Running for Your Life: Week Seven

Catching up to real time; Week Seven is September 12-18. Note to self: When climbing the Prospect Park stone staircase to the manmade lake overlook the second and third weeks in September, wear a sturdy hat, if not a helmet. Squirrel-bomb acorns threaten serious head-beaning. No joke.

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My foot hurts like hell. On Saturday, the end of Week Six, I bought a new pair of Brooks Defyance at JackRabbit in Park Slope, Brooklyn. When I examined the old pair, the sole seemed to be holding up well, except for a spot on the left shoe, which had worn down to a thinnish layer where on the ball of my foot a callus had hardened. I’d been wearing the Brooks brand for years, usually for over a year before replacing them. But these I’d just purchased in April, a few weeks before the Pittsburgh Marathon. Perhaps, I thought, there was something wrong.

JackRabbit was packed with kids, getting outfitted for PE, after-school sports. When I asked the clerk for marathon shoes, a fellow marathoner sitting nearby asked me which one I was running.

“New York?” he said. In my experience in Brooklyn, everyone thinks if you are in training, you are training for the New York Marathon.

“No, Steamtown. In October.” Still blank stare. “Scranton, Pennsylvania.”

“How soon should I be changing shoes?” I ask the clerk later, after lacing up the new pair.

“It depends, everybody is different.”

“In my case I usually stay with a shoe for at least a year. This past pair I’ve had for only five months.”

“One rule of thumb is to change at about 400 miles.”

I do a hasty in-my-head calculation. “Yep, that sounds about right.”

The first two runs of Week Seven my left foot protests some more. Good old “Barefoot Ken Bob” Saxton, finisher of more than 70 barefoot marathons, says: "Luckily, your feet are sensitive, which is a good thing. Listen to them and they’ll keep you from doing something stupid.”

Maybe this is stupid, I think. I make good time in the new shoes on Sunday, but despite the extra cushioning the callus on my left foot is bothering me more than ever. I’m only doing a lucky shortie, a 1:05, and halfway, I start to feel pain across my forefoot. Soon, it's feeling numb so that the final mile I do with body-memory, not with a natural sensation of foot-to-ground.

Once out of the shoes, my foot quickly returns to a normal sensation, so I try again on Monday. But, if anything, it's even more troubling. My right foot is fine, but my left, halfway into a 55-minute jog, turns into what must be what a club foot feels like. If I’m listening to my feet, like Saxton says, I should stop. But I don’t. I pay close attention to where I’m going because I could easily stumble and hurt myself in this condition, but I keep running. I have to get the miles in. And I really must, in Week Seven, get in three hours on Wednesday.

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For more than year before he died, D would tell you to distraction that “David Live” was the best rock ’n’ roll album every made. So when we pallbearers, just out of our teens, blasted “Rebel, Rebel” on the car stereo and shouted out with David Bowie, the tears flowing, literally gasping in grief, while on the "circuit" of Owen Sound’s Main Street to Harrison Park and to the Old Arena in The Halftrack, it left an indelible stamp on us all. Everyone would remember D. True to the cliché; in so many ways, he was the best of us. I don’t think of him consciously on every run. There's Avatar, and my Nigerian running pal Leonard, but in the deepest part of me, stemming from that year of near-death and loss, D is back. And at the starting line of a marathon, the 20-mile mark, the words for “Rebel, Rebel,” course through my mind. Every verse.

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Damn! it’s killing me. And on the first truly beautiful day: breezy and 77. My left foot, same spot, only worse than Monday. Of course, I’m out on that long run on Wednesday, as planned. At my favorite spot along the Hudson River Park, the Christopher Street pier. I could stop, should stop, but no. Discretion is the better part of valor. If only. The right foot’s fine, though. No pressure, no pain. I go on, altering my stride, favoring heel strikes for a half-mile. Then, no, this is about building up the calluses; I'm back in natural stride, striking mid- and forefoot. Build up the calluses, I think. Yes, it's better. So much so, I make it to 79th Street Boat Basin, my planned turnaround spot, and a second-wind kick out on Pier 1, feel the breeze on my face. At Chelsea Piers at 23rd Street, I join for a time a rookie half-marathon runner, about half my age, legging a taper-run before the Philly Rock ’N’ Roll Half. I see the cordoned-off mosque site, police keeping a vigil, and back to Brooklyn, but then, at Court Street, on a rise before the Gowanus gully, I feel it. Done. Both feet now, I’m shuffling, almost stopping. Finally, though, I’m there, at home. Twenty miles running and 2:55, only five minutes short of my goal. But at what cost? Only 24 days before the marathon, and I’m not at all sure about what to do about this damned foot.

Next: Running for Your Life: Rest Stop: A tornado hits home