Our new friend in the bright blue jacket needed to share the
news with someone. He didn’t drop the bomb and leave. He stayed and sympathized
and repeated it, after I clearly didn’t believe him.
My family dropped back to see what was happening and he told
them, too. Then we looked around again and people’s faces made sense. After a
couple of minutes I thanked the guy and we shared a powerful moment of
adjusting our expectations of the world together. Here were all these people
whose long months of training and faith in the Mayor’s call to come to New York
rendered them true believers—in the city, in ourselves, in the race. And in a
second it was all gone.
We rushed into the expo center and joined the long lines to
get in to where our race numbers were waiting. Maybe if we can get our hands on our identifying, official materials,
we can reverse this. Runners were quiet. We watched Wolf Blitzer on big
screen tvs breaking the news. News crews began to set up around us, too, in a crush
of media wanting to capture our shock.
The line also stopped moving and we spied a rush of activity
inside the hall. Now we know they were swiftly dismantling the areas where they
distributed the numbers.
You can’t successfully put in marathon miles all year if you
believe for a second the day won’t come.
We were an army of denial. This couldn’t, couldn’t be true. The airports had
opened just in time! We responded to the Mayor’s call and came!
Within an hour we had been ushered in, thrown orange t-shirts
and ushered back out. The press conference began on the tvs and we came back
out to the lobby to watch the marathon organization and the city explain why, ‘Of
course this marathon can’t go on, you fools!’
Disappointed, naïve, crushed. We all filed back into the
streets to wander and think. No one ever stopped considering the suffering of
the storm victims. I have said it before but I believe that the storm and the
marathon can be considered as separate entities because the Mayor characterized
it that way all week when urging us to come. He said runners could contribute
to healing the city. We could bring life back to the streets.
We walked down 34th St. towards the Empire State
Building and down into the subway. We made it to our big dinner at vegan mecca
Candle 79, where we were warmly greeted by Javier and then Benay. They
expressed support for us immediately and sat us upstairs around other runners.
There could not have been a warmer environment to sink into at that moment.
Benay runs the place and exudes compassion. She reminded me of a beautiful
woodland creature, dominating her forest and keeping all her friends fed and
safe.
The next day brought greater acceptance and reconciliation.
We walked to the park first thing and found it re-opened for the first time
since the storm. By then it was sunny. Everyone headed to the Finish Line,
which was being taken down. Flags along the 26th mile were removed,
one by one. We sat in the orange bleachers listening to gorgeous, uniformed
runners speaking almost every language you can imagine except English. Word began to spread that two main options
existed for Sunday-race day.
The marathon organizers remained silent and didn’t sanction
either of these options. Actually, by Saturday morning, they hadn’t even formally
notified us of the race cancellation. Though
we all hope for the guaranteed entry for 2013 that they promised us, no one is
very happy right now with New York Road Runners and their unconscionable silence
throughout the last 2 weeks.
But resourceful runners organized a Sunday morning trip to Staten
Island to assist with relief efforts. Another resourceful group organized a
makeshift run in the park—Run Anyway NYC 12. I can’t say why we didn’t discuss
joining the relief contingent. I’m sad to say it wasn’t my first instinct to go
there. It’s clear to me now that that would have been the right thing to do. A
lot of us had developed outright fear since the threats made by Staten
Islanders against marathoners when the race was still on. Their rage came from
grief and wouldn’t stop me from reaching back out to support their recovery. But
we made our contributions monetary and didn’t join the ranks of the real
responders.
If running an impromptu grassroots international race in Central
Park with thousands of other runners was the wrong thing to do, though, I’d be
shocked. It was too beautiful to regret and will remain one of my most stunning
memories. Sharing the experience with my mother made it sublime.
We all wore our orange marathon shirts and headed into the
park throughout the morning. I carried an 8-pack of bottles of Gatorade in with
me and started handing them out to runners immediately. Some were running 4
times around—a full marathon. Most of us, I think, made it more of a fun run to
celebrate the city carrying on and our own ability to get past this.
Joe Nocera wrote of this event in the New York Times: “It was one of the most joyous, awe-inspiring
things I have ever seen in this city, cathartic in a way that the real marathon
could never have been. Not this year anyway. A politician could have-should
have- owned that moment.”
His point was that no politician, corporation, or corporatized
running organization did own it. The
runners took back the park. We ran under the stripped structures and past
strewn signs. They took our marathon down and yet we ran together without their
approval or support.
I ran once around, slowly and in awe. Everyone was running.
On the west side, New Yorkers brought out Dixie cups of water, along with some
Oreos and Starbursts. On the east side a well-meaning and amused gentleman
brought out his box of Cheerios and shook some into any hand who needed some
mid-run nourishment.
This was the antithesis of sweeping, shouty Gatorade
stations we’re used to at major mile markers. No one was jockeying for position
or stressing about their time.
It seemed like what the park was made for—a public gathering
space. To play and share.
The glory of it was the simple humanity-cool people like my
mom sitting in the bleachers, celebrating the success of Peruvians, Swiss,
Chileans and Mexicans. Runners and native New Yorkers joining ranks to acknowledge
a bright new day.
In Canada’s The Globe
and Mail, Sarah Nicole Prickett wrote about the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy,
boldly stating that “Manhattan
as disaster movie is the new, already post-apocalyptic reality.” She
says it’s always a film set, but when disaster strikes, as we have seen happen
too often this century, a strange mix of fiction and reality intertwine. Considering
New York City last week, she refers to a line from Cormac McCarthy’s terrifying
The Road: “Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to
leave.”
The path
around Central Park presented us a safe circle after the storm. We came to the
city to run everywhere (hitting 5
boroughs is the point). We comforted ourselves by remaining in a confined loop
at the city’s heart.
There were
jokes flying around about how, if we were somehow hooked up to generators, our
steps could power the city.
Central Park
as the heart.
Runners
pumping the blood.
Our
presence did no harm to the city as it suffered and healed. I like to think the
symbolic run empowered an embattled people. If my initial goal was to tap into
the romance of New York City, all facets of a brilliant human drama were
realized. 
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