Running with a Police Escort

by Jill Grunenwald

  After layering up, I collected all of my running gear and got in the car. It was a good thing I have a tendency to leave obnoxiously early, because the roads hadn’t yet been cleared, which meant it was a slow and slippery going as I navigated my car across the fifteen very slick miles to the Bay Village High School.

  Despite the weather, the SnoBall 5K had several hundred participants that year, many of whom were already at the high school when I arrived. Packet pick-up was inside the hallway outside of the gymnasium and pockets of people were camped out on the bleachers, trying to stay dry and warm for as long as possible before needing to head outside to the start line. I found the registration tables and checked in. After taking my race shirt back to my car, I headed back into the school to join everyone else as we waited for the call to line up.

  As any who’ve tried it know, running in snow is not for the faint of heart. I don’t even mean just dealing with frigid temperatures and trying to balance dressing warmly enough to not freeze to death while also making sure the body doesn’t overheat. That’s all taken care of before even stepping outside. No, just the physical act of running in snow and especially on snow, is a mental and physical challenge. Your muscles get used in a completely different way than they did when running in non-winter and, for me at least, it’s hard to get into that running zone where I can tune everything else out because I have to constantly be aware of the ground in front of me lest I slip on ice and fall, thus putting myself out of running commission for weeks or even months.

  Around the second mile, it was all starting to catch up with me. I was utterly exhausted from what felt like hours and hours of walking in snow and, because of said snow, I was absolutely freezing. It was falling hard and fast, making it difficult to see, and the thought that I still had a mile to go exhausted me even more.

  I was also in last place and not even trying to pretend otherwise. In other races when I’ve been one of the stragglers at the end, I usually try to at least put in a good effort: I stick to my intervals and run when I can. I want to finish a race knowing that even if I didn’t necessarily do my very best or do as well as I would have liked, I at least gave it my all.

  With the SnoBall 5K, woo boy that was so not happening. My desire to not be out in the snow and cold was so extreme that there were multiple moments where I wanted to turn around, go to the police car following me, and ask if he would mind driving me back to the Bay Village high school because I had officially hit my limit.

  But I didn’t. Even though I wanted to. Really wanted to. This was pretty much on par with what I was feeling during those final four miles at the 2014 Cleveland Half, only this time I was cold and freezing and shivering.

  In this instance, the one unexpected benefit to being in the back is that I never had to guess where I was going on the course. Because the streets hadn’t been plowed, the runners in front of me had all beaten down a slushy path in the snow.

  Another unexpected benefit was that it gave me time to mentally work on the Ignite! Fitness presentation that I would be giving at the upcoming FitBloggin 2015 conference in Denver. FitBloggin is an annual conference that focuses on health and fitness with a vast online community of participants. I discovered FitBloggin through some social media networks and was so disappointed when I realized the 2013 conference was going to be the same weekend as my sister’s wedding. (She has forgiven me for a lot of things, but skipping out on her nuptials would not have gone over well.) 2014 was the first year I attended. At the Keynote Address on the Friday night of the conference, FitBloggers get up on a stage to give Ignite! Presentations. These last five minutes each with accompanying auto-forwarding slides. The presentations cover a wide range of topics and are voted on by the FitBloggin community.

  In anticipation of the 2015 conference, I submitted an Ignite! presentation that covered the topic of being in the back of the pack. It was titled It’s Not Last Place, it’s Running with a Police Escort, inspired by the photo I took of myself at the Running the Bridges, with a cop car over my shoulder.

  A few weeks before the SnoBall 5K I found out that my topic was one of the ones selected. The conference wasn’t until that June, but I knew that was going to come quickly and I hadn’t yet given that much thought to my presentation.

  Considering I was currently slowly trudging through the snow, in last place, this seemed like as good a time as any to start giving this some thought.

  Near the end, the main road splintered and the path followed a slight curve back behind the school, continuing to the finish line.

  Up ahead I saw the familiar black finish clock in the middle of the high school stadium. The finish line itself was along the track which hadn’t been cleared. Because of course it hadn’t. Why would they clear the high school track in the middle of February for fuck’s sake?

  As I turned the corner and headed towards the finish, I heard a car horn behind me. I turned around and the police officer who had been following for the past three miles gave me a thumbs-up sign before driving past.

  Police escort, yo. That’s what I’m talking about.

  I slogged through the snow towards the finish, attempting to match the established footprints of the runners who had finished before me. Then, after finishing, I slogged through the snow back to the high school. A set of tables was set up in the middle of the gymnasium piled high with gleaming bright aluminum food warmers. My stomach growled with hungry anticipation.

  In my desire to be finished, I had completely forgotten that the SnoBall 5K included a post-race pancake breakfast and awards ceremony.

