Miami Heat
The hard part about Miami wasn’t the humidity. It was running out of money while unemployed, being kicked out of my apartment, and having my flight cancelled during a snowstorm the day I needed to be back to sign a lease….
when I started working on marathons in all 50 states, it never occurred to me that life would be the hard part.
It should have, one of the first lessons you learn while training for a marathon is that the training isn’t the hard part, it’s everything else. And yet, Miami’s complications still startled me.
I had asked my landlord if I could move out at the end of December (I had been paying rent without a job for 9 months, I was finally out of money). They said no. Then they offered to list the apartment if I paid them an extra month’s rent (after telling them I was out of money). Then they emailed to say they’d let me out of the next three month’s rent if I moved out by the end of January, on January 22nd. With the Miami marathon on January 25th.
I’d have exactly 6 days to get back from the marathon, find a new apartment, sign the lease, and move out.
Then a snow storm hit, my flight got cancelled, and the only way home without dropping $1k I didn’t have was a 2.5 day long bus ride.
Perhaps the most important thing Miami taught me was to focus on the moment. Both in terms of compartmentalizing my money and apartment situation, as well as making it through the heat and humidity of the race.
I knew it would be hot, I knew it would be humid, I still wasn’t ready.
Breathing while running was harder than expected. I’d completed an Olympic distance triathlon the summer before in 90 degree weather and 100 percent humidity. It still wasn’t the same.
Miami heat is literally suffocating. You either slow down until you can breathe, or you die. Before I finished the first mile I knew I had to throw all of my plans out the window. I walked part of it, just to reframe my expectations.
And that’s how most of it went, I met runners along the way blindsided by the difficulty, I passed one man that was down and I was pretty sure wouldn’t get back up. He didn’t. The ambulance didn’t get there in time.
And the hole time all I could think about was Minneapolis and ICE and what was I doing here when the world is on fire. Then I ran into Coach Bennett at mile 24 and I said all of this to him and he said ‘The world has always needed firefighters, now more than ever. You are a fire fighter.’ And I broke down in tears.
And finally, when I felt like mush and wasn’t sure how I’d find the finish line, there was birthday boy coach Joe Shayne, waiting for me on the bridge, one mile out.
Eventually, after a long bus ride, I got home, I found the new apartment, I moved, and despite taking a $200k pay cut from the year prior, I managed to sign up for another 3 marathons still waiting in the year ahead. Miami taught me to focus on the road under my feet, and keep moving, no matter how daunting the next few miles feel.
No one can force us to give up, unless agree to. And we’re still going. See you in New Jersey.
