What I Learned From Destroying Myself at the NYC Marathon
November 08, 2024 at 06:06AMIn the arena of “avoidable pain,” there’s very little like the kind the plagues you somewhere after Mile 18 of a marathon. (I do not know this from personal experience, never having ventured past half marathon territory, but I also have zero trouble believing it.) But there’s also very little like the unalloyed bonhomie you get running a major marathon like the one that took over Gotham last weekend. Long a (drunken) spectator, Will Leitch ventured to the other side of the divide and learned this the hard way—and the result is a perfect psychic balm for a stressful week.
I stood back up, leaned over the railing, and tried to stretch out my screaming calves, terrified I’d gone all this way and done all this work just to fall short in the final stretch. Then I noticed a group of young people making eye contact with me. I was in as serious of pain as I’d ever been in my life, and I’m sure I looked it. But they did not behold me with pity or concern — they just screamed, almost in unison, “You got this, man!” And you know what? It really helped. Their enthusiasm didn’t loosen up my cramping muscles, but it pushed me to keep going anyway, to reward their unalloyed, wholly sincere excitement — to make their effort as worth it as mine.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/11/07/what-i-learned-from-destroying-myself-at-the-nyc-marathon/
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