a 13-mile run when the forecast predicts 40-degree temperatures and a “wintry mix”? Two hours before the Philadelphia Half Marathon, I still hadn’t decided. The weather should have been the least of my concerns, considering how much of a slacker I’d been at training for the past two months—but I found it distracting.
At 5:15 a.m., I piled on pretty much everything I had with me—two long-sleeve T-shirts, a sweatshirt, a wind-resistant jacket, a pair of spandex yoga pants, and some oversize fleece pants—and headed out into the eerily quiet early morning with my sister, Rachel, and my boyfriend, Anthony. We watched our breath freeze and barely spoke on the 10-minute walk to the marathon’s starting gates. After reluctantly peeling off our topmost layers and leaving them in the “gear drop” area, we trotted off to the starting corrals.
Rachel and I huddled together for warmth and grouped up with the other half-marathoners, a few rows back from the official starting line. Anthony, who wanted more of a challenge, had already wished us luck and joined the full marathoners across the parkway. In a few moments we’d all be released onto the same road, running the same course until mile 13, when the marathoners would continue on without us. Full? Half? Right now it didn’t matter how much of this run I was doing. I felt like one of the gang already, proud that I’d be starting neck and neck with these experienced athletes.
Then, as if singling my sis and me out of the entire crowd,the announcer blared through his megaphone, “If you’re running a 10-minute mile today, you don’t want to be in the front; you’ll be trampled by everyone who’s faster than you.” Gulp. We shuffled further back, trying to find people who looked a little less intense and more our speed.
Then we were off. It took a few minutes for the crowd to get moving and for us to pass under the actual starting line banner, but that didn’t matter since our official times would be based on the exact second we crossed that zero mile marker. A radio-frequency microchip, threaded into a slip of paper and tied to our shoes, would be the final judge, preventing us from fudging our times or making excuses later.
It was cold and rainy—but with long sleeves, warm pants, and adrenaline pumping through me, I was sweating by mile 3. People were tossing their jackets and tear-away pants along the route (all discarded clothing was later collected for charity), but I hung on to my gloves and ski cap because I knew I’d need them if we had to slow down later.
The first six miles were a breeze. I usually need music to keep me distracted during a long run, but MP3 players were banned from the race for safety reasons, such as not hearing a runner beside you. (Not to mention, wearing one in a thunderstorm wouldn’t have been the best idea.) Many runners disregarded the rules and wired up.
But the sights and sounds of Philadelphia were enough to pump me up and keep me moving. At the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge, I jogged alongside two NFL fans having a fierce, out-of-breath debate about the Eagles-Giants rivalry. A stereo system blared House of Pain as we ran down South Street. (Anthony later commented that this would have been more appropriate at, say, mile 23.) And in the Old City neighborhood, I took in the signs spectators held along the road, including “Philly is much cooler than Chicago” and “26.2 miles for a T-shirt and a soft pretzel???”
We jogged slowly but fell into a crowd of people running at a comfortable speed, at about a 10-minute-mile pace. Around mile 7 my calves, shoulders, and arms were begging for a break; then a torturous hill at mile 8 almost made me stop and walk.
Several others around us were starting to falter at that point, as well, and I watched as a girl ahead of us slowed to a walk. She glanced over her shoulder at us—and her jaw dropped. Among the 15,000-plus people competing in Philadelphia that day, we’d stumbled upon a classmate from our Jersey high school. This pleasant surprise kept us going for a while longer, and we all picked up the pace while we caught up on old times.
I didn’t walk until between miles 9 and 10, a personal record. We ran-walked the next couple of miles, stopped for a bathroom and stretching break, and—wincing through the pain in our legs—sprinted around the final turn, racing the clock to reach the goal my sister and I had set for ourselves that morning.
Our official time was 2 hours, 31 minutes. Out of about 4,000 half-marathon finishers, we ended up somewhere around 3,000th place. Rachel and I were the perfect team: She pushed me to keep running through the first half, and I encouraged her to pick up the pace at the very end. And though we missed our target time by one measly minute, I’m damn proud that we came so close and were still standing. We even managed to climb the art museum steps at the finish line, Rocky Balboa–style, to take victory pictures. (The Rocky movies may be cheesy, but anyone who has grown up near Philadelphia can tell you what a great feeling it is to go up those stairs—and now I’d done something to earn it.)
I couldn’t believe it was already over! We retrieved our extra layers, stopped by the food tent, and then spent the next two hours wrapped in foil windbreakers, cheering on the marathoners and watching for Anthony. When he crossed the finish line at 4:36, I felt a twinge of envy. Maybe I should have done the whole marathon. He told us how relentlessly the crowds had cheered during the second half, how a bakery gave out brownies in the neighborhood of Manayunk, and how a fellow runner yelled at him to “get his ass moving” when he was about to give up. I started to regret not pushing myself further—but then a gust of wind hit and I thought about the two painfully long marathons I’d walked in the past. Someday, I told myself, I’ll really run one. But for now, 13 good miles felt much better.
Hours later—after a shower, a hearty meal, and a nap—I was faring pretty well, not at all as stiff and sore as I imagined I’d be. Still, my knees hurt like hell—proof that I hadn’t trained nearly as much as I should have. This was all the more motivation to get back to the gym, ASAP! Especially with the extra cell-phone prompting I’d just gotten from my new trainer. His only response to the results I’d texted him: “So what’s your next goal—2:15? 2:10?”
Me? No problem.
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