  My experience with post-race award ceremonies is pretty limited. I think in all my time I’ve seen only a handful out of over twenty races. Most races don’t wait for everyone to finish before handing out awards, which, I mean, I totally understand. The winners of the awards are always the fast runners, the ones who finished in record time. Literally, in some instances, where they manage to be so fast they set a new course record. These are the runners who finished early and I can totally understand why it makes more sense to hand those awards out while other runners are still running rather than make the winners just hang out for a significant amount of time until everyone gets back. Depending on the race and the runners on the course, they could be waiting at least an hour.

  So I certainly always appreciate when a racing organization makes the effort to make sure all runners have finished before starting the awards ceremony. And, it turns out, if you’re going to convince the faster runners to stick around until those of us in the back of the pack return, it helps to have more than just the usual banana and chocolate milk waiting at the finish line.

  Like, say, hot, delicious pancakes slathered in maple syrup and butter. Yup, that’ll definitely do the trick.

  14

  Trust the Process

  A couple of weeks after the SnoBall 5K, it was once again time for the annual St. Malachi race. While Northeast Ohio obviously has races in January and February (I just ran one per month), St. Malachi is often considered the unofficial start to the racing season in Cleveland.

  At the beginning of the year, when I committed to running one a month, there were certain races I knew I’d be remiss if I didn’t run them as part of this goal. St. Malachi was one of those races. 2015 also marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of the race and in honor of this milestone, there was going to be a special finisher’s medal. Not that I needed additional encouragement or anything, my “Will Run For Bling” stance clearly ingrained, but still.

  St. Malachi also fit in perfectly with my training plan. As of Monday, February 23, 2015, I was officially back in training mode, this time for what would be my third half marathon. Not only would I be running my third half marathon, but I’d be running it as an Ambassador. As an official Ambassador, in exchange for my own free race entry, I got to blog about my training experience, give someone else a chance to run for free, and promote the race across all the usual social media platforms.

  I should have been ex
cited about this. I was going to be running my third half marathon and represent both the back of the pack and the city that I love.

  Me. Third half. Numero Tres. Three times a charm, right?

  Only, I was actually dreading it. Dreading the early morning alarm clock calls. Dreading the sacrifice to my social calendar as I planned early Friday night outings to fit in even earlier Saturday morning runs. I had already gone through this all before. Twice. I knew the long road ahead, I knew the hard work that would be required and the blood and sweat and tears (hopefully not literally, but after my second half marathon, anything was possible).

  My last half marathon, the 2014 Cleveland Half, left me feeling dejected, and then the whole cancellation of the second Cleveland Rock ‘N’ Roll Half. Add in that a May half marathon means starting training in February. In Cleveland, this is not a month that is typically kind to runners. Limited sunlight means running indoors on the dreadmill or running in the dark, neither of which is my favorite way of getting in my training runs.

  Being a slow runner only complicated matters. My first training run on the program was for three miles. For a seasoned long-distance runner, three miles is a pretty minor distance to tackle for an early morning run. But because of my speed, I have to build in extra time into my mornings to make sure I give myself enough of a buffer to get the run in and still get to work on time. Someone who averages a 10-minute mile only needs half an hour of their morning. For me, I needed 45 minutes on a good day. But because I hadn’t been running as much and had lost some of my base I was starting from scratch in some ways, which meant I would be slower than usual and/or would be adding in more walking breaks, so my three mile run was going to take something closer to an hour to complete. That wasn’t even counting the time it would take me to get dressed in weather-appropriate gear and, oh yeah, actually wake up enough to function to the point of even being able to go run three miles.

  Take that, then multiply it by multiple runs over multiple weeks and, oh yeah, add in extra miles each week, building up the long runs, and add in additional early mornings for cross-training.

  So, yeah. Not looking forward to this whole “training” thing.

  Training for a half marathon is similar to any journey. There will be obstacles and detours. There will be hills and valleys (sometimes even literal ones) that need to be climbed. Things won’t always go as planned no matter how expensive a GPS you own. Training is sort of like dealing with a GPS that hasn’t been updated in a while, unaware of road closures or lane changes. Following such a GPS can lead to frustration, as you’re forced to quickly maneuver and figure out a different route to your destination.

  Focusing on the process means the destination is more likely to be a blip than a boom. And the end result becomes just that: the final data point in a long line of other data points. Which, really, makes the most sense out of everything else. With a half marathon training program, that’s something like twelve to sixteen weeks during which hundreds of miles are covered. Literally, hundreds of miles all told.

  That totally blows my mind, even now. To think that over the course of a couple of months, I can run that many miles and yet so much focus and effort is put on those final 13.1 miles (or 26.2 for those that run full marathons).

  Obviously the goal race, the one for which you put in all that training, is important. It’s the reason I am training to begin with, but putting all my attention on that end result, those final 13.1 miles, that bright blue finish line, makes me anxious. I put so much pressure on the outcome of that race, on those particular 13.1 miles, that I somehow lose sight of those hundreds of miles that come first in the weeks and months leading up to the race. Why do I find those other miles, of which there are so many more, somehow less important, less significant? Those miles are the ones that prepare my mind and prepare my body to rock those final 13.1 miles come race day. I wouldn’t have successfully crossed all of those finish lines without those training miles under my belt.

  Five of those miles were going to be completed at the St. Malachi.

  It’s probably just a coincidence, but the St. Malachi always seems to line up perfectly with my training plan. Even when I’ve picked a shorter spring race, the two mile option at St. Malachi is like a square peg in a square hole on my calendar.

  The first two weeks of my training had gone well, although, I had to add in an extra rest day because I’d been battling a cold. Admittedly, I probably wouldn’t have let myself be sidelined because of a few sniffles, but I just felt so run down, and since I was already not digging being in training mode, I took what excuses presented themselves.

  It’s impossible to predict what the weather will be like when St. Malachi rolls around. In 2013, I battled hail and snow. A couple years before I started running, it was a bright sunny day, warm enough that wearing short sleeves wasn’t crazy.

  That year, it was a mostly typical late winter, early spring day. It had rained the night before but when I woke up on race morning the sky was dry, although it was a little chilly and I was going to need to wear a jacket. Underneath, I had a green Guinness shirt and was also sporting green sparkly shamrocks in my hair and coordinating knee-high socks.

  I don’t really get St. Patrick’s Day as a holiday—all-day drinking doesn’t appeal to me and never has, not even in college—but I have fake red hair and look good in green, so it’s one of the easier races to get in the spirit and dress up for. Like Miranda said in an episode of Sex and the City, “Anybody can be Irish with the right colorist.”

  The race starts on the corner of Detroit and West 25th, two major streets in the neighborhood. This corner also marks the home of the actual St. Malachi church, which the race represents. Before the race, their basement Fellowship area is open for the runners to hang out in while they wait.

  A couple of the Cleveland Marathon Ambassadors were also running in this race, and as I stood inside, I kept updating my Facebook feed to see if anyone was posting their own location. Because the weather wasn’t too bad, lots of runners were also waiting outside all around the church property so trying to find someone was a bit tricky. Megan also tends to run St. Malachi on an annual basis, but I’ve only managed to connect with her one year and even then it was purely by accident. But at least I knew her, so when I saw her standing in the same pocket as me I was able to recognize her. I hadn’t as of yet met any of the other Ambassadors in person, I only had social media profiles to go by.

  Mary, then social media director for the Cleveland Marathon, mentioned she was on the back end of the church so I went outside and headed up to try to find her. Somehow, against all likelihood, I found Mary and we stood around chatting and she introduced me to her friends.

  As we started to line up near the west entrance of the Veteran’s Memorial Bridge—also known as the Detroit-Superior Bridge—I mentioned to Mary that I had started doing intervals. She said she was a big fan of those and did one minute of running followed by one minute of walking.

  “Do you want to run with me?” she asked.

  “Oh,” I said, “I’m slow.”

  “That’s okay! I am, too.”

  We stood next to each other in the crowd, near the back. When the gun went off, the crowd surged forward, carrying us with it.

  The Veteran’s Memorial Bridge is about half a mile long and four lanes wide. Because it’s close to the church, it’s a natural starting point for this race and I always love watching the crowd take over the whole bridge right from the start. It’s just a moving sea of green folks spread the entire width and breadth of the bridge.

  Thing was, Mary’s idea of “slow” was much faster than mine, and while I tried to keep up with her intervals as long as I could, we had barely made it over the bridge before I told her I had to slow down. Between the quicker pace and the cold I was battling, I was having a hard time catching my breath.

  It’s like in television shows and movies when the unathletic protagonist decides to start running and turns to those super fit neighbors
next door, assuming it’ll be totes easy to join them on a morning run. Two minutes in, our protagonist is standing on the side of the road, bent over at the waist, panting, waving the neighbors ahead: “Just … go … on … without … me.”

  Yeah. It was just like that.

  As Mary ran ahead, I slowed to a walk as the rest of the back of the pack moved around me.

  Because I had started way faster than I should have, I spent the rest of the race struggling to find my groove. That first half mile at a pace far speedier than my body was ready to run made for a very long remaining four and a half miles.

  After crossing the bridge, the course turns left and starts to head towards Lake Erie. The course ran parallel to the Shoreway, although this time on the actual ground beneath, past First Energy Stadium, the Great Lakes Science Center, and the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

  The halfway point of the race was the Burke Lakefront Airport, a very small airport situated right, as its name suggests, on the lake. Along with being the halfway point, it was also our first and only water stop. The course took us through their horseshoe driveway then we headed back where we came, this time going behind the home of the Cleveland Browns.

  By now I was walking more than I had planned, but my legs still burned from their earlier attempt at a speed outside my ability. But I tried to run as much as I could as I continued to follow the course, sticking to my intervals as best as I could.

  At this point, finish was still another half mile or so away, and at the next turn, I was directed to go down a long hill. Runners who had already finished were walking up the hill as I bolted towards the finish.