Race week

I started this blog shortly after I returned from the Peace Corps. At the time, I did not have a reporting job and did not know that I would be too busy to really "chronicle" my preparation for the New York City Marathon.

I am now less than a week out. I did a mere 6 on Monday, 7 this morning and after some 100-mile weeks it feels like nothing. Some people do not like the taper: They get worried they are losing everything they have worked to gain. But I know from experience that it works -- the fitness does not go away; it improves -- and I like this phase of winding it down to the race, doing just enough to stay sharp, feeling like an athlete.

Last week was about 65 miles. On Thursday I did 3 by 1 mile with a 400 jog for rest. 5:00, 5:03, 5:10. The last rep was a struggle; obviously I would have preferred it not to be. Before Chicago in 2006 I did 5:00, 5:04, 5:04. But this workout took place first thing in the morning; it was cold and windy and I was feeling a bit drained. I see no reason to panic.

This will be my first marathon in America in two years. I chose to do this race while I was in Niger, around the time Emily and I decided we would not be staying in country for the entire 24 months. It may even have been last November: We were in Zinder and I was running through this wide open patch of hardpan near the hostel ...

Before I left for Niger in January of 2007 I was dealing with the idea that I might not be running for two years, that a few months after running 2:29 at the Chicago Marathon and feeling like I was finally getting somewhere in this sport that it might in fact all be coming to an end.

We spent our first two months in a training site. It was enclosed by a fence, perched up on a hill overlooking a village, quite literally in a bubble. My first five days there I had no choice: my luggage (my shoes) did not make it from Paris. By the time they arrived, however, I had to do something, and I had already begun to realize that training in Niger would be possible. It may be the hottest place in the world, but it is tolerable early in the morning. The people may be some of the poorest in the world and extremely conservative and perplexed by running, but the villages are surrounded by dead land rolling out and out and out. You find a way to sneak away; then you are gone, free, unseen.

There was a decrepit basketball court in the back corner of the training site (which was previously used by French engineers during the Colonial era). I started there, running some laps around the court and then carving a small loop around the site. It was difficult: I had not trained in a couple weeks, for one, but my system was in a state of shock.

Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Forty minutes. After I week I could stand the compound no more; it was time to break out. I let myself through the gate one morning, the sun barely up as the guard said something to me in a language I did not understand and suddenly I was running again, in brown pants and a buttondown shirt, the closest thing I had to running clothes ...

I chose New York because I wanted my return to marathoning in New York to feel triumphant. I wanted a big city marathon like Chicago, only I did not want to be competing with my 2006-self in Chicago, on that flat-as-a-pancake course. I would return to the city where I was born, a city I only have vague memories of, a city that nonetheless has a certain smell and an energy that makes no other city I have ever been to truly feel like a city, a city that would carry me to back to where I was. A tough, fair, championship course with hills and difficult pavement.

As much as I was able to run in Niger, my return to truly regular training -- the kind that is not regularly interrupted by things like 24-hour bus rides, farming season and amoebic dysentery -- was humbling. My fitness was lower in March than I assumed it was. My anaerobic conditioning was depleted, and it got better, slowly, but my summer racing was nonetheless discouraging.

So now I have put myself through the rigors of a marathon buildup. I am tapering correctly. I know I know how to run this race. I believe I know what I can do. For the first time in many months I will be able to rest and be fresh and have some pop in my legs. My parents, my wife, my coach will be on the streets cheering me on.

There is more faith than hard evidence at this point. We'll see how tomorrow's dress rehearsal goes. One day at a time. Always